I heart books

Here's another photo of that big pile of books I managed to score for myself over the holidays. Ok so the 'Making Stuff for Kids' book is in there because I wrote a bunch of it, and the colours looked good together, but look at all the other great books I now have- I love how the colours are all clashing together.

However, this isn't enough, I need yet more books! In fact I have about £90 that I have to use for art/craft/curating related books, thanks to a special grant I received, and i'm hoping that some of you could make some suggestions for books to add to my huge pile. I'm looking for books that are going to inspire me, i'm happy to read pretty tough theoretical tomes as well as pretty pretty craft books.

I would LOVE to get my hands on a copy of 'Craft in Transition' by Jorunn Veiteberg of Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway. I know it came out in an English language version in 2005 as well as Norwegian, but I don't know how to get hold of it. If there are any Scandinavians reading this then maybe you can help me track this down?

I'm open to your suggestions- which books inspire you, which could you not be without?

Yesterday I took time off from stressing about my work for the final show, and instead spent the day in the garden of a friends house, making peg dolls with her children. An activity that I thought would keep them occupied for maybe 15 minutes ended up lasting for at least 2 hours, and would have carried on longer if i'd taken more pegs with me! You'll be able to see more photos and instructions when 'Making Stuff for Kids' the book comes out later this year.

Still no time to stop and chat

wallpapered wall
Originally uploaded by crunchcandy.

Here's a little bit of what i've been working on over the last few weeks. Today I think I finished papering the shelving, got the ornaments out of the boxes and wrote down a list of things still to do. It's a pretty long list considering the deadline is 4.30 on Tuesday.

This weekend I shall be making a bird box, a wormery, and a collection of peg dolls, all with the help of two lovely children. I'm behind on my projects for the new book, behind on my contribution to the periodic table print project, and i'm not even going to start to tell you how behind I am on things like cleaning and feeding myself properly. My poor allotment has been left to fend for itself and all I can do is hope that on Wednesday i'll be able to drag myself down there and rescue it from weeks of neglect.

London calling

I'm heading off to London for a couple of days- no idea really what i'm going to do while i'm there, other than meet up with Ally to take a look at the National Portrait Gallery, wander aimlessly while waiting to meet my other birthday twin* Ellie Pea, hopefully meet up with Vikki to talk about our forthcoming top secret project, and maybe just maybe get to look at some inspirational art. At least two of the shows I wanted to see aren't going to be open- but if you hurry you might get a chance to see The Craft at Transition Gallery or Clare Rojas at Modern Art.

* Miss_Jen was of course a birthday twin too

April/ May - GREEN, PINK, YELLOW!

The colours for April and May's Project Spectrum are green:

Pink:



and yellow:

Ok so that last image I picked because of the pink, rather than the yellow, but it seems that yellow isn't a colour that features very much in my life. The top image is one of the screenprinted blue tits I did last year (green), the middle image shows two of my spooky doll face brooches (available on etsy, and representing the colour pink) and the bottom image is one of the paintings I did last year- it's based on a polaroid photo I took one night of a cafe on the seafront. I loved it when I did it, but now I'm not at all sure and wouldn't mind getting it off my hands.

Right now I should be busy working on a top secret project (similar to the last top secret project I had, which is reviewed here by Not Martha), finishing some sketchbook work for college (or should that be starting some?) and taking my clothes off the washing line, instead I find myself here on the internet again.