Typography on my Floor

I rusted a piece of my steel typography signage without a protective floor covering and look what happened! Many would be horrified but I'm quite excited about the effect. I love having a typographical floor in my workshop!

The Chipping Sodbury Vintage and Handmade Fair

I had a lovely day at The Vintage and Handmade Fair. It's the first time I've done a fair and I was a bit nervous as I couldn't hide behind the veil of an online shop. I actually had to sell my wares the traditional way!!! It was fun and lovely to have the opportunity to chat to people about the things I am passionate about, namely producing hand lettering the traditional way but adding a modern twist. I like the contrast between the gentle art of pencil drawing and then using a harsh industrial method to produce it. It's what I have always understood to be one of the foundations of good design, a contrast or juxtaposition. This doesn't need to be jarring. I like it to be complimentary.

The vintage style personalised metal signage went down well, perhaps because the possibilities are endless as to what you could have made up to go on your wall. I was hoping someone might place an order for a rude word but sadly no one did...

Above is my bespoke business card dispenser which cost all of 10p and was cleverly (if I do say so myself) constructed from an ancient Mills and Boon paperback by simply folding all the pages into the centre of the book.

I made mini blackboards out of old frames and then wrote prices and other useful bits of infofmation on them. It made people smile!

It all looked like organised chaos really but I got lots of lovely compliments which made me feel a bit giddy. I took my eldest daughter and we felt like we had a proper day out as we were surrounded by the loveliness of all the other stalls. I meet Michele who also sells great cards on notonthehighstreet.com and Jess Quinn whose small art was inspired and whose dolls had the most beautiful faces. The WI was there providing delicious cakes...I had a particularly good lemon drizzle.

My letterpress cards were popular and worked well in old office filling drawers.

I recreated the blackboard look on black card with white pencils and it made really cheap but effective signage. I was amazed that it looked so chic as I find it hard to put a look together usually because I get so over excited and have too many ideas!

Everyone loved the roses and they added to the stall and made it look pretty. All in all it was a fab day and I would definately do it again!

Full of Promise

At the end of last year we moved house from our little country cottage to a big country cottage! It's been exhausting getting everything sorted with the house and settling the children into their new schools. I've been rather daunted by the epic proportions of our new garden which hasn't been helped by the long, dark, cold winter.

It's amazing what a bit of sunshine does for the spirit, though and yesterday morning I wandered round our garden in my pyjamas, with a steaming cup of tea, in a delirious state of happiness! The blue sky was the perfect back drop for buds just waiting to burst and the trees were full of birds singing their hearts out.

Swathes of Snowdrops carpet the woodland floor which is damp and woody smelling. With the risk of sounding like a bit of a ponce, it reminds me of the first verse of the 'Promise of Spring' poem by Edith Nesbit.

'JUST a whisper, half-heard, But our heart knows the word; Caresses that seem Like love's lips in a dream; Yet we know she is here, The desirèd, the dear, The love of the year! 

In the murmur of boughs, In the softening of skies, In the sun on the house, In the daffodil's green (Half an inch, half-unseen Mid the mournful brown mould, Where the rotten leaf lies) Her story is told.'

I love that bit 'Just a whisper, half heard...' it is so true for this time of year when there are only glimses of promise. ..

Ok, so the ponds currently look like The Somme, but we do have lots of green daffs in our mini orchard...and a lot of mouldy, brown leaves...

This is the wonderful view of the Kilcott Valley which runs along the length of our garden.

Hedgehog Rescue!

 

 Above is a little bunch of roses from our garden to thank the lovely Mary for all her good work helping our one eyed, resident hedgehog, Nelson. My neighbour and I kept spotting him wandering around in the day which is a sure sign that things are not good. I spoke to Mary and she said that it can mean that the hedgehog can't consume enough through the night. Nelson looked very thin and small and had a rather nasty looking lump in his eye. We managed to catch him and, with the help of three excitable children, took him to the hedgehog hospital!

He's been there of six weeks, had his eye treated and was fed up (with food, not bored!). He he is on his return!!

Isn't he beautiful? We put him in the hedgehog house with a mountain of mealworms... Sometimes we hear him snuffling about in the evening if we wander about in our garden which is nice. Just call me Kate Humble.

Nelson's bijoux residence....

Walking in Avebury

Our lives have been incredibly busy lately. A combination of this and a substandard internet connection have resulted in a forced stay-cation from Blogsville. However, I'm now back with a camera full of creativity just waiting to be uploaded...

Our work load over the last few months has been relentless. Mr Inky and myself are exhausted both physically and mentally from all the stuff we've had going on. More about that in another post...this one is all about a lovely, rejuvenating day out yesterday at the neolithic stone circle, Avebury.

We come here a lot as it's not too far from where we live. We don't profess to be druids but you really can feel a wondrous sense of calm and well being here even when there are masses of people (and sheep) wandering and wondering along side you. We come here when we are unsettled and facing change and the solid, ancientness of these stones seem to ground us.

