Tree Fall

Milk

 

Back before Christmas I had a little wish list, included on which was this book.

In the interests of not leaving anything to chance, I ordered the book myself, but was at least good enough to put it away for Jim to give me on Christmas day.

 

 

Milk is a French fashion and lifestyle magazine aimed at children and parents. Similar to the UK magazine Junior, it focuses on design and culture and the role they can play within the modern family home.

 

 

As well as the magazine, Milk have published a series of Deco books. In a  similar format to the Paumes books they are image heavy with minimal text.

 

 

This is Deco 4 and it's full of gorgeous images of family homes and childrens rooms. And although it's a French publication the text is in English too.

 

 

I got my copy from this great website and have loved it so much that I've just ordered Deco 3!

Angie Lewin : Plants and Places

 

 

 

 

One of the presents that I was most looking forward to receiving this Christmas was Angie Lewins new book, Plants and Places.

Featuring over 80 of Angie's amazing prints and with text written by Leslie Geddes-Brown, the book explores the influences and methods that result in her incredible artwork.

 

 

Split into chapters defined by geographical regions (Coast, Woodland, Meadow etc), the book includes images of sketchbooks, photo's and finished prints, as well as an insight into how Angie views the world around her.

In the book itself Angie talks about the print processes that create these beautiful images and the fact that she uses a number of different printing techniques, depending on the desired finished effect. For example, for large areas of flat colour she likes to use screen printing or linocut and for smaller, more detailed images she uses wood engravings, carved from small blocks of the densest wood she can find (often holly, pear or lemonwood).

 

 

 

Having originally studied at Central Saint Martins in London, Angie worked as an illustrator and also studied garden design, but it was a move to Norfolk that led to her return to printmaking.

Taking inspiration from the surrounding Norfolk countryside and coastline, as well as the Scottish Highlands, Angie's work features incredible natural landscapes.

 

But landscapes with a difference, because rather than focusing on the huge sweeping views of the Highlands or the vastness of the North Sea she looks closer to home at the grasses and leaves beneath her feet. And captures a beauty in the wildflowers and weeds that dot her landscape, that most of us would never even notice.

 

Having discovered Angie's artwork a number of years ago, I've tried many times to put in to words why it has such a strong effect on me.

Her coastal work effects me the most. As I've written before, I spent a part of my childhood in Dungeness and although Angie's work is not based in that part of the country it still evokes memories and emotions that transport me straight back to my childhood days spent exploring the beaches and marshes.

 

 

 

 

 

But it's not just that. Her use of graphic imagery and deep colours remind me in so many ways of my grandmothers house, which was the only constant I had as an Army child. The use of the Portmerion ceramics that my grandmother still owns, the thistles that grew in her garden, the deep blues and greys that dominated the landscape, the seedheads and crystal encrusted beach stones. It all feels so familiar to me and so personal.

 

 

 

 

And that's what I love so much about her work. The incredible, detailed images capture more than just a dot on a landscape, they capture a feeling and an emotion that can transport you to a more beautiful place.

 

 

 

As I had hoped it would be, this is a truly stunning book with a plethora of images that are almost overwhelming in their detail and depth of colour.

And at almost 200 pages long, Plants and Places offers so much to look at that you'll find yourself coming back to it again and again. Each time discovering a new aspect to a print, noticing details and colours that you hadn't noticed before.

 

 

 

 

At £25 this is not a cheap book (although you can get it for almost £10 off at Amazon), but if you are in any way a fan of Angie Lewin or printmaking, it truly is worth every single penny and I highly recommend it.

And if you want to learn more about Angie or St. Judes, the Gallery in Norfolk run with her husband Simon, you can read more here and here. And if you want to find out more about the truly beautiful textiles produced by St. Judes, you can do so here.

 

Angie Lewin : Plants and Places, text by Leslie Geddes-Brown, is published by Merrel.

 

New Christmas books. Is there anything better?

The top two books are by Djerba Goldfinger, the founder of the famous online fabric store Reprodepot. Known for her love of pattern Djerba has put together two amazing books of patterns, that not only offer a huge amount of inspiration, but also give you the option of printing them out for personal use, using the cd that is included in the books which features all 225 patterns (75 designs in 3 different colourways).

After years of collecting vintage textiles, Djerba created Reprodepot, initially as a way of feeding her stash, but these days it stocks a beautiful array of both authentic vintage textiles as well as vintage inspired fabrics, including many wonderful Japanese prints. Even with the rapid increase of online stores that now specialise in Japanese and retro fabrics, Reprodepot is still a firm favourite with anyone that loves pattern as much as Djerba does.

