For what is Chatteris?

Notebook obsession

2009-11-02T14:22:00.009Z

My name is Sarah and I have a problem with buying lovely notebooks and sketchbooks... Above is just a couple of my favourites. Next to my computer is a pile of exactly twenty notebooks of various sizes (not including those pictured or my other stashes around the house). Now, there's nothing wrong with buying so many as long as they actually get used. But, here's my confession - the ones pictured above, and the pile by my computer are all blank and completely unused.

I keep telling myself that one day I'll get around to using them, but the pile keeping getting bigger and I still can't bring myself to put pen to paper.

Sometimes I feel guilty about my habit and I suspect that my scrupulous recycling of waste paper might be undone by my collection of pristine, empty pages.

So, when Folksy announced their Upcycle Christmas competition, I sat eyeing up my pile of notebooks on the desk and decided that I should try and make a notebook with upcycled paper.

Here's the random selection of books that I got in our local Sue Ryder shop (although the Printing Processes book didn't make it as far as the cutting mat...)

Another find in Sue Ryder was this rather grim black bag, which I took great pleasure in cutting to pieces...

Underneath the lining fabric was this horrible foamy stuff, which disintegrated and got everywhere!Once I'd unpicked the stitches, the bag material gave me quite a big bit to work with.

Then I cut the music sheets, the Dover book and some of the road atlas to make pages. The Dover book of stencils was made up of lovely, thick creamy paper, and each page was blank on one side, so I used these for the bulk of the new pages, intermixed with the odd page of music and road atlas.

I covered the back of the bag material with some of the sheet music to make the covering, and then sewed the whole thing together.

I incorporated the zipped outside pocket of the bag into the cover of the notebook, making a pocket perfect for pens, or other little bits and bobs.

About half of the pages are completely blank, and the stencil patterns in the Dover book mean that other pages have bits of floral designs on them with plenty of room to write around them.

At 24cm by 19cm, and 3cm wide, it's a nice chunky book, with 160 pages.

You can see the book on Folksy here, as well as all the other competition entries too.

Christmas is coming!

2009-10-20T16:02:00.005Z

Yesterday I popped over to our local branch of Sue Ryder to pick up some bits for the Folksy Upcycle Christmas competition.

My entry will involve this lovely bit of sheet music, the Dover book of Victorian floral stencils, a complimentary Barclaycard road atlas from 1990 and 'Introduction to Printing Processes' (which is actually quite interesting and might be saved from the cutting knife!).

Find out how to enter yourself here.

With Christmas on our minds, we're really looking forward to having a stall at the Pick and Mix Maker's Fair in Holt on December 12th, which promises to be a lovely day out, especially as The Tea Lounge from Norwich are doing the food! Find out more about the fair here.

After a recent burst of activity we've got a little box full of tiny offcuts of leather and marbled paper, the perfect size for making teeny, tiny little books like this one -

It measures just 4.5cm - not much use for writing a novel, but the perfect size for small striped bears.

The East Anglians

2009-10-15T11:59:00.004Z

Last weekend we headed over to the Sainsbury Centre to see The East Anglians, an exhibition of photographs by Justin Partyka.

It was excellent - lots of atmostpheric photos of Norfolk and Suffolk. It definitely captured the East Anglia we know and love, which seems less like 'a largely forgotten rural world', and more like normal rural life to us.

If you're in Norwich, then do pop in and see it. The rest of the Sainsbury Centre is very nice too, and they do splendid cake. And there's a nice shop.

This week we've been busy working on a pile of hardback journals using some lovely decorative papers, and some marbled papers.

This navy blue and cream paper is Jon's favourite.

I love this blue and green marbled paper. My little raku jar is from Jude Allman's Folksy shop.

This splodgy marbled paper in mustard, dark red and navy blue is another favourite at the moment.

Journals in these papers and more are now available to order from our Etsy and Folksy shops.

We are still here!

2009-10-06T19:50:00.003Z

Honest!

After reading Lupin's post on the Etsy forums about good blogging today, I guiltily realised that it's been nearly a month since our last post! Eek!

Since we last posted we've enjoyed a gorgeous week away in Wales at Stockwell Farm, another Landmark Trust property, which really recharged our batteries. This is the view we woke up to every morning - the hills in the distance were once the Forest of Radnor, and some of it is now a firing range. They were further away than they looked...

