A folky little giveaway

Today i'm putting the wedding blog post on hold. There are 2 reasons for this, one is that because i've been so busy i've just not had the time to put anything together and the other is that I have something to give away.

A few years ago a lovely Chinese lady who was one of Dave's work colleagues that I met a few times,  found out I was very into making things and gave me some little booklets containing traditional Chinese folk paper-cut art. They're lovely delicate little tissue paper cuttings which can be used to make cards and a host of other things. I've kept hold of them for ages, in the hope that I would one day use them for a project but haven't really every found the time to plan anything to use them in.
So i've decided to give them away to someone who can make use of these.

There are a total of 50 beautiful and intricate pieces in 5 themed booklets/folders each. Two of the booklets are the same type and have dragon themed paper cuts:

1. Opera art - A bound booklet containing a total of 10 pieces, each measuring around 10cm x 6cm. A page of this book is featured in images.
2. Ming Vase art - A bound booklet containing a total of 10 pieces, each measuring around 10cm x 5cm. A page of this book is featured in images.
3. Dragon art (1 of 2 of the same) - a small folder containing a total of 10 pieces, each measuring around 10cm x 6cm. A piece from this is featured in images
4. Dragon art (2 of 2 of the same) - a small folder containing a total of 8 pieces, the same as the others in the other dragon art folder.
5. Chinese ladies - a small folder containing a total of 12 pieces, each measuring around 10cm x 6cm. There are 12 ladies in different poses in traditional Chinese costume.

I want them to go to someone who will genuinely use these in a project or piece of work, so anyone interested please comment below with details of what you plan to use these for and i'll choose the best. If there are several comments, i'll put the best ones in a hat & pick a winner. 
Make sure you put your email address in the comment so i can contact you if you win for your address. I'm afraid you will need to be based in the UK to take part.
This will be open till next Friday when I will pick the winner.
Please feel free to pass this onto anyone else you think may be interested.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Its time for another wedding series post.
Following on from the cliffhanger end (sort of) to my last wedding blog post, you've probably already worked out from the above title, that the Routemaster bus ride destination was the beach.

After a 20 minute (longer than planned for) ride through various Northumberland villages, down narrow rural lanes and past many bemused holiday makers, we arrived.
Of course, Dave had to make an exit from said bus by giving a waiting audience a little pole dance action:

The bus pulled up at the top of a cliff beside a slightly awkward path leading down to the beautiful Northumberland coastline looking out over to Bamburgh Castle.

Dave and I had visited this beach on several occasions in the past but never had it been quite so busy. The sun had attracted LOTS of people. Luckily the bit of beach we were on was tucked away at the end of the stretch so we mostly had it to ourselves, aside from bothering a family of four who obviously thought this was a nice quiet spot - WRONG!

Once down at the beach the champers was doled out from the pre-cooled ice boxes into sunshine yellow cups (very fitting).

Of course once on the beach stood next to that beautiful blue, cool sea in the blazing sunshine, a paddle was practically compulsory. Knew those wellies would come in handy!

This has got to be one of my fave pics - my uncle making sure the remaining bubbly didn't go to waste:

As the day was fun packed, we were running a tight ship and only had about 25 mins on the beach. So after a quick paddle I spotted a perfect photo opportunity & swiftly rounded everyone up for a 'WEDSTOCK' shout out pose...

before we all hiked back up the hill towards the bus -

Let the festival fun commence!

Wedding post 4 - Magical mystery tour

Did I tell you what a packed day it was on our wedding? With all the stuff that we'd planned for the day it wasn't exactly a leisurely event, but it was masses of fun.

So after the ceremony, ...

a few photos, ...

and much throwing of confetti,

it was time to pack up out cool boxes of champers

and hop on to the Circa 1960s London Routemaster. Aka the Wedstock Fun Bus for a magical mystery tour.

I took this opportunity to slip on some comfortable, festival friendly footwear. I don't do heels not very well anyway! Plus where we were going I knew the wellies would be a better option that 4 inch satin stilettos. NOTE: I hadn't accounted for the possibility of it being a 30 degree day when preparing for this, so it wasn't exactly a cool option.

Unfortunately the bus company had misheard the name of our little do over the telephone so we ended up with an, as the kids would say: epic fail! Spot the error -

Tune in next week to find out the mystery tour bus destination.

Wedding series 3 – Cakes and favours

Yes you heard me right: ‘cakeS’, there were plural.

Originally the plan was that my mum would make the wedding cake, as she was a dab hand in the kitchen, but unfortunately that was not meant to be.
Instead we put the cake bake challenge to my sister Jennifer, my close friend Rachel and Dave’s mum Ruth with the idea of splitting the task & having three different kinds of sugary baked goodness to appeal to different tastes.
They all went above and beyond the call of duty and the result was an amazing cake extravaganza!

