Designer Crafts At The Mall

Repost from my website...

This year started on a high for me with my first exhibition as a Merit Licentiate of the Society of Designer Craftsmen. As a new member we were required to help with the set-up and I really enjoyed getting my hands dirty and getting to have a say in some displays, it's definitely something I want to be involved in again.

I decided to make some completely new work for the exhibition so here are some pics, new jewellers got half a cabinet each so I have two shelves. Trying to make a display stand out in a row of 10 cases when having such little space was hard when I could only carry so much with me on the train/tube but I was pleased with the overall effect of my trusty cork mats.

I displayed new jewellery featuring handmade paper sections cast with vintage patterns, framed in sterling silver and strung on woven paper yarn chains. I experimented with oxidation and was pleasantly surprised, so I matched the oxidised ones with dyed chains.

On my first display I had two brooches front middle, a large fan shaped necklace to the left, a white 3 circle necklace to the right and back middle my grey woven paper neckpiece with silver tassel.
 

On shelf 2 I displayed two large circle necklaces front middle, black three circle necklace to the left, two of my drop-in necklaces to the right, and front right & left were a suite with stacked paper discs. I really liked the way these pieces turned out and exploring the paper casting that I used at uni.

The Harley Gallery Arts Market

Last weekend I participated in the tenth annual Harley Gallery Arts Market, despite the snow it was a massive success, I thoroughly enjoyed it and met loads of new people.

Setting up my own stand for the first time was a bit daunting, especially as I was travelling 60 miles in the fresh snow! But everyone was really helpful and I enjoyed putting together the display. After a quick change of mind over some wall frames I was all set and ready for the crowds..... which surprisingly appeared, despite several inches of snow and seb-zero temperatures!

I had great feedback and made plenty of sales so it was really encouraging, it's made me eager to do more shows!! 

We were in a marquee and as the inside temperature rose (apparantly...) the condensation started to drip off the beams onto our stands, argh!! With the nifty use of some black bin liners overnight to protect our displays we defeated the weather and stopped our tablecloths getting soggy.

With a hot water bottle doing the rounds courtesy of Anna Colette Hunt and humour courtesy of Nicola Lidstone I had a wonderful time and will definitely be applying for next years's market, though hopefully it'll be a lot less chilly!

Lists, Christmas and fabrics galore!

I've been selected to have a stall at the Harley Christmas Market, as well as a few local markets I'm doing, so my list making has gone into overdrive to decide what to make! It's also been a great excuse to go fabric shopping, so off I went. I'm making a quilt, my first ever, for my nephew's 2nd birthday so I'd been looking for something to back the Alexander Henry 2D Zoo fabric I'd been saving. I went to a lovely local fabric shop which has just expanded and found a perfect dark blue polka dot cotton and just HAD to buy some Hungry Hungry Caterpillar fabric too! I also picked up some nice grey spot ribbon and a lovely toadstool painted darning mushroom.  

I couldn't find a binding to go with it so I nipped across the road to Boyes, a fantastic general purpose store that my area of the country is blessed with. They've got some nice 100% cottons in, £3.50p/m!! So the 5 fabrics across the bottom row from the right are from there. The bottom left one is a remnant I thought I'd missed so pretty much whipped it off the table with delight, it's a yellow Peter Rabbit print and I'm going to have a good think before I decide what to use it for. I also decided to make a green crocodile for my nephew so I picked up some felt and a pack of googley eyes. The snowflake fabric and the blue and green birds fabric are both from the great Seamstar online shop.

The sewing machine will be put into service tomorrow as I have a whole day to devote to it. Fewer shifts at work means an unhappy bank balance but at least I have time to craft!
Speaking of work, I tend to use quiet periods to plan what I'm going to make, do you do the same? One thing that's been going round in my head is a 'sprout' design wire bangle and tonight I finally tried it out and I'm really happy with it! What do you think?

 

I'm going to make more based on this design but first I need to order some more wire! Watch this space for new pieces and I'll let you know when I list them in the shop. 

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I haven't posted on here in, well, let's just say a while. In the meantime I have completed my degree at uni, displayed my work in not one, but two graduate exhibitions with a third national one looming on the horizon, oh and I managed to squeeze in a blissful week away in Spain. Phew!