Now we're back to our more usual view from the office window, and the nights are certainly drawing in now that it's October. It feels like we've neverbeen away now that we're back in the thick of it again!

Now that it really feels like autumn I've started to plan out some ideas for Christmas decorations for our trees - this one is a prototype that I made this afternoon. Excuse the slightly dodgy photo taken in the dim early evening light! I really like it with plain white paper, but I can't help but feel it would be even better if the paper was printed with some kind of Christmassy linocut...

The John Jarrold Printing Museum

2009-09-13T21:35:00.003Z

Today was the last day of this year's Heritage Open Days, so this afternoon we dashed into town to visit the John Jarrold Printing Museum, a magical wonder-world of presses and ink and bookbinding and lithography and type...

We had a lovely afternoon peeping into type cases and chatting to the volunteers who run the museum, and who are very enthusiastic and keen to share their tips with novices like us!

They had a nice little Heidelberg press up and running (above) - they don't turn the huge ones on for big public open days (health and safety), but one of the volunteers said that they do run them during the museum's normal opening hours (Wednesday mornings).

There are some more photos in our Flickr photostream.

Do go if you ever get the chance, it's a lovely little place, and packed to the gunwales with presses and type and cameras and litho stones and guillotines and loads of other interesting bits and bobs.

A quick peek...

2009-09-10T08:52:00.003Z

...at a big lino block I'm cutting at the moment.

It's quite a big block - roughly A3 sized, so there's a long way to go yet...

Yesterday we had a lovely trip to Big Blue Sky, a really nice shop in Wells up on the coast, where everything is made in Norfolk. They're going to be stocking some of our work this autumn, which is very exciting.

More news soon, promise!

Spring time...

2009-08-30T17:40:00.005Z

This weekend Jon has been busy printing another little letterpress print on the Adana. This one has a nice old block from an advert or catalogue with some rings (priced in shillings, so it must be old....).

The quote is most famous for being in 'As You Like It', although the song probably predates Shakespeare (click on the picture to enlarge it if you need to).

Although this print is all about the joys of spring, it's definitely feeling autumnal here, the first conkers have fallen off the horse chestnut, the nights are drawing in and we've been foraging in the hedgerows. In our part of Norfolk the elderberries are ready, but the sloes aren't quite there yet - another week and we'll have to return to our top-secret favourite sloe picking hedgerow...

Weddings and Tigers

2009-08-26T12:54:00.003Z

A new letterpress print about weddings and tigers -

Printed on the Adana using our nice old wedding block and some Bodoni italic.

This one is in our Etsy and Folksy shops now...

We didn't dress up as tigers the day after our own wedding (or go to the seaside), although I suspect it would have been more fun if we had!

We're looking forward to the bank holiday weekend so we can both make a start on some new prints, and start planning a new and exciting project - more news soon!

Treasury

2009-08-15T07:46:00.004Z

It's always nice to find ourselves featured in a treasury on Etsy -

This one features lots of other fabulous Etsy printmakers, so do go and have a look!

Today we're finishing off a little print that Jon has been working on this week, we just need to add some letterpress text...

A prototype

2009-08-08T16:10:00.005Z

This weekend we made some British Birds cards as a special commission for someone - at the moment we don't do cards of any of our bigger prints, but we rather like these ones.

Then we made some new packaging as a prototype, we've been meaning to redesign our card packaging for ages - something nicer than the usual plastic bag...

We designed an envelope template over a cup of tea, and started cutting out a prototype in thick grey card -The envelope has a clear film window in the front to see the cards through (attached here with double sided tape) -
Here's the finished envelope complete with cards inside -
This batch of cards will be winging its way to a new home soon, but now we're debating whether we should do some more and pop them in our shops. What do you think?

We've just polished off rather large slices of lemon drizzle cake, complete with homemade lemon curd and mascarpone filling, the recipe is here - definitely worth the effort!

Wool (2)

2009-08-04T15:54:00.003Z

This weekend we printed the second layer of ink on our wool ball linocut for a business card commission - a layer of light grey ink over the pink layer to pick out the details of the strands of wool.

