Photos

I have had a lovely relaxing weekend, I took some time off making and read my book, did some doodleing, made lovely soup and looked through my 'cut out collection'. I started this in my first year at art school for research, and now I can't stop. When ever I find paper, magazine photos, catalogues, newspaper articles that interest me I cut them out and file them. Recently I have been really inspired by wall paper, and interior fabrics so I spent some time on Sunday looking through my files and doodling ideas in my handmade note book/ sketch book/ journal. I made a new one just before christmas, I decided the size I like working best in is A5 so I rummaged through my paper box and cut all different coloured and textured pieces I have and stitched them together with an old cereal box painted white as the back and front covers. I poked holes through the tops of each piece of paper and bound it with wool. Because of the different types of paper I can use different techniques on different surfaces, and I can stitch, draw, punch, paint and stick to my hearts contenet! They are also really interesting to go back and look at and I always have one on the go, and in my bag. It means I can wite down song lyrics, shop names, sketch a scene or person or note down patterns around.

I started doing some funky illustrations last year and got them out again this weekend too. I used my cousins as inspiration, I am the eldest of 14 grandchildren so I have 13 little bundles of inspiration all around! I start off by looking at photographs and highlighting features and stylising them. Then I scan in the images and begin working on them in Illustrator. But some of them that I have tried to upoad the colour is all weird, so I'll need to look into that, or maybe blogspot just doesn't like them!!!

This is Olive, she is based on me! I think I would like to write some stories to match the pics but don't know where to start, so I'll need to give it all some more thought.


I did make the most of the lovely bright day yesterday and re-took some of the earring photographs for my shop. Before they seemed lost on the white backgrounds I was using so I got some advice from Gemmafactrix an amazing jeweller, designer and photographer. She suggested using coloured background and I think they look much better, but still need a bit of work, I need to find the right colours to compliment the pieces. Off now to do some more doodles!