spring summer autumn winter

All week it has felt like autumn is here and this weekend is no exception. I even bought some new boots on a whim because I felt like the season was upon us.

Yesterday I went to the Brunswick Festival and ate some amazing apple and blackcurrant cake. I was really tempted to buy the chocolate and courgette cake but was wary that it might be a bit odd (has anyone tried this combination?).

And guess what!? I held a baby!!! Lucianna bought Jemima along and she had the cutest little laugh and the smallest of feet. Some of you might remember that this was one of my new years resolutions (yes, that's strange I know). She was squirmy (because she was hungry) but such a sweet one, and Emily presented her with her new cardigan. Very skilled knitting there!

After the main event the rain hit so we took shelter in the pub, which led to the appearance of crochet and knitting and made it feel even more like a wintery sunday afternoon. Nice and cosy though.

In other news, my friend Alex has written a book. He's a very talented man.

how very apt

I got a nice surprise in the post today, courtesy of Derek. THANK YOU!
The above page seemed particularly appropriate.

one for sorrow

this and that

A little bit of an update:

Today i got a new book in the post. I look forward to giving it a read.

On saturday I got locked out of home but used the day productively by going to Yumi's and creating some library card designs for our local library (there's a competition on at the moment). We don't have high hopes of winning but we had a good time drawing so all is well.

I tried to draw tiffany from memory:


As you can see I missed out some key elements (turns out my memory isn't that good).

Also last week I had some bad news...my cat Shadow passed away. It was quite expected as he was almost 20 but also very sad as he has been a lovely friend for most of my life. Poor little lamb.



Tomorrow me and Yumi are going to head to the library to see the outcome of the competition - wish us luck (we really do need it!).
x

book fair

Just an update to let you know how I got on at the recent Press & Release artists book fair in Brighton. I held a stall there with a group of friends from my MA course so we had quite a wide selection of books & ephemera for sale which I think was a good plan. I made some books & cards & stickers:


I wasn't sure how popular the fair was going to be, or what kind of crowd it was going to attract, so I went down the small & inexpensive pathway (as there are oh so many students in Brighton) and I did quite well. I managed to sell quite a lot of items and I even sold one of my books to a representative from the Tate library. This means that in a few weeks time my book will have been catalogued and will be part of the Tate Artists' books collection. Exciting news!

The books I made were based around the topic of collective terms for animals as I found a lot of the names were quite interesting & often a bit bizarre (e.g. a parcel of penguins). I created 4 different mini-books - jellyfish, magpies, snails & mallards - all using a variety of illustration techniques, and I packaged them up with a gift card & some stickers. Here are some spreads from the books:


I think this is a series I'm going to try and add to over time as I really enjoyed illustrating the animals and there are a lot more interesting collective terms to explore. In fact a lot of people didn't believe that they were real terms and thought I'd made them up.

Now I'm considering listing some of the left over items from the book fair in my etsy shop, but I'm not sure how well they would sell on etsy - any opinions? Thanks in advance.

x

wreck it

more photos
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more wrecking

see my progress through the book so far in my flickr set

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story time

We had a book day at university the other day, which basically involved us each bringing in 6 books we like and then spending some time looking at and discussing what others had brought in. (I took in this & this amongst others).

There was an amazing selection of things to see and by the end of the day I had a huge list of books I wanted to own myself.

One of the books was this - The Happy Hocky Family by Lane Smith.


It's so nice that I couldn't resist buying it straight away.
It's full of very short, rather funny little stories and the illustrations are truly delightful. I especially like the paper used for the pages which I think compliments the imagery perfectly.


so very nice.

x

boo!

surprise project







was it a surprise?

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wreck this

my new book


just LOOK what dropped through my door the other day (from amazon) - alongside the arcade fire albums there was this amazing book by the ever so creative & talented keri smith.

It is such a lovely idea for a book - you have to follow the instructions on each page which literally tell you different ways to trash the book.
i was very hesitant about starting it at first but i'm in full flow now. i am working through it in page order (as i am a little bit on the anal side) and here are some photos of what i've done so far:







what fun! and i have also found a flickr group dedicated to the book and other people's attempts at wrecking it - which i like a lot as it's great to see what other people have done for each page and the different approaches taken.

so, i'd recommend all of you to buy a copy of the book (it's not very pricey) and then let me know how you get on.

x