So, I thought I'd have a quick catch up session and show you a few photos from my various escapades. Firstly here are a few shots from our lovely graduate exhibition, this was a first show for many people so I think we did pretty well and we got really good feedback.

Glass by Emma Whitton

Ceramics by Kelly Fisher

Paper by Natasha Reidie

Glass by Tanya Beasley

Porcelain Chandelier by Lauren Hirst, Silver Necklaces by me.

These are just a few of the makers who exhibited, you can see the full list here. Our year has had a great mix of materials and styles, I think these worked together well in the show. It was part of our course to organise our own exhibition, which we did, but as it was a few weeks before the rest of uni exhibitions our work was also put on display in the foyer of the Think Tank, the new building where are workshops are so it tied in with the other courses. And just recently we were told who would be exhibiting for the university at Week 1 of New Designers, so there has been a lot of planning and organising going on. I am very excited to be showing my work and perhaps some of you may see it if you are planning on visiting. If so, do say hi, a friendly face is always appreciated!

Lincoln Christmas Market

Lincoln Christmas Market 2009 is an event I've been looking forward to since I started university because this year was our turn to hold our own stall selling our own handmade work to raise money for our end of year exhibition 'Direction' next May.

This year's stall featured the work of students on the Furniture and Contemporary Decorative Crafts courses.

This is our stall being manned by Kayleigh and Tasha.

Here you can see porcelain wall panels by Lauren Hirst, glass paper weights by Tanya Beasley and glass necklaces by Emma Whitton.

Paper bowls by Natasha Reidie and myself, snowflake jewellery by me and glass pendants by Kayleigh Rose.

Embossed cotton linter wall panels by Natasha Reidie.

Porcelain wall panels by Lauren Hirst.

And these are the sterling silver sets I made, tassels above and domes below.

If you're interested in any of the items shown please ask me for the contact details of the maker who will be more than happy to make a similar item for you if the one pictured is no longer available.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, organising the stall, making my jewellery to sell and sitting at the stall seeing all these wonderful people who liked our work enough to buy it! It has made me excited about the thought of having a stand at a show, though I know it's on a completely different scale.

2010 just got even more exciting at the prospect of our Final Year Show 'Direction'!

Thank you to Benchpeg!

I've been a bit caught up with uni lately but I just wanted to post to say a big thank you to Benchpeg, I won a pair of tickets to Origin in London last week in one of their competitions. As well as being a great resource for jobs, exhibitions and seminars the newsletter also features giveaways!

Origin was great this year but there were two makers who really stood out to me, Saloukee and Moon. Saloukee is a maker whose work you've probably seen before and it never fails to impress me but her stand was what stood out from the others. She had searched for something to make her stand more relevant to her work and I believe it was Bloxes she turned to.

Moon had a selection of pairs of cacti rings in storage pots and shadow puppet rings featuring hands which cast shadows of animals when a light is shone on them. At Origin the latter were displayed in a tray with a poisable spotlight, it was a great stand, it really allowed you to interact with the jewellery and if I'd had the money I would've taken a 'Duck' ring home.

As I didn't get any pictures while I was there here are a few from a recent trip to the Trentham Estate.

Featured Item Joy!

I logged onto Folksy last night to find my Tree brooch on the 'Featured items' list on the homepage. After a rather stressful week of moving house and being poorly this was a nice little lift and has given me a bit more impetus to continue with some of the crafts projects that've been put on the backburner lately.

So watch this space for more items being added to my Folksy store soon!

Little bag of happiness.

We visited Ikea at the weekend, the list of things to buy from there had been getting out of control so we had to nip it in the bud. Aside from all the other wonderful things I came away with there was a stack of fabric, Tasha and I hogged the cutting table for about half an hour. I had to buy a mini blue bag just to get them home safely, now I don't want to get them out except to unfold and refold them, they look so snug!

I've stocking up on sewing supplies lately and got a few gems from a charity shop- 3 vintage patterns (to go on the To Do list) and some bias binding, all for £2!

