Wedding Bunting...not for the faint hearted

I normally warn people off wedding bunting as it is invariable underestimated in required length, required time etc.  But how could I quibble when called to arms by one of my earliest icons of crafting prowess, my oldest friend Chloe's mum, Jan Fuller?! 

It was only one flag, mind.

I had a little bit of breathing space this weekend...so how did I fill it, a bit more sewing, what else!?

Chloe is getting married in a few months. The invite popped through the letter box on friday, complete with 2 bunting flags and instructions to get creative! I am always keen, when presented with a crafting challenge, to use up what I have and not have to buy anything new - Jan would surely approve - that is the whole premise of make do and mend is it not?

Most useful kit is at the studio but my quilting kit still resides at home and with it, a healthy amount of embroidery thread. 

I haven't done any embroidery since I monogrammed Ant's initials for his birthday present last year. I'm a bit rusty to say the least, and improved considerably as soon as I found a needle with a big enough eye to fit a full strand of embroidery thread through...  

So far, a little bit wobbly, but I like to think it is friendly embroidery. 

I love colour graded embroidery thread...these three ferns were done with one thread that gradually got pinker and pinker!

For those of you keen to have a go yourself, I used a split stitch to write my font. I faintly drew it in a water soluble pen. To decorate, I did a variation on the two below stitches, Tete de Beouf and Fern.

Split Stitch

Tete de Beouf stitch

Fern Stitch

And here is the finished article, complete with tassel so I'll be able to identify it from the thousands 

Food Styling

photo Carly Wong

 I got asked a little while back if I ever did any prop/food styling...Not as such, but I thought what a better excuse to get some very talented friends together and get some good food out of it at the end, that is if we hadn't varnished it or used any other horrifying food styling techniques.

Photo Carly Wong

 The flower petals in ice cubes was something I'd seen on that wonderful lifestyle porn site, Pinterest. I had to have a go.

Photo Carly Wong

Wonderful Carly Wong and Simon Withyman shot the food, cooked beautifully by Belle Mayo (who also salvaged a rather sorry looking thai green curry that I had attempted.)

Belle suggested some rather good looking dishes and ingredients. Those heritage carrots at the top were to die for!

Photo Carly Wong

I was interested in creating storied around the food and finding interesting table tops. Clifton Stone kindly lent me a piece of slate and limestone for the shoot. I also found a beautiful old board game board in a charity shop that suited this bright, vintage brands shoot above.

Photo Carly Wong

 The plates were an assortment of family bits and pieces that I have inherited as well as Mum's ever interesting stock.

Photo Carly Wong

Photo Carly Wong

I had been trying to find a reason to hold on to the dominoes for years. I'm so glad I did!

Another new venture?! Part 2

SO off I went to Seville. I went alone and had an incredibly productive time as I had no distractions. although I could have really done with a friend in the evenings! I powered through my book very quickly!

Seville was perfect. I was so lucky because I hadn't done all that much research other than having people rave about it whenever I mentioned I was going. That was good enough for me.

The city is covered in beautiful hand painted tiles wherever you look. Even the most ordinary housing has hand painted tiles porches and window sills.

There is a wonderful mix of the earlier, Moorish style geometric designs alongside the later, lyrical pastoral spanish designs. This gave me the idea to layer up contrasting styles of tile design using fresh contemporary colours to create brilliant borders for my wedding stationery.

There were some brilliant fonts on display too.

I took my sketch book everywhere I went and jotted down interesting patterns in the stone, tiles, and general architecture.

I had also brought out my watercolours so here is the first attempt away from the Folk House class room

You'll have to wait a wee while for some finished products...they are being kept under wraps for now...

Another new venture?! Part 1

You may think I have enough on my plate...?

Well I clearly didn't think so...and have added another string to my bow. In doing so, I have made the tough decision to fine tune what I do and cut out the event and interior design (it was SO hard to say no to a job of that nature today.)

Last year, my step sister Sally, asked if I could help with her wedding stationery. I couldn't resist but jump in with both feet. Soon a fully designed invitation was in existence and I had been bitten by the bug. The wedding industry is something I have always felt I could contribute to but was never sure of what particular field. 

Sally and Andy's invitation from my instagram 

Meetings with my good friend and super wedding stylist Kirsten Butler helped me start on the long path to becoming a wedding stationery designer, with the opportunity to design some invitations for a shoot at Arnos Vale. I featured those on the blog a little while back and it really got me inspired.

I needed to improve my painting skills so I enrolled on a wonderful 5 week course at the Folk House and got back to basics with the watercolours. It was a botanical drawing class, which is a subject I love, and just happens to be all over high street prints and homewards at the moment. 

