Vintage treasure and stuff

I've just finished my first week back at uni and am knackered! 

We've got a brief to be drawing people that we don't know, so I've been to the hairdresser, the local library, bus station and greasy spoon to try and catch interesting types. The results are ranging from bad to awful so far... fingers crossed I'll improve!

We're also now doing a Photoshop module which seems quite fun, again we have to do character studies of strangers which we can then digitally manipulate so I anticipate lots of sitting in coffee shops with a sketchpad over the next month or so. I guess it could be worse!

I'm also in the process of designing a poster for a freakshow attraction for a typography project, and also need to research graphic novels for a seminar talk I have to give in 7 weeks! Erk. Anyway all's well and good, and I'm still loving the course :)

Hope you have a lovely relaxing weekend. 

Shop Updated

After far too long I've finally added some things to my shop. It was looking a little sparse...

So, new on the list are some mini collages and a couple of pencil cases which have been SO fun to make! I went with the whole "back to school" theme as I am finally back to uni next Monday! Overall I'm pretty pleased with the last two days' work, fingers crossed for some nice sales now!

Tomorrow I've got to pop into uni and collect my grade for the printing module we did before Christmas - which in my case was the lino printing I did, and bound into a book. Fingers crossed for that too! Eee! It's been years since anything I did got marked, it's quite a weird feeling!

Fore!

Ok, well I know people don't traditionally yell "Fore" when playing squash, but maybe they should. These guys look like they take themselves pretty seriously which is why I've surrounded them with pretty colours. Y'know, to make them chill a bit. 

It occurred to me, don't sports make us do the oddest things? After finding the book these chaps are from entitled "Squash Rackets (Completely Revised)" and wading through the tactical diagrams and shot angles I realised that maybe it's the fact that I do little to no exercise which makes this all seem so alien! Maybe there's a New Years resolution to be found amongst all this. 
Me...and sports. 
Hmm.

Goodness me.

I'm going mad. Mad with rage. I've spent the whole of this week waiting for a replacement window for my broken-into car to arrive from a breakers yard and yesterday found out that the courier (Citylink, yes I'm naming and shaming) have lost it. It's just vanished between them collecting it and it getting to their depot. Just marvellous isn't it? All the while my car is sat out on the street with a poorly constructed perpex bodge-job to keep the snow out. If someone nicks my car the insurance won't cover it as it's not secure. The breakers yard won't send me a replacement or refund my money. Seriously, is it so hard for people just to do their freakin' jobs properly????? Grrr.

OK, rant over.

More

Couldn't help put these up too, I think they're amazing!

Mucking about

This week is turning out to be quite fun. It started badly with my car being broken into at the weekend but now that's on its way to being sorted out (expensively I might add) I can concentrate on experimenting with new ideas and materials. 

Blotting paper is currently on my list on best things ever! How fun are these chromatography tests? You draw a half-inch circle of colour in felt tip onto a circle of blotting paper, cut a little 'leg' that will drop down and act like a straw in the water that you've got the circle resting over - I used a wine glass - and about 2 hours later you have a big circle with the different 'ingredients' of the ink split up. I've got a black dot on the go at the moment and its producing a bright cerise pink, very strange!

Other proper work is going OK but I keep getting distracted by these things! Must knuckle down today... 

Old china

All this sitting about being on holiday is getting me a little bored so I'm going to get my teeth into my "homework" this coming week. We're continuing the Cockney Rhyming theme but I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent which will allow me to draw pottery (I know, any excuse..). 

You see the genius lies in the expression "Me old china" meaning of course "My old china plate" = "Mate". So today we went to Emmaus, which I love, and I took lots of pictures of pottery to work from and give me ideas for china patterns. I will post how I get on with this, my plan is to make screen-prints and maybe emboss bits of them to add texture but we shall see...In the meantime I've just rediscovered watercolour and am LOVING using it! Oh yeah and I've been drawing old men in pubs too... it's been an interesting week.

By the sea

Happy New Year!

We spent a magical afternoon on the beach today at a really weird place on the Suffolk coast. There's lots of coastal erosion happening there so you get oak trees suddenly finding themselves right on the sea front, roots exposed. It reminded me of the opening to Polanski's Macbeth with the witches on the heath, it was misty and cold today so lighting a small fire was exactly what the doctor ordered. And we had marshmallows! What a lovely start to the year. Hope you had fun welcoming in 2009!

How cool

Are these? They're vintage reel tape cases of about 5" square and are perfect for storing loose CDs and DVDs. I picked them up at a local refuge/thrift shop outside Cambridge for a pound. I love the graphic style and typography and the colours are amazing! Seriously I could look at these all day but I won't, as we're off to Jacob's parents' for a few days then I'm spending Christmas with my family so a little blog break is due. 

Have a great Christmas everyone, and see you soon! xxx

Don't tell....

...but this is what I've made my sister for Christmas! She's just moved into a new house with a  friend and I thought it would make a nice housewarming pressie. It's basically a collage, framed, with cup hooks screwed into the bottom so you hang your keys up! I've attached mirror plates to the sides so it can be securely hung. I'm quite chuffed with it! I wonder if people would buy this sort of thing on etsy...maybe I'd have to use perspex instead of glass for safety of shipping. Hmm, something to think about in the New Year anyway.

