Coasting

My Christmas season has been fabulous so far, I have watched a LOT of children's films. 

And saw lovely friends and family and ate tasty food of course. 

As is traditional I decided to make a portion of my gifts this year and I decided to make a selection of coasters. 

After umming and ahhing over various tutorials on Pinterest, I bought a job lot of wooden and felt circles from ebay and then began covering them in collage designs. 

Some were in sets like these almost obligatory map and bird designs

and roses

and others were one offs. 

In all a good crafting activity for giftage, although beware of taking up a lot of surfaces in the home when many are drying at once.

If you are thinking of making some coasters and you want them to be functional as well, make sure you consider the waterproofness of the materials you use - I used found printed papers and book cutouts for a lot of the designs (woo serendipity etc.) but where I did use pictures I'd printed from my own designs I made sure to print them on a photocopier with heat sealed ink, and not on my inkjet printer. I also sprayed the finished coasters with two coatings of varnish, but early results indicate the brand I used might not be particularly heat resistant, so do more research than I did. 

Merry betweenchristmasandnewyears

Nice weather we've been having recently

And handle in handle away the lovers go, through the hearts and flowers, into the depths of space.

I managed to remember to take down most of my valentines stuff from the shop today, although I have left up a few cards and re-branded them as 'greetings', 

because you know, 

IT'S OK TO EXPRESS YOUR LOVE ANY DAY OF THE YEAR.

That's probably enough sticking silly love words together for another year. Time to get back to drawing and  illustration. Speaking of strating the illu (that's not a thing), I went to a talk by Quentin Blake hosted by the AOI last week and wrote about it for Amelia's Magazine. Which you can see here. 

 He was quite inspiring. He didn't actually give 5 tips for creating great illustrations tho. That was me extrapolating from his postulating. 

Here is my drawing of him (Quentin) 

In the big news this week as well (as well as well as the weather and the tube strike and the usual), is that I have got a new telephone. Although Alex is referring to it as a television. Because of it's prestigious size. It has a big screen. For the showing you my artworks. And a good camera. For the showing you my artworks again and again on many social platforms. 

Which is to say. I have got Instagram!!!

Look i already did lots of instagram!

If you are an instagrammer please come befriend me. i am obsessed. For the now. I even baked some dodgy looking valentines biscuits and posted them. (tragic).

I was a loyal Blackberry user for a long time but I've come to realise it has been holding me back. From posting so many pictures of random stuff.

Horay. 

If you are wondering about the title it is a quote from the clangers. 

This episode. 

 

Which is a very lovely love story you should watch for Valentines Day with your cat. Actually it is quite problematic. But still. 

Sick of Silly Love Songs? If you can't beat them, collage them.

Proper wedding blog is in progress, but to whet your appetite here's a nice loooooooong picture of a composite love song. 

I just photoshopped it into this long format which is not very blogger friendly. But oh it is amicable for Pinterest.

Yes indeed.

I might do this as a print, what do you think?

Beauty of this kind does not come abundantly

just found this in the loft going through my bag of 'art fair' stuff. Early foray into collage work. Good times. 

some long overdue pictures and stories from the Paint it Make it event for Illustration Rally, and poster for The One Hour Plays

me and Junesees collaborated on this live portrait

This was the recent London event raising money for Japanese earthquake related aid that has come out of the site - organised by super amazing people like Natzuki Otani and Erica Sharp (fellow ACOFI artists as well as June) there was giant origami, loads of crafts, tea ceremonies, cake etc. see a proper write up here. We did live portraits - fast becoming a speciality of mine - and it was an acecakes super fun day.

satisfied customers

live portrait of Rob. Yes, he does look that grumpy in real life.

poster I made for the One Hour Plays stint at Edinburgh Festival. Graphics is not my favourite thing to do, but I enjoyed this because there is bunting on it. And you can never have too much bunting.

Also in other news, I am going to be getting married to my Alex some time in the next few years. I may or may not blog about the planning process. I don't think I can be the kind of blogger that goes on about cupcakes and roses all the time. I mean I like cupcakes. I Love roses. But meh, you know, I prefer kittens and pretty dresses. we'll see.