The next stage is to letterpress the text into the empty space, which will call for some patience and careful printing on the Adana.

On Sunday evening we spotted two hot air balloons drifting over the house. We often see them in the distance floating over Norwich (they take off from up near the university), but only rarely do they come over the house. Jon grabbed a camera and took some photos before they disappeared into the distance - they go quite quickly!

One day maybe we'll go up, up, up and away!

Chatsworth

2009-08-02T17:30:00.003Z

It seems like ages ago that we had a fun day out at Chatsworth when we went on holiday to Derbyshire, and ever since Jon has been planning this wood engraving.

And now it's finished!

Here's the nearly finished block, with just the sky left to do -

And the finished block all ready to print -

Here it is all inked up and ready to go!

Prints are available in our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

We have had a busy few days of printing and an exciting London trip - I spent quite a lot of money in here (photos of purchases to follow....)

Wool

2009-07-24T14:44:00.003Z

Its been so dark and wet here today that I've been tempted to dig some of our winter woollies out of storage! Whilst we wait for the weather to improve I've been cutting some lino blocks for a new business card commission.

The cards will have a grey and pink ball of wool wrapping itself around the text. I've carved the two blocks (one for a pink layer, and one for the grey outline), and hopefully we'll get a few proof prints done this evening before embarking on a mammoth printing spree this weekend...

British Patent Number 388934

2009-07-17T11:33:00.006Z

This little gadget is screwed onto the corner of a bookshelf in our study - the Fermafix Paper Binder!

Sheets of paper are fed between two notched wheels, turned by a long handle, which crimp the sheets together. The interlocking notches on the wheels work a bit like a zip to hold the pages together. Very useful for binding my endless lists together.

The patent number was registered in 1933, but as yet we haven't been able to find much out about it.

Yesterday was Jon's graduation at UEA - here he is looking dandy in his robes and bonnet (designed by Cecil Beaton, no less).

Next week we'll be starting on some new prints - hooray!

Munro Cautley (and some other new things)

2009-07-13T15:30:00.007Z

Many apologies for almost a month long blog absence! Where do the weeks go? Life at SpoonerGregory Acres has been extremely busy for the past few weeks, but hopefully we can start to relax again now and post more regularly!

Since we last posted we've acquired a big, cool new block to add to the collection (thanks again Alan!). This one is for the cover of a book (well known in these parts) - Norfolk Churches by Munro Cautley, originally published in 1949 with a watercolour by Albert Ribbans on the front cover.
Cautley was also an architect, and there's a Flickr group devoted to his work.

Here's a print taken from the block -

The church is St Peter's in Ringland, not far from Norwich, so of course we had to go on an expedition (complete with the block in our rucksack....)

The tree in Ribban's watercolour has gone, but here's the church from almost the same place.

You can find out more about the church on Simon Knott's Norfolk Churches website, always our first port of call for Norfolk church related things.

Now we just have to get our hands on a copy of the book!

In other news...

I have finally finished sewing together the pile of little notebooks that I started a while ago. Sets of five notebooks are listed in our Folksy shop at the moment.

Our Folksy shop was in serious need of restocking, and this afternoon is the first chance I've had to sit down with a cup of tea and do it, although there's still more to list.

Jon is busy working on a new engraving, which should be finished by the weekend.

And finally - on my way to the Post Office with some orders this morning I couldn't help but notice this dandy Hornsea storage jar in the local charity shop, so naturally it came home with me and is adjusting to life on our mantlepiece rather than at the back of a dusty shelf.

Poppies and castles

2009-06-16T20:20:00.002Z

On Sunday it was another sunny, hot day so we headed off early in the morning for a walk and then a picnic at Baconsthorpe Castle, near Holt in Norfolk. It was built in the 15th century, and was more like a country house than a castle, and the ruins are a lovely spot for an afternoon in the sunshine. We spread out our picnic blanket next to the moat and watched the ducklings gliding around.

Even though it was a glorious Sunday afternoon, there were only a couple of other people there, and we didn't see a soul on the five mile walk we did beforehand - where does everyone in Norfolk go when it's sunny? To the seaside I suppose!

Jon has printed his new engraving of a poppy head - it's on thick, Somerset paper, which was lovely to print on.

Theres one in the Folksy shop now.

