Recent Crafternoons

Decoupage birdhouse decorations
Knitted print decoupage paper - Hobbycraft


Handmade Kindle case from an old book
more on this soon!...

Song Sparrow

Here is the A3 illustration I submitted for the Salon Hang at Long Live the Art School.
In fact I drew two different versions, one with black line twigs and one brown. I chose the black for the exhibition in the end.



Both illustrations are hand-drawn with pen and pencil on A3 320gsm handmade cotton rag paper.

Eat Me Magazine

Here are a couple of illustrations that I did for Eat Me Magazine's fifth issue, back in April.


The article was about the traditional English pub (Midsomer Murder's style) being taken over by young, kitsch-y, Cath Kidston wearing families.

Portfolio book & website launch!

Mini Di

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and my best present by far was a Diana Mini! The packaging she came in was amazing in itself, with a cute little book full of Lomography inspiration. I popped in my first film and snapped away at my birthday celebrations. However this analogue photography business needs practice, as I found out when the film was developed. I guess it didn't help that I was using the wrong film...

But anyway I was proud of my first Diana photos, even if they were blurry and dark. So I made them into a little concertina book.
I've started my next film, this time taking photos outside, experimenting with different settings and using a tripod, second time lucky?!

who wants a moleskine?...

...when you can make your own! 
I have spent this morning and yesterday afternoon making this journal. I will probably use it when I go back to Uni in September. I used spare pages from an un-used Moleskine cahier and 1m card and book cloth for the covers. I also managed to teach myself how to add decorative inside covers and an elasticised fastening!

Excitement!

I'm off to Paris on Monday for a few nights, and I can't wait! I've been once but barely remember it so I'm expecting myself to take hundreds of photos. I made (ok customised) this little book to take with me as a kind of travel journal. The cover is vintage French wrapping paper with little stickers that I found in Accessorize. There's some cute stationary in there at the moment!

Back in a few days with a million photos of the Eiffel Tower no doubt!!

New big book

This week I supposed to be on Jury service, but I was only needed for 3 days! So I've been trying to keep myself occupied...I made a new book! 
It's the biggest I've ever made, just smaller then A4 and is quite thick with 60ish pages of plain cartridge paper. 
I want to use it as a scrapbook for all the little random bits and bobs that I pick up or make, that get shoved away in my drawer or a box and forgotten about. I'll let you know how that goes!!

Paris bead bracelets

I've known about My Vintage Charms for a while now but never bought anything, but when I found out I'm going to Paris in July (eeee!) I wanted to make a few Parisy bits of jewellery. I ordered 6 mini Eiffel tower charms, in silver and gold, and a large gold one. I also bought these mini spoon charms as they're so cute. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with them until I remembered the beads I bought from the bead fair I helped at last month. 

So I made these...

I think My Vintage Charms is amazing and such good value (£1.50 for 3 mini Eiffels) You can make your own jewellery so much cheaper, if you can be bothered I suppose. Also the packaging was rather lovely! I was wondering about adding these bracelets to my Becky's Buttons (and beads maybe?!) collection, but they take quite a while to make...hmm...

Handmade button sketchbook

I'm going to Scotland tomorrow so I made this sketchbook to take with me for my 3 1/2 hour train journey. Inside it has plain cartridge paper pages and an embossed button on the cover. + a ribbon bookmark.


I also took some photos of all my handmade books together, I'm so pleased with them! I want to start making books with an actual context.

New book - mini notebook

I made this little book whilst procrastinating over my contextual studies essay! It's a little pocket notebook with found paper pages and bird cage paper cover. + a ribbon bookmark.

Lino printing

For the past few Thursday evenings I have been taking part in a relief print workshop, which I signed up for as I had never really done it before. I decided to keep it simple and cut one of my bird illustrations into lino, taking a print each time as I cut more away...

I also tried cutting into a woodblock, which I think takes a lot more practice! (This is supposed to look like tree bark)

I really enjoyed doing this so I will hopefully be experimenting with it more soon.

Mono printing

Some experimental prints from a mono-printing workshop.




I created the above image by printing using textured wallpaper.