I've been attempting more fabric related projects lately and as I'm temporarily back at home while I work the summer in my local Post Office I needed to set up some crafting space. My Mum had salvaged a Singer treadle table from a skip outside a sewing shop many years ago and converted it to a table, but it'd been in the garage for a few years so I got it out, cleaned it up and installed it in my bedroom. The treadle still works so smoothly despite being out of action for about 30 years.

On my table here you can see a pin board I bought because it was square, pinned to that is some felt stitching inspired by the beautiful Polygon throw by Mia Cullin at Habitat. On the board is also one of my Scribble necklaces, soon to be added to my Folksy shop. In front are a selection of postacards from New Designers a few weeks ago and also two felt cacti- Astrophytum Myriostigma inspired as my real one gave up the ghost just recently and it was my favourite. Felt cacti are dangerous- they keep you up until 2am making them!

And lastly these are some of my Scribbles units before trimming and shinking, I really loved the negative shapes created with the black background, I'll try to encorperate this into some future pattern design and maybe screen print it.

Stool saga part 2.

Yesterday Tasha and I went bargain hunting, she got a very cheap table and I bought the foam I wanted to recover my very sorry looking blanket box, I also had to steel myself against buying a sewing box in a charity shop, good job I didn't have enough cash!

Anyway here's the pathetic blanket box-

The 'reupholstering' it had was not particularly nice, the staples were sticking out in places! So off it came and the frame needed a bit of tlc, I had to hammer some nails back in and one of the corners needed glueing as the joint had come apart. Here it is drying with a clamp on, my beloved car is unwittingly being used to lean it against!

Next to that in the garage is the frame from my first stool purchase which I'm just finishing sanding, then it will be oiled and reunited with the seat pad which I have covered, I'll save that until it's finished.

I've been having quite a textiles obsession lately since going to IKEA and buying some of the beautiful bird print Cecilia fabric for £1.99 p/m. I also splashed out on some Lena fabric too while I was there and recently snapped some more up on eBay, on the right in the pic, as I don't often get chance to go to IKEA and if I do it's always an expensive trip! Also in the pic is a pillow case Tasha gave me to amend to fit a small pillow, top left, and below that are two pieces of fabric I bought from Isabelle and Kate's Fabrics on Folksy. I've been planning to try covering some Moleskine Cahiers with fabric and I think the yellow and grey piece may end up involved.

Finally, for this post anyway, I have somewhat of a cactus obsession. I've been collecting a few cacti and succulents but a clear favourite has emerged, purely because it seems to have grown at least an inch every time I look at it. This is my prize prickly pear, which needs repotting as it had an accident in the car on the way home from the garden centre and fell out, as did most of it's soil, but despite that it has sprouted. I don't know a lot about them but I'm hoping it grows to be pretty big.

Spurred on by my cactus obsession and a search online I'd been wanting to make a cactus pincushion for some time and finally got round to it this week, infecting my friend Tasha with the bug too, you can see hers on her blog here. My next plan is to make a prickly pear one, but I need to get some purple felt first, then I'm thinking maybe a little bunch of cacti on a wrist band for mobile sewing and then ......

More on this and more shrinkle-ing later.

Folksy fun.

I've been a bit loathe to post when I don't feel like I've much to show but I think maybe I should

just do more then I can post more often!

There has been alot of planning going on of late, I decided I wanted to start a shop on Folksy when I discovered it was a UK alternative to Etsy.

The things I was thinking of selling needed to be quite simple to make so that they wouldn't take up all my summer (which is supposed to be spent doing dissertation research!). So I came to buy some shrink plastic which I remember fondly from my childhood. I had a few goes with an idea in mind of the sort of thing I wanted then I took some sheets to a friend's house and fellow blogger Tasha and co, all had a go, the results were really interesting!

Group efforts.

Original 'Temporary gems' idea.

Brooch with my signature 'Trees' design.

'Forest' necklace idea.

The 'Temporary Gems' I'm going to make a range of based on different stone cuts, they're temporary in that they're credit crunch gems and perhaps can be upgraded to the real thing in the future!

The 'Trees' are based on a pattern I made for my course and I'm going to make a range of jewellery with combinations of the sizes. I've listed a brooch on my Folksy shop to start with, there'll be more soon.