Pick 'N' Mix Market

We had a brilliant day at the Pick 'N' Mix market in Holt on Saturday. The market was really busy, especially in the morning - our most successful craft fair ever, due in part to the great coverage of the event in the local press!


We got some yummy chilli preserves from our neighbouring stall, Chillis Galore, swapped notebooks for beer with the Grain Brewery, and I got a lovely pair of silver earrings from Emma Mitchell, and a jolly good day was had by all.

Christmas is coming!

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.

Happy Christmas!

Our tree is up and decorated and Spooner-Gregory Acres is looking very festive indeed. We will be having a proper knees-up because Jon has finally finished his PhD. Hurrah! Here is the finished bound thesis - the hard back version will be bound later in the spring, after his viva.

In case anyone is wondering it's called ' Marginal Environments and the Idea of Improvement: Heathland and Moorland Landscapes c.1650-1850'.

Happy Christmas everyone!

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Jenna! And thank you to everyone else for leaving such lovely comments :)

A short post today - it's so cold that I can't type properly! We had a little expedition out into the cold to buy our Christmas tree, its sitting outside in a bucket at the moment but expect a blog post festooned with decorations soon!

Finished holly leaves

This weekend we finished a pile of holly decorations ready to take to Clutter City next weekend. Here they are at various stages -

And here they are finished! We're saving most of them to take to Clutter City, but we have listed a pair in our Folksy shop too...

As well as making holly leaves we've also been adding to our pile of concertina books too. They look so pretty, and we're really pleased with how they have turned out. They're very relaxing and therapeutic to make too - must be all that paper folding. This photo is rather dark (it is a very grey day today), and the colours are much more sparkly and vibrant in person.

This afternoon we are going to letterpress some new Christmas cards, as well as baking a cake and lighting a fire!

Christmas Decorations

Today we have been experimenting with printed Christmas decorations and this is the most successful one. Two holly leaves printed with green ink, sewn together with little red buttons and some red ribbon for hanging.

The design needs a little work, and we need more red buttons and thinner red ribbon - I feel a crafty trip into Norwich for supplies coming on...

Finished cards

We have finally finished printing the linocut Christmas cards we started a couple of weeks ago. We printed each one in red, green and gold, and it made us feel very Christmassy...

Especially when I dug out the Christmas tree lights to take some photos! I managed to resist the temptation to dig out the Christmas mugs and tea towels - its a bit early for that yet...

We've decided to letterpress some more Christmas cards using some of our teeny tiny holly blocks - that will be this weeks project, as well as pressing on with my flying ducks (which have been sitting on a shelf feeling lonely for a couple of weeks - I'm determined to finish them this month though!). Sets of Christmas cards are available on Folksy, Etsy and Dawanda now!

This afternoon we're going to make Chelsea buns and plant some last minute bulbs in the garden - we'll have to sweep up all the leaves first though!

Joyeux Noel

Today has been wet, grey and cold - a good excuse to stay indoors and do some carving. We meant to start making Christmas cards much earlier this year, but as usual various things caught up with us and we've only just started!

This year we are having simple square cards with handcut lettering, done on lino. Here is a proof of the first one, 'Joyeux Noel' -

This one is done in gold ink - we've only ever printed tiny areas with it before, and I wanted to check how it looks over a bigger surface area, and it looks great (although better in person than on the computer screen...).

I've got two more blocks to carve before I start printing the cards - I would have like to finish the carving today but I managed to gouge my finger instead of the lino, so I shall be forced to spend the rest of the afternoon curled up with a book and a cup of tea instead. Never mind - remember, always cut away from you!

Our second ever blog post in December 2006 was about printing Christmas cards - at least we've got a bit further ahead this year!

Christmas time, resingrave and wine...

Merry Christmas! A busy one for us, flitting between Devon and Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. Much fun and good cheer had by all, though we never did get those rollerskates... We ventured out to Wicken Fen on Boxing Day for a tramp around in the mud which provided much food for thought. Watch this space for fen related prints.

Back in Norwich now to enjoy a few last nights sat by the tree before it gets sawn up and thrown on the fire. New additions to the house include a pristine 1950s Singer sewing machine that's sure to be pressed into service soon, a Nikon EM to add to the camera arsenal and our first piece of boxwood courtesy of the incredibly fine craftsmanship of Chris Daunt.

It'll be a while before we're brave enough to make a mark on the boxwood, so in the meantime we'll stick with Resingrave. Our first bit of Resingrave has been put to good use, it was interesting to work with, holds fine lines quite well, though does chip if you attack it too vigorously with the large scorpers. The house design I chose was for a present and is coming along nicely. We pulled some test prints on Christmas Eve, using a mixture of Speedball acrylic inks as we'd run out of black, save for some thick oil based stuff which wouldn't have dried until somewhere next February.


Currently listening to: Low, Christmas

The Printing of the Cards

Sunday was christmas card printing day, having finished engraving the block (see below) on Saturday evening. It was our first time printing from engraving plastic and we learned quickly from our mistakes: 1, don't print with the ink too wet as it fills in all the fine lines; 2, Stay off the sherry. Don't drink and print kids, you know it makes sense.



Once we'd realised that allowing the ink to dry on the inking slab a bit before rolling it on the block was the way forward, things progressed very smoothly. Seeing as we don't have (and can't yet afford) a press, everything is done by hand. In the case of the Christmas cards the block was inked, placed face down on the card, rolled over quickly with a rolling pin, then flipped over and burnished with the back of a teaspoon. Crude, but fairly effective. Using acrylic rather than oil based inks made cleaning up after each colour a lot quicker. Forty cards later and it was time for a rest.



We also started printing our Christmas gift tags, a scroll design cut from a small offcut of Japanese plywood:


All the cards were written and sent yesterday, and we've even been organised enough to start wrapping presents and writing tags. After a trip into the city yesterday, ostensibly for Christmas shopping, we managed to find our way to the art shop and buy our first block of Resingrave, so look out for updates on how that progresses... A busy week ahead, buying a christmas tree today, driving to Cambridgeshire this afternoon and getting a train to Devon tomorrow. Still, 'tis the season!

J and S

Currently listening to: The Decemberists, The Crane Wife