Clutter City and new stuff

We had a lovely day at Clutter City today - saw lots of people from the last time round, and lots of lovely new people too - so hello if you've stopped by after picking up one of our postcards!

We made lots of shiny new things for our stall, including the paper flower brooches that I made this week. They were really popular, so I'm planning on making lots more!

We also made a little pile of hand sewn books with hand printed covers, filled with nice drawing paper. I used a mixture of old letterpress blocks and larger wooden blocks, in all different colours. The ones below have got various 1960s 'dinner dance' blocks all over them. The dandy felt pincushion is by Lupin, and is the nicest thing in my sewing box!

Here they are all finished -

There are still some notebooks and brooches left over from Clutter City, so we'll be listing them in our various shops this weekend...

Flowers and a new print

Last night I finished the flowers for Christine's flower project.

The rest of the flowers have been turned into pretty brooches! They were quite fiddly to attach to a brooch back, but they look great pinned on, and we'll be selling some of them on our stall at Clutter City this Saturday.

For Jon's birthday last week I gave him a little linocut of our house, which I've been beavering away on in secret since the end of July. It's hard enough not to let slip what his present is normally, but keeping a linocut a secret is hard! He kept wondering why there were ink splotches in the bathroom when he came home from work, even though I supposedly hadn't been doing any printing...

Here's the wood mounted lino block with the design all drawn and ready to go -


In progress (after being hidden in a drawer inbetween spells of working on it) -

And the finished print framed on the wall - twelve layers, about 6x4 inches, and about six weeks of skullduggery.

We will be at Clutter City again this Saturday - come and say hello if you're in Norwich!

Back from our holidays

We spent a lovely and mostly sunny week in north Devon. We stayed at the Library, another Landmark Trust property - plenty more photos here.

It was Jon's birthday whilst we were away, and for a surprise I gave him a linocut of our house that I have been secretly working on for several weeks - I'll post some photos of the finished print, and some 'in progress' shots this week.

Now we are back we are busy working again, but I have been working on the flower project mentioned in our last post. I've spent a couple of evenings cutting out lots of different shapes in various colours ready to make up into finished flowers.


Not all of these flower shapes are going to end up being sent off for the project, but I have a plan for the leftovers!

Flowers and macaroons

I did find some time this weekend for a little bit of crafting (poor Jon has been chained to his computer unfortunately...). Here is a prototype for Christine's flower collaboration that I blogged about a few weeks ago. It's just three layers of some block printed paper that I had stashed in the spare room, cut into flower shapes and sewn with a button in the middle. Simple, but effective I hope! I'm going to experiment with different papers, colours, buttons, shapes and sizes - there are a few weeks before the deadline, so I've got plenty of time to play around with them.

And plenty of time to stuff myself silly with salty-peanut-caramel macaroons from our new cookbook, Ottolenghi, which is brilliant - we've tried a different recipe almost every day this week, and they've all been delicious.

Dog Sitting and other adventures

Our first post for a couple of weeks - we have been busy dog sitting in the Fens and having various adventures, as well as trying to fit in some work as well!

We had lots of fun looking after three elderly dachshunds -not that anyone would know they were old, from the amount of mischief they get up to!

This is Hal, engrossed in a book (he sometimes likes watching tv too). We ate our fill of produce from the kitchen garden, which is much larger and more plentiful than ours is!

Today we explored the kitchen gardens at Audley End, which are even bigger again! We liked the glasshouses and the mushroom house best.

It was another grey and dull day, until we got in the car to go back home and now its really sunny! Hurrah! Still, summer is definitely over, and everywhere smells autumnal.

Anyway, no rest for the wicked - we are both working hard to meet some deadlines before we go away on our Landmark Trust holiday, so printmaking has had to go on the back burner - hopefully we might find time at the weekend!

Hello Duckie!

I've started clearing the first of the three lino blocks I mentioned in our last post. I've always wanted a set of ceramic flying ducks, but now I'm creating a set of three printed ones instead! This is the largest one - the other two smaller ones need to be cleared as well before I print the first layer. There's a long way to go yet!

I've signed up for an interesting project all about handmade flowers, thought up by Christine from Paper and Cloth. Each artist/crafty person involved makes several flowers which will then be sewn together to make one big piece of art. You can find out more about the project (and join in!) on her blog. I'm going to be making some printed paper flowers over the next few weeks - I just have to work out how they could be sewn onto fabric first. I think I might need to experiment with some prototypes!

Should Hello Duckie really be Hello Ducky? We couldn't decide...

Pika Package!

A few weeks ago I was the lucky winner of a Pika Package, and this morning it arrived from Pikaland! Full of lovely goodies from designers and illustrators from all over the place - all of which are brilliant! I'm so excited - I never win anything!

I'd thought I'd share a couple of my favourite things....

An original drawing on a page of Goethe by Susan Schwake.


A print by Iris Schwarz.


Another little print - by Nancy Mungcal (pretty little thieves)


And my absolute favourite - a Little Red Riding Hood set by Denise Ann Simon, including a Gocco print (above), bookplates (below), and bookmarks!


I have many other favourites too, naturally, and so does Jon! In the package were some adorable stickers from PhatSheep - I am now coveting the Fair Isle jumper tea towel in their Etsy shop.

Apologies for the slightly dodgy photos - it's wet, grey and miserable here today. Where has the summer gone?

We haven't been idle despite the horrid weather - these three lino blocks are almost ready to start cutting! They'll be turned into a set of identical prints in three different sizes, so they'll work together or individually. There is a lot of clearing to do before printing the first layer, which will keep me going through these wet afternoons!