Catching Up

Life seems to be rushing past so quickly at the moment, and I feel like I'm trying to crowbar everything I need to do into the last few days of child-free time before the summer holidays start at the end of next week.

Here's a quick round-up of what I've been doing...

I got my copy of Popular Crafts magazine today with the Q&A I did for them a while back.  Very exciting to see myself in print for the first time!

I bought a beautiful hardback book of Garden Flowers from my next-door bookshop.

There's been so much going on at the girls' school lately - the end of term art show was really impressive - how great do these sail pictures and shadow boxes look?

Filling my kiln up with various bits of various birds...

Buying this ace vintage chopping board - perfect for the campervan.

Making Isla's birthday cake, including a little marzipan Dobby the House Elf figure, at some ridiculous hour of the night (morning).  I always leave these things to the last minute...

Find

Was really excited* to find this little vintage Waechtersbach pot 

in the charity shop the other day.

(*read: grabbed it out of window display and ran to the till)

If you'd like to see more of this Dick Bruna-esque range of ceramics,

there's a whole Flickr pool dedicated to it.

David Weidman

I went to visit my lovely talented friend the other day,

and she showed me this book.

I couldn't put it down.

Fun and Games

I have discovered that Mike's phone takes a half decent picture, so will do as a temporary measure while I decide which kind of camera to get (read: have more than 27 and a half pence in bank account)

We've been enjoying these board games (found in my local emporium of dead-old-lady-stuff) as an after dinner treat.

You may wish to hurl cries of "Owwww, Board games are Borrrrriiingggg" at this point. I know we did as kids. But strangely, Snakes and Ladders has somehow become a white knuckle roller coaster ride of thrill in my old age. Perhaps it's the anticipation of small children throwing almighty tantrums if they lose that gives it the extra frisson.

Finally, by popular request....

My New Favourite Book. In The World.

Do you remember this?


It is from a book called The Dancer, The Bear and The Nobody Boy by Daniele Bour and Jean-Claude Brisville. I got a copy from Ebay recently, and it is as beautiful and magical and melancholy as a book about a bear, a circus, a tightrope walker and an orphan should be.




Also, I love the way it has been translated from the French - do I detect a Cockney accent?!


Don't even get me started on the end papers...



This is one book I actually could read to the girls every night.

Graphis 177

I was fairly ecstatic to happen upon a stack of old Graphis magazines in my very-local-second-hand-bookshop-next-door yesterday. Especially Edition 177, published in 1975, which is a special focussing on children's book illustrations. About 90% of my favourite illustrators are in here, plus a whole stack of talent I had not heard of. Organised by country, and crammed full of colour and black and white images, flicking through it in a deckchair in the garden yesterday was pretty much heaven for me.

Walter Grieder


Jiri Salamoun


Emma Heinzelmann


Daniele Bour


Alain Gauthier


Adolf Born

7 Aesthetic Themes - Part 1

I'm gatecrashing Jaboopee's meme today. I've been wanting to do a "what inspires me" post for a while, and this seems a nice way of doing it. The idea is that you list seven aesthetic themes in your work - showing some examples, and then how they feature in your work. I'm not sure I've got seven, but I'll get started and see how we go...

1) A 1970s Childhood We're talking Dick Bruna, FisherPrice, Bod, Meg and Mog, Playmobil, Topsy and Tim. Those strong, simple designs with their black outlines and bright colours translate to stained glass so well.

Images from here, here and here






2) Retro Fabrics I never get tired of gingham. Ever. It just always looks so fresh and fun and girlish. As soon as I learnt how to acid-etch glass, I used that technique to make gingham. Back in the old days, when I lived in London, we lived around the corner from Cath Kidston's first shop in Clarendon Cross. This was in the days before she was a household name and had sold her soul to Debenhams (sorry Cath) when it was a quirky little shop selling lovely things and the catalogue was a couple of photocopied hand-drawn sheets of A4 (cue harp music and misty eyed nostalgic moment). I digress. Around this time was when I started learning the various techniques of manipulating sheet glass, and the first pieces I made were pretty much homage to the fabric designs of La Kidston. I was also (much to the amusement of my OH) spending a lot of time hanging round the Imperial War Museum and using up my ration coupons. Once I'd worked my way through cabbage roses and floral sprigs, I moved on to abstract designs of the 50s and 60s - Lucienne Day and Evelyn Redgrave. I love the challenge of trying to recreate fabric designs in stained glass. The limitations of the medium are also what make it so addictive.
Images from here, here and here

3) Scandinavian Folk Art Bold colours, simple designs, repetitive patterns, flourishes, symmetry, flowers, birds. Of course.


Images from here, here and here

Well, as much fun as this is, it is also taking up all of my Friday night. So Part Two follows soon....