These seems to go pretty well, so I started to have a think about what kind of designs I wanted to do for my wedding invitations. After narrowing it down from being everything to everyone, I settled on hand painted, high end, beautiful and delicate patterns inspired by botanical prints. But I had a strong desire to add a contemporary edge. This would come in the use of colour. Poppy Delevingne's second Pucci Wedding dress summed up the feel I wanted to give: incredibly elegant and drawing on traditional fold art and crafts but beautifully bright, daring and contemporary.

This led me to think of the traditional floral patterns found in Mexican Folk Art...Could I justify going to Mexico just to look at embroidered flowers? Hmm, I needed to think a bit closer to home...

So I booked a ticket to Seville.

You'll have to wait for the next post  to find out if Seville gave me what I needed and to get a hint of my drawings and paintings of Seville tiles and architecture

Where have I been?

So where have I been these past few months?

I won't lie, I've been having some fun. Ant and I have been to the odd festival, found a shepherds hut or two down in Cornwall for much needed intervals in our busy lives.

Photo Anthony Jolliffe

Somersault Festival, after too much sun

Photo Anthony Jolliffe

There has been an awful lot going on in our lives. Many creative excitements and challenges and some personal ones too...

...One of my best mates Polly has been getting through Breast Cancer, she is an incredibly cool, well dressed individual and has been tackling it all head on with an incredible blog. I decided the least I could do was run the Race for Life

Photo Anthony Jolliffe

But I couldn't do it without emanating a bit of Polly's innate style. I LOVE these trainer wings, and I can't believe I got them from a joke shop. They are still on my trainers, a month on.

My human sketchpad, Al, has gone under the pen again for another nautical themed tattoo. This was a halfway through photo but I almost prefer it to the finished result as you can see the pain he is enduring for his art!

I've spent a fair bit of time in London, working on a few shows, that you will no doubt hear about soon. This incredible installation at the SouthBank Centre is all about its LOVE festival. This euphoric assault on the senses is what I think love looks like. A little too painful to start straight in the face, but if you are brave enough to do so, you will discover new hidden delights the longer you look.

Saying that, it was a bit of a grey day when I took the photo!

One of those London shows is one called Fat Man, devised by Martin Bonger and Alex Swift, produced by Little Mighty and Move to Stand. I won't give too much away but it's touching, bloody funny and will completely turn the myth of Orhpeus on its head. Find out more about the tour here

Martin is, by no stretch of the imagination, Fat, Therefore he needed a pretty pimping fat suit to get the job done. I called up Jill Molyneux and Kelly Jago at Jag Props who made an incredibly life like fat suit. I then dressed it, grubbed and sweated it up and, voila! that protruding tummy above is in fact  a prosthetic tummy on a glorious fat suit. 

My theatre company Dot and Ethel is going from strength to strength, with Heidi and I just about keeping up. We have secured Arts Council Funding for a national Tour of our christmas show the Little Match girl, now transformed into the universally seasonal 'MATCH'.

Photo Chris Collier

That scraped the surface of the past few months. The pace still hasn't let up and at times it feels like I'm keeping just out in front of the tidal wave. I'm sure many of you feel like that, but we all keep coming back for more.  I look forward to sharing all that comes with you in future posts.

Play Hair

I've been working with the uber talented photographer Carly Wong rather a lot recently. A few months back she shot and I styled for a new Hair extensions company Play Hair, set up by stylist Mia Stronach.

Here are some of my favourite looks from the shoot; a young, playful image. Items from Miss Selfridge, Quiz and Oasis. Three highstreet shops I haven't been into for years, I was extremely pleasantly surprised!

Mia adding extensions to model Amy Burnett

 Here is a behind the scenes video of the shoot, made by the brilliant Joe Murphy

Reading Room: Made in India, Cooked in Britain, Meera Sodha

meera's book

Anna and I have a very talented new sister. Meera Sodha is my brother's fiancee and a rather incredible Lady. 

Meera, Anna and me

You have probably seen her gracing the colour supplements, cooking up a storm on Women's Hour, chatting away with her mum on BBC Asian Network, to name but a few. She is an incredibly modest girl who one day asked her mum for some family recipes to cook for her friends. Nothing had been written down as the family tradition was to cook by experience rather than written instructions. Meera took that as her cue to prevent these glorious recipes from disappearing into the ether and started to make records. The book wasn't intended to be published initially, but just to be a safe record of all the family food heritage. 

Meera and family

A year later, and here we are at the book launch, published by Figtree, Penguin. 

The official tag on her site is:

MADE IN INDIA: Cooked in Britain: Recipes from an Indian Family Kitchen is the essential book for anyone who loves Indian food and wants to know how to make it easily at home

Meera and Hugh

And that is just it. Both of my parents, incredible bastions of the leftovers brigade, have taken to this book so incredibly strongly, both have been serving up Meera's dishes on a daily basis without breaking into a chilli-induced sweat.

The book is currently number 5 in the Amazon charts...and that is the chart for ALL BOOKS. not bad huh.