We both have ideas for new prints to start this week - the inevitable water tower for me, and another engraving for Jon...

Wheels, windmills and water towers

2009-06-08T19:16:00.005Z

Today we had a fun day out for the first time in ages! After several weekends cooped up doing Open Studios (great fun, but housebound), it was lovely to be out in the countryside, especially on such a nice day.

We started at Bircham Mill - a mid nineteenth century windmill in north west Norfolk, scene of many a childhood cream tea for me and Jon's first visit.

We climbed all the way to the fan at the very top!

It was definitely worth the climb up the steep ladders, and unlike previous visits I didn't have to be talked down in tears by my Dad (I am not brave with heights, but Jon was bouncing up and down the ladders).

Then it was off for a 10 mile cycle along a section of the Peddars Way, a Roman road that runs all the way up through this part of Norfolk towards Holme-next-the-Sea on the coast.

One day we'll get round to doing the whole thing, and camping along the way - but 10 miles was quite enough for one afternoon. We didn't see a soul, just lots of birds and several hares.

After a nice cup of tea and a scone back at the windmill, we headed off for a bit of water tower geekery - stopping to investigate Docking and Foulsham. Expect to see both in printed form soon(ish)...

Docking (in the distance)

Foulsham

In July there's an exhibition on the towers of East Anglia (not just water towers) in Felixstowe organised by the British Water Tower Appreciation Soceity. I wonder just how many there are in Norfolk?

New projects

2009-06-02T15:05:00.005Z

Last weekend was the final weekend of Norfolk Open Studios - thanks to everyone who came along this weekend. We have really enjoyed the experience, and we've met so many lovely people!

We both started new projects over the weekend. Jon engraved a small block with a close-up of a poppy head in a walled garden -

We are going to print it one evening this week.

I letterpressed lots and lots of little coloured covers with some of our nice vintage blocks for sets of small notebooks. I've been sewing the notebooks together inbetween other jobs - very therapeutic.

This week we've been enjoying cherries and peonies (and these strange pink spiky flowers) from the market in Norwich. The cherries didn't last very long...

Just nudging into the corner of the photo of the flowers is our new little raku pebble by Norwich ceramicist Lucy Edwards. It just fits in the palm of my hand, and is lovely and tactile, and such pretty colours!
Also, thanks to everyone for taking part in our survey. We've had loads of responses, and I'm going to pick the winner of the giveaway later this evening :)

Seed Packets

2009-05-28T16:50:00.005Z

The sweet peas in our front garden are in their full glory this week - they smell lovely!

Last week we finished off the seed packets that we started printing earlier in May. We finished them off with 'seeds' printed in 24pt Plantin underneath the little linocut - leaving plenty of space to write names, dates and notes.

In the background is my new orange Nutscene twine - I can't live without it. Well, I can, but the garden would be a sadder place without it.

The seed packets are available in our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

You can also win a little package of printed goodies by taking part in a short survey about buying artwork for a course I'm doing at the moment. If any readers have time to take part, I'd be eternally grateful!

Click here to take the survey

Otherwise, we are gearing up for another jolly weekend of Open Studios!

Open Studios

2009-05-26T19:56:00.005Z

Well, our first weekend of Norfolk Open Studios has now been and gone! We had such a great weekend with a steady stream of visitors, most of whom stayed for a nice long chat and some tea.

We found time inbetween visitors to take some photos of everything set up -

The chimney in the front room is adorned with a framed set of Flying Ducks (as well as the inevitable Penguins).

We put Alan's manicule to good use in directing visitors through to the dining room...

...where they found a table full of materials, assorted bits and bobs as well as the Adana. We did a little demonstration for a few visitors, who had a go on it too and took their prints home with them.

Thanks to Celia, Andy and everyone else who came along to say hello! And we're doing it all next weekend as well!

But before next weekend's excitements we've got a busy week ahead of less than exciting things (like the enormous pile of ironing that's been ignored during the run up to Open Studios....).

Nearly ready!

2009-05-22T17:52:00.005Z

Tomorrow is the first day of Open Studios for us! We have spent a couple of busy days getting ready to open our doors.

We're open from 10am to 5pm this Saturday, Sunday and Monday at home -

5 Chester Street in Norwich (just off Unthank Road)

You can see a map of how to get here on our artist pages on the Norfolk Open Studios website - click here!

