March 19, 2012 in flowers, handmade goodness
Spring has sprung here in London. The sun is shining, it feels joyful out and about and the bulbs are starting to flower in my little London garden. It is my favourite time of the year for flowers, all the bulbs I planted in the autumn are now bursting into life. This is a welcome change to the grey days we have seen recently and has lifted my spirits as I have had an extremely busy few weeks. It feels like I have been working non-stop, but all for wonderful projects that I love. My new book The Homemade Home for Children is due for release early next month, I have been working with an award-winning architecture practice on an exciting project and I have an editorial shoot next week that I have been working on over the last few weeks and am really looking forward to.
I haven’t had a spare moment to take any new pictures this week, but looking through my archives I found this series of photos I took early last Spring and didn’t get around to posting at the time. With the Spring flowers appearing I thought it perfect timing to share them now.
These Lily of the Valley were plucked from my parents-in-laws’ garden where swathes of them grow in the shade under the hedges. I adore their fresh, crisp coloration, their slim elegant leaves and their smell – just divine!
As I was playing with my camera, placing the stems on fabric it reminded me of some of my old textile designs where fresh flowers were always an inspiration – whether drawn, painted or embroidered. I placed a stem next to one of my old embroidered designs of the same flower above.
This is a simple freehand machine-stitched textile design of bottles that I made a few years ago. I placed a stem as if displayed in its vase. You can get wonderful effects by freehand machine-stitching on paper or fabric with practice. The embroidered portraits project from my first book uses this technique.
A single, simple stem in a simple vase looks delicate and sweet but with an understated elegance that I love.
Hello Spring, I’m happy you’re here.
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January 30, 2012 in handmade goodness
Today I thought I would share some photos I took for recently for my friend Heleen Miller Aberson who started an online children’s clothing business a few months ago. Heleen and I first met and became friends when our boys were at nursery school together, I loved her Dutch sensibility and sense of fun and we soon became car boot buddies, sharing a love for all things vintage. We visit our local car boot sale together every month, meeting as the birds wake up, with coffees in hand and plenty of news to chat about as we rummage for treasure amongst the junk.
If you were wondering why little girl above looks familiar then that’s because she is my daughter (she turned five earlier this month) and the our other pretty little model is Heleen’s daughter. We’ve done a few mini shoots at my home after school or early on a Saturday morning, trying to keep it quick and fun before the girls get too fidgety – which is easier said than done! It’s not the first time my daughter has modelled… in fact the teddy bear in the photo below has also modelled before too! We are all on the front cover of Anita Kaushal‘s gorgeous book FamilyLifestyle Home, taken in my living room when she was a tiny three months old.
The clothes in the photos above and below are the latest Spring/Summer designs by Rokje London, a collaboration between Heleen and her Swedish friend Rebecka Bjurle. The clothes are inspired by retro prints and vintage cuts but brought up to date with soft colours. The tops are hand made from a beautiful 100% cotton fabric and they are all individually hand printed. All the tops are lined at the neck in the same colour as the print and they all have a fabric covered button at the back. These outfits are available now in their Etsy shop and there are more photos over there too. Have a look.
The photos above are from Rokje’s Winter collection and are available from the Shop Yuko website. They are all hand made and hand printed too.
A few months ago Heleen started Shop Yuko, an online children’s wear shop which has been getting lots of interest which is fantastic. Her shop offers Eastern-inspired clothing that looks a little different from the usual high street children’s clothing. She stocks clothing by Shampoodle, Redfish, Lucky Wang, Sckoon, Pom Pom and her own label Rokje.
You can see more on the Shop Yuko website and she also has a Shop Yuko Facebook page where there are more photos and news – plus my little boy makes an appearance too!
I certainly don’t consider myself a photographer but I do enjoy taking photographs and a couple of these photos have been published in The Saturday Telegraph and Angels & Urchins magazine which is pretty amazing.
And our little girls have had great fun getting dressed up and modelling too. I love my daughter’s little leg lift in the photos above which she did naturally! She also makes an appearance in some of the photos in my new book The Homemade Home for Children.
Big girls ands little girls having fun with fashion and being creative. Strike a pose!
