Brighton

On Friday we drove to Brighton on a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was great! I'd heard Brighton was lovely from pals who'd studied there, and seen it enough on telly to pretty much know what to expect but it was far lovelier. The pavillion was amazing, so weird - especially the ornate windows. We ate delicious crab salad sandwiches and fish soup rather than the usual greasy fish and chips and then went round The Lanes and looked at vintage clothing. It was all the tacky bits of any English seaside town, with a whole bunch of interesting culture thrown in, not to mention a bookshop/gallery on the seafront that sold Charlie Harper books and Rob Ryan prints. Lovely jubbly!

Pick-me-up

What a beautiful day!

I thought I'd give ceramic on-glaze paint a try on a set of espresso cups thrifted last week. I really liked using it and will try it again for sure. This little set of four are now on etsy.

Plus, a new ebay-ed lamp for my desk. I bit the bullet last week and moved my desk downstairs to our living area. Now I can half-watch morning TV, half-work without leaving the whole dining table covered in cut paper and paint-covered plates. The trade-off however, was that I had to take apart our table football. I'm afraid I am officially boring now. And grown-up. Ew.

That is a handsome lamp though.

Coral Pencil Case

Today I have been catching up on 90210 as I'm such a saddo. I also made this pencil case and listed it on etsy.

Hope you had a super Easter and are stuffed to the gills with chocs! I'm still munching my way through bunnies in denial of the fact that I must really do the proper food shop today...

Northern Europe

Today I've been exploring Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and France in my world tour.

The cine films are really fun, especially the funny trousers people used to ski in in the early 60s!

I've still got so much to do, adding to my coverage of Africa and the Middle East. Oh and then I have to scan EVERYTHING (last count 65 A3 sheets), learn how to make a horizontal website with javascript (?????) and then learn how to use After Effects. Nothing too challenging right.....? Did I mention I have only 5 weeks?

Bring on the distractional Easter treats, I think some chocolatey inspiration will help!

Prints

Prints of my journey piece are now available on etsy. Hope you're having a nice weekend!

Finally found

I've been stuck at home the last few days with a horrible cold and cough and have got sooooo bored. This evening there's been nothing good on TV to distract me so I got to looking for old books that I had as a kid, then I started thinking about old toys...

My very first memory is of playing in my grandparents' house in Cape Town before we moved to England when I was two. So we're talking pretty early memories. What I remembered was playing with these lovely little wooden blocks they had (I think from my Dad's childhood), that were made of hardwood and stained in purple, and pink, and brown. I loved tocking them together and remember my granny and my older sister piling them up (I guess I was a bit too little to manage it myself though!). I have to say I got a little emotional when I stumbled across this vintage set of Cuisenaire Rods - I now know that's their proper name - that sold a few days ago on ebay.

There's a book about colour theory that I had when we moved to England that I'm working on finding too, and I think I can pretty much attribute my entire fascination with colour to these two sources! I can't describe how exciting this is!

Nice pair

A lucky half hour at the car boot sale this morning - Avocados and Catherineholm pots.

And we're back.

Didn't take me long to get back to bright colours did it?

After coveting Tif's beautiful collection of vintage knitting needles I decided that I was going to be good and frugal this week, ie no more buying 60's children's picturebooks on Abe Books, or anything else on ebay. But when I accidentally found myself in a charity shop yesterday (ignore the fact I'd parked up and put money in the meter round the corner, it was total chance I happened to be there.... OK?) there they were.

A box full of knitting needles, a lot of them brightly coloured in all shades of yellow, red, coral, turquoise and green and for 5p per pair. I can't even knit but my goodness they're nice to play with and sort into colours and pairs. I've actually had to put them in a cupboard upstairs so I can get on with some work today.

I need help people.

Softly, softly

Don't you sometimes just need a bit of quiet colour and tactility?

I've been making paper with little flecks of painted paper and gold card, a lovely way to re-use all those scraps that I end up with after a good scalpel collage session. I've also been burnishing with the back of a metal spoon to give clay a wonderful silky feel and a slight pinkness, like the pot is blushing.

My big project is coming along. I'm having to trick myself into doing bits of it though. I start off with a bit of typography, looking carefully at retro typefaces and reproducing them in colour, then I move onto a bit of architecture picked out from the cine films and finally, when I've loosened up I can get into drawing figures which is not my greatest strength. Add several litres of tea and you get an idea of what my work-at-home Thursdays are like. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Hope you are having a productive and fun week. And Happy St Patrick's Day!

The journey so far...

These are a few of the drawings I've been churning out for my big project for uni. I'm drawing inspiration from postcards, business cards, cine films and ephemera from the 1960s to 80s when my grandad was travelling around the world. My aim is to create ten or so a3 sheets of drawings and typographic studies per week (bearing in mind I have a printmaking module and a creative writing one to work on!) so that by the end of the Easter hol I can start scanning and piecing together my website/film from the best drawings. Daunting is not the word.

Hope you're getting a bit of sun this weekend. It can't make up its mind here. I'm off to the museum soon to help with a families afternoon painting Chinese masks, should be fun! Have a good one whatever you're doing.

Surprises

I like when old things jump out at you as if new. I just rediscovered these photos in my iPhoto library.

This week I've been drawing from old cine films which has been so much fun. Will show you how the project is going soon...

Happy weekend :)

New Project

We're doing a big project at uni based on a theme of our own choosing. It's pretty daunting as it's worth half of the marks for the year for the core module so if it goes wrong we could fail the year! So we're all bricking it a bit.

I'm doing mine on my Grandpa's travels around the world in the 1960s and 70s. He was a tobacco trader working in Zimbabwe and regularly made trips to Europe, the Middle East and China sending postcards all the while. So I have a big box of them to use as reference as well as several amazing cine films he took whilst in places like Egypt, New Zealand and Rome. I really want to make the project my own so won't be using any original imagery, but will be doing lots of drawing and hand lettering from the pile of old business cards that also survived my grandparents' move to England. So if this is all you see on here for the next few months you now know why!

Hope you're having a good weekend :)

The Paper Flower Tree

I bought this beautiful book from Amazon on a friend's recommendation a week ago and was kind of dreading its arrival. I'd bought it from Amazon.com rather than .co.uk and had totally forgotten the added shipping costs when I pressed Buy, so hadn't quite got the bargain I thought I had. But when I unwrapped it on Saturday morning I was so thrilled, it was worth every penny.

It was written and illustrated by Jacqueline Ayer in 1962 and I got a first edition. It looked familiar in format to me, and when I held it next to my copy of Edward and the Horse I realised it was released by the same publisher just a year later! Don't you think the illustrations look so contemporary? I've been looking up other works by Ayer but they seem to be pretty rare, perhaps I snagged myself a bargain after all...

Happy Valentines!

I hope you're all tucked up at home this weekend with the ones you love. We've been thrifting today and noticed all the red things that I seem to have found in the last week. How serendipitous. Lots of love to you all xx

Experiments in Letterpress

Last Monday at uni I was given the task of printing Take One Home for the Kiddies by Philip Larkin in letterpress. I wanted to try a bit of everything so my version is a bit of a jumble sale of typefaces and sizes but it was really nice to have a good play! I feel confident that I could use letterpress in my work now without too much bother. It takes ages to set the type up but is so satisfying.