Flowers On Board

I was just about to throw away (well, recycle) a small and anonymous piece of grey board at work today when I decided to save it to use for a picture. This is what I think whenever I flatten a brown cardboard box or fling away some foamboard offcuts, but it seems overkill to pilfer every last piece of used paper from the office, and I don't have the room at home! Anyway, flowers came to mind, quelle surprise, et voila...

Rescue Mission

Rescue is this week's Illustration Friday theme... this is inspired by a colleague's local newspaper story of a cat stuck up a tree for three days (it's a cliché but really, this was front page news last week)!! My cat seems perfectly happy where it is, as is probably often the case.

Art Attack

A couple of weekends ago I visited The Affordable Art Fair, which is a big exhibition of lots of art galleries in one place. In fact, I went to the last event 6 months ago and wrote this post. This time around there were lots of artists that I really loved, here are five of them, in no particular order...

Sophie Abbott

Mungo Powney

Craig Shuttlewood

Chloe Lamb

Beth Richardson

Best Before

The lastest theme for Illustration Friday is 'expired'. It stumped me a bit, until earlier today at work I was changing over some flowers and throwing away a bunch of roses past their best. There is still a beauty about dead flowers and it does seem a bit sacreligious to consign them to the bin, but there you go. So anyway, expired (in sharp contrast to the post below!)...

New Blooms

I suddenly realised the other day that my website still had my Valentine heart prints on the front page, which is a bit outdated, like having the Christmas decorations still up halfway through January... so I've just replaced them with this more season-appropriate patterned flower.

Oliver!

This afternoon I went to a talk by artist/illustrator Oliver Jeffers at the London College of Communication. I was looking forward to it like you wouldn't believe, because Oliver is my absolute favourite book author/illustrator (well, 'maker' in his own words), and I'm mildly obsessed with his work (than doesn't make sense but I want to get across that I'm not scarily obsessed, despite what comes next)... The girl in his latest book, The Heart and the Bottle, is so sweet, I decided to have a go at making her as a doll to give to Oliver. She didn't turn out exactly as hoped - head too wide, dress too dark, arms too long - but I handed her over in a brown paper package as I was getting my booked signed, and fingers crossed he likes her!

The Underground

The latest Illustration Friday brief is 'subterranean'. I'd planned for a rabbit in its warren reading a book by lamplight, but it turned out entirely differently, and somewhat closer to reality...

Love Letters

I've just entered this month's Tigerprint Competition, the theme is Love Typography, and the idea is for the card designs to be customisable by users and sent as e-cards. These are my four entries...

Book Report

My latest Amazon acquisition is Like A Give A Frock. It's a collection of fashion/trends-based observations and musings by Michi Girl (a quirky Australian daily email like Daily Candy). I don't know if I'm explaining it properly, but the main thing for me was that Kat MacLeod illustrated every page of the book with her brilliant fashion/lifestyle illustrations, and each one is just really fab - colourful, imaginative, a great book to flick through!

Brave

The theme for this week's Illustration Friday is... brave. I had to really think about what to do and wanted to depict it in a not-too-literal way. I think that jumping out of a plane is very brave - and a bit crazy but I think if I could pluck up the courage I might try it one day! Maybe.

Paper Wedding

A friend of mine's getting married today (and it's a gorgeous sunny-but-cold-day luckily). This is what I'm giving the happy couple, it's a papercut with their names and today's date on. I haven't done this before and was pleased with how it turned out, although my cutting hand was twisted into a tight grasp for a while afterwards! I didn't get a chance to photograph it before I framed it, so it is slightly marred by my reflection...

Easter Eggs

I've talked before about Small Magazine and their accompanying blog. Well, I've recently started putting together a monthly craft project for the blog, something for parents and kids to make together. This time, seeing as spring has sprung and the supermarkets are brimful of chocolate eggs, I thought handmade egg cosies would be apt. You can see the whole post here.

My Sister Sophie

As mentioned and promised, here are a few examples of and link to my older sister Sophie's work. She's an incredibly versatile artist/illustrator/designer/maker and can turn her hand to anything creative! When I was growing up it was always so exciting to see her latest greetings cards in Marks & Spencers, and now I'm lucky enough to have some of her sought after work on my own walls. You can see more of her work on her website, and here and here.

Daily Draw

This (well, last) week's Illustration Friday theme is 'perspective'. I didn't fancy a struggle with foreshortening, so went for a slightly quirky interpretation..