Two more new prints

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...

View from Cotehele

Cotehele is a lovely, rambling old house in Cornwall owned by the National Trust. We've been there several times when we've been down in Devon and Cornwall - it has a great 18th century triangular prospect tower (there is another one tucked away on a side street in nearby Plympton too).

Jon's new print is the view from the top of the Prospect Towers - a five colour reduction woodcut.Here is the blue ink being rolled out for the first layer of sky.

The sky was followed by a creamy yellow for the arable fields, followed by three layers of green for the pasture fields and the trees and hedgerows.

In our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

Lee's Century Baking Powder

Here is that new print...

Here are the first two layers - first, a layer of beige brown bricks...
Followed by a thin, blotchy layer of a darker red-brown.
Then Jon cut out the lettering and printed a thin layer of white over the top for the final layer -

Lee's Century Baking Powder - it never fails! If only you could still buy a pound of baking powder for sixpence.You can see a photo of the real-life sign here.

There are loads of great examples of faded adverts painted on the sides of buildings on the Faded London blog and in the Ghost Signs group on Flickr.

Jon's print is now up in our Etsy and Folksy shops.

A new print

Here's a peek at Jon's newest woodcut (he's firmly back in his printmaking groove now that the thesis is handed in). We'll upload some proper photos tomorrow - its a bit dark to photograph the the finished prints properly.

We've had a sprinkling of snow today, but yesterday was gloriously sunny so we went for a walk along the River Bure, near Oxnead and Buxton.

We've been sorting through the rest of our photos from our holiday - here are a couple from the top of Walsgrove Hill. The colours look rather muddier than they did in real life, but it was a spectacular view with plenty going on. We were up there for ages watching a shoot and a football match at Abberley School, as well as all the sheep (including a few lambs) roaming around the fields.

We had to move in the end because we were getting so cold, but the view definitely has some potential for a print in the future - perhaps an engraving?

Cock-a-doodle-doo

This weekend I have finally managed to find the time to finish my cockerel print - carving out the final layer and then printing a lovely dark blue colour. Jon helped with the printing when he wasn't out in the garden, and we're both really pleased with how he has turned out. If only we could have a real one of our own! Maybe one day...

We don't have the space at home for a proper studio so all our printmaking activities take place on our dining room table (helpfully covered by a wipe-clean striped oilcloth). My favourite place to sit and carve is in the chair opposite the window, which gets the most sun. Everything gets moved to one sie of the table (or onto the floor) when its time to print, so we often end up having to eat our tea on our laps because the table is covered in wet prints and other printing paraphenalia.

We've interviewed a fellow printmaker, Ellen Shipley, for the Prinsty (Printmakers of Etsy) team blog - read it here.

It has been very hot and sunny here for the past couple of days, which has meant lots of time in the garden tidying up and planting things out. It's all looking lovely and tidy out there now. This is the first year that we have tried our hand at growing strawberries. These ones are in a hanging basket outside the back door, above the herbs. I've got all my fingers and toes crossed that they ripen!

A wet bank holiday weekend

Another wet bank holiday weekend here (although it was sunny yesterday, so Jon got lots done in the garden), so we have been stuck inside with nothing to do but carve woodblocks, print, eat toasted fruit loaf and drink plenty of tea.

I have been busy carving and printing the next layer of a square print of a cockerel. The background colour and the first layer of his feathers are all printed, so today I did some cutting before printing the next layer of feathers - a dark orangey-red. It is working out very well at the moment, but will probably take at least a couple more weekends work before I manage to finish it.

Jon is busy working this weekend, so hasn't had much time for art - but he is busy coming up with plenty of ideas for his entry for the 71st annual exhibition of the Society of Wood Engravers - the submission date for entries is in the first couple of weeks of July and both wood engravings and other types of relief print can be submitted.

Yesterday, when it was still sunny, Jon took a lovely photo of one of our home grown alliums. I only cut one to bring into the house but now I wish I'd cut them all as they have now taken a bit of a battering from the rain...

Drying the dishes in style

This week we have spent our hard earned pennies on some lovely printed tea towels - you can never have too many (not even when they take up two whole drawers in our tiny kitchen). I couldn't resist the pink spotted one with old fashioned jelly moulds, printed by Fran Squires. I have one of her gorgeous aprons too, but I can only wear it when I'm not cooking anything too messy...
We also bought a 'one lump or two?' tea towel from MrPS in Big Blue Sky, a gallery in Wells-next-the-Sea which sells many wonderful things, all made in Norfolk. The postman brought us these three tea towels, which came all the way from the US, from Patapri, one of my favourite textile shops on Etsy. The two alphabet tea towels were designed by Linzie Hunter, and we love them too much to put them away in a drawer, even if it is the drawer for tea towels that only come out on high days and holidays.

This week I finally managed to finish off my little landscape print that has been patiently waiting on the dining room table for a couple of weeks! In our last post I mentioned that the sky had gone a bit wrong the first time round - it has now been (hopefully!) rescued with a thin layer of grey ink, and a cloud.

The end result is a 15 layer reduction print, measuring 5.5 x 5.5 inches. The photographs and the scan don't really bring out all the colours and texture of the overlapping layers of ink very well, but I'm pleased with how it looks in real life, and its given me plenty of ideas for future prints! Now available in our shop.

This weekend has been lovely and sunny, so we've been out in the garden filling up spare pots with summery bedding, and planting rows of marigolds inbetween our rows of veg. The mini greenhouse is full to bursting with lettuce and tomato seedlings, so in a few weeks we can start feasting on our own produce - unless the army of slugs beat us to it...

Cutting

This weekend we have both been doing lots of cutting!

We both find cutting to be quite therapeutic, especially with a glass (or two) of sherry and a favourite CD in the background. After a couple of weeks of day-job related upheaval we both needed to sit down quietly and do some cutting!

I have been working on a new wood block of a wooden peg which is now ready to print. I used one of my new tools, which was very pleasing to use and puts my old blunt ones to shame.

Here I am concentrating very hard on not cutting myself -


Jon has been busily engraving for a commission for a surprise present, so instead of a photo of his current block here is a photo of his magnifying glass. Useful for engraving and setting fire to small bits of paper when the sun is in the right place.