lifeboat?

I have been alternating between working on proper stuff and doing ideas for Christmas cards. How hard can it be to come up with four different designs? I am at 3, but the last one is proving elusive. Whilst doing that, this strange dude turned up in a boat...


Hopefully I'll be able to work on the cards and open up shop in the next week or so. Fingers crossed!

drowning

in work... sorry.

attempt no.2

How about this one? Sorry about the random colour choices... gah! I HATE purple and that's how it looks on my screen. Yech!

fontcapture

I really shouldn't get so excited about this, but I am. Yesterday I came across a link to Fontcapture via Pikaland - thanks Amy. In a nutshell, you download a template, draw your own font into the boxes, scan and upload the template and hey presto, your own writing as a font. The possibilities! The kerning isn't great, and depends a lot on where you place your letter in the box, but it's great fun. Apparently you can also do this at yourfonts.com. Here's the little test I did in about 10 minutes just now:


It's called karenbasic and if by any chance you want a copy of the font, just comment with your e-mail address (but use 'at' and 'dot' instead of your actual address so you don't get spammed). I'll be sure to have another attempt or six very soon and maybe they will get better. I think some more stylising would be good for this - a bit more thought required, though!

I've been a busy beaver this week - drawing lots of cars, bushes, trees and monkeys for Skoda. It's the best job I've had in a while - it feels great to be using a paintbrush again, even though I'm cheating by tidying up and altering colours in dear old Photoshop... what did I ever do before I learned how to use this program?

Anthropologie opens in London

One of the stores I wished to visit on our recent trip to New York was Anthropologie - such whimsical, pretty store styling and products simply had to be seen. I came away from the 5th Avenue shop with four pretty cake plates that really brighten up breakfast, and a tiny pink striped rice bowl (oh, and a cardigan too!). I have been coveting their beautiful crockery for months now, and at last I won't have to travel across the pond to get my mitts on it (nor pay an arm and a leg in P&P).

Now I hear that they are opening up shop at 158 Regent Street in London next week (23rd October). Whoop! I can't wait to go and have a look and to touch those bowls. They sell such feminine stuff - not to everyone's taste, of course, but a bit of floral girliness never hurt anyone. I like the backlash against boring, stiff minimalism - I'm all for pattern, colour and lots of both, please!


I have loved this clock from afar for ages. Silly thing that it is, I still think it is witty and a lot better than a real one, which would annoy the hell out of me. Shame I still can't afford it! Maybe I'll knit my own. Oh, hang on, I can only knit scarves...

jelly

Thanks this morning to my lovely friends at Jelly for mentioning the Cretinous Ostrich blog that Baz and I draw, after I sent over a couple of pictures from it that tickled their fancy. For more from the blog, please click here.

Holiday Stories

Here are a few scans of that book I mentioned. What's nice about it? The thick, textured paper that has gone all yellow and patchy. The beautiful silhouette on the back cover. The quirky titles of the stories, with crisp black and white illustrations and lovely typesetting, and the print almost debossed into the paper. Cute, for a couple of quid.

the weekend

was pretty good, all in all. Minus having to drive the husband to the airport via one of the most annoying motorways in England (take a guess... yeah, the M25). Lordy, that was awful - stop-start driving amongst the never-ending roadworks and alongside what appeared to be EVERY SINGLE nutjob driver in the South. Urgh.

The weekend visit to the North was good - lots of family fun and appallingly bad Trivial Pursuit 'pop-culture edition' playing. I'm the worst person when it comes to knowing anything about TV, films, music etc. I watch nothing, I watched nothing in my youth and my musical knowledge is more of the, uh, classical kind. Call me sad, call me behind with the times, but I don't really mind not ever having watched 'Spaceballs' or any more than one 'Back to the Future'...

Best bits included an eye-opening foray into Halifax, which had a charming indoor market and lots of charity shops. I bought a pair of 1980s black pixie boots, which are all the rage at the moment and, because they are too small for me, I intend to sell them on eBay where they are selling for ridiculous sums of money right now. What else did I get? From an amazing second-hand bookshop in the Piece Hall, I got hold of a beautiful children's story book with perfectly aged paper, which I shall scan something from later today if I have the time. Bear with me, I'm supposed to be working!

The husband is away again, this time in Korea, and has taken the camera away from me, so no photos this week! I popped into some charity shops this morning and came back with a teapot and a squat little planter that I intend to draw on with porcelain pens and sell in my soon-to-be-open shop. How exciting. Now I've just got to think of things to draw on them. I love experimenting.

charms

The scanner arrived but I have nothing to scan... So I thought I'd take a few pictures of some of the vintage silver charms I picked up at Willingham Auctions a few months ago. Amongst quite a big selection there was a charming birdcage with a gold-coloured birdy inside, a tiny lion and a teapot. I've just got to hang them on some silver chain with a few other odd beads or something and I'll have some serviceable Christmas presents... well, maybe I'll keep the birdcage for myself :-)

distracted

Sorry it's been a while since I last posted some of my own work. My scanner packed in the other day and I'm still waiting for its replacement. Grrrr! I have been reliably informed by some automated delivery e-mail that it should arrive today.

It's not as if I've been doing much personal work recently, though. I've been working rather hard, which is a change for me!

It is sunny today and I went out just half an hour ago with the camera to see if I could capture that misty, cool quality of the light and the deep shadows of the furrows in the newly-turned field. It's cold this morning, chilling the tips of my fingers as I check my beer traps for slugs, assess the rapidly fading vegetable patch, pick the last few courgettes. I don't think this picture captures all of these things, but this is my view today:

junk

I used to hate wicker and still have an uneasy relationship with it. I think it has its place - log baskets for the fireplace, or picnic baskets and hampers, but absolutely not, never ever (shoot me if I change my mind) in furniture. Wicker chairs and stuff like that make me shudder. Remember this post? Well, it's no longer picnic weather, but I found something even nicer (and cheaper after some haggling!) than this at Peterborough on Saturday. Here she is, tubby and just the right size, with a lovely worn leather strap:


What else, what else? We got a Mason Cash mixing bowl, a lovely vintage plaid dress, a watering can and these sweet little watch faces that I intend to string on some long chain with a vintage charm or two from an auction purchase.

grey and gloomy

The weather has just died here and gone all pasty grey like a drowned corpse. It's raining. I was in London yesterday and I swear it didn't let up until 4pm - I was miserable and wet, mostly because I couldn't be bothered to bring an umbrella even though I knew it was going to rain. So I don't expect sympathy.

Had a good weekend in blowing gales at the Peterborough Festival of Antiques, which was immense and bewildering. Forgot to take my camera with me. Came back with a clutch of interesting things which I will photograph later today if the light gets better.

auction action

It's that time of month again... auction time, that is! We're not even going, but I like to cast my eye over the catalogue anyway. So what is there to see? Not a whole lot this month. There is this lot of jewellery including a funny picture of a man to wear around your neck, and three sweet little perfume bottles that you wear like brooches.


Or how about this stereoscopic viewer with lovely old cards?


For £50-£100 you can get this case of very well kept dead butterflies. Hm.


If you don't want any of those, you can always depend on there being a quantity of terrifying dolls :-)

it arrived!

Well, it arrived a week ago but I couldn't stir myself to go to the post office to pick it up until yesterday. Now I've just got to work out how to rewire the damn thing and find a spot in the house for it...