The undulating landscape is lovely and very inspiring for an arty bod like myself. I love the colours in this picture...the yellow cornfield against the blue sky and green grass...

The stones form huge circles and inner circles which are enclosed by deep ditches and high, chalky banks which are great for running along, the only risk is sustaining an embarassing injury from slipping on a fresh sheep poo (there is rather a lot).

 
This path leads to a monumental collection of 'Lord of the Rings' type trees which were very mythical looking.

When we arrived there we saw a lady chanting a spell by one of the trees and a mother and son whispering words of prayer. We felt that we needed to be quiet and respectful here like when we visit a church or stately home. These beautiful trees certainly commanded the same respect. The ribbons hanging from the branches are peoples wishes...

Under the trees was a man playing the billabong. It was a welcome a soundtrack.

The little girl tied a ribbon onto one of the roots...

...and wished that she would grow fairy wings.

I wonder what these wishes are?

 This one is my secret, yellow wish..

Some wishes were more permanent...The, somewhat, raging Pagan in me tells me that this is tree abuse, the typographer, however, says it could be art...

...talking of art, these knarly roots are are a joy to behold, never ending, interlocking...

Imagine seeing huge, protruding stones when you open your bedroom curtains!

Not a rain cloud in sight... we enter another week fully refreshed!

Washi Tape Cake Toppers!

When the Little Girl gets back from pre-school we have just over two hours of peace before we need to start the school run...and then chaos seems to reign! Our peaceful afternoons are my favourite part of the day because we have a rule only to do lovely 'Little Girl' type things such as wrapping bits of ribbon around barbie dolls, colouring, drawing family members (all with long eyelashes and lipstick) etc.

The Little Girl's favourite thing to do, however, is cooking and we have progressed from jelly to fairy cakes. Such are her cake baking skills that age 3 she can break eggs perfectly only getting a tiny bit of shell in the mix...which adds a bit of crunch! To our cakes we usually add pink icing made with icing sugar, a bit of water and pink colouring but we had a bit of white chocolate left in the cupboard so decided to use that.

We melted the chocky and then added a glug of double cream turning an ordinary cake topping into a very posh sounding 'ganache'. This basically means that the chocolate is quite silky looking and sets sticky rather than hard. We added 'micro' chocolate eggs and hundreds and thousands...yum!

Next stage of the decoration are the flags. The Little Girl is as equally excited about a plain sheet of A4 as her mother and set to making a 'no expense spared' white paper flag...

...and promptly selected the largest cake as her own...that's my girl!

Now if any of you arty/crafty bods out there in blogland have not heard of Washi tape you're in for a treat. It's basically decorative masking/paper tape which is ever so slightly transparent. Go to the Washi tape website for inspiration. Washi tape is brilliant for young children because you can rip it and re-stick it.

Anyway...we decided to make little flags for our cakes. Just cut a little piece and stick on the top of a cocktail stick....

Fold it over so it sticks to the other side and snip a little triangle out to make a flag shape...

Looks gorgeous on little cakes..!

Stone Lettering

I've always loved this quote and spent a long time last year drawing the lettering for this piece.

It kind of marks a turning point for me because for 10 years I've been drawing formal roman alphabets and consequently have become a bit obsessed with 'getting them right'. By 'right' I mean that the proportions of every letter are perfect, the space within and surrounding each letter is balanced etc.

Whilst I understand that it is essential to have strong foundations when developing a skilled craft, and the key to breaking the rules in art and craft is to know those rules inside out, it has left me with a slight nervous twitch every time I do something which bends formality a bit...will it look rubbish? Will my peers snigger at its childishness? Am I producing something new and exciting or odd and confusing? I think that this is quite common insecurity for arty, crafty bods.

I started to find that the longer I spent 'perfecting' something, the worse it starting to look!

My friend Judith helped me. She wondered why I was trying to recreate a perfect letterform. Was it because I was trying to make the letters look like they hadn't been hand drawn? Fine... if I had intended that but what was my intention? For me it is to create a beautifully formed letter, beautifully DRAWN, not typed on a computer. I realised that to me, the visual beauty in a letter created by a human hand (rather than a machine) is in its imperfections which, in turn, make that letter pleasing to the human eye.

...And so eventually, with a lot of messing about,  this lovely quote by William Morris became some thing beautiful for my house! The lettering is my variation on a roman capital. It's a bit wonky on purpose as I adjusted the letters to fit and didn't drawn any lines to follow which I think is interesting.

Finally, Judith said that I must look at the work of David Jones ...
 

A lot of his work was purchased by the Tate in the seventies. It's a beautiful and free exploration of roman lettering created, I think, with pen strokes like the 'versal' lettering used in ancient bibles and religious texts. Its imperfections are beautiful and very inspiring.