slacckkerrr

so, yes.yes.yes i know i've been a little slack with updates of late, but i've been a little on the busy side, and i dont quite have time for a substantial update now, but i promise that there is one to come just as soon as i have time to put everything together.
in the mean time, this is a cake paul and i made for my friend louise. she was supposed to be having an operation, but somebody broke the sterilisation equipment so it all got postponed. which is probably a good thing in terms of the cake. i forgot about the whole "nil-by-mouth" thing before operations, and the cake would have gone stale by the time she got back home, so yes, at least this way she got to eat it...!
Louise has decided to blog her experiences of her ACL reconstruction so that others in her position can know what to expect from the procedure, you can find her over at a right ruddy hoot. fabulous. :o)

and that is all for now,
but yes, soon... soon there will be more.
weapon.x

concertina people :o)

whilst experimenting to see if i could vectorize my drawings in illustrator, i decided to develop the fruits of my labour into a sort of concertina creation... yes, i have no other words for what it has become, but nonetheless it is rather nice to look at...!


yesterday, after having birthday lunch with my mum in town, we visited Ruislip's offerings in terms of charity shops. Oxfam, Cancer Research, Scope, the lot! (what a fabulous way to spend one's birthday...!)
but yes, i got this odd little keychain for 50p. its rather sweet really. a wooden apple core...! how handy!

weapon.x

stamp stamp stamp

so, yes, ive been playing around with rubbers... trying to make my own stamps. carving images out with a thin blade... im not sure im equipped with the most suitable apparatus, but for now i'm just making do with what's at hand...!

i think they've turned out rather nicely actually..!

weapon.x

birthday eve

hoorah hoorah o yes. o yes.
t'is indeed my birthday tomorrow, (making today my birthday eve...!) which is naturally extremely exciting, hence the eagerness to show off these lovely little wooden happy birthday stickers i came across in hawkins bazaar. fabulous indeed!

on friday night james, ben and i had a 3-in-1 birthday bash at juno in shoreditch and it was super lovely to see everybody's friends all together again. i got each of us a cupcake and a different coloured candle to match instead of having to lug a whole birthday cake up there, and with that in mind, below is the card i made for the two boys: (one of them had a blue one, the other had green, and this matched with the ribbon on their gifts...) :o)



i bought james Rob Ryan's new book "this is for you" and fell so much in love with it that i had to buy myself a copy too...! ive been wanting to post pictures of it ever since i bought it about a month ago, but had to wait until james had recieved his. so finally... here we are!


all the shapes, the words and the pictures are cut out of paper. its the most beutiful intricate thing ever! i love it!
and the story is so sweet. all about a boy trying to uderstand what love is and searching for his someone to love. :o)



Rob Ryan's blog is one that i have been following for a while, its cram packed with his beautiful papercuts, plus, his printed tiles are lovely and you can pick them up from his etsy shop. fabulous.

weapon.x

bearrr...

t'was a good friend's birthday a while back, but i only just got the chance to give him his gifts last night over fireworks and boardgames. he's a big radiohead fan, and lots of their songs remind me of him and of the times we used to spend together, so when i found stanley donwood's new book "dead children playing", (not the most friendly title really... but i promise its a really really lovely picture book full of donwood's finest illustrations.) it seemed the perfect gift. To go with the book i transformed the little bear from the kid a art work into a soft toy, which went down a treat :o) hoorah!




weapon.x

just a quickie...

'tis my lovely mother's birthday tomorrow so i made her a little cuddly owl for the occasion, to go with some lovely.lovely penhaligons bluebell scented goodies. :o) yum.yum.yummm.
and yupppp, heres the card toooooo:



and in other, older news, my littlest sister passed her driving test last week, so, of course, a card was called for to celebrate this momentus feat. she may welll be ready for the road... but lets just hope the road is ready for her...!



weapon.x

northern jaunt...

it was only a short break, but it was lovely to escape up to the north for a few days. paul and i headed up on sunday and returned this afternoon. but yes, we had a super time... especially seeing as we got to see the sheep blocking the road on the way to spaunton again.... :o)

paul took me up to the view point overlooking pickering one night but it was pitch black and rather eerie, so i demanded he bring me back at sunset one day, and im so glad he did, as it was rather special...





lovely.lovely.lovely :o)
i rescued this lens from an old broken camera and spent the rest of the trip taking photos through it! what fun! i have hundreds of these photos... but for now heres two....!




so yes, after lots of catching up with friends and family, a good amount of shopping, and some good ol' yorkshire fresh air, we began the long road trip home.




and i think i miss it already. it was a perfect few days. its a shame reality can't wait any longer...! still, theres plenty to get on with back home. it feels like birthday central around these parts at the moment...! so many presents to wrap, some still to make, and the cards...! yikes! i best get on it!
nope, reality definitely cannot be delayed.

weapon.x

grow

this weeks IF theme is grow and here lyeth my entry.

i was tempted just to enter my watering can image, the one i did for the orange brief at uni last year, but that felt a little too lazy...! but yes, here are the watering cans again anyway... but look.... this time theyre green...! fabulous!



and now for a quick hama update....! my happy hama bead family is growing faster by the second :o) right now im working on some cup cakes and some badges, so we shall see if they work out...! but yes, now i have ducks and an apple and a chick and some birthday cakes and so on!
i wonder if i'll ever be able to stop...!



