A stately weekend

This weekend we stayed in the most beautiful old manor house in Norfolk to celebrate a friend's 30th. The weather was pretty grey but I managed to take a few pictures and we got out for a nice walk. Most of the time was spent drinking in front of the most enormous fire and eating and laughing. A life I could get used to!

You are gold

This is the music-related project I was talking about.

Over Christmas we had to design the packaging for a CD we were to make, with all the songs following some sort of theme. The examples they gave were songs about dogs, colours or countries.

I chose chemical elements and packaged the cd using a nice contrast of plain white card, and crinkly gold card. I'd spent some time drawing minerals and crystals at the museum and making paper forms but liked the random nature of crushed card. It seemed much more like naturally-formed crystals than anything I could make using a polyhedron net.

In case you can't see from the photos the tracklist was as follows:

lithium - nirvana

helium hearts - super furry animals

carbon monoxide - regina spektor

oxygen - willy mason

neon bible - arcade fire

the sulphur man - doves

titanium expose - sonic youth

my iron lung - radiohead

think zinc - t rex

silver - hundred reasons

iodine - leonard cohen

platinum blonde - blondie

gold - spandau ballet

mercury - bloc party

I finally go back to uni on Monday and can't wait to get back into my work!

Charity shop goodies

I popped over to Ely on Saturday where my parents live, and had a few minutes to spare so had a quick rummage in the charity shops there. It's usually a bit hit and miss but I found these goodies. I love the butterdish as Prickwillow is a small village just 4 miles outside Ely and some years ago used to have its own pottery. It struck me as a nice piece of local history. And that lovely raised design? Well, it's a bit nice isn't it?

I also found a lovely pale blue knitted silk jumper with pearls sewn on the front. It's slightly rouched at the point where sleeve meets shoulder, so I see it as a little nod to the massive shoulder adornments Rihanna's wearing, whilst still keeping it granny chic!

Hope you had a good weekend!

My First Treasury

I could hardly believe it, but late last night I got myself a treasury! It's the first time I've been online at the right time so I was very excited - albeit a little unprepared, as I took ages in picking my items... but I'm glad I know how to do it now as I have lots of themes in mind...

The Elements

Well, it's been a strange old week. I went to a funeral yesterday and it absolutely poured with rain. I was very moved by the people around me, and it got me thinking how amazing life is, and how important it is to enjoy the simple things in life. I can't begin to think what the Haitians are going through right now, it's never been far from my mind over the past few days.

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These are two collages made with some new photos I took in the recent snow we've had. We visited our local country park last weekend as there are a couple of nice lakes there and lots of ducks that make that lovely quacky laughing sound. But while we were walking, the wardens decided that the frozen lakes were too tempting for people to skate on (and not safe to do so) so they blocked the entrances. We had to climb over a fence to escape which was rather exciting.

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I'm also working on a uni project which I'll reveal next week. All I'm saying for now is that it has a musical theme...

In the meantime have a lovely weekend whatever you're up to.

Photo collages

I've recently been enjoying going through my old photos and cutting them up to make these new collages. Most photos are from when I briefly house-sat for a friend in the most beautiful house. I've also used a piece of photo by my friend Jamie - the original is amazing and he tells me it's from a roll of film from the 80's, hence the permed hairstyles! I'd love to see more, the colours are so great! You can see more of Jamie's work here and see these two new pieces in the shop.

neon and on

I'm still loving the neon paper but also sparkly gold leftover wrapping paper! I was kind of thinking about a magical forest when I was making this today.

I was remembering a folk tale my lecturer told us during our last lecture of 2009, which was about a forest that nobody would pass through for fear of what lurked inside. To cut a long and scary story short, there was a terrible troll that was trapped under a huge stone slab in the forest clearing and he made the sound of a small child needing help to lure people to him. Whoever was foolish enough to have entered the forest in the first place, lifted up the big stone and out he jumped! He'd then grant you a wish, but insisted you never thank him. Poor Tom (the farmer's boy - obv.) accidentally thanked him on three separate occasions and landed himself under the stone whilst the troll walked free. Pretty scary!

My collage ain't half as nasty, and is now in the shop.

How cute!

I found this little children's guide to sewing at a car boot sale before Christmas and just love the colours and style of illustrations. Very much of their time, but still fresh and bright and really cute!

I'm looking at a lot of this kind of imagery from the late 50's and early 60's in preparation for the book project we have coming up at uni. I'm thinking of doing something about my grandparents in their heyday. There's something so optimistic and innocent about illustrations of that time that I love.

Turkish Delights

Well today I've done nothing except cosy up on the sofa and nurse my cold but I've been cheering myself up by reading guides on the best places to visit in Istanbul as on Sunday we booked a week there in August!

I'm so excited, it looks so colourful and interesting. I can't wait to visit the Grand Bazaare (where the photo above was taken) and see the old part of town, the mosques, and take a boat ride out to the Princes' Islands for a swim on one of their small beaches....

Anyone been before? Got any tips?

Happy New Year!

How was your New Years Eve?

We ended up in our local which was nice, they fed us allsorts of of tasty finger food, but then, rather crucially, forgot to do the midnight countdown! Instead we enjoyed a rather bad rendition of The Clash's "I Fought the Law". Oh well! Happy 2010!

