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.

We are still here!

Honest!

After reading Lupin's post on the Etsy forums about good blogging today, I guiltily realised that it's been nearly a month since our last post! Eek!

Since we last posted we've enjoyed a gorgeous week away in Wales at Stockwell Farm, another Landmark Trust property, which really recharged our batteries. This is the view we woke up to every morning - the hills in the distance were once the Forest of Radnor, and some of it is now a firing range. They were further away than they looked...


Now we're back to our more usual view from the office window, and the nights are certainly drawing in now that it's October. It feels like we've neverbeen away now that we're back in the thick of it again!


Now that it really feels like autumn I've started to plan out some ideas for Christmas decorations for our trees - this one is a prototype that I made this afternoon. Excuse the slightly dodgy photo taken in the dim early evening light! I really like it with plain white paper, but I can't help but feel it would be even better if the paper was printed with some kind of Christmassy linocut...

The John Jarrold Printing Museum

Today was the last day of this year's Heritage Open Days, so this afternoon we dashed into town to visit the John Jarrold Printing Museum, a magical wonder-world of presses and ink and bookbinding and lithography and type...


We had a lovely afternoon peeping into type cases and chatting to the volunteers who run the museum, and who are very enthusiastic and keen to share their tips with novices like us!

They had a nice little Heidelberg press up and running (above) - they don't turn the huge ones on for big public open days (health and safety), but one of the volunteers said that they do run them during the museum's normal opening hours (Wednesday mornings).

There are some more photos in our Flickr photostream.

Do go if you ever get the chance, it's a lovely little place, and packed to the gunwales with presses and type and cameras and litho stones and guillotines and loads of other interesting bits and bobs.

A quick peek...

...at a big lino block I'm cutting at the moment.


It's quite a big block - roughly A3 sized, so there's a long way to go yet...

Yesterday we had a lovely trip to Big Blue Sky, a really nice shop in Wells up on the coast, where everything is made in Norfolk. They're going to be stocking some of our work this autumn, which is very exciting.

More news soon, promise!

Spring time...

This weekend Jon has been busy printing another little letterpress print on the Adana. This one has a nice old block from an advert or catalogue with some rings (priced in shillings, so it must be old....).

The quote is most famous for being in 'As You Like It', although the song probably predates Shakespeare (click on the picture to enlarge it if you need to).

Although this print is all about the joys of spring, it's definitely feeling autumnal here, the first conkers have fallen off the horse chestnut, the nights are drawing in and we've been foraging in the hedgerows. In our part of Norfolk the elderberries are ready, but the sloes aren't quite there yet - another week and we'll have to return to our top-secret favourite sloe picking hedgerow...

Weddings and Tigers

A new letterpress print about weddings and tigers -

Printed on the Adana using our nice old wedding block and some Bodoni italic.

This one is in our Etsy and Folksy shops now...

We didn't dress up as tigers the day after our own wedding (or go to the seaside), although I suspect it would have been more fun if we had!

We're looking forward to the bank holiday weekend so we can both make a start on some new prints, and start planning a new and exciting project - more news soon!