weapon.x

hama time

hama-time...!

hoorah! so yes, as promised here is a quick post about my renewed obsession with hama beads.


this is my attempt to "hama-ise" my drawings...! i think they look rather cute actually. although the necks are extreeeemely fragile... eeep!


this pattern is a slight variation on a design found in the hama bead inspiration pool on flickr from altered angel. well, actually it was made by her 7 year old daughter which is rather something! i dont remember my hama creations being as artistic as this at that age!


and this pattern was found in the same place, by qalballah. i thought it was simply lovely, and wanted it for myself...!
oh goodenss... i could go on... and on... but i'll stop now, i'll save the others for a rainy day :o)

weapon.x

tidy-up-time

so, the other day, my mum and i took on the monstrous task that was sorting out the mountains of toys and board games piled up in the play room. a lot of them dont really get used anymore, and they were just taking up space, so we dutifully organised them into 4 piles: keep, jumble, charity shop and rubbish.
so, of course there were some fabulous finds amongst the buckets of lego, heaps of sylvanian families (aw!) and multiple copies of scrable...
the most exciting of all being a box full of hama beads! hoorah! so naturally i got straight to work..!



(just as a warning; there will be a post sometime in the near future showcasing my many hama bead creations, especially thanks to the discovery of the hama bead inspiration group on flickr... yesyesyes!)

the cats were looking a little bemused as we lugged 12 (yes, 12!!!) black sacks downstairs, and migrated to the sewing room for some peace and quiet...



thats cleo...


and this is oli. the naughty one... but he was being uncharacteristically sensible here... funny little thing..!

ta raa for now...
weapon.x

extremely... anything

this weeks IF theme is extremes.

"The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age. Even those masters and princes of aerial fighting, the survivors of fifty mortal duels in the high air who have come scatheless through the War and all its perils, have returned again and again to their love and perished too often in some ordinary commonplace flight undertaken for pure amusement."

— Sir Winston Churchill, 'Thoughts and Adventures,' 1932.

in other news... on a recent charity-shop-shopping-spree, i happened across these 4 little books. one being Seridan's "School for Scandal" which excited me muchly and brought back lots of memories from the school production many many moons ago :o)
but yes, these books are such a lovely size. i think all books should be this size. so easy to slip in your pocket, the ultimate travelling companion! and the fact that theyre 110 years old each, only makes them all the more enchanting...





and finally...
heres a little something ive been working on... these notebooks aren't finished yet, but heres a little sneak preview...



so yes, thats all for nowwww...
weapon.x

open

this weeks IF entry. lalalalalaaa.

i've been.busy.busy at school again, today, with the year 4's, we were making felt pannels for a huge african quilt, and with the year 6's we were making photo frames from clay. lots of fun, but also lots of mess... not a good day to have worn black trousers...! ooopsies!

and thats all for now... short and sweet, i know...!
weapon.x

tomorrow is my last day of work experience with the infant school, nex week i head up to the juniors to spend time with the art teacher. ive heard a lot of good things about her so it should be a lot of fun. so, yes i made these cards to thank the teachers and the children whose classes i was helping in. each class is named after a colour so the colours of the cards correspond to the relevant class.

it has been a lot of fun so far, all the teachers seem to have got wind of the fact that i am particularly fond of creative activities, so they have been saving their art lessons for the day that i was with them. we've made tiger masks, done weaving with wool and painted carribean style landscapes. oh to be a child again...!

ketch-up/catch-up

yesyesyes, my organisational needs for 2008 are officially catered for...! my first moleskin is the limited edition weekly planner in RED. yum. it comes complete with stickers and a little tabbed booklet. too exciting for words methinks... roll on january 1st i say... i wanna crack this baby open a.s.a.p..!




and this, this is a loverly set of 3 tins from ikea. i think that its designed for storing tea and coffee in... so that fact that i drink neither probably makes this a rather unessesary purchase... but what the hey! im sure ill find something to put in it...!




now, ive been meaning to write about the lomo world congress since i went.. a while ago now, but yes, ive finally gotten around to doing it.
right in the centre of trafalgar square was this huge maze of.. well... photographs. wall upon wall of them. it really was something. the LomoWorldWall. in an attempt to create the largest, most colourful and diverse lomographic portrait of the goings on on the surface of the earth, lomographers from all corners of the globe were invited to contribute by designing segments of these maze walls.



it was absolutely amazing to be completely surrounded by all these beautifully designed walls and to get physically lost within them, but the fact that when you suddenly found yourself again, you would be greeted by aspects of london's finest scenery, only made it all the more special.






wellwellwell. i should be off now, bedtime has been and gone... :os
so yes.
weapon.x

hop.hop.hop

whilst gazing across the piles and piles of books my sister is storing in the the playroom, i came across this one. sarah & hoppity. i remember reading it over and over at my grandparents house (where it used to live). it used to be my mum's whe she was little so it's getting a little tatty along the spine and is yellowing with age a bit, but nothing too bad. but yes, it's illustrated by a woman called marion wilson and the pictures are just lovely. i adore sarah's big beautiful eyes and hoppity's cheeky little face!







<333
weapon.x

ta daaaaa!

ta daaaaaa!



so yes, after much anticipation (im sure...!) my website is finally complete. hopefully it will be something i will keep adding to, but of course, the more frequent updates will be right here. hoorah!

so go! go visit my brand spanking new website!

weapon.x