I thought I'd see in a new decade with a bit of flourescent pink and orange in my Etsy shop, it seemed like a good idea at the time... So there are three new collages listed. I've really struggled with Etsy's photo limitations though. Why oh why does Etsy desaturate so badly? My photos have come out fine when transferred from camera to computer but as soon as I upload them to Etsy, or Blogger they look really dull. Hmm, annoying. You'll have to take my word for it that the oranges and pinks are blisteringly bright. Or look at my flickr page.

OH! Damn, just read how totally last year my experiments in neon are... oh well!

Merry Christmas!

Well this will be the last chance I have to wish you all a happy holiday! I hope you have a lovely time with family and friends and I will see you in the new year (if not before). As a parting gift I thought I'd show you some of my hand-made produce that I'll be giving this year, from top, hazelnut and plain truffles, apple and walnut chutney and crystallised orange and lemon peel.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Winter Wonderland!

Well, if you've not heard, it's bloomin' snowy in England! 

We were out for a work do last night and it was just starting to snow. By the time we finished our meal there was about 3 inches of snow on the ground and we had to help cars get out of the carpark, and over bridges as we walked home in a huge blizzard!

We're forecast more snow tonight... So exciting!

Couple of new prints

Goodness, it's been a busy few weeks! I've got my last deadline of 2009 tomorrow and then a tutorial on Thursday but then nothing until late January, which is a bit of a relief, I'm knackered!

Today I've been doing last minute picture framing for customers who have a Christmas deadline and - somewhat more bizarrely - making a costume to turn a small white 13-year-old boy into the Three Supremes for a school talent show tomorrow night! It's a great thing to be involved with, and the fact that this boy is going to sing a Motown medley is reason enough for me to give up my evening! In case you're wondering, the costume consists of a plastic pipe with two life-sized Supreme's heads on either end, each with a clothes hanger for shoulders and then a piece of gold fabric that hangs as a dress. It sounds awful but looks surprisingly good!

I've also been making chutney for Christmas pressies, and found a nice Rick Stein recipe here which looks and tastes pretty good if I do say so myself. On Saturday I'm going to get to grips with crystallising orange and lemon peel a la Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, I'm feeling all homemade-y since watching Kirstie Allsopp. Although, how many times did she say "Meadowgate" in three programmes??? Bad editing I think...

Anyway, these two prints are from the linocut book I did around this time last year are now in the shop. I dug it out the other day and felt sad I'd not done anything with it at the time. So I thought I'd see how a few prints go in the shop. More to come in a few days.

Have a good week folks!

Thank you!

You are such a lovely lot, your advice was so helpful!

I'm just about to start making a set of 12 cards that will fit together to form this larger picture, as an extra to having the actual poster for the crit tomorrow. Both the cards set and the poster (which will fold into 12ths) will be presented in slip cases which I'm covering in chartreuse and white gingham, to pick up the colour of the pears and bird cages.

I'm pretty happy with the finished result, I think using fewer colours worked to bring it all together, and by highlighting the path it makes a clearer journey - like you all suggested.

I hope you like it! Thanks so much for your help!

Help?

Hello dear blog reader, I'm having a little trouble and wondered if you might give me your advice. 

I'm working on a poster as a response to a brief asking us to make a sequence of images following a figure through Porto. I chose to do a child running around counting things that he notices. So it goes, 1 boy, 2 hams, 3 boats, 4 pears, 5 moustaches, 6 sardines, 7 barrels, 8 birds in cages, 9 hands on 9 hips, 10 pigeons. 

I don't want it to be too obviously a counting game, hence not including words or numbers but I do want it to look more like a cohesive journey that it currently does. I think I would naturally read each row from left to right like a book but I need to make the layout design strong enough to show that in the second and fourth rows read right to left. I hope the windy path will achieve this. Confused?

I've got bodies to add to the moustache men and I want to use less colours to make it bolder and either block in some colour or make a continuous grey track for the boy to follow. The photo is of my first draft.

I realise I am procrastinating to the max by blogging this instead of just getting on with it but I genuinely feel stumped. Help me please!

Ceramic news!

So I'm pretty pleased with the latest set of tiles! They are all now in the shop. I love the bubbles one especially, and how the rainclouds have come out. Unfortunately the numbers one didn't turn out well - I'd filled them with red beads but the colour burnt off in patches. For some reason hot colours don't do so well as blues and greens. Weird. Anyway on those that have worked the glass is just so crackled and shiny! I love it!

Also, I just let Lucie know (as she's a woman obsessed when it comes to this stuff) that Portmeirion are reissuing some of their 1960s pottery designs in the form of mugs - perfect for the Christmas gift audience methinks. I saw this one in a posh shop today and they are just gorgeous, so tactile, and lovely in contemporary white - the sludgy blues and greens of the originals are dreamy of course but the new versions have a wider appeal I guess. Yum yum!

Recent vintage

I've accumulated this little lot over the last few weeks (and possibly months) but neglected to show you! I bought the baby sellotape tin just this morning for 50p and it's so cute! It's about 3 inches across and will probably store needles or safety pins in its new life.

I love the Francais book, it was printed 1961 and the charming illustrations run all the way through. And those 1950s plates were a snip at £2 for 6! 

Have you found anything good at car boots or jumble sales lately?