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January 6, 2012 in handmade goodness
These little items are my new pride and joy – small things to make a girl happy and add some new interest to my displays at home. My family and I visited Selvedge magazine‘s Christmas fair last month and my husband bought me these as Christmas gifts (I heavily hinted that I would love them). They were wrapped and hidden away until Christmas day and I thought I had to share them with you as they’re something I treasure.
These sweet fabric balls set in real, dried acorn cups (Oak nuts) were made by Susi Joel. I love the combination of natural and patterned, especially the Japanese print, which could look wrong but it looks so right. On the mantlepiece in my living room, it will add just a pop of colour and interest and give me joy every time I glance that way. I photographed them on pieces of vintage Japanese fabric that I had bought at the Hammersmith vintage textiles and fashion fair.
I also adore this hand-woven wire bird nest by Helen Thompson of Holy Smoke. I had seen it at the Selvedge fair the year before and had wished I had bought one then and luckily they had a stand again this year. I love the delicacy and the tiny off-shoots that look like buds. This too will take pride of place on my mantlepiece, a touch of organic amongst the rigidity of my ceramic vases.
Holy Smoke also make the most adorable wire-framed, fabric dogs oozing with character covered with linen that my son wanted to take home with him.
The Selvedge fairs are well worth a visit if you are in London and like unique, handmade products. I also bought lots of little gifts for family and friends; jewellery from Emma Cassi, rubber stamps from Noolibird, paper twine from Paperphine and soft toys from The Black Rabbit among others.
I may need a bigger mantlepiece for all my treasures!
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November 12, 2011 in handmade goodness, inspiring places
I managed to catch the end of Sophie Smallhorn’s show Notes on colour at Westbourne Studios in Notting Hill recently. I am a huge fan of Sophie’s work and I love her colour use, graphic style and how she experiments with their relationships in her screenprints and 3D artworks. I wake up to one of her images every morning as it sits on a shelf in my bedroom (see my previous post here) and it was a joy to see so many of her prints together. I also saw some of her work earlier this year as part of a collaboration at the Craft Council’s Collect, the international art fair for contemporary objects, at the Saatchi Gallery.
Sophie says:
Notes on colour
Having been involved in a number of long-term projects recently, I wanted to work with a process that would allow me to move through ideas quickly and instinctively. ‘Notes on colour’ started some months ago as two hundred sheets of paper, a basic screen printing set-up and a desire to play. The project has been a fascinating time and for me, an essential back-to-basics way to sketch out thoughts on colour, form and composition without becoming preoccupied by ideas of perfection. Mistakes were made and then made something of, one print informed the next and no single print has taken longer than a day to complete. ‘Notes on colour’ is in a sense a thought process illustrated over one hundred screen prints. Collectively it is a story, a story about colour.
To see more of her work visit Sophie’s website
The day after we went for another big dose of artistic inspiration…
With a young family it’s all about finding a balance at the weekend and doing something we all love, and luckily my children love art. So we made a family trip to Tate Modern on Bankside. A quick walk around the amazing turbine hall and then first stop was the fab Tate shop for some Moleskine note pads and Tate pencils to keep the children occupied, drawing their favourite paintings and sculptures.
A trip to any of the Tates is a wonderful day out, enjoyable and educational and if you are able to visit regularly then the annual membership is brilliant, allowing access to the paying exhibitions too. The current Gerhard Richter exhibition was a fantastic show, enjoyed by us all. One of the other benefits of membership is is the view from the members’ rooms balcony on the 6th floor, I snapped the view across the river in the reflection of the famous glass windows.
We also took a browse around a couple of the permanent collections and my daughter loved the fact that by coincidence her outfit matched one of my favourite paintings there, an abstract from 1914 by Vanessa Bell – one of the Bloomsbury group and Virginia Woolf’s sister.
There’s no doubt we’ll be popping back soon for more artistic inspiration!
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October 29, 2011 in handmade goodness
The New Designers graduate show is one of my favourite shows and somewhere I’ve been going every year since I graduated from Edinburgh art college. I was discovered and offered a job when I exhibited as a graduate there, and it gave me my first stepping stone into my creative career. Every year since then I return to look at the inspiring work and to chat with graduates, encourage them and buy a few pieces of work to support them.
