New 'folio page to co-incide with the bird canvas I did (on the right). Once again, woeful photo-taking efforts from my webcam but I'm quite chuffed with the layout so far.

Brenda Oelbaum

I was having a cheeky gander at The Adipositivity Project website which I love and I saw these awesome trousers by Brenda Oelbaum which are really cool and have all different derogatory words for fatness beautifully reclaimed and stitched onto them (typography, fashion and self-acceptance all combined in one glorious pair of trousers? I am too excited for words)

Aside from trawling through google images or hoping to catch a glimpse of her work in her blog is there anywhere I can just look at all of the awesome work she does? Why have I not heard of this lady before now???

Old-ass sketch I found of a shell I did in 2007 with indian ink and a stick in one of my first art classes at college.

Tilleke Schwarz

WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get), 2006, 75 x 67 cm by Tilleke Schwarz

Eleanor Glover

Found an old exhibition catalogue from an exhibition called 'Smile' at the Ruthin Craft Centre in Wales in 2010, appologies again for rubbish picture-taking. Kinda hit me today that that exhibition had a pretty big influence on the style of work I've been producing lately, espcially the lettering by Eleanor Glover because I've always had this nagging feeling in the past couple of years that applied arts and typography should be combined and the results would be glorious, and this little catalogue was just sitting dolefully on my bookshelves waiting for me to spot the connection the entire time.

This is some of the glass I mentioned earlier that I did on a Saturday crafternoon with The Cultural Sisters before it was fired. I haven't actually seen the finished glass, but I've received an email that says "it has all turned out lovely!" so I'm looking forward to getting my grubby paws on it. Am thinking about incorporating it into the comic project I've been slowly working on.

My Phone also got stolen by some old dude at a library but I've managed to rescue a couple of photos I had from failbook, yay!

This is some graffiti I spotted and thought was rather charming on my walk into town

'Folio

I have also started mounting some of the work I've been producing within the last year so that I can make a professional portfolio, just starting out with some of the stuff I made at unit 12 under the supervision of Emily Notman which I can upload online and maybe get myself a proper website (gonna take better photos than these obviously but these are just so ye can get the rough idea).

This is the first 'folio I've built all by myself without other people telling me what to put in it and so I'm a little bit nervous but excited. Might take a while to get hold of some of the pieces (like the painting I did for my grandmother that I need to scan on an A3 photocopier, the glass I did from a Saturday crafternoon with The Cultural Sisters since I'm no longer in Stoke-On-Trent or getting hold of a camera for my ceramic pieces that isn't totally rubbish) but if I'm living life without challenges, then I'm pretty sure that counts as 'Doing It Wrong'.

I also decorated a tiny little box with stitches and excessive amount of eyes because I was feeling paranoid on that day

Lampshaade

Here be a lampshade I started decorating with ribbons and buttons and stitching and wotnot. I bought it for my new flat but my gross old one which is covered in bizarre orange stains (don't want to know how they got there) just will not budge and I've lost my pair of grips so it's stuck on the ceiling and my lampshade is stuck on the table, subject to whatever experimentations take my fancy.

A point of singularity

Hand-Stitched lettering done in my own fair handwriting, it may be illegible but I'm still fond of it

Moar Typography

This post is a liiittle bit immature but I wanted to make expletives look all pretty and painty a bit like Theo Olesen's Beautiful Swear Words (I'm super original like that). My original plan was to make a really nice love letter to the boyfriend that said how fucking beautiful he was, but instead I just painted the word Fuck all over my sketchbook and I guess these are the results:

Yes, I am fully aware that my Fs are a bit S-like :(

Work with Lorraine!

Here is a doodle I roughly copied and coloured in with acrylics from historical painter Hieronymus Bosch whose work I am much in love with these days.

It marks the start of a joint collaboration project with Lorraine Bennet, not entirely sure where that will lead us but I think we both agree on it being an awesome idea. We both wanted to do something mythical and mystical but have super different approaches so I am excited to see the way different artistic disciplines can work together and the hopefully complementary outcomes that will be our result. Currently meeting up for thursdays sketching and doodling ideas stage. Next week is going to be collages, so watch this space.

(detail from 'The Hay Wain' by Hieronymus Bosch)