The books themselves are beautifully presented, with the sort of photography and attention to detail that you would expect from Chronicle Books. The paper quality alone makes you instantly fall in love and then add the incredible patterns in to the mix as well as 10 craft projects and you're on to an instant winner.

The two volumes are Flora and Folk, and are equally inspiring. Flora concentrates on mostly tiny floral (obviously) prints, all with the vintage vibe you would expect teamed with a strong scandi/japanese flavour.

 

As well as the 225 patterns available on the cd, you can also print out templates for some of the 10 paper craft projects that are included at the back of the book.

The projects are well explained and range in simplicity from a sheet of wrapping paper to the more complex instructions for creating a stab-bound book.  And I have to say that as someone that has no experiance with paper crafts I definitely found the ideas inspiring - basic enough not to scare me off whilst still varied enough to keep me interested. My only slight negative is that both books have the same projects in them, but I guess that's fair enough when it's all about the patterns rather than being actual project books.

I love the fact that there are 224 straight pages of pure pattern here. I don't know if it's just because I'm a total geek, but this stuff makes me happy. Especially when it's presented in such a lovely format and also offers me the chance to use the patterns as often as I like in as many ways as I can think of.

If you're into print and pattern then I'm pretty confident that one or both of these books will appeal to you, whether you're looking for patterns to use or just some beautiful eye candy.

Various Miscellany

I apologise in advance for the lack of cohesion of this post. I keep waiting until the weather is good enough to take some new photo's and until I have more than five minutes to piece my thoughts together and until I actually have something to show you. And I think that that way lies disaster! Or at the very least, a very quiet blog indeed. So in the interests of keeping this thing rolling, I present a jumble of images and thoughts.
First off, I recieved this wonderful birthday present last week from Lesley .

I was so very touched when Lesley asked me for my address and then even more so when the postman dropped a lovely parcel through my letter box a few days later and I opened it to find this beautifully embroidered picture.
I love it and must say that when a friend of mine saw it she sighed and said 'you have so many lovely things' and she was purely looking at the wonderful work of my fellow bloggers. And I realised as we discussed it that it's only been since we have been stone broke that I've become the proud owner of such lovely things. Back in the day when I was still a recognised member of society and earnt my own money, if I wanted something I popped out to a store and bought something immediate and generic. If I wanted to change the look of a room I would pretty much be able to do it in one day, with one shopping trip. Which is all very well, but so little of what I bought was original and none of it was actually made for me! And I know I keep banging on about this, but I LOVE that I'm looking at real art, made by real people. And I also love the fact that my friends are a little jealous!
So a massive thank you to Lesley! We've all said it, but it's so worth saying again - the kindness and generosity of the blogging community is just amazing.

I meant to post this picture on Friday as part of  Fiona's WIP Fridays. But just didn't get around to it, so I guess this is now WIP Monday.

A couple of piles of mattresses, a couple of disgracefully tardy fruit patches and some princesses. And in the background the start of a new topsy turvy doll - assuming that the fabric works. I'm a little worried that it may be too stiff to facilitate the topsy turvyness.

I've been meaning to show you this book for a while now. I just haven't been able to work out how to crowbar it in to a post until today.

Trapunto has always made me a little nervous. It seemed to me to be rather complicated and something that I should just avoid. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, trapunto is not a type of car (as Jim has just suggested!) but a form of (usually) whole cloth quilting that results in a raised surface. The pattern on the quilt top is often something like a vine with leaves and fruits that is stuffed with cord or batting.
It's a nice effect but not something that has really caught my eye until I bought this book. As I've said, trapunto is usually used for vines etc, but this (slightly crazy) book uses it much more interestingly. Just look at these crazy toaster and breadbin covers!

Mmmm, beige towelling!
But dodgy fabrics aside, this book really did simplify the method for me and gave me some cool ideas that I want to try out. I really like the look of the tote on the front cover. And I don't know if you can see it, but that apron has little trapunto mushrooms on!  Lovely.

And finally (I think), I've been wanting to wait until they were all finished and ready to go in the shop before I posted new Coney Rabbits, but the speed I'm working at the moment means that that may never happen! So here's a peek at some of the new rabbits, with still more to come.

