Yum

I made bread yesterday for the first time! It was surprisingly easy but had always been one of those things you imagine is very technical and not worth attempting, but I was very pleased with these little rolls. Each is just smaller than the palm of my hand, and like french bread in texture, nice and crusty on the outside but chewy in the middle, rather than too fluffy. Just how I like it! We had them with butter and cheese and wardolf salad for lunch. Yee-um.

The next thing I want to try making is Sushi...

Scraffito tiles

I had my first proper play with scraffito (the method of painting leather-hard clay with a coloured slip, then scoring through to base clay) before we went to Scotland. For some reason I'd not done much before but my friend at work fired them for me and I'm quite chuffed with the results!

The grey shows up the white underneath clay slightly better but the turquoise is such a yummy colour. I've deliberately left them unglazed as that chalkiness is what I love about working with clay and unless the glaze has its own colour or finish I often prefer the untreated version.

I've listed the vessels and pebbles designs on etsy but it was being very slow so will do the others tomorrow. Time for a cup of tea methinks...

Scotland

Hello! We're back from bonnie Scotland! It was so beautiful, and the weather was amazing. It rained on the way up, and on the way back but almost the whole time we were there it was sunny and hot. Pretty much unheard of in that part of the world!

Camping was fun too, we had a cute little camp stove and whistling kettle and enjoyed boiling up water for tea in the evenings as the sun was setting behind the mountains. I even managed to do a bit of drawing and painting too. Bliss.

Hope you all had a good week/end, I've got loads of blog catching up to do!

Read me like a book

Morning all! Just a quick post today to show you a new collage I made yesterday using my growing collection of vintage piano music and their brilliantly coloured covers. The colours are just to die for - you know, really yummy saturated hues printed in the 60s without a trace of gloss to the surface of the card. Just pure matte loveliness. Can you tell I'm a bit obsessed?

Anyway, this one is now listed in the shop for your viewing pleasure.

This will be the last post for a week and a bit as we're heading up to Scotland tomorrow. We're so excited, as it'll be the biggest road trip we've done (9 hours or so there and back)! But I'm sure even if the weather's not great we'll have a fun time, we are going to Loch Ness afterall! That reminds me, I better get cracking with my cardboard Nessie, I'm determined to have some photographic evidence on my return - and if I have to orchestrate it so be it.

Have a great week folks!

Feeling blue?

This blue version of my lined paper pencil cases is now in the shop. I think they look pretty! I enjoyed playing around with the glasses to take the first photo. I found them at the junk shop at the weekend and they're so lovely! They have clear lenses so I could wear them anytime, and I like that they're made in France and are wonderfully pointy and evil-looking! 

!!!!

Just had to toot my own horn a bit. I'm on the Etsy front page twice, at the same time!! I'm thrilled, and it explains all the new hearts on my shop. Yay! If you've found me because of this, Hello!

Minted

This is a new design of pencil case I've been working on. I've been meaning to do the lined paper design in blue but I got carried away with the possibilities of polkadots and came up with this instead! Now listed in the shop.

I've also been going to the gym (!! I know - unheard of, but I'm getting fat) and sorting out my workroom, organising everything and chucking stuff out. I rarely feel in the mood for this sort of thing but when I do I'm brutal about it.  It's a bit tricky being in a rented flat and not being allowed to knock any nails into the walls but I'm trying to think of ingenious ways of brightening the room up. Perhaps I'll make a screen out of corkboard stuff, or just stretched stripey fabric? That would be cool. Anyway I'm rambling, have a good afternoon folks :)

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!