Posted in Publicity & Articles, tagged brixton, christmas fair, christmas market, london, the new vintage on December 7, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Roll up! Roll up! It’s time for the second event at The New Vintage in Brixton. Held at the Living Bar on Coldharbour Lane, the first event in November was a roaring success – so don’t miss out this time!
In addition to lots of fabulous handcrafted goodies there will be swing dance demonstrations by Swing Patrol, and there will also be an acapella swing band singing too!
Posted in General craftiness, tagged A-Z, london, map, notecards, notelets, postcards, recycling, stationery, upcycling on August 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Last week I made a start on making some stationery from an old A-Z. I’ve since made a few more bits to go with the previous items.
A set of six postcard-style notecards
A set of six regular notecards
and a set of six postcards.
The previous set of notecards had matching envelopes, also hand crafted from A-Z pages. This proved very time-consuming though, so I dug out some regular cream coloured envelopes from my stash to use with these.
These will be added to my Etsy shop today.
Posted in General craftiness, tagged city, london, map, notebooks on June 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The promised heatwave hit London yesterday and persisted into today – by 10am it was 28 degrees in the shade and still rising, finally topping out at about 32 degrees at lunchtime.
I love living in the city, but in the summer it’s a mixed blessing. The mass of hard surfaces – tarmac, concrete, brick, slate, stone – both absorbs the heat and reflects it back, and on a clear day when the temperature is high you can see the heat haze. On a day like today it makes the city seem, from a distance, blurry and out of focus.
Which was the perfect inspiration for the books I made today. I used a fabric which is printed with a slightly blurry map of London:
It’s a lovely fabric, and I actually like that you can’t see the fine detail – it gives the books a Monet-like effect: they look fabulous from a distance, but a little messy close up. I’ve got enough of the fabric left to make a third book, which I may well do tomorrow if the heatwave continues.
Posted in General craftiness, tagged drawing, ink, london, london underground, sepia, sketching, the city, westminster bridge on June 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I returned to the pen and ink drawings over Wednesday and Thursday evening, and I’m glad that I did. I think the sepia ink works better with a more simple style. Just the outlines have been inked in, and (to my eyes at least!) I think it looks good:
Here’s the first version I did on Tuesday:
See, I do think the simple version works better, what do you think? I also had a go at a view of the London Underground:
I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do with these yet. So far they’re just experiments so I may do a few more and then decide whether they’re good enough to do some print of…
Posted in General craftiness, tagged drawing, ink, london, sketching, the thames, westminster bridge on June 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
It’s a sad fact, but my hands were too stiff to do any bookbinding today: clearly I overdid it at the weekend. So I turned to sketching instead…
When I sketch with ink I normally just use a pen, but today I decided to have a bash with an old fashioned dip pen and some ink. It’s turned out pretty well, but I think I’ll use less colour next time. I’m more accustomed to using watercolours, but with ink it’s more difficult to get the same effect. Practice makes perfect though, so watch this space!
Posted in General craftiness, tagged etsy, LDN, london, notebook on February 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A new notebook, inspired by my wonderful hometown:
Available to purchase in my Etsy shop. Click here to view.
Posted in General craftiness, tagged butterflies, etsy, london, notebooks on December 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Most of the books I make are standard sizes, like A6 or A5. However, sometimes I get the urge to make odd-shaped/sized books, and this week was one of those times.
I’ve had some really lovely papers in recently, and here are three of them used on the covers of tall books so as to make the most of the paper:
My favourite is the one featuring a map of London… but then I am a bit biased!
