Cheater Quilt

This is my entry to this weeks Spoonflower competition. ‘Spring floral cheater quilt block’ I was only allowed to use nine colours, of which i chose three, and white. ( i just don’t like pink) 

I hadn’t heard of cheater quilts before now. but, in essence, someone would buy a yard or three of this fabric, some padding and a backing fabric, and stitch along the lines to make a quilt instead of cutting out the hexagons.

It will be available here: http://www.spoonflower.com/designs/2723171

The competition doesn’t open for voting until Tuesday, but i’ll be sure to remind y’all. ;)

Goat Cushions

Finding photos people have posted of my goat patterns!

Available from:
Society 6 as all manner of products
spoonflower as fabric by the yard, fat quarter or 8" swatch

Don't forget! For every sale of this design i will donate half of the proceeds to the Boughton Monchelsea Sanctuary for Goats or ‘Buttercups’. UK Registered Charity No 109927

If you’d like more information about the Charity or like to donate here is their website : http://www.buttercups.org.uk/

FREEBIE - calendar

I made you all a new years present! The first three months of a 2014 calendar! :)
Feel free to share, download, print off, put up in your office, kitchen, anywhere you like. I tried to make it as ink friendly as possible!

Don’t forget to post pics, i’d love to see what you do with them. :)

Happy new year folks! 

[Go here to download uncompressed high res versions]

Lucky dip 100% recycled sketch-books

I  made some sketchbooks this after noon, perfect little stocking fillers for that creative person in your life! (starting at £1.25)

http://crumpetsandcrabsticks.bigcartel.com/product/lucky-dip-100-recycled-sketch-book

Sleeping Tabby - Process

Recently i started working with Lino again, after some issues with my screen printing set up not working well with my new apartment in the Isle of Man.

So Yeh i hadn't done this since my first year of Uni, and apparently this was a lot longer time ago than i realised. So I use tumblr almost constantly, so if you follow me on there you will get the WIP process as it happens, This is usually done through Instagram as well. I only ever post to Blogger a wee time after everything's done.

So right, this lino cut; here's the initial sketch

And here is that loosely translated on to lino:

By the way i made a big mistake of using permanent marker on brown lino. It appears that if you are using waterbased inks, it's best to avoid as it adds a greasy residue onto the surface of the lino that makes the ink 'salt' and bubble up and not print a perfectly smooth black finish.

Here is an example of this:

I thought it was because i needed a new roller, the brayer i was using for some reason when i was still at uni, i thought it would be clever to roll acrylic with it and not wash it off instantly. This resulted in a weird acrylic paint texture to it. I really really don't advise this! So that roller got demoted to rolling the back of lino and that's it. Had to buy a new one. 

This is the one i got, for some reason i went for a 2" one, i guess at the moment i'm working small out of fear of wasting lino, so a smaller roller seemed the best choice, and they're easier to store, and less cumbersome. i kept making a mess with my old 4" going over the sides.

So after asking around a fair amount to print makers i know and randoms on the internet i realised that it might be the permanent marker, so first thing i tried was white spirit to dissolve it. it worked a bit. But it was still really evident. I started applying loads more ink to the plate as well, and this helped. At this point i realised that print making is practicality 99% trial and error. So i has no other option at this point i had to literally sanded it down lightly. This i can assure you was terrifying. 

But it kinda worked., i felt that the image didn't warrant 100% perfect coverage as it actually added to the fur texture, i was happy to start printing, i chose 100% recycled brown and 'eco-natural' card to print on.

And my living-room temporarily turned into a drying rack

I printed a run of 25 on brown card stock, and a run of 25 on a beautiful 160gsm fine grain cartridge paper A5 with a large boarder.

You can see here on the back i added my information and a note of "100% recycled". This was simply done with my ink jet printer

The greetings cards are available from my big cartel, but they are limited I may do additional runs on different substrates in the future. If there is demand.

I really enjoyed getting back into lino, and since cutting this, I've actually done a load more stamps that i'm using for my personal Christmas projects. These will go on sale next October/November (2014). (so as not to spoil anything for my friends and family :) )

Trip back to the UK

So last week i went back to the UK for a wedding and visit my family

I made a sketchbook to take with me:

I made it out of a random selection of papers, bound with a couple of heavy duty staples, and a nice charcoal grey cover.

I embossed the front with a little message:

I was quite excited, i'd never flown on my own before. And of course, by excited i mean worried everything would go wrong and fall apart!

So i did quite a bit of sketching mostly when i was traveling. Which i did a lot of. reminded me of how much i hate trains. so glad there isn't any here.

New BIG CARTEL Shop!

i have a few things up for grabs on my big cartel! 

All items are limited edition, and will only be available until November-ish when i switch the stock around for some more festive items! (and or they sell out… which ever happens first… i think we know which one will happen first…)

We’ve got a tote bag, and a lorra greetings cards for the moment with some tea-towels and fabric goodies to come.