This summer I went on the Saturday morning with the whole family, wandering around with my children who enjoy looking at all the work (until they get fidgety and want to go and play!). As we walked around, my husband and I were both immediately drawn to the work of Lesley Elliott who had just finished the Decorative Arts course at Nottingham Trent University.
Gorgeous, monochrome drawings etched in delicate porcelain, mounted on pieces of salvaged wooden plank and hung on on a dark grey wall was always going to appeal to me! They’re all inspired by her travels and I love their quirky, graphic qualities.
We chatted with Lesley about her work and her plans and she was lovely, keen and enthusiastic – as well as very talented! We asked if we could buy a piece as we knew it would fit perfectly into our home and she said yes. Our favourite was this drawing of a Polish train ticket, a memory of her travels there, drawn with a needle into the porcelain and inlaid with black slip.
The images below are from Lesley’s website, lesleyelliott.co.uk, please do go and have a look. She also has a Tumbler blog here – it reminds me of my days at art college and how much fun and creativity we had as well.
This short timelapse video is a lovely insight into how Lesley makes these wonderful pieces.
After the show Lesley emailed us with a very sweet message and I wanted to share this little quote from her:
“It is my first piece I’ve sold and for that I am so grateful to you two, giving me the confidence that what I am doing is good and can be cherished by someone other than myself (or my mum!) so from the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
It sums up exactly why I believe it is important to support and encourage art and design graduates as they start out on their careers. I wish Lesley and all the graduates of 2011 the very best for their futures.
What do you think? Do you visit the graduate shows? I would love to hear your thoughts.
If you live near Nottingham then Lesley has been selected as part of the ‘New Meteors’ exhibition at Lustre at Lakeside Arts Centre in Nottingham on 5th/6th November and will also be part of Craft in the City at Waterstones, Nottingham on 3rd/4th December. Do pop by and support them if you’re in the area.
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September 30, 2011 in handmade goodness, my london
London Design Festival – a pleasure every year, so many shows, exhibitions and events to go to. I love to catch up with people I’ve worked with before, design companies and designer/makers that I know from previous shows or whose products I have used in photo shoots. With my book deadline to meet followed by a photo shoot for a client I didn’t make it to as many shows as I would like to this year, but what I did see was great. There is always so much to see and do all over London.
First stop was the Tent London show at the Truman Brewery to wander round with lovely Elisa Rathje. It was really good this year, lots of interesting products and creative thinking from smaller design companies. In the afternoon we headed to Origin – the contemporary craft fair and met up with my friends Holly Becker and Leslie Shewring who were over from Germany and Canada to enjoy the shows for the first time. I only took a few photos (with the exhibitor’s permission) of things that caught my eye but thought I’d share them. I would have taken a lot more but I was too busy chatting, having fun and enjoying all the work!
I loved the colours and simplicity of the ceramics above, they’re by Belfast-based Derek Wilson.
It was great to catch up with textile artist Debbie Smyth whose thread drawings I love (above). I first met Debbie in 2008 when I bought some of her work from her at the New Designers graduate show. It’s great to see her doing so well.
Loved these handmade, wool knitted textiles by Stephanie Wooster.
This silver jewellery by Amy Keeper caught my attention too. It has a vintage feel and is etched with antique photos and text and looked great displayed in old printers’ trays.
The next day we headed to the much larger commercial interiors and design show 100% Design at Earls Court, where the big international names have their stands. An interesting contrast against Tent and Origin and it’s always good to see the bigger interiors picture.
On Sunday we popped in to see jewellery designer/maker Emma Cassi to stock up on lovely goodies then headed to Chelsea and one of my favourite stores Anthropologie where Holly and Leslie were hosting a talk on creating mood boards as part of Holly’s Decorate book tour, along with fab interior designer Abigail Ahern.
And finally a quick whizz around the Saatchi Gallery with the family afterwards for a contemporary art fix just to round things off!
It was a very busy few days in London. So much great work and such fun enjoying it all with good friends. I can’t wait until next year!
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A place to share my work and the things I love: interior styling and great design; fine art and contemporary craft; exciting new products and flea market finds; handmade and homemade; celebrating the old and embracing the new; creativity, family and fun. The things that I believe make your house a home.
Line Up contemporary craft exhibition, curated by Sania Pell, at Flow Gallery, 1-5 Needham Road
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