End of Week 3

Busy Bee

I spent all day Friday in the printroom printing up more Wolves and Woodsmen because I have RUN OUT of all three of my Little Red Riding Hood Designs. Shocking. It's taken 2.5 years for all the Woodsmen and Grandmas to go, but I'm now on my fourth printing of Wolfy. I must've been highlighted on someone's blog or on Pinterest or something recently, as I've sold nine prints over the past two weeks, which is just crazy for January. I barely sold anything in the run up to Crimbo! Ain't loife strange sometimes.



I'm back in the printroom Tuesday morning to get more Grandmas done, then that's me finished on these for now. I would have loved to have got them all printed up on Friday, but that was asking quite a lot for one day; I was flagging come 4.30pm as it was. So, Tuesday it is.



I've printed the new lot of Woodsmen up in a more eggy shade of orange this time, just to ring the changes a bit. The saffron shade of the background really sings against the dark, dark grey of the outline, but then I would say that as I'm biased.

I've also FINALLY done the sensible thing and ordered a job lot of poster tubes. Can't quite believe it's taken me this long. The double trips to the Post Office - one to get a tube, the other to post the print off - are just getting on my wick, so, at last, I've done something about it! Duh.

The new Wolves are already up in my Folksy shop, along with a Bumper Deal to get all three prints for a bargainous 35 squid, saving a tenner on the individual prices. I am generosity itself. If you'd like to take a gander, that would be grand, ta veh much.

Sunset, 4.26pm Yesterday

Taken from the printroom. I don't really get to see sunsets these days, as my studio is at the back of the house and faces east. I just caught this one as I was cleaning up my screenprinting mess yesterday, downing tools and grabbing my phone to go capture it. Beautiful oranges.

Blown Bulbs

From the Gocco

Hehehehe. That's More Like It.

Tin Tastic

I bought this tin waaaaaay before Christmas, mainly because I just love M&S' Crimbo biscuit tins, but also because I wanted to stuff my face with the shortbread inside. I discovered, t'other day while searching for lovely Gocco prints, that this was designed by the amazing Lab Partners (their photo above). I've LOVED their stuff for a while, so I was rather chuffed to find out it was their work. The only difference is that, IRL, the tin does not have any blue-skinned people on it, they're off-white. Granted, they do stand out better from the background now, but it makes me slightly uncomfy none the less....

I really do need to curb my tin habit for next Christmas; I have them coming out the wazoo right now.

The Eyes Have It

End of Week 2

Locco for Gocco (groan)

Last March, Lovely Cat was selling her Gocco machine, and, having wanted one for AGES, I just jumped at the chance to buy it from her. Ten months later, it was still in the box. Not for want of enthusiasm, mark you, just lack of spare time.

The Gocco works as a kind of a cross between screenprinting and stamping. I was reading an interview with Forever Foxed last week, and was astonished to discover that, unlike screenprinting, you can print more than one colour at once. "Eh?", I thought to myself. "How does that work, then?" The answer is, instead of pulling the ink towards you through the screen with a squeegee, you press the ink down through the screen. As there's no "drag", you can use more than one colour at a time, provided they're not too close together. The interview with Forever Foxed I linked to above has more details on the process. Do go take a read; it's informative without being too technical and confusing.

So, after getting all inspired and worked up about all the lovely Gocco-ness around at the moment, I thought I'd crack out the poor, neglected Gocco to print up a couple of ideas I had for Valentine's cards. Here are the results:













For a first attempt, I'm pretty pleased. I was a little nervous about the process, but I've learned so much just from making these two images and I'm just raring to do more. The Riso inks made specifically for the Gocco machines are oil based, which I'm not too keen on, to be honest. (Brings back too many memories of screen printing at uni and having to constantly wipe and wipe and wipe my screens down with white spirit and newspaper to get them clean, temporarily obliterating my fingerprints in the process. They use water based inks these days, health and safety and all that.)  I might have a go using the water based acrylic inks I use at the print studio to see if I get on better with those.

