Before and after

We went to a sale at our favourite junk shop yesterday and picked up quite a few goodies including some golf clubs (yes, we have a new penchant for all things golfy since a couple of rounds of mini golf in Clacton. Seriously, we plan on making regular visits to our local pitch 'n' putt and everything! I must find some vintage pringle jumpers.). 

We also found a few bits of nice pottery and this ikea mini chest of  drawers. Pity it wasn't nice raw wood as new. Instead it had been stained a really icky garden fence green...so I set about fixing it up today. My hand-painted lettering isn't quite up to scratch yet but I like the overall effect. I especially like the lazy lion embroidered patch I found in a charity shop ages ago. It's from the 1960s and reminds me of something but I can't quite remember what...for some reason I could imagine him saying "Miscellany" and then yawning.

Well, have a nice relaxing Sunday afternoon all. I'll be back this week to show you some new pencil cases I've been working on and perhaps a sneak preview of a new ceramic project.

Byeeee!

Nostalgia alert!

Remember this?! I found some in a joke shop yesterday and it was so fun to do! You colour in the plastic lightly with colour pencil, put it in the oven and wait for it to shrink to a seventh of its original size! I love my new elephant keyring. It's suitably 80's and naff. I'm sure there are endless crafty possibilities for this stuff (other than the badges and fridge magnets they already suggest). What would you make with it?

My little pinky

I love Flickr, and how seeing new things every day inspires me. I know it's perhaps not the most adventurous example of inpiration-to-output but I'm sure you understand what I mean. Sometimes it just takes a chance encounter to gee you on. Anyway, the photo above by Niella got me thinking about new possibilities for my pencil cases, which got me back on the sewing machine and doing stuff after a little while of not being very productive. I've now got ideas coming out of my ears and will be starting a new ceramic project tomorrow! 

These new pink lined paper pencil cases have just been added to the shop and am pretty happy with them! I plan to do some in baby blue too, once a new lot of oilcloth arrives in the post...Yum.

New Tiles

Gosh thanks you lot for all the lovely comments! I think I am going to stick with the turquoise theme for my museum as I simply can't stop buying turquoise things! I pretty much don't have to think about it anymore, it just happens, so it's a natural choice I suppose. So long as I spend lots of time cataloguing, drawing and arranging the items I guess it almost doesn't matter what the theme is. I think the point of it is to get us looking at objects and get us into the routine of hoarding - not something I need any encouragement with!

I've had a bit more luck with my own making this week and have a couple of new tiles in the shop. I've also been working on a new set of pencil cases which I'll show you on Monday and have the beginnings of what will become some screenprints once I get back to the print room at uni. They're papercuts which have a bit of theme which has been fun to work on. More on that soon!

Have a great weekend all :)

PS - Thanks to Lucie and Sue Bee for the heads up on me being featured on Modish! Very exciting!

Museum of....

It feels like forever since I last posted, I'm having a bit of dry spell inspiration-wise. I've been round all the local charity shops in the last week, been to yard sales and Open Studios, a huge antiques centre and some lovely shops in the hope of giving myself a kick-start....

... and still nothing! I have picked up some great things in the process though. I'm absolutely in love with the little antelope at the top (which I think is made of ivory, but is old so I don't know if I should feel guilty about it or not?) and the carved resin walking stick section really floats my boat too.

I've got a uni project to get stuck into but I just can't decide what to do. Perhaps dear reader you can help? 

We have to make a collection or "museum" of objects to catalogue and be obsessive about but since I already collect lots of stuff it's hard to decide what to do! I was wondering if I could make a museum of turquoise as I have lots of mid-20th century turquoise bits and pieces (including my new typewriter!), but does that seem a bit lame? I really fancy the idea of lots of small things that one could get hold of for free (or cheap anyway) but that still have some interest to them. Oh, I just don't know... any ideas?

Errr...

I think, I think, I might like this colour a bit!

These vintage goodies were all bought over the weekend in Clacton's charity shops and at a rather strange Sunday market we found in Jaywick. It was only when I got them home I realised the similarity of colour of all four purchases! 

I already have a Sellotape tin like this but it was 50p and I always think a pair of anything is nicer than just one. We can now have boiled eggs and soldiers for breakfast with these cute plastic eggcups, the weighing scales are missing their bowl/s but were a mere 20p! And these lovely glasses came as a set of six - perfect for homemade lemonade.

Clacton

Well we had a great weekend caravanning! I got a little sunburnt but the weather was great and we got to spend lots of time on the beach. The sights and sounds were all the more exciting in the bright sunlight although I only really got round to taking a few snaps towards the end of our stay.  

On Sunday we visited a really odd place called Jaywick. It was strange, a friend of ours had said it was worth seeing as all the houses there were tiny and falling apart, and he was right. It was quite eerie, you could tell it was a sweet little holiday resort in its 1930s hey-day. Now it's the poorest area in East Anglia. It seems to me that there's always an element of this eeriness at British seaside towns which makes me love them and feel sad at the same time. 

Caravan Love

I'm just about to set off for our caravanning weekend but thought you might appreciate the Vintage Vacations website. My pal Issie tipped me off with this and I pretty much want to go there for our whole summer holidays! They have caravans and a shack and a bungalow to offer so there's plenty of choice! I love the interiors of the caravans...but the shack looks amazing too...



Have a great weekend folks!

Home at last!

This morning I decided that after far too long, I would frame the best tea towels I've ever found whilst charity shopping. I bought both for £1.75 about 2 years ago and have never had the free wall space to show them until now. Since we moved into the new flat, all the goodies I've had hidden away are surfacing!

