After Some Hiatus

I know, it's been awhile. Ever since I got back from London I have been putting in some extra hours at work covering for someone on a brief leave. It's nice to pad the bank account during a quiet summer but it was a busy and stressful position. Also, the project I have been working on since returning from London was gift and had to be kept off the internet until it was ended up on the doorstep of the recipient. Which it now has! So I can post these pictures of it, hooray!

The book was a gift for our host in London. The cover is made of strips from pamphlets from the various museums, gardens and historic homes we visited. Inside the are pictures from the trip and drawings of things we saw in our various explorations, which were all done digitally. In the back is an envelope lined with a London tube map and it's filled with more pictures, recipes from dinners we made and more.

Day #6&8: William Morris & the Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts & Crafts movement was a design movement that arose in the second half of the 1800’s. In response to the aggressive expansion of industry and shoddiness of mass produced items, artists of the movement sought to return to hand produced crafts. William Morris became the leader of the group with the establishment of his business Morris & Co, which produced many handmade textiles, wallpapers, and furniture, as well as his Kelmscott Press printing company.

A very strong underlying theme in our trip was the Arts & Crafts movement, we visited lots of relevant sites and it somehow managed to sneak into unsuspecting places as well. So obviously the first stop on our Arts & Crafts tour had to be the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. This we followed up later with another walk along the Thames past the original home of the Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith and on to the home of Emery Walker, the immaculately preserved Arts & Crafts home of a printer who worked with Morris.

  Along the River Thames in Hammersmith

Read more about the stops on our Arts & Crafts tour after the jump...

Day #5: Kew Gardens

While gardens and plants are a major source of inspiration for artists and designers I will try and keep my slideshow of pictures of plants to a minimum, though my unfortunate boyfriend will not be as lucky as the rest of you. But, I mostly want to focus on the piece of art we found there.

My mother and her grade school friend, our wonderful host, both love gardens and are avid gardeners so it only made sense we would end up in a garden eventually. But Kew, the Royal Botanical Gardens, is an absolutely breathtaking park with an extraordinary variety of plants, trees, greenhouses and gardens (there were even live peacocks just wandering around). 

When we came out of the first huge greenhouse we discovered our (non-vegetative) favorite thing in the park, which was the Rose Garden Tea Party, an installation created by Kirsti Davies & Giles Thaxton which featured a variety of edible plants growing up from china planters all across the table. Depending on where you sat the table and china would inform you what theme you were looking at, such as plants used in fizzy drinks. The beautifully crafted china then labelled the plants and hinted at how the plants were applied to food and beverages.

One of the artists was actually there as we were admiring the table, recoloring the text on the table. She fun to talk to and had a lot to offer about the production of the china. My only complaint would be that I couldn’t buy these for my own table.

Learn more about the incredible process of this creation here: http://incredibleteaparty.co.uk/

Day #4&7: The V&A

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London is one of my favorite museums I have ever been to. It’s the worlds largest design and decorative arts museum with a collection housing over 4.5 million objects. Oh and did I mention admission is free? Because it is. I love that most of the museum is not just pictures on a wall, instead there are whole galleries dedicated to iron works, mosaics, theater design, stained glass, jewelry and so much more. We had visited the V&A on our last trip to London and realized we hadn’t even scratched the surface of their collection and had to return. We spent most of our time in the Theater & Performance Gallery as well as in their Cast Courts. See more of our favorite pieces after the jump...

Day #1: Eel Pie Island

This time last week I was just getting home from my trip to London! My mother, sister and I went for a summer adventure and spent a little over a week exploring with an old friend of my mother's from grade school who lives there now. The following posts are going to be quite a bit about the things we did there...

In Twickenham, set in the middle of the River Thames is Eel Pie Island. The private island is accessible exclusively by footbridge and is only opened to non-residents on a few rare occasions. The island used to be home to the Eel Pie Island Hotel, which was once famous for performances from many infamous groups such as the Rolling Stones, The Who and David Bowie. The hotel mysteriously burned down in 1967, after which the island became known for being the largest hippie commune in the United Kingdom.

Now Eel Pie Island is mostly home to artists and their eccentric studios. The week we were in London happened to coincide with one of the island’s rare ‘Open Studios’ day and our gracious host took us down along the Thames to see this strange place. 

Read more about our Eel Pie Island adventure after the jump...

Birthday Birds

Not only was Sunday Father's Day, a week ago was my father's birthday so there was quite a bit of dad celebrating to do. For those of you who don't know my father, he is an excellent musician, fantastic furniture maker and quite the technical illustrator. And none of those are even his day job. But his job does intersect with one of his oldest hobbies - birdwatching. So it was a natural choice to make they contents of his birthday card avian.

Here's a lovely sketch.

And the final painting.

Life of Pi - Literary Carry

I promised this would go up for Memorial Day weekend and then I spent all week being sick. So I had to play some catch up, so here is my catalog of what Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, found in his lifeboat after a shipwreck.

Definitely click to view larger...

Make It Yourself: Clean or Dirty Indicator

If you live with three other roommates like I do and sometimes you find it's hard to keep up on running that dishwasher, have I got something for you:

 This lovely dirty or clean indicator!

We use ours to remind each other, 'Hey, there are some dirty dishes in here, load it up and run it.' or 'Look these dishes are clean, maybe I should put them back in their cabinets.' It's at eye level on our cabinets above the dishwasher.

I bet you are wondering, 'How can I have one of those for myself?' Well, let me tell you: by using this template and following these wonderfully easy steps put together by yours truly. Read after the jump for my full tutorial and printable template.

Maddie on Things!

Last week my roommate and I went to the Brookline Booksmith to see Theron Humphrey and his infamous dog Maddie presenting their book Maddie On Things. If you are not familiar with Maddie and her special talent, stop reading right now and head over to their website:

www.maddieonthings.com

 

I really didn't know what to expect, a reading? A signing? It ended up being a delightful artist lecture, listening to Theron talk about his work, Maddie and beyond.

Not only is Maddie an incredible subject, Theron is a great photographer. His work is so much about telling stories and his passion is abundant. His most recent project, Why We Rescue, tells the photographic stories of rescue dogs and their families. He is so invested in sharing these stories and encouraging the creativity of everyone he speaks to. It was an wonderful event, and if they are coming to your city you should definitely make the time to fit them in. 

Not to disappoint, midway through Theron's slideshow Maddie hopped up on a thing:

Photo by Caley Mahoney

My Father's Dragon - Literary Carry

One of my favorite books growing up was My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett with illustrations by Ruth Chrisman Gannett. This is just a little painting I did the other day cataloging all the things Elmer Elevator took on his adventure to rescue the dragon.

Definitely click to view larger...

I liked the idea quite a bit, it was fun to see all laid out what the contents of his backpack were. So now I am working on another painting of all the the things Pi found in his lifeboat in Life of Pi which should go up this weekend.

These are some of the beautiful original illustrations, done in grease crayon on a grained paper.

Flowers, Plants, and Leaves

Lately I have been trying to work on some designs for patterns, though I can't say I am progressing forward very quickly. Basically just been sketching bunches of flowers, plants and leaves. So here are just some drawings that will hopefully become something later...