Inspired by the fantastic Squint Limited (who charge more for one chair than I would spend on a new car), I have been trying my hand at a bit more upholstery:

Here’s the original – pretty special isn’t it? It cost £2 from a car boot sale. I bought it some new foam as it had kinda lost it’s squishy-ness.

Watch this space for the standard lamp I have been doing to match. It’s not quite finished yet as I am too much of a dunce to sort out the wiring bit…

Here are some pics of a commission I finished recently for super-ace Bristol artist Kathryn Thomas.

Katheryn got in touch with me through the recent Nature’s Way exhibition I did at the Grant Bradley Gallery in Bristol. She wanted a piece specially made for her then fiance as a surprise wedding present. It was a fantastic brief to work on – Katheryn wanted me to use images of her own paintings and a couple of little love notes that her man had written for her within the piece.

I scaled up images of her paintings to appropriate sizes and then had these printed out onto pearlescent paper. Then I scanned in the love notes she had and printed the text from these out onto tracing paper. Then I cut everything up and fixed it all into place in a specially made box frame.

I was really pleased to see the finished results and (thankfully) Husband and Wife were both really stoked with the piece too. It was really interesting for me to see this idea that I have been working on for some time now moved on to the next level using the new subject matters. The images of the paintings seemed to really lend themselves to this new format – which was fantastic considering how delicate all these tiny pieces are and how massive the original paintings are! The pearlescent papers really made the colours of the paintings shine out and they were a great contrast with the very flat looking tracing paper pieces.

- Hurrah!

I designed these wedding invitations recently for my cousin and his fiancée who are getting married in December.

I was really pleased with the results in the end. They are entirely printed using pearlescent card stock and the envelopes are made from lovely textured metallic papers.

The wedding is going to be held at Castle Leslie – a fantastic venue over in Ireland. The brief was for something traditional that would fit in with the castle theme, without it being too stuffy or old fashioned. They also wanted something that would feel quite christmassy due to the time of year the event is being held, which was why I decided to go for the shinier card stock and metallics.

I think the result is simple but classic. The invitations have been hand finished with the gate fold and the black band around the middle.

Clockwise from the top: Invitation with metallic aubergine envelope, Save the Date cards with metallic black envelope and small details card with a link on the back to the wedding website.

There will be Order of Service sheets printed up nearer the time with a gatefold and black band to match and then I guess the design will be continued through onto the table plan and place settings etc.

Lovely

It would appear that I have entered turbo-nesting territory…

Having achieved Sweet Fanny Adams for the last few months due to general preggo illness, I have lept into action this week and have:

• reupholstered a foot stool

• made a new standard lamp

• made a fabric pin board for my new office space

• reupholstered our entire dining room suite

- PHEW!

Here’s a pic of the chairs, which I am very pleased with…

(Clearly these are not all exactly the same chairs – there are 6 of them altogether)

More info after the jump…

I chose 3 different fabrics in the end. I was just going to stick with just the one, but I thought they’d look a bit more fun this way.

The two end chairs are covered with silver velvet – which are my favourite I think :

Then there are two chairs covered in a charcoal leaf fabric:

And two with a grey teardrop fabric:

I am so pleased witht the results. These chairs come from a G-Plan dining room set that was bought by my grandparents back in the 1960’s. They looked like they hadn’t been recovered in at least the last 40 years and they are SO much more comfortable with the new foam. It’s great to see them all with a new lease of life!

I just used 1 inch foam and a staple gun – the whole thing cost me £30 – bargain!!

Much joy and celebration was to be had (very soberly) on Friday evening as my entry for the Grafikea competition in this year’s Bristol Design Festival bagged the first blummin’ prize!!

So sure was I that I would not be winning this competition, I missed the awards ceremony due to being at home trying to squeeze my ever expanding form into a variety of different outfits – D’OH! I got a call from a friend to say that I had won whilst I was in the car on my way to the event. I couldn’t believe it!

I was greeted on arrival to the design festival by a lovely trophy and a massive cheque!! (cheque was for £250 – but it was one of those massive ones like you see on telly – cooool!) Official photos were taken which I will post up on here as soon as I get them and I also did a quick ipadio phonecast interview which you can listen to here.

Here are some pics I took with my phone of my entry:

And this is a pic of my favourite entry entitled “Bristol Apple”:

Like a goon, I didn’t make a note of who this table was by – I can remember that his name was Olly. I had wanted to buy it, but some other punter came in and snapped it up before I had time to decide! Props to you Olly – it was super-cool!

For more info about the Grafikea competition and some more pics of the different entries, have a look-see here.

So things have been pretty quiet over here at Camp Bird Face and progress has been been slow…

…thankfully this has been for good reason – I haven’t been feeling quite myself over the last few weeks, but this is because I am 21 weeks up the duff!! 

Nano Bird Face is due October 19th. I am feeling quite a bit better now, so hopefully production of baby stuff will be commencing with gusto sometime soon and I will have some more exciting things to post up on here – hurrah

Image by Rob Ryan (who I heart v. much).

I’ve been busy making batches of butterfly cards using old maps and musical script.

These are now available to buy from Fire Works Gallery or The Grant Bradley Gallery in Bristol.

It was my friend Joh from Butchi and GosMos’s birthday this week. Here’s a little brooch I made for her using the free heart pattern here from the Mochimochi Land blog.

I really want one myself now – I wonder how many years it’ll take me to get round to doing that…

I have been busy busy getting everything prepared for the upcoming Nature’s Way show, starting this week at the Grant Bradley Gallery here in Bristol.

I have got my new cards all sorted and a new website – which is somewhat sparse at the moment, but should hopefully be much more interesting by the end of the week (in theory!).

You can have a look at it here or click on my new link on the right side of your screen.

These have just arirved in the post this morning and I am really chuffed with them!

They are mini business cards from moo.com. You can print up to 100 different designs per set – how good is that?

I’ve had them printed for the Nature’s Way exhibition I am taking part in which starts next week. More info on that to follow…