Unfortunately the way our living room is laid out means I couldn't get any long shots of them and the sofa but you'll have to imagine that the sofa is just underneath, and that I usually sit underneath where the pink tea towel is, and Jacob where the blue is. How cute!

In other exciting news, my work has had a mention over at freshly{blended}, so welcome if you've found me from there! Thanks Nicole for the kind words :)

Well I better tear myself from the tennis on TV and go and teach my pottery club - depending on how the latest firing has gone I may have a new tile or two to show you soon...

Have a good afternoon!

Land Ahoy!

I've been rather quiet blog-wise of late as I've been up to my gills in picture framing for Open Studios in Cambridge. But the end is in sight and I've today had the luxury of sitting in the cool, watching Wimbledon and making boats out of bits of paper!

In case you wondered, I'm feeling a little nautical these days as we're off to the seaside this weekend! It's going to be my first caravanning holiday and I'm really rather excited. In my head it's all gingham covered seat pads, brightly coloured thermos flasks and tasteful-but-floral-60's-pattern awnings. In reality I suspect it will be white plastic garden furniture, screaming kids and Spam.

Either way, I've come up with a new set of collages with a boat-y theme. The first of which is now listed.  

PS - An interesting and sickeningly cute fact about me and boats, I used to call them "boaps" as a child. I nearly called the collages my "Boap" series but thought nobody would find them on Etsy...  

Hot Summer!

Don't you just love how hot colours look in the sun? It's unfortunately not something I get to see very often living in England but oranges and turquoises are just amazing in summer! Don't get me wrong, I think us Brits do understated elegance very well indeed, but sometimes a zing of Valencia orange or tropical blue can't be beaten. I found these old music score sheets in a second hand shop a few weeks ago with Lucie (I found the books there, not Lucie, can't put a price on her!) and have just been gawping at their colours since.  Then I bought a pair of bright red hand-blown glasses in a charity shop this week (one pictured) and it reminded me to make something of these bright colours. 

These ones are now in the shop.

Treasury fun

I really liked the items in this treasury that featured my bunting collage. How cute is this brooch? And this painting?

Have a great weekend all, fingers crossed for a bit of sun :)

A Different Perspective?

Since I started my degree and have been drawing from life more, I've realised how much I get a kick out of drawing with perspective and vanishing points in mind. I suppose it makes sense as I love geometric puzzles, linear drawing can be quite logical I suppose. In any case, it was only when I was trying to think how best to lay out my pieces for my parallelograms collage yesterday that I started thinking about traditional Chinese perspective and how it's different to western perspective in art.

The idea of layers and rows of similar objects really appeals to me and I think is evident in my work so far, and certainly in the objects I like to have around me - my letterpress tray a perfect example. Making landscapes using this rule of thumb hadn't really occurred to me before I made this new collage featuring bubble trees and houses with a mountain in the background. By simply arranging one layer below the last it creates simple perspective but I think there's something really oriental about it. I guess it's the mountain too, it just reminds me of a Hokusai painting where there is usually a presence of a large volcanic-looking mountain. 

This one is now in the shop.

Shapely

I can't help myself when it comes to geometric shapes. I even like their names, trapezia, parallelograms, dodecahedrons. Yum.

This little collage was my returning to an old idea I'd had in a dream of a kind of landscape or cloudscape I suppose. It's hard to explain. But anyway, all the way into the distance were these shapes of different colours. It's now in the shop :)

Treasure!

These were my latest finds from the car boot sale at the weekend (and Yes Ursula, people do sometimes sell straight out of the back of their cars, but usually have a trestle table!). The best finds for me were the printing blocks, not just because I love the mixed sizes and styles of letters but because of the graph paper block that I found! You won't have had to have read my blog for long to know that I'm pretty crazy for graph paper so you can imagine my excitement at the prospect of printing my own, in any colour I want. Seriously, this is like the best thing that's happened all year! I only wish the letterpress room at uni were open over summer but I fear I shall have to wait until October to try these little guys out :(

Until then, I will very much enjoy taking my little yellow suitcase (Jacob bought a matching red one) on our caravanning holiday in a few weeks with friends, deciding whether to keep sewing supplies or art materials in my vintage folding-out sewing box, and having imaginary tea parties with my newly matching sugarbowl and milk jug!

Happy Monday

Hello folks, hope you've had a nice weekend. We went up to see Jacob's parents and went to a huge car boot sale (needless to say I'll have pics of my finds soon...), and I'm really rather excited about one find in particular. But you'll have to wait and see what it is...

In the meantime you can enjoy the new collages I've been working on which are now in the shop. Let's just say I've been inspired by the English summer!

I've also added this mini collage to the shop, what can I say? I'm a soppy one really...

Bargain hunting

So Lucie and I went round the charity shops in Cambridge on Tuesday and found some little gems! I love this Denby bowl and this Crown Ducal milk jug. The colour is so pretty! The little yellow cup was only 50p but will eventually have a little plant growing in it I suspect.  I also got a couple of quite heavy wooden trays that are like empty box frames of 16x16" which are begging to be painted and filled with stuff, maybe like Jospeh Cornell's boxes which I have a bit of a thing for. I may omit the bird stuff, but I like all the balls and moving parts he used to include.

I am currently rather jealous of this found by Francesca, I even think I had a dream about it last night! I can't wait to see what she does with it! I'm also excited to see what Lucie's been doing with her vintage finds from Tuesday, she found some great things which I'm sure she'll be showing off soon, it was a bumper day of bargains!