Jennifer's 2-part cake feat was festival woodland themed and came complete with Glastonbury backdrop. A delicious Madeira sponge with a white chocolate buttercream filing – YUM!! She stayed at our house a few days before the wedding to prepare it and put in some seriously hard graft.
The use of the Syllvanian Families characters is a stroke of genius.

 Rachel’s creation was woodland festival inspired. A nut free (as I’m allergic) carrot cake, topped with butter cream and decorated with mint foliage – mmmmmmm! This was surrounded by several flower ‘chocolate pots’ complete with a crumbled Oreo soil. Sadly somehow I missed out on these…too slow.

Last but not least was Ruth’s very elegant and traditionally styled, wedding fruit cake, decorated with individually cut, white icing flowers.
Dave and I polished the remaining piece off a couple of week’s ago. I’ll admit I’m not usually a fruit cake fan but it was damn fine cake!

Do you remember I mentioned that my good friend Helen from White Fox a Fortnum and Mason supplier, was providing us with chocolate wedding favours as a gift? Well at the time I didn’t want to give the game away but now I can say that the favours were actually milk chocolate, muddy wellingtons. A seriously talented chocolatier Helen went to all the trouble of creating a left and right boot complete with top buckle and tread. They were awesome! Unfortunately one thing we didn’t consider was that the weather would be quite so hot on that day, so most of the wellies melted in the sun. It was such a shame walking into the marquee & seeing in place of the boxed up wellies little chocolate puddles. Still they were tasty puddles! Luckily I took photos of the samples we were sent pre-wedding:

Without a doubt the tastiest wellies ever to be made!

Sampler

Yay i've finally managed to get round to doing some professionally printed sample booklets of my work. I had planned on getting these made up many months ago but with  so much going on didn't mange to do them until now. Better late than never I guess. Each booklet has 10 images including the front and back covers.

I'll be sending these round to publishers and a few agents in the hope of getting on a few lists - wish me luck!

Wedding installment 2 - The Makes

It didn’t take long after accepting the marriage proposal for my mind to jump to all the stuff I could potentially make for the big day….
Hold on, time out!  Before I continue with this post & the remaining installments i’ve just decided, for ease t refer to the wedding day itself as ‘bd’ – (I hope to God, that acronym doesn’t stand for some kind of rude phrase anywhere) short, of course, for ‘big day’!

Ok so back to it, I realized that the 'bd' was the perfect excuse to indulge my making addiction. Woohoop!
Now lets see what did I make:

• 1x15 foot long vintage bunting created over several sittings, using mostly scraps from an extensive stock of fabric

• 8 large applique flags with help from a good friend (Binny – thank you). These were put up around the garden in our ‘main stage’ area. Will show some pics from the stage later. Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of all of these when we made them & i've since given a few away, but heres a pic of one I still have  -

• 16 table trees and stands - part of our table decorations. There were 2 trees different per table. A great idea initially but unfortunately they didn’t go quite to plan as the card I used to print the design onto turned out not to be sturdy enough to enable the tree to stand un-aided. I only discovered this after printing all the trees…that’s a lot of printing.
  So the only way to make them stand, was to design & make each one a separate card stand with a lot of help from my now husband…still can’t get used to that word. All in all a hell of a lot of work!

• Yes and the list goes on.....8 table wigwams & mini flags. Like the trees these were my own designs printed and cut from card. They were then rolled up and the sides sewn together. Each one then had a bbq skewer split and put inside to give them that authentic wigwam look. Then  a little cocktail stick flag with the number of the table drawn on was put in the top of  each tent.

•  8 lengths of mini bunting which was stretched between the table trees over the wigwams.

• 2x rainbow raindrop decorations to hang from the trees.

• Signs – oh hold on now Dave did most of this so I can’t take credit. A must for any festival, otherwise how will people know how to find the 'long drops' after several pints of cider.
  The signs were produced from thick, brown box card as it looked kind of like wood and attached to a wooden garden stake

• Cloud pinata. Actually again i had minimal involvement in this, as it was Dave's baby. The photo below is of it in the making.
  Soooooo much work went into this giant creation that mentioning it briefly in this post wouldn't really do it justice so i'll come back to this much loved make in the not too distant future: 

Hmm, so  guess I/we got a little carried away - but its a one off right!

P.S. Oh and did I mention the 60 festival programmes/ order of services, the 8 medicine bottle decorations and........okay, ok i'll shut up & go away.

Budget Home Improvement

Before continuing the marathon of wedding blog posts…just kidding, will keep them to a minimum I promise, i’m going to share with you a home improvement project kindly funded by the folks at MoneySupermarket.com.

I got word that they were running a competition: £50 to do a budget home improvement & then blog about the project. Yeah pretty ace huh?!  Well I couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, especially seeing as that pony doesn’t come round visiting too often, so I took up the challenge.

