Wooden Ampersands

My brooches are now available in walnut and obeche, you know, in case you need a more neutral typographic accessory for Spring. Available in my Etsy shop.

A bit more editorial

This week I worked on a self-set editorial brief. It was about the idea that feeling anxious during certain times of year can be linked to subconscious feelings from our childhoods. In my illustration I highlighted the example of feeling anxious towards the end of the summer holidays as dormant back-to-school-blues creep into our adult minds. Interesting stuff. And nice to draw chairs.

Hope you're having a super weekend - I've just been to a made it market in Cambridge, and am now off  to a jumble sale in a really posh village. Yippee!

I finally finished!

I can finally show you my entry to the YCN's Student awards as I submitted it yesterday. I worked on the brief for Fedrigoni, an Italian paper manufacturer, and I focused on their Woodstock range as it's recycled and in beautiful soft colours that appealed to me.

It was quite daunting setting up the installation and photographing it, having a private view, then taking it all down. At that point I rather ran out of steam so had a week on another project which was a welcome change. I then thought of setting the installation photos and resulting promo flyer and swatch booklet into a presentation. And who doesn't like a little story? Everything is cut from paper and photographed by me - although, if I were to do it over I'd certainly enlist the help of a proper photographer. Paper is so hard to shoot! 

What do you think? Keep your fingers crossed for me - there's some stiff competition! 

New brooches for Spring

I've been rather neglecting my Etsy shop lately so here are some new offerings for Spring. They're meant to be coral but they're also a bit like antlers. They add a bit of a natural-shaped zing to an outfit (and, as it happens, the red one turned upside down doubles as an excellent fake nosebleed - in case you needed such a thing. I hope you find it entertaining that I discovered this...).

Today I also submitted my entry to the YCN's Student awards, so fingers crossed it does well. I'll finally be able to show you what I've been working on for the past 6 weeks!

Full of the joys

I just had a wander round our neighbourhood and found all this amazing blossom. I love this time of year, it's a shame things at uni are so busy as it's only too easy to miss all the nice things coming to life outside. Hope you enjoyed the sun today, it's been amazing!

Absolutely Faberlous

These pretty book jackets were all made by Faber and Faber. I was looking for inspiration on Friday and borrowed the excellent Eighty Years of Book Cover Design from the library. It's full of typographic gems, in the loveliest colours.

Now, time to figure out how this helps me make my own cover...

One Week of Solitude

I'm taking a week out from the YCN project to focus on the Penguin cover competition. This year the title is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Yesterday I mostly cut leaves out of nice colour paper. Today I plan on doing something a bit more substantial! But I do quite like the leaves, perhaps they will be a new set of collages for Etsy... 

It's quite a tricky book as it revolves around 100 years in the life of a family in central America. They re-use christian names from one generation to the next, so flipping back to the family tree printed at the front of the book was somewhat necessary... It was quite like listening to your granny for a couple of hours - people, places and time sort of melted together!

+++++++ Update +++++++

Leaf collage now available in my Etsy shop!