Parking on our street is for permit holders only, but there are some 'visitor' spaces at the top of the hill, and at the bottom (outside the fish and chip shop).

Do come and say hello if you're in Norfolk.

If you can't make it this weekend then don't worry - we're doing next weekend too!

Right, back to organising things...

New project - seed packets!

2009-05-17T15:07:00.007Z

This weekend I've been working on a little linocut of some vegetables to print onto some little envelopes.

I cut a pea pod, a leek, a carrot and an onion onto a small rectangle of lino (about 2 x 3 inches). I really like working at this scale, especially with a freshly sharpened tool :)

Our garden peas are racing up their pyramids, and the sweet peas started flowering this week too. We need to get lots of our seedlings planted out too, especially our climbing courgettes - we just need a dry afternoon!

Here is the block inked with some nice, new green oil ink -

The green looks really nice against the brown envelopes -

The next stage will be to letterpress some text onto the envelopes to turn them into proper little seed packets.

This weekend was the start of Norfolk Open Studios. We are doing the next two weekends, and we're quite excited about it! We'll post some more details about how to find us this week.

British Birds

2009-05-11T17:06:00.009Z

Last week Jon finished a new linocut - British Birds!Each little bird is paired up with his colloquial name. Naturally, we had to include a hornpie.

Here's a close-up of Billy Biter -

I love the blue Jon has printed this in, very Farrow and Ball I think.

Here is the block, halfway through cutting - lots of fiddly backwards lettering for this one. Fortunately Jon has a steady hand!

There are prints of British Birds in our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

The first person to leave a comment guessing the 'real' name of each bird will win a selection of Lapwing Printworks cards and the like! EDIT: Well done Fibrespace for guessing them all correctly!

I'm going to go and eat some more ice cream now - I had my wisdom teeth out this morning - so no solids or hot things for two days. I'm desperate for a cup of tea.

Computers and cupcakes

2009-05-06T14:26:00.004Z

This morning I made some delicious little elderflower cupcakes with pretty white icing and little yellow sugar flowers. Yummy and very cheerful!

We need cheering up because last night my desktop computer's hard drive failed! Fortunately, the most important things like theses and wedding photos were backed up elsewhere, but we have lost a lot of files. Most upsettingly, all of our Lapwing Printworks files!

Anyone who sells their work (online or offline) will know the joys of a finely crafted stock spreadsheet with a myriad of colours for what's been sold, and which things are in which shops. Not to mention all our accounts and things like that. All gone!

Also, we've lost all our internet bookmarks - blogs, interesting websites, tutorials etc. If you have any good links to share then we'll be happy bunnies :)

Anyway, enough doom and gloom! Tomorrow - a new print and some exciting things that have been arriving in the post!

Two more new prints

2009-05-04T16:41:00.007Z

It's May Day bank holiday today, and we've spent all weekend busily carving and printing ready for Open Studios.

Jon has finished an engraving of a bunch of daffodils in my favourite spotty jug -

It's engraved on plastic, rather than wood, and printed in black oil ink on Zerkall. Here's the block at various stages of completion -

This one has taken a fair few recuttings and proof printings to get it just right. The little spotty jug is from Ark in Cambridge, and is often filled up with flowers.

I've been working on a reduction woodcut of East Ruston water tower, which we saw on a walk we did in Happisburgh and East Ruston on Easter Monday. Jon did a woodcut of Baconsthorpe water tower a while ago - perhaps one day we'll do them all? Well, all the Norfolk ones anyway...

Here's the finished print - two images of the water tower side by side.And the block in the early stages of cutting -

And the first four layers of printing (the fifth and final one is the green layer) -

Of course, they are in our Etsy and Folksy shops now!

This weekend we had a go with our new book-making leathers - the result is one nice red leather journal, with some more gorgeous marbled paper inside.

If you join our email mailing list (sign up on the right!), then you can get 15% off (plus free shipping) on any of our leather journals this month. We promise not to spam you :)

Right, we've got rosemary breadsticks to bake for dinner, to dunk into a baked camembert... It's strange how I'd never dream of eating a whole camembert to myself raw (as it were), but I don't have the same qualms about a baked one...