For a long while i’ve wanted to create an art wall in our living room using a salon-style hanging. If you’re not familiar with this it is basically a way of displaying several differently sized framed pictures on a wall in a more unconventional fashion to create an eye catching feature. Here is an example of a fab one I found on Pinterest:



This seemed like the ideal opportunity to do this, so here’s my ‘£50 salon-style feature wall, home improvement tutorial’-

1. First off you need some art... actually no scrap that! First off you need a wall which needs pimping. Here's mine:

Think you'll agree this definitely needs improving.

2. Now for the art, photos or other imagery for your wall. I would suggest no less than 6 hangings in the feature. Now obviously £50 isn’t going to get you a couple of Picasso’s, the latest Saatchi artist’s work or most likely even a single artwork from your local gallery. Therefore what goes in the frames has to be cheap or better still free. There are many ways you can do this:

a. If you like getting creative then its easy, make some art;  an abstract painting; a simple print that can easily be created at home such as a stencil or lino cut; a pencil drawing; or a simple typographical artwork made on your computer & home printer; a uber cool collage from old magazines/books/annuals…the list goes on. Basically its easy to create cheap and good looking art if you have at least 1 creative bone in your body and most people do.

b. You may already have some art or photos etc (possibly already framed) which could go into the hanging.

c. Alternatively from the £50 put aside a small budget of £20, then go hunting for some low cost art. You might be pleasantly surprised & find a charity shop harbouring a dusty but lovely painting for £4 , or a car boot sale might reveal something equally awesome. Try visiting a local craft market and see if there is anything you like in your budget; perhaps an artist is selling some great postcards with their work on - these could look great in a frame, particularly with a picture mount border.

3. Time for the frames! This is what most of your £50 budget will need to go on and it is indeed pretty much where all of mine went, seeing as I already had the art.
If you’ve already spent £20 of it on artwork then you’ll only have £30 left. Yes…it may not seem like a lot, but there are plenty of places to get cheap frames particularly as they don’t all have to be the same size or type. It just requires a little time to hunt for them. Try:

a. Charity shops - an excellent source for cheap, and often good quality and unusual frames!

b. Car boot sales/flea markets/jumble sales.

c. Shops like Ikea and Wilkinsons do frames at very low cost.

d. Maybe you already have a couple of frames lying around the house that you can use, or perhaps your folks might have one spare.

Keep in mind the size of work when looking for frames but don't worry much as photo mounts (which often come in the frames if buying them from Wilkos) will create a border for your image, so mostly the work won’t need to be a perfect fit for the frame. You can buy picture mounts cheaply on ebay. My frames have come from the following places Ikea, Wilkinsons, a charity shop, a low cost but quality local framing warehouse which I’m lucky to have not too far away from me (Factory Framing Centre) and I already had a lovely framed piece of art as a wedding present which went in the mix.

4. Once you’ve framed your images find a space on the floor big enough to lay your frames out and play around with the display. It’s important to bear in mind which frames work better alongside each other the shape of the wall and of course the size. Once you’ve decided on your format for the display, grab a camera and take a quick snap of the layout on the floor. This will be used as reference later.

 














5. Next create templates by placing each frame on some sheets of old newspaper (or other suitably sized paper you have spare), drawing around them & cutting them out. I would suggest marking on each paper template piece the name of the corresponding pic i.e. this piece relates to the framed fox artwork:

6. Ok now for the tricky bit. For this you’ll need a spirit level (which I’m afraid I didn’t budget for as I already had one) to ensure all your frames are level.
Take your templates and with blue tac begin organising them on the wall using your photo reference and the level to ensure they’re in the correct position and straight.

 
7. Like me you’ll probably find each of your frames have a different kind of hook i.e. D rings or mirror plates etc. Depending on the style of hook this will effect the positioning of your frames on the wall e.g. if you’re hanging with string/picture wire you’ll need to consider the stretch of the wire as to where the frame sits. Sounds a bit complicated doesn’t it?
Actually its not too difficult as long as you measure exactly where the nail needs to go in the wall. For example if it’s a deep frame and you can hang it from a single nail: simply measure the distance from the top of frame to where the nail needs to be and the centre point between left & right side. Then on that frame’s paper counterpart tacked to the wall, mark the point where the nail should go using your measurements and hammer away!

8. You can hammer the nail straight through the paper template & remove them afterwards. It’s a good idea before removing the templates to test out each frame as you go, against its paper counterpart and make sure it sits right.

9. Once you know each frame sits in the correct position, take down the paper pieces and put up all your pictures making sure they’re nice and level. Et voila! An eye catching feature to transform what was once a sad bare wall -

Hope you like it!
Oh and just before i go, just want to point out that it probably seems pretty narcissistic creating a an art wall only from my art, but this is temporary and once i have some more spare cash i intend to replace some of it with work from other artists whose work i admire. This is a bit too much like having a wall of images of my own face - Aahhh!!