I thought I would attempt a 50 facts about me challenge as a fun way for you to get to know me a little better and to see if we have anything in common! Lets see if I can think of 50 half interesting facts about myself. Here goes...
1 - My full name is Finnley May Elliott. My parents made up the spelling of my name to make it more girly as it's typically a boys name. May, my middle name, is after my Grandma who died before I was born.
2 - I grew up in a little village in West Sussex called Fittleworth, before moving to London to go to University. But soon got fed up of the expense and pressures of life in the city so moved back to Sussex to pursue a creative career.
3 - If you don't know already - I'm a freelance artist, specialising in Pet Portraiture. I also really enjoy painting landscapes (particularly mountains) and people.
4 - We moved to Hastings on the South Coast of England almost two years ago and love living here. Everyone is so friendly and there's a great creative scene. My partner and I run @creativehastingsuk as our little way of promoting the creative talent in our area as well as sharing exciting and inspiring things that might be of interest to those creatives.
Hastings Bonfire night.
5 - I'm not a quitter! (except when it comes to smoking, then I most definitely am.) I'm a huge believer in hard work. I'm very determined and when I believe in something I will not give up. I regard it as one of my better personality traits, although it could also be described as stubbornness! The following 3 facts are examples of this.
6 - I've been a vegetarian/occasional fish eater since I was 7 and a vegan for just over a year.
7 - I completed my AS and A2 Levels in one year rather than two. I knew I wanted to go to art college but didn't want to wait for two years to get there, so I worked my butt off and got 3 A's!
8 - I've been with my boyfriend soon to be husband Ollie since I was 18 (11 years!)
9 - I'm getting married in May this year.
10 - I HATE dancing. I'm way too tall and gangly to be good at it. It makes me feel really awkward and uncomfortable. I also hate things that make me the centre of attention. Needless to say I'm not looking forward to our first dance.
11 - My favourite food is dried Mango.
12 - My two worst foods are Coriander and Coleslaw. Coriander tastes like sweat to me and Coleslaw is just plain disgusting. Strange as I like all the individual ingredients, but together they're rank. I also hate Coca Cola. Can't understand why it's so popular. It's just brown sugary water.
13 - I'm scared of needles and the dark.
14 - I used to be horribly shy when I was younger, and although I'm a lot better now, walking into a room full of strangers is still incredibly daunting for me.
15 - I used to hate having my photograph taken, so much so that no photos exist of me between the ages of about 7 - 14.
16 - My biggest dream in life is to swim with Great White Sharks (preferably in a cage!) They were my favourite animal when I was younger and I have a shark tattoo'd on my arm.
17 - I didn't own a mobile phone until I was 18. I was adamant I didn't need one. Now I am practically glued to my phone.
18 - I believe in ghosts. Here's why.
19 - I'm obsessed with tea. When I was little I used to have a big cappuccino mug filled half of tea and half with milk which I used to down in one go. It was my weird little daily ritual that I did everyday until I was in my twenties.
20 - I am one of the most forgetful people you will ever meet! I think it's something to do with being dyslexic, I think ahead too much and can't focus on what I'm doing properly.
21 - The most famous person I've ever met is Ralph Fiennes (aka Voldemort). I used to work in a cocktail bar in Soho and he came in for a drink. Happy to say he was very nice and was wearing a rucksack which struck me as very normal and unpretentious.
22 - I absolutely hate talking on the phone and I will do anything to avoid it.
23 - If I wasn't an artist I'd love to be a set designer for period films and dramas, an art therapist or a forensic investigator.
24 - I'm obsessed with true crime and my specialist subject on mastermind would be serial killers. Hence why I would like to be a forensic investigator. I've been fascinated by scary things as long as I can remember, starting with Dinosaurs when I was maybe 3 or 4, I then graduated on to Sharks, then Ghosts then on to True Crime when I was a teenager. I used to think I was weird that I found stuff like this interesting but then I listened to My Favorite Murder and found out there's a whole community of people just like me!
25 - The first ever single I bought was Pretty Fly for a White Guy by The Offspring. A sign that I grew up in the noughties!
26 - I swear A LOT which my mum constantly tells me off for.
27 - One of my favourite activities is going to the pub with Ollie and my friends.
28 - My favourite genre of film is either horror or documentaries.
29 - I hate worms. Even the thought of them makes me shudder. I hate how when it rains they all come out of the ground and slither in puddles.
30 - My favourite colour is cornflower blue.
31 - When I was growing up we had all sorts of animals - hamsters, tropical fish, dogs, cats, chickens, quail, rabbits, guinea pigs and apart from our Black Labrador Cotton my favourite pet was a duckling we rescued named Fidget. She used to follow my mum round like she was her mother and sleep in the crook of our necks, snuggled into our ponytails.
32 - I'd describe myself as a very empathetic person and as a result I worry about upsetting the people I care about a lot.
33 - My worst personality trait is definitely my temper and I'm very impatient.
34 - I love collecting things and find it very difficult to throw anything away. Some of my collections include creepy dolls, birds nests, plants, postcards and I'm slowly collecting artwork by artists and illustrators who's work I love.
35 - I wanted a dog of my own my whole life and as soon as we moved out of London I got Tovah. She is a Shihtzu x Jack Russell named after the author of the Moomins (Tove Jansson) but I spelt it the Hebrew way so people don't have trouble pronouncing it.
36 - If it isn't already clear. I love art. My favourite artists are Marcel Dzama, Raymond Pettibon, Susan Hiller and Bas Jan Ader.
'The flowers have horns and the devil had thorns' - Marcel Dzama
No title (But the sand...) - Raymond Pettibon
On the edge - Susan Hiller
The Fall - Bas Jan Ader
37 - I consider my eyebrows to be my best feature.
38 - I'm really bad at painting anything with straight lines - buildings in particular and I'm beyond terrible at Maths. I got a U at GCSE. My brain just doesn't work that way!
39 - I have two younger sisters and we all sound very similar. So much so that you can barely tell us apart on the phone.
40 - I have really big feet. They're size 8 (9 in some shops) but I'm tall so I feel like it balances out!
41 - I'm left handed.
42 - I have terrible circulation and I'm always cold.
43 - I have a massive girl crush on Gillian Anderson. What a babe.
44 - I have been on TV twice when I was younger. Once with my dad when he was on 'Deals on Wheels' buying a Morris Minor for my mum. I told the presenter I thought my mum would hate it. I was also on a gardening programme with my mum and my sisters. I think there was a shot of us playing with our chickens.
45 - I absolutely LOVE podcasts and could listen to them all day (and often do). I wrote a blog post recommending some of my favourites : read more.
48 - My favourite books are The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, The Goldfinch By Donna Tartt and Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.
49 - My first ever job was as a waitress in the local pub when I was 15. On my first shift I poured a tray of drinks over a mans lap and decided it probably wasn't the career path for me.
50 - I'd love to do a road-trip across America. Mainly because there are so many different landscapes and climates there - mountains, deserts, forests, swamps and big cities.
That's it! Hope you enjoyed my random 50 facts. Let me know if we have anything in common!