Saints Summer Street Fair

On Sunday 27th June St Peters Street in Ipswich will be hosting the first Saints Summer Street Fair as part of the Ip-Art festival. I Make Fun Stuff have gathered together local artists and makers to sell their wares and help prromote the independent shops and businesses on St Peters Street and St Nicholas Street. A thriving part of Ipswich town centre that is often neglected by shoppers using the main street.

The shops and cafes will be open so you can explore these unique places and stalls and find yourself some goodies and tasty food.

Fingers crosses the weather is good for us!!

The Royal Opera House likes tea

Yesterday i had a phone call from my good fries Cathy at LoveOne. She had a man in the shop who was buying her out of my tea cup badges and wanted 15-20 more!! Luckily I was just on my way to the printers to pick up the posters for the Saints Summer Street Fair, which is 2 minutes down the road from the shop.




So off I popped, fresh posters in hand (more about those later) and tins full of badges. After a catch up about fair progress and a good gossip Will Tucket of The Royal Opera House returned to buy 34 tea cup badges and a tea cup necklace! It came to £94.99! All at once! Blam! Here you go! Crikey that was exciting.

I asked him why he wanted that many and he told us about the play he is showing at the new Jerwood Centre, Dance East at the Ipswich Waterfront. It's called "Pleasure's Progress: A tale of sex, wigs, wags and bawds". The tea cups were for his cast members and the necklace for his assistant as a little in joke. In the production the main female character is interrupted by her husband while in bed with her lover and asks him for a cup of tea to distract him! How appropriate my badges were for little favours. Sometimes your work is just in the right place at the right time!

Re-Opened Etsy Shop!

Hang out the bunting I have good news!

I have re-opened my Etsy shop and stocked it full of stuff. In celebration every order for the next week gets a free badge, just state which one you want in the "message to seller" box when you order!

Yay! It's good news!

Cuppa Tea And Cake Etsy Shop

A new arrival

This weekend we added a new member to our previously 2 person family. Her name is Milly.


I've had cats all my life so when Chris and I moved into our own home it was only a matter of time before we added a small feline bundle of fluff to the family. I must say our house really feels like a home now, I'm used to having an animal around to call on for strokes and attention, I used to live with a dog but those animal lovers out there will know there is a big differences between cats and dogs.


Milly settled in really fast, 30 seconds of hiding under a blanket and that was it, we were overwhelmed with purring and rubs with no limb left unattended! She has a lovely habit of rubbing you on the cheek, like a face butt really, very cute and she purrs like a trooper.

So now she's found her feet she's zipping round the house getting into all kinds of mischief and mewing most of the time. She doesn't like not being able to see what you're doing and has to be involved in everything. And when she does snooze, only a lap will do! She's lovely and very cute!

Yum!

Cheese scone triumph.

Booty and Goodies!

Goodness me, I do love vintage finds! We went to our local car boot on Sunday. I think my expectations were a bit high, I haven't been to one in years and I think I had forgotten how much tat people have to sell! Okay okay, I know, "one persons' trash is another persons' treasure" but really, there is so really not nice stuff. We were walking round and I saw a young girl walk past with carrier bags of what looked like interesting stuff and a couple of old leather bags. I said to Chris "I think she's got all the good stuff already" but I shouldn't speak too soon! I managed to get the little leather suitcase in the bottom picture for £3 and a big pile of stamps and embroidery transfers, also for £3. Lovely!


Then on Thursday my friend Cathy of LoveOne and I went out into the Suffolk countryside to find some old furniture for the shop. It was wonderful! We wandered round some shops selling vintage furniture and garden stuff, had a cup of tea and a cheese scone, or a cream tea and managed to get a few goodies. I got that lovely enameled jug with my gorgeous Lupins in that is sitting in our fireplace. Wow I love old stuff!! My eyes glaze over with excitement when it comes to vintage goodies and clothes and furniture. Happy happy days!

New beautiful prints

I recently invested in my first permanent screen for printing one of my drawings. I've had it for a few weeks actually but hadn't got round to trying it out mainly because i've been in a bit of a creative black hole!

Luckily a good friend of mine Sarah Wade gave me some very good advice, "just draw she said, doodle and see what happens and don't worry whether it is good or bad". Well it worked! Also watching the great series Mad Men on dvd was quite inspiring too. So my brain woke up and so did my enthusiasm, so this afternoon I gave my new screen it's first try out. And oh my is it good!! Chris even gave a little gasp when I lifted it up to reveal the first print.


On the left is the results hanging on my washing line in the beautiful May sunshine. It was ruddy hot in Suffolk today I can tell you! Lucky really cos the fabric flew over itself but thankfully the print had dried.

I must also include a picture of the great squeegee holder my dad made for us. It's got different slots for different squeegees as I have some skinnier ones to use on my new screen as well as the big ones for traditional screens and it is so super handy! I really needed something to prop my squeegee on while i moved the screen and this is the supreme tool for doing it! Thanks Dad!

I'll be doing some more prints on this length of calico in different colours and probably different prints so i'll post pictures as I go along.