Getting ready...

This week we have been busy getting ready for the Pick 'N' Mix Makers Market in Holt this Saturday. We're really looking forward to it, and have got all sorts of new printed goodies for our stall.

Here's a peek into a box of books and other little things all packed up and ready to go -

We've also been printing new notebook covers on the Adana - my new favourite thing is bright orange paper...


And we've got a few new prints as well, including a new engraving by Jon using this lovely dark blue ink -


There are going to be lots of other lovely handmade, vintage and edible treats on offer - so we'll hope to see some of you there on Saturday, from 10am to 4pm in St Andrew's Church Hall, Holt.

The winners of the Folksy and Sue Ryder Upcycle competition have been announced! You can read all about the winners on the Folksy blog, and all the entries are now up for auction on ebay (100% of the winning bid will be donated to Sue Ryder). You can bid for our upcycled black journal here, and we've got our eye on a few of the other entries too!

Notebook obsession

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!

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

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.

New Stuff

We've bought a few lovely things from the internets over the past few months (some of which we have finally got round to having framed) to share -

Two lovely bird prints from five in the morning lino -

One linocut of swallows and swirling clouds...

...and one of some weaver birds and their intricate nests.

Mark's Etsy shop is here, and he has his own website too.

We also have a new screen print from The Post Family, which is now hanging in the office next to the camera shelves...

The photo doesn't really do it justice and it is pretty big - 79cm x 70cm.

And this morning the most adorable amigurumi from hannah-chan arrived in the post.

A sweet little star gazing bunny...

...and the most adorable finger puppets ever.

Have a look in hannah-chan's Folksy shop, and her blog - they are so lovely, I want more!

Makes!

The new Makes section of Folksy has launched, and we are very excited to be one of the first 'makes' on the site.

Find out how we engraved and printed our little Edgefield print here... And have a look at the other splendid 'makes' from other Folksy sellers too!

Today we have made a rather large batch of teacakes using one of Dan Lepard's recipes, and we'll be spending the rest of the day toasting them on the fire and reading the papers!

Teacakes:
600g strong white flour
125ml warm water
5 tsp or 2 x 7g sachets of quick yeast
150ml milk
75g caster sugar
50g white chocolate or dripping
300g mixed dried fruit
25g golden syrup
3 eggs
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger

1. Mix the yeast with the water and a tablespoon of the flour. Set aside.

2. Heat the milk until it is almost boiling, then take it off the heat and add the sugar, syrup, white chocolate/dripping and the fruit.

3. Beat the eggs and add to the yeast mixture.

4. Sift the flour and spices into a large bowl and then add the milk and yeast mixes. Beat together until it is all thoroughly mixed.

5. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. You can knead it if you fancy but we've found it makes no difference to the final buns.

6. Divide the mixture into 14 teacakes. Shape them by stretching the dough and tucking it in underneath itself so you get a neat round ball of dough.

7. Place the teacakes on baking trays covered with baking parchment.

8. Leave in a warm place for 1hr 30 mins. Preheat the oven to 200C.

9. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden on top but still slightly soft.

10. Eat far too many of them, split, toasted and slathered in butter. Yum.

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!