Cards I've Made

As I'm finding it increasingly difficult to get to my studio I've been trying to find more and more ways to stay creative at home. One of my solutions has been to make birthday cards for my friends and family.  

Back in July I made two cards for my friends Rachel and Tamzin. Rachel's card was a cut out design based on leopard print. I cut out shapes that would symbolise the main spots and then cut several thin stripes around these to create further detail to the spots. I left the card white and placed a layer of white tissue paper underneath, so that the cut out design was the main focal point. 

Tamzin's consisted of a simple fabric heart stitched onto card, with uneven 'Happy Birthday' stitching. The fabric I used came from an old Topshop skirt. 

This month has seen both my boyfriend's and my Dad's birthday. My boyfriend, Declan, isn't really one for cards, so I tried something different for him. He's really into tattoos so I thought he would appreciate a collage card of cut out letters from Skin Deep magazine. I also organised a treasure hunt for his birthday, and the numbers on all the clue envelopes followed the same style. This was a really fun and easy card to make, I didn't have to worry about neatness and I'm really pleased I managed to find a different font for each letter - my favourite is the 'A' in 'Declan'. 

Tuesday was my Dad's birthday, and for his card I found a sample square of bobbly silk, frayed the edges and stitched 'Happy Birthday Dad' onto it. 

Today is four months until Christmas and tonight I'm going to start thinking about what I want my Christmas cards to look like. This may seem a bit premature but I know just how manic Christmas is going to be. I'm working full time now and the more I can get done now the better!

Simple and Sweet: Making Birthday Gifts

In my last post I said I was making a friend of mine a 'simple, yet sweet, present'… well I wasn't kidding, my gift was a sweetie ja,r complete with handmade and personalised label. 

The label is what took longest to make. I wanted to cut out my friend's name (Hannah) into some paper but before that I had to draw out her name in a way that that looked pretty and yet be sturdy enough. After a good while spent drawing and with a little help from a calligraphy leaflet, I managed to get a design I liked. I drew the design onto tracing paper and then transferred it onto the paper backwards so that I was cutting and drawing on the reverse of the label and not ruining the front with scruffy marks.

After cutting it out I felt that the label needed something more, I found up some bright and colourful vintage floral fabric and spray mounted the paper label onto it. The fabric backing made the label look that much more special and it matched the sweets I bought brilliantly. 

My friend is a vegetarian and I was limited in what jelly sweets I could use. I know she loves these Meerkat jelly sweets from Morrisons so I bought a few packs of them and also got her some yummy veggie percy pigs, which have a green ears to show that they're gelatine-free. 

The sweets went in a large empty coffee jar, which I then decorated with the same floral fabric I had used for the label. I attached my hand-cut label to some string and tied it round the lid in a loose bow. 

I'm back... and with charity shop goodies

I've had a little break from textiles, craft and creativity but now I'm back in the mindset and ready to go! I got a huge burst of inspiration last weekend after an exhibition crawl in London. I went to see the breath taking 'Modern Chinese Ink Paintings' at the British Museum, the sweet and colourful 'Colour Identity' by Korean fashion designer Yeji Kim at Mokspace, the design-tastic 'Bauhaus Live' at The Aram Gallery and finally the bold 'After Bloomsbury: Rugs from the Omega Workshops 1913-1916' at Somerset House. A full account of my day, thoughts and ideas will take me a longer time than I have to write this evening but I'll be going over all the details in a post this weekend.

During my break I've been reading, bird-watching and doing a lot of day-dreaming but I haven't been completely slack, just last week I had a fixing up clothes burst. Back in March I posted about some charity shop finds, which included a wool tartan skirt that I wanted to take up. Well, I finally got around to doing it and I wore the little beauty during my exhibition crawl. It's now a lovely little high waisted mini-skirt and it's great for work. 

I've got some new charity shop goodies too! Last Thursday I spontaneously popped into my local charity stores and found myself an old rolled gold ring- with a purple glass gem, a geometric print scarf and a lovely little translucent white shirt with a delicate feather print, the buttons were a little boring but, after pawing through another shop's button tin, I managed to find some fantastic alternatives and fixed the top up to my liking. 

(ps. apologies for the poor quality photos, I've given my partner his super-duper camera back and as soon as I did, naturally, my little camera went and died on me. And so I'm suck with a phone camera for the foreseeable future)

Out Of Sync, Room Of Dreams and The Architecture of Cloth, Colour and Space

A couple of weeks ago I took a little trip into Central London to check out some exhibitions. My first stop was Somerset House to see Out Of Sync and Wendy Ramshaw's Room Of Dreams. 

Fernando Casasemere's Out Of Sync is said to 'recreate the joy we feel at the sight of blossoming flowers' and 'the bringing of spring'. I found Out Of Sync very pretty and, despite being created from clay and metal, very organic. When I went to see the installation the sun was shining to an extreme and, although it made my eyes squint and water, it was a lovely setting. The sunny weather lit Out Of Sync up beautifully and I did feel joy at viewing the installation. I  think it would be very interesting to go back on a drab day and see how Out Of Sync compares. 

I was amused (probably too amused) with all the pigeons sitting among Out Of Sync's clay flowers, and took as many photos of the birds as I did the installation. I'm a bird lover and they looked so happy and peaceful sitting among the ceramic flowers, for me it really highlighted the spring-like and ecological qualities of the installation.  

All I knew about Wendy Ramshaw before going to see her exhibition, was that she was a jewellery designer and that her Room Of Dreams drew inspiration from Alice In Wonderland. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland was my favourite book growing up and the show's links to the book was my main reason for going see it. I really enjoyed Ramshaw's fantastical works and her interesting ways of displaying; the Room Of Dreams really blurs the edges of where jewellery ends and display begins, I particularity liked the bird wearing the necklace. As a fan of Alice, I was also very attracted to Ramshaw's use of keys, as I find keys to be wonderful objects, full of importance and mystery! 

