Tag Archives: butterflies

Design for The Observer Ethical Awards 2011 trophies

10 Jun

You know every so often stuff happens in your life that is just outrageously cool? Well, this happened to me recently when I was asked to make the trophies for this years’ Observer Ethical Awards – woo-hoo!!

The theme of the event this year was butterflies and each award was to be a box of butterflies made from recycled papers. There were 12 trophies to be made in all and each one was designed specifically with the recipient in mind. This was SUCH a lovely job to work on as I did loads of research on each of the winners and it was so nice to be able to make things for such a deserving bunch – hurrah!
Here are some pics of each of the trophies:

This larger award was for the Lifetime Achievement Award, which went to James Lovelock. He got gold leaf in his too for being so clever!

Here is a little film of Mr. Lovelock receiving his award 🙂
(I didn’t even pay him to say that!)

The award ceremony was held at the V&A Museum in London. It was a super-cool night and I was very honoured to be asked to show some of my work during the event. Here are some pics:


Me and Leigh Tunnadine (who did all my beautiful framing for me) before the event started.


Me with one of the smaller pieces of work that I had on show. All my stuff looked SO tiny once we got it into the museum, it was ridiculous!


All the trophies lined up and ready to be handed out.


Leigh with one of the white pieces.


Us with James and Seb from the Bristol Bike Project, highly deserved winners of the Grassroots Award!
(massive well done, Bristol chums!!)


With the inspirational Carry Somers, founder of  Pachacuti and winner of the Fashion and Accessories Award, sponsored by Vogue.com.


With Greg Valerio, ethical jeweller and winner of the Global Campaigner Award.

All in all, it was pretty blummin’ marvellous!
Props to Gilly Woo for dressing me in all her handmade finery and preventing me from looking like a hobo in my hour of need!!

More official photos are to follow…

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New Jewellery

30 Jan

Here is a sneaky peek of the new jewellery I have been working on:

Available soon on notonthehighstreet.com – hurrah!

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Paperworks 3

24 Aug

I am lucky enough to have had my work chosen to be in the third Paperworks exhibition being held at the Bury Art Gallery.
The show is on from 31 July – 6 November 2010.

Here are some pics from the show – such a beautiful space!

Click here to read my post about the last Paperworks show I took part in back in 2006 🙂

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A couple of new commissions…

13 Aug

Just thought I’d post up these pics of a couple of new commissions I have done.

The first is for a lady who had specifically asked for something using browns and golds with an oak frame. Nice 🙂

The second was made in an original old Victorian entomology case. It has quite a different feel to it than the first one – but I reckon this one’s a winner too – hurray!

I’d like to do some more pieces in old entomology cases. The have such a nice feel to them and I really love the stained paper in the background. I picked this one up on ebay a while ago and haven’t been able to find any more since.

Any ideas on finding any more, anyone?

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Commission O’Clock

8 Oct

In the interests of cutting things ridiculously fine, I agreed to take on a commission for some artwork last week. Here is the finished piece, fresh back from the framers:

I am really pleased with it – sometimes it’s so great to get a commission on the go as it’s a good chance to do something a bit different that you perhaps wouldn’t have thought of before…

This client wanted something that would look good in her living room, so she brought me round a sample of fabric from her Marimekko curtains which look like this and we talked about how she has a few things that are covered in gold leaf.

All the butterflies are colours to match in with the curtains and I added in one large butterfly in gold leaf for good measure – lovely!

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I am the weener!!

9 Jun

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.

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Everything’s going to be all white…

9 Mar

I have been asked to participate in an exhibition about the natural world at the Grant Bradley Gallery in Bristol next month (hurrah!). There are quite a few new plans afoot for my paper entomology artwork at the moment, so for this exhibit, I have decided to do something a bit different…

Here’s a couple of pics as a taster. Hopefully they should look great in white frames up against the white walls of the gallery.

More details on the exhibition to follow.

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Stop Motion Video

24 Feb

So, after a few week’s break following the pre-Christmas rush, I have been back to making paper butterflies and insects.

It took me a little while to get back into the right frame of mind, but once I got started, I really enjoyed it. Him indoors made this little film of me working away – it would be SO great if I actually could work anywhere near this fast…

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