My kit didn't come with any ink blocker gubbins, so I've bought a sheet of crafting foam which I'm going to experiment pairing with double sided tape and see if that works as a means of keeping my colours definitely separate.

I've had a couple of ideas for new prints, but they've already got extravagantly out of hand, so I think those particular ones will need a trip to the print room. I need to get back there, anyway, as it appears I'm all out of Wolves, Woodsmen and Grandmas. Rocking.

If you fancy a Gocco Valentine's (anniversary, just because) card, I've put some up in my Folksy shop here.

Muggle-Style Vintage Travel

Hogwarts at Night by Caroline Hadilaksono. Gawjus. See more here.

Going Up in the World

These are a bit flash, aren't they? I think they must be part of the Old Market/London Road regeneration that's just started. They were putting it in this Tuesday, I took a snap yesterday afternoon of the completed thang.




Shame it's Bardsley's, not Bardsley, though.

Move Over Cassette Lord

And This is Progress

A little bit of sheep surfing. Like you do.

This is Brighton

This is Brighton from Caleb Yule on Vimeo.
I started shooting not long after my thirteenth birthday, and what began as a test, turned into a project that would take 9-10 months of on-and-off shooting to complete. I shot over 45,000 stills including reshoots and eventually decided that I had most of the footage I had set out to get for my film.
Shot as a series of stills on a Sony A230. Tilt-Shift effect applied in AE. Edited in FCP.
The music is by the wonderful 'Cinematic Orchestra'.
The film itself is dedicated to Rob MacDonald who sadly passed away this year.

Gorgeous. 

End of Week 1

Annnnd here we go again. I didn't order one of these last year (not sure why, maybe I just didn't see it in time?) but in 2010 I blogged my CIA calendar pages every Monday. I tried to do something similar last year with my Monday Meander, but I think I only got to about 4 or 5 entires before that fell by the wayside. It's much easier to post a picture of something that's already on your desk than having to go out for a walk, take an interesting-ish photo, come back and blog that!

Anyway, so here is the beginning of the CIA Calendar 2012 Monday blogging. And as it's Olympics year (yawn) it's all on the theme of sports and the like:

Vintage Polish Soap Packaging

Lovely old Polish soap packaging from PanTuNieStat. See more here.

Offside Explained

Blummin' hilarious. This is one of 29 new 50p pieces designed for the Olympics and Paralympics. Each one commemorates one of the sports to be contested during the games this summer and were designed by members of the public after the Royal Mint launched a competition to find the 29 designs in January 2009. Read all about this and all the other designs here, although there aren't any others as chortlesome as this one!

"How Lovely" Is The Main Reason I Hate Talking About What I Do

via @stubbleagent, aka Sam Copeland. The image is by Posy Simmonds, and she should know.

White Room + Kids + Stickers = Awesome

I cannot tell you how much I want to go play in this room. This is an installation in the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art created by artist Yayoi Kusama, who, over the course of two weeks, gave children visiting the museum thousands of coloured dot stickers and invited them to help her transform the original white space into a riot of colour. I love the little caterpillar-type bug someone has made at the top of the third image down.

The installation is entitled "The Obliteration Room" and is part of Yayoi Kusama’s Look Now, See Forever exhibition, which runs until 12th March. (She has such awesome hair, too.) Read more here.

Year Long Exposure

How beautiful is this photo? It was created by Michael Chrisman, Canadian freelance editorial and art photographer, and is of the Toronto skyline. You should be able to click to embiggen it. There's a lovely article written by Jim Rankin of thestar.com all about Michael's photo and his process here, but I just want to put my favourite paragraph down here as it sums it up so beautifully:

"Think of it as a time-lapse painting. The physical progress of the sun leaves a streak that shifts minutely each day. The daily on and off of building lights leaves only light, not dark. Once exposed, there is no way to undo it."

Lovely. It's inspiring me to get my Fisheye camera out and maybe even my SLR. As long as I remember to take the lens cap off, right?

**I've just seen that Michael Chrisman is on Twitter here and is selling prints of the photo in an Etsy shop here. Might just have to get me one when I get paid.