Tea and cake

Not much to report today, got all my prints bound into a book, but ran out of time to photograph it before it had to be handed in! 

I bought this lovely tea set yesterday for £5 from Cancer Research (Christmas present to myself...) and am so in love with it! It's late 50's/early 60's Midwinter and seems to be a fairly rare pattern, so a bit of a bargain. We just had tea and Jacob's birthday cake ( which I made! - I'm rubbish at cakes but it was pretty good!) using the set, so that was very nice! :)

Pages printed!

These are my "journey" book pages which I'll be binding over the weekend. They were all printed with lino and oil-based inks in the albion press.  The images were made for a Print and Process project based on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. You would never know it, but they said to just run with whatever line took your fancy. i chose part of a line that said "Even if I were to walk from here to India..." so started thinking about a journey on foot.

I'm pretty happy with them as a set. Using small lino blocks like hand stamps, the suns, arrows and houses break up the flow of the book and make it a bit more playful. It's taken me ages to do and is only just dry but I feel like a weight has been lifted now it's all done! I'll be binding them in a hardback cover which will be covered in a white oilcloth with maybe a grey leather spine. I'm still a bit undecided on that so any ideas...?

Finished kit

Ta da! Here is my finished kit to make a paper ball as pictured in my previous post. It was a really interesting crit today seeing what other "batches of five" people had come up with for under a tenner. Someone had made pants with Noel Fielding (from the Mighty Boosh)'s face on!!! My idea seemed quite nerdy in comparison but hey ho, I'm chuffed with how they look!

Update - You can now buy one here!!

Batch of five

This is the paper ball that you'd be able to make from one of the kits I'm working on for this "Batch of Five" project. We first saw structures like this at the Science Museum and thought they were really cool (especially as they appeared in the "History of Computing" section). Recreating them has taken me days - I know, they are more complicated than they look - but I'm really pleased with the result. Will show you a pic of the finished kit when it's done...

Double whammy

Firstly, a sample print from my book about a journey. I'm quite chuffed with it and think it could look lovely in other colours. It still needs its little coloured houses but I quite like the abstracty look at the moment.

Secondly one of my collages was featured in a lovely treasury by Sarah and Jon of  Pocketstudio which is exciting. The other work featured is gorgeous I feel mine looks quite out of place! 

Anyway, time to go and do research, I have to think of a "batch of five" identical things I can produce, buy or compile that could potentially be mass-made, by Tuesday...erk.

Any ideas more than welcome!

Afternoon

I have to get some final printing started at least for this book project we're doing. So, this will be me for the next 3 hours on the awesome albion presses at uni. They are just so nice to use I can't describe..

Triangulation and celebration

Marcus Walters

Kate Gibb

Brandi Strickland

Have you noticed triangles popping up around the place? I have. I really, really like them! I'm a massive fan of Brandi Strickland's work, same with Marcus Walters and Kate Gibb but I only stumbled across the work of Jill Browning on etsy today and it has a really fun graphic style. She sells prints from her etsy store that opened only 2 weeks ago so go and have a look. Her work reminds me of amazing late 60's fabrics which can only be a good thing! 

Finished!

Phew! I'm having a break from my essay and just wanted to show off the linocut I finished this morning in front of Bargain Hunt. My fingers ache but I'm pretty pleased, I just hope to God it prints OK. I'll be printing it in a really pale grey as an icy background to some little coloured wooden houses for my landscape print project. I've got allsorts of lovely mountainous scenes planned but only two weeks to cut, print and bind them into a book... erk. It's fine, it's not as if I have an essay to write, another brief to start and finish and picture framing to do by Dec 11th or anything...

Oh yeah, in case you wondered it's not proper lino, it a vinyl tile from b+q as you get six 12" sq tiles for £3 as opposed to a 6x8" piece of proper lino for about the same. The tiles are easier to cut through, though that can be a mixed blessing as you can see where there are holes right through to the backing paper! But because it's so cheap I just stick another layer on the back once I'm done to give it strength. Seems to work OK. I was thinking of printing it up in colour at some stage too, I think turquoise or golden yellow would be just dreamy!

I have mail

This arrived in the post on Friday and I love it! It's called ABC3D and is by Marion Bataille.

I was researching pop-up books and cards for a project and found it online, it's so beautiful and clever. I love that it's black white and red too, it makes it a bit more of a grown-up looking toy. I'd have made a video of it myself if I could a) be bothered and b) do a better job than this one. Neither of which seemed likely given my state of absolute lethargy this afternoon. I've been doing quite well cutting a very complicated pattern in lino though, although I fear I may develop a hunchback if I'm crouched over like some sort of printmaking hobbit for much longer...

Cockney innit.

Our first proper brief where we have to come up with images from our imaginations was set a week and a half ago on the theme of Cockney rhyming slang, it's pretty fun but quite tricky incorporating the idea of the phrase and the meaning into one image. 

I was quite pleased with this little chap, especially because of the moustache! It was also quite fun researching suits, I'd love to learn how to cut patterns and make jackets and stuff, if only there were time...