There are blue and green rabbits still in various stages of evolution that I'm hoping to have done this week and then I'll be updating the shop. I've also got at least one quilt to add to the shop and maybe a couple of other little pieces. But that could just be me mistaking my life for someone elses!

A Pox On Your House

In the space of a couple of days we have gone from this,

my beautiful girl eating her first ever piece of cake, which I must say she managed like a pro. Definately her father's daughter when it comes to cake!
To this,

my poor baby has chicken pox and is as miserable as sin. And you know what? After my post the other day about never having a sleepless night, Bella stayed up until 5am this morning and then woke again at 7am. The poor thing is feeling very poorly indeed and I am feeling horrible and helpless and useless. And I never again want to see my daughter look at me with such confusion as to why I won't  make the pain go away. I guess that will teach Jim and I to feel sorry for ourselves! It is just so wrong that I can't make her feel better.

On a much nicer note, here are a few books that I got for my birthday.

This book is wonderful! It's full of beautiful images of both modern and traditional rooms.

Sorry about the poor quality pictures, my scanner isn't working at the moment and the lighting wasn't very good. (and a poor workman always blames his tools!).

I also got this book.

Which is jam packed with fantastic photos! But I must warn you - alliteration is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands!

But this is my favourite one.

As it says, it's a recipe book, but it's oh so much more. It' s beautifully big and heavy and absolutely heaving with the best photo's ever.

If you've got all of Nigella's books and you want yet more, this is the book for you! It is personal and evocative and wonderful to actually read, with it's annecdotes and family photos. And it also has some fantastic looking recipes. Seriously, buy it!

What Is A Butterfly?

Continuing on the theme of books that I've recently bought at car boot sales, this is a lovely childrens book that I grabbed last week. The cover is so fantastic that I wasn't in the slightest bit bothered about whether or not the actual book was any good. I was indeed judging a book by it's cover!
Fortunately the inside is wonderful too.

It's tell the story of the butterfly in text book form but with gorgeous, gorgeous illustrations.

I'm getting quite a collection of childrens books and I keep wondering what to do with them. I kid myself that I'm buying them for when Bella's older, and I even put them on her bookshelf. But the reality is that I love them and want them for myself. What does everyone else do? Do you keep any of the thrifted vintage childrens books for yourselves or do you actually give them to your children? I suppose that it's different once they're older, but at the moment Bella would obviously wreck them and I guess I just can't picture a time when she would take care and appreciate how old and beautiful these books are. I just have this image in my head of coming home one day to discover that Bella has cut up the books for the pictures!
Don't get me wrong, we love books and we will raise Bella to hopefully love them too, but she'll still do what kids do. And of course, if I say that the books are hers then she's got every right to do what she wants with them.
It just seems too precious and anal to keep these books away from the very people they were intended for. I guess the answer is to just wait and see. Bella may grow up to love books as much as I do. I would be interested to hear what others have done though.

Here is the reason for the lack of craft posts at the moment.

I have been working, working, working on the Princess and the Pea sets.

I'll be putting another few sets in the shop later today I hope (with a little added extra, not shown in the last sets).

(They're in the shop now).

Flower Arranging

The great thing about thrifting - or in my case, car booting - is that it allows you to start collections that you ordinarily couldn't justify. I mean, if I was paying full price for the books that I buy at car boot sales I most definately would not have started a collection of vintage flower arranging books.
Flower arranging is not a subject that has ever held much interest for me. But when a book catches your eye and it only costs 10p, you can afford to figure what the hell! And I'm very glad that I did.


I love the vase on the cover and I love that they used pink text.

Everything on this page appeals to me. Those trays are just wonderful. The orange one shoud be living in this kitchen .

That vase again. It really reminds me of   Troika , which I am always torn about. I love a lot of the shapes but the dark, dense colours don't always appeal to me.

How beautiful is this image?  This is my kind of flower arrangement. Although I love a bunch of wildflowers just thrown in a vase I am also a big, big fan of very sparse, sculptural arrangements.

Brown, green and white. Beautiful.
The whole book is wonderful and I've been surprised by how interested in the art of flower arranging I'm becoming.

This is actually the first of the books that I bought. I had no real interest in the subject and actually bought it with the intention of perhaps cutting it up (eek!). But once I got it home I realised that it was just too perfect to ruin.

It's much more traditional than the Japanese book, but is still has some pretty wild arrangements in it.

Look at the deer! And is that an actual vase?

This one actually makes me kind of sad. That deer looks so wistful.  But I may have to copy it next christmas because it's just so cool.