After refuelling myself with some lunch and a drink I then wandered over to the Aram Gallery to see Ptolemy Mann's exhibition, The Architecture of Cloth, Colour and Space. It was very inspiring to see how a textile artist can approach different aspects of design and make a career from it. Mann's use of colour is fantastic, her bright pieces really transformed the exhibition space and I was impressed by her innovative use of digital print. The large scale pieces strongly retain a textural quality and her designs are a refreshing change from the endless graphic style digital prints we see today.

Time For Tea!

Happy Easter all! It's Good Friday toady and I've been scoffing my face with hot cross buns today… yummy! I love hot cross buns, they're the perfect little snack to have with tea, and I've had a major obsession about tea lately. Every time I'm in a supermarket I've been scouring the tea aisle and treating myself to some new flavours. 

My most recent buys are Marks and Spencer's White Tea & Raspberry Infusion, Twining's Pomegranate Green Tea and The Drury Tea & Coffee Company's China Jasmine Tea. 

This new tea collecting of mine might have something to do with the fact that I finally got my own teapot! My Nan was going to throw it out but I was instantly drawn to its bright pattern and painterly quality flowers, so she let me have it. The pot has a stamp on the bottom reading 'Crown Ducal Ware England'. 

I've been doing a little research and this stamp was used by a Stoke-on-Trent pottery company called A.G Richardson from around 1925s onwards. I also discovered someone on eBay selling a teacup, saucer and side plate with the exact same same design pattern. My teapot obviously belonged to a similar set once upon a time and the listing confirms my suspicions that it was hand-painted and estimates that the set was made circa 1927… making my teapot 85 years old! 

My teapot is a little worn and I doubt it would be worth much, I just like knowing that it has some history. It's small, only enough space for one and a bit mugs, but as the only tea drinker in my house this suits me just fine, and besides… what a great excuse to treat myself to some smaller tea cups!

Cardigan dyeing and charity shopping

Like I mentioned in my last post, I'm starting to give myself little tasks/projects/etc to keep my mind creative, and the other day while I was routing through my over flowing wardrobe I came across and old, faded, lemon coloured cardigan, and it was really starting to look tatty.

The cardigans care label caught my eye and I noticed it was 100% cotton, instantly I thought 'Great! I can dye this and make it look nice again!'

I'd bought some Procion MX dyes just after Christmas and was yet to use them, and having not dyed with Procion since my second year at uni, I thought dyeing the cardigan would be great practise. 

Just for any textiles people out there- I used 4% Procion Yellow MX 4G and 0.5% Procion Red MX 8B. The cardigan is now a lovely warm (almost orange) yellow, and there's not a patch in sight!! 

I really do enjoy dyeing, I find it quite calming and extremely satisfying once you can see the results. It was also a lovely change from using black dyes and having to spend hours rinsing the fabric out. 

After dyeing, I realised the cardigan had a couple of holes that needed sewing up and that the buttons needed changing, as they still matched the original lemon yellow colouring. 

I couldn't find anything suitable at home so I walked into town to have a wander around the charity shops. I found a rather ugly coat thats only redeeming feature were its lovely shiny black buttons. I bought the coat, cut the buttons and poppers off and left the coat for the shop to donate or use for rags. 

I fixed the cardigan up yesterday afternoon, and I must admit I'm really pleased with the outcome.

And while I was shopping for buttons I also came across a few bargains; these included a £3 full length red and white skirt that had a great geometric print on it, a 70p knee length tartan skirt that I'm going to take up and turn into a mini skirt and a £6 wool and camel hair Jaeger coat!  Four new items for my wardrobe costing just £11.65 not a bad weekend me thinks!

Blog revived!

Long time no post….. bad Kat Man!

January has always been a distracting for me, as I'm still excited from Christmas and mega excited about my birthday, I find it terribly hard to concentrate on work… and then in February I get what I call the 'February blues' (while the rest of the world is suffering from the blues in January, I'm too busy in bouncing around with birthday glee, resulting in month delay for my blues) and this also results in little work.

I've started working full time at my job, I told myself I'd do work at the weekends, but I'm finding it difficult to stick to this resolution. 

However, I've really enjoyed working full time, and although it's not to do with textiles I do get to be creative on a daily basis. I work in the internet department for a shoe shop; I have several jobs and tasks that I'm responsible for including; taking and uploading photos of the products, writing short descriptions of each shoe, producing banners and newsletters for the website and I even get to write the occasional blog article. Pretty cool really!

I do A LOT of work on photoshop, and I'm beginning to understand how to work creatively with the program, which is a great! As a traditionally taught textile designer, I've always preferred handmade, handprinted work because it offered more creative options (beautiful mistakes), and I found it a real challenge to apply this to digital processes, but now I'm fairly confident in the future I will find it much easier to use digital design in my work.

Design work is not being completely abandoned, I'm going to start drawing again and I'll be setting myself little creative tasks to do now and then, and slowly build up the time I spend working on each one… today I'm going to dye an old faded cardigan! 

I'm also going to concentrate on creating pieces for my portfolio and hopefully once I've saved a bit of money I can take a short course and develop my skills further.

And this blog is being revived too! I found it tough to keep going before as it was just about my textiles and textiles craft. The problem is that I love and am passionate about so many things from music to birdwatching, children's animation to tattoos. Many people would see this as a negative but I love being inspired by different things. So from now on this blog is going to be true to my character and will feature ALL the different things I find brilliant!  My life is a collage, not a masterpiece painting and I like it that way!