My Splodge Bear Dashboards

If you have been following me for a while now you will know that I have four bunnies (and two piggies) and they are my life as well as my inspiration. I am always drawing bunnies and have even shared how to draw a bunny tutorial with you. Many of you have been following my darling Splodgey's journey into old age and her battle with her cancers. It is with deep sadness that I write to say on Thursday night we had to say good bye to the sweetest, kind hearted little bunny there ever was. OK one of because all bunnies are beautiful. I am sharing this for a couple of reasons. Firstly because so many of you have been a part of our lives through my vlogs and social media and have been very supportive and I just wanted to let you all know that she is no longer with us. Obviously we are very sad but it is a weird sadness because we also knew that this day was imminent, she was old and poorly and it was inevitable. We are dealing with this in our own way. I wanted to let you know this way as I don't know if I could share that well in my vlogs without breaking down. Anyway, please don't feel bad for us and I don't want this post to be about sadness or sorrow, instead I want it to be positive which leads me onto...

I really wanted to do something for my darling girl as a little legacy or memory. She has an amazing story (which I will share below) and I feel that should live on some how. But how to do that? Well I came up with the only idea that a planner loving person could. As part of my processing of Splodge's passing I took to the paint and paintbrushes and painted my own little version of my little girl and it is then that the idea hit me!

I have turned my little painting into a dashboard in a way that I do with many of my paintings and this is now for sale over in my Etsy shop as both personal and A5.

An A5 dashboard costs £3.50 and a personal dashboard costs £2.50 and I will be donating ALL of the money from a purchase of the Splodgey dashboard to a rabbit rescue charity. Splodge was a rescue and she has been such an inspiration to us with her warm heart and funny little character. I wanted to put something back to rescues for the amazing work that they do in caring for these darling animals and also to help give both a bunny and a forever family they chance to be together. I have found a rescue that is in my home County of Cambridgeshire here in the UK and they are called 'The Rabbit Residence'. I will be paying the Etsy and PayPal transaction fees and also for the prints and materials so 100% of the purchase price will be going directly to the rescue.

Please don't feel pressured or 'guilt tripped' into feeling like you have to buy a dashboard but if you would like to then that would be fantastic. This was the only way I thought of as a memory and legacy for this darling little girl.

To purchase the dashboards please click on these links: A5 Here and Personal Here.

Thank you so much everyone for all your support and continued support, it truly means so much to me and I have met so many wonderful friends through blogging and YouTube. I created a video to share and talk more about this:



Splodgey's Story

In October 2010 Splodge and Nibbles were taken in by a friend of ours as they badly needed a home. My friend knew the home that they were from and sadly it was a home with domestic abuse and violence. My friend took them in temporarily as due to ill health she was not able to give them a permanent home. Splodge was 4 and Nibbles was 3. When they came to us they were both very shy, timid bunnies who could not bear to be touched most bunnies can be a bit timid when moving to a new home but this was more fear than anything and they hated Jon! Splodgey used to sit a bit funny and we wondered what that was all about and the vet confirmed to us that at some stage in her life she had had all of her legs broken and they hadn't set back in the proper place. She was mostly fine they were just missaligned which caused her to sit with them at an angle. In her long life these have never once shown to bother her. She was a very strong willed little girl who very much knew her own mind. She was a dedicated Mummy to Nibbles and was always very protective of her. Through lots of love, care and understanding they both grew to be very confident and comfortable around us and even used to take treats from out of our hands. With any bunnies you need to build up their trust and confidence and this was more the case with this pair. Unfortunately in February 2014 Splodge developed a growth on her tummy and at the time the vet only gave her 3 months to live. We so couldn't believe this given how much she was bounding round the house and tucking into her carrot and the vet was proved wrong. At the end of the year Splodge took a downward turn and had problems with her teeth which I discuss in the video below:



She recovered pretty well and was back to her fairly usualy self although she was starting to slow down like most old folks do. A few weeks ago she had yet more problems with her teeth and we then found out that the cause of that was a tumour in her mouth causing her teeth to be pushed. She was still so lively and wanted to eat but couldn't so she moved on to soft food. We kept umming and ahhhing as to what to do, do we put her down? But she was still so happy and lively, we couldn't put a healthy lively bunny down like that. Until the day she went she was still so full of joy and a zest for life. That is Splodge's story. We love you baby, thank you for lighting up our life and filling us with so much joy and inspiration x