Rescued and Revived

This lovely couple from the 1940's were promoting the Waterworks at War event at Kew Bridge Steam Museum, they kindly agreed to a photograph outside the Rescued and Revived Stall at the Kew Green midsummer Fete. Botkin and Galliers have been taking the make do and mend work ethic to wonderful lengths to create more of their stunning blankets, cushions and tea cosies. You can read more on their blog. Rescued and Revived will next be appearing at the Barnes Village Fair on the 10th July.

Skull necklace for Folksy Upcycle Competition

Here is the finished piece for the Folksy/Sue Ryder Upcycle Christmas competition. A skull necklace inspired by The Day of the Dead festival. I was going to make a more abstracted piece but as I worked on the different parts I kept seeing a face so I went with that idea. The work is going to be judged today by Wayne Hemingway, India Knight, Louise Roe and Antoni & Alison and five lucky winners will have their work showcased next year in the Sue Ryder shop in Camden Town, London. All the pieces submitted will be auctioned next week to raise money for Sue Ryder care. You can see the other entries here. If you are a Folksy member you can favourite the items you like, until Thursday 10th December the piece with the most favs will also win something. There will be updates about the judging and the auction on the Folksy blog.

Folksy competition - Upcycle Christmas

I have entered a competition organised by the lovely folks at Folksy. Upcycle Christmas. Selected Sue Ryder Care stores have offered to donate materials to be collected by Folksy members which will then be transformed into wonderful items to be placed in an auction to raise money for Sue Ryder Care and first prize will be a showcase for the winner(s) in the Sue Ryder shop in Camden Town, Parkway, London next year. Only selected stores were taking part in this so competitors are allowed to use any recycled materials from any source.

I do like to work with a brief, so I decided to follow the guidelines and visited Sue Ryder in Camden Town yesterday to collect some inspiration after my visit to the magical Museum Of Everything. It transpired that I had missed the deadline but the manager kindly brought out some bags of clothes for me to rummage through.

I chose a bright red patterned kimono and some pale linen trousers from the bag of odds and ends, and then I decided to look around the shop for more inspiration. I had already decided I wanted to make a piece of jewellery from old beads and textiles before I arrived at the store. I then found this beautiful dress handmade from the softest needlecord, the colour of dried blood with beautiful orange, green and white flowers with leg of mutton sleeves. I also purchased these pieces of jewellery.

I started sketching some ideas on the train journey home and today I carried on drawing at the Orthodontist while braces were fitted to my nearest and dearest.

The deadline for the competition is Saturday 5 December - eek!

Romuald Hazoume

Miss Berlin 1999, mixed media

Romuald Hazoume Made in Porto-Novo at The October Gallery 24 Old Gloucester Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1 until 28 November.

Crafting with The Guardian

The Guardian magazine on Saturday featured these craft projects by Susanna Clarke, I particularly like the coffee sack cushion. Photograph by Sara Morris.

James Plumb

I wish I had seen the work of James Russell and Hannah Plumb aka James Plumb at Tent, their website is lovely. I saw this on the Haute Nature blog.

Rescued & Revived Ltd.

It was lovely to see my friends Botkin and Galliers of Rescued & Revived Ltd at the Bust Craftacular. These lovely ladies only started stitching together a few months ago and they have been going down a storm with their beautiful cushions, picnic rugs and throws. I cannot believe how much they have achieved in such a short space of time.

Rescued & Revived Ltd.

The delightful duo Botkin & Galliers launch Rescued and Revived Ltd today at Barnes Fair, London SW13 - their emporium of curious delights includes these marvellous outdoor adult pursuit blankets.

The Social Lives of Objects

Assemblage by Hilary Jack

Hilary Jack, Lisa Penny and Dallas Seitz are artistic plunderers of the roadside skip, the charity shop and of the more eccentric reaches of eBay. They recycle the detritus of our urban existences: broken umbrellas, last month's magazines, false teeth, detached stilettos, mangy fox stoles, mantelpiece ceramic ornaments no longer treasured. Their raw materials bear the marks of backstreet histories. Through an aesthetic of fragmentation, of disorientation and unpredictable re-assemblage, they arrive at sculptural images that come on like dream mementos of fictional autobiographies, or icons of obscure personal mythologies. It's a sculptural tradition with a long history - dada, surrealism - the mundane made marvellous, bad taste transformed into something else. Robert Clark The Guardian

Currently showing at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester until 19 July. You can read more about Hilary Jack on her website and her blog.

Cloches

These plastic water bottles make great cloches for starting the beetroot seedlings off. We planted some of these without cloches too. The ones in plastic are bigger and stronger and seemed to retain the moisture really well.

Sasja Saptenno

Jewellery by Sasja Saptenno.

In Holland, there are approximately 16 million people and 13 million bikes. Multiply the number of bikes x 2 and you get a rough calculation of at least 26 million inner tubes.

What happens to all those inner tubes when they are beyond repair? Jewelry designer Sasja Saptenno has found a creative way for people to accessorize with them! Sasja obtains her materials from bike shops, neighbors, and even off of her own bike!

Have a look at Sasja's website, (accessorylab) for more wonderful creations, and you can read more on her blog.

Thanks to Haute Nature for the link and Bikehacks for the information!

Word to Mother

WTM Word to Mother - IMG_9682 copy, originally uploaded by Wallkandy.net.

Lost For Words is the latest exhibition by Word To Mother, the show ends on Sunday. It is on at the Stolen Space gallery, Old Truman Brewery. You can see the full set of works here.

Jessie Chorley

Jessie Chorley is one of the artists exhibiting at the Flow Gallery in London as part of Making Stories this month. The gallery will be closed from the 24th December and re-opens on the 5th January until the 10th January. Jessie Chorley also has a wonderful shop in Columbia Road which she runs with artist Buddug Humphreys. Go to their website to check opening times.

Cameo

Transmission successful

Its been fixed! I think...

(14 posts deleted and re-published)

Seon-hwa Lee

It was lovely to see Seon-hwa again. We met at the college show last year and her work is so beautiful - she works with free newspapers that litter our lives and transforms them into these delicate jewels - all the colour in the pieces is from the colour in the newsprint. You can see her work again next month at New Designers. in Islington.

Laura Anne Marsden

Eternal lace - created using waste plastic bags.

Laura Anne Marsden

The recycled house

photograph by Beth Evans

The house of artists Kate Shipp and Mark Hill is featured in the Guardian newspaper today. Their house is furnished entirely with salvage from skips and roadsides, car-boot fairs and markets.

Circles necklace

I have been developing some new ideas for making textile jewellery. This has partly been due to developing exzema on my right hand which makes wet felting difficult. I have a stash of wool pullovers that have shrunk in the washing machine. So I started to cut them up into circles of varying sizes and layer them together with some offcuts of velvet which had been lying around for a couple of years and then I embroidered flowers onto them. I was going to make them into flower brooches but then I started placing them next to each other and liked how they looked and so this necklace came into being. I have photographed it both outside and indoors to try and show the the textures of the piece. It is a very slow process, so I have also made some with less embroidery which you can see on my flickr page.

I have to confess to the subliminal influence of these lovely circles of felt over at Bugs and Fishes.

Jodie Carey

Daily Mail 2005 (detail), 228x54x60cms Newspaper, tea, coffee and blood - from Seventeen Gallery.

Jodie Carey graduates from the Royal College of Art this summer. The Royal College of Art is putting on The Great Exhibition from the 15-28 June 2007 in Kensington Gardens, it will feature the work of over 400 students.