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!

Home Grown Produce

This week everything in our little garden seems to be suddenly ready all at once - loads of peas and beans, courgettes, chard, herbs, tomatoes and the first beetroot. One of my chilli plants has finally flowered as well - hurrah!

Here are some of our double courgettes...We made a delicious salad with them on Monday night - cut the courgettes lengthways into ribbons using a potato peeler and mix with the zest from a lemon and a lime. Make up a quick dressing with some nice olive oil, a little honey and the lemon and lime juice and mix into the courgette ribbons.

Yummy! I'm afraid it didn't last long enough to take a photo of it, but it looked very pretty. The recipe is from Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook, which we use a lot!

We're also over-run with chard, both pretty and delicious!

Not much printmaking news I'm afraid - it's been too hot and busy this week to have a chance to do more than think about it, although we are both hoping to start something new over the weekend - so watch this space!

In the meantime, have a look at these lovely little birds by Emily Sutton. They'll be in the new exhibition at St Jude's gallery in Aylsham later this month. We like having the occasional mooch around Aylsham - Humphry Repton is buried in the churchyard, and there is a good second-hand bookshop which usually has some good Penguin finds.

Postcard Tower

Ever wondered what a pile of 500 postcards would look like? Here is the answer! 500 brand new Lapwing Printworks postcards ready to go in with our orders and to be given out willy-nilly. Ordering them is something we've been meaning to do for a long time, and we're so pleased we took the plunge because they look great!

This is another letterpressed card from last week's efforts - a teeny, tiny card with a dark blue crown. The envelopes have a smaller, matching gold crown on the front. I love these ones, they strike me as being rather Regency somehow - perhaps I was being influenced by flicking through Pride and Prejudice looking for quotes for the Pemberley cards. Now available in our shops - and with the added incentive of a Lapwing postcard!

Today has been hot and muggy again, and attempting to work in a deckchair in the garden didn't result in much work being done... Tonight we are harvesting our very first courgettes for our tea, which is very exciting, but I'm making myself wait until Jon gets home from work so we can pick them together (seeing as he does all the work, and I just reap the benefits).

A great estate...

This week we letterpressed some notecards with a quote from Pride and Prejudice paired with a vintage 1960s block of a bungalow. I love this block, and have a whole raft of ideas on how to use it in various little projects.
We printed sets of the Pemberley cards in various summery shades (pink, blue, light green, lilac and peach), and they were snapped up from our stall at Clutter City yesterday. Clutter City was good fun - but hot! Today we've been sitting in the garden reading and trying to keep cool. This week I printed several more sheets of wrapping paper too which look brilliant - but too nice to use?The remaining sets of Pemberley notecards are available in our Etsy, Dawanda and Folksy shops now.

Clutter City & Folksy

Come and see us this Saturday!

We will be having a stall at Clutter City at Norwich Arts Centre from 10 to 4. We are busy getting ready at the moment, so expect all manner of printed and letterpressed stuff. If you're in Norwich then come along and say hello!

We have also set up a new online shop at Folksy, a new craft and design website. This means that we can now list our prints in £££, which is brilliant! The site is still in its testing phase, but there are already plenty of lovely UK designers and crafters on there.

You can find our Folksy shop here, at the moment there are only a few prints in there but we will be adding the rest over the next couple of weeks, as well as some new stuff!

A Suffolk adventure

This weekend we ventured out of Norfolk down into deepest, darkest Suffolk...
We explored the very pretty village of Clare (where we took lots of photos with the Rollei on the windswept castle motte) and pottered about in Sudbury, including a good poke around in Gainsborough's House which has a very nice print studio. If only it wasn't an hour and an half drive from our house...We also went to visit Celia Hart's studio, which was open to visitors as part of the Cambridge Open Studios scheme. We love reading Celia's blog, purple podded peas, and it was lovely to have a good chat with another printmaker. We spent the long drive back to Norwich discussing all the prints we want to do in the next month or two.

Today we have been busy wrapping prints ready for the Clutter City market in Norwich next weekend (more on that another day), so expect lots of letterpress related posts this week as we get ready to stock our little stall!