And just in case flower arranging wasn't strange enough, I've also started collecting vintage cake decorating books!

Great Mail Day!

Oooo, I love mail! At least today I do - yesterday, not so much! But today was definately a good day!

These lovely parcels arrived from Claire . And inside were all of these (I'm not boasting, just very grateful and happy!).

Beautiful ribbon! I wish, wish, wish I could get ribbon like this over here. Why is the UK bereft of lovley ribbon? What did we do to deserve our lack of beautiful ribbon?

And this wonderful, beautiful pin cushion. It is so perfectly made, I can't tell you. And the colours!!! How I love the colours. Just yummy!

Also a set of Claires ATC's. Now I'm very aware that I'm running out of superlatives here, so please forgive my use of the words, beautiful, gorgeous and wonderful again - but I'm pretty sure that you'll agree that they are completely justified. How lovely are these? They're going to be framed and hung in Bella's room. (This blog has led to Bella having so much original, fantastic art in her room and that makes me very, very happy indeed!). These are the first ATC's that I've ever had and it was great timing because whilst looking at them I was listening to this . How perfect is that?

Claire also sent this great magazine. We can't get this here. Is it seperate to the Kids magazine? I haven't seen it before but I love it and it sparked great excitement in Jim when he saw the 'Collection in a Box' piece. He apparently used to make little spy kits in matchboxes when he was a kid! How cool is that? It's a side of him I didn't know about. Not the spy side, we still pretend we're spys, but the making things side of him. Don't get me wrong, he used to make films, but I've never known him do anything actually crafty. Very cool.
And did you notice that I also got one of Hillary's postcards? They are the best postcards ever. Yes, ever.
Thank you so much Claire! I love everything! And I shall be putting some ATC's in the post for you very soon (once I've made them!!).

The other thing that arrived today was this book. In one of those bizarre coincidences Amanda got hold of a copy of this book at the same time as I won it on Ebay. Isn't that weird? I'd never heard of this book before I bid on it last week and then I see it on a blog. Sometimes the world feels very small.
I can't tell you how inspirational this book is. Actually I can. As soon as I opened it I started to embroider a tree on a scrap of fabric. Literally as soon as I opened it.

Wonderful!

I love knitting

As I'm feeling a little better today the three of us went out for a coffee at Borders. I haven't actually left the house since Friday so this was more of a treat than it might sound!
Usually I'm pretty good when it comes to buying books. I know I can get them cheaper at Amazon and I don't have a problem with waiting for them, and since I don't have any independant bookstores to support, I don't need to feel guilty for going for the cheapest supplier. But I just couldn't resist today. My defences were weakened by the flu. It wasn't my fault. Honest.
So even though I don't knit and can't knit and dare I say it, hate to knit, I bought this book  today.

I know that other people have already got it, but it's the first time I've had a chance to look at it. And it is heaven! Even Jim agreed that my lack of knitting should not stand in my way of owning this beautiful book (he's such a good husband).
So, I now have to re-learn to knit and re-learn to damn well enjoy it, because Bella's getting everything in there, even the boys stuff!

Scanner, PC, Zip Drive, Laptop

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3, (4) to get a scanned picture on to this blog! For some reason my Laptop will not recognise my scanner and my PC runs too slowly to try and upload from. Also my PC does not have a cd rewriter (how old ??) as I discovered last night when I popped a CDR into it's cd tray and tried to save to it. All I got was a prompt asking me to put a cd in. "I have " I kept shouting. Finally I realised - that it wasn't the PC being dumb, it was me! It wanted a real cd, you know an audio one, because it only plays cds. Duh!
So, in order to get a picture from a book to my blog we follow the procedure listed above (after formatting the CDR because the PC won't recognise it otherwise!). And thank you to my lovely husband for sending me to bed and then staying up to sort all of that out!

And this is what I was determined to post about today.
 
I found this book at a carboot sale just before christmas and I just love it. Look at all these lovely pictures! (sorry I've just discovered that although Jim did a great job of sorting all of that out last night, he didn't actually copy all the pictures -so this is only a few for now)

I love these leaves so much!

Can you see that embroidered circus bedding??? I know a little girl who's gonna be getting circus themed bedding for sure!

I like the simplicity of this hanging, although I'm not keen on the yellow and the pink.

And I know it's a bit late for this picture , but how great are these Christmas cards?

And to top it all off, inside the book was this handwritten list!