New technique. New jewellery!

The last few weeks I've been using some new techniques for me. I've wanted to work with wood for jewellery for ages, I've done some laser cutting and some screen printing. Now I'm on to painting. Ideally I'd like to be cutting shapes from screen printed wood but its near on impossible to cut circles with a scroll saw and it's all about circles for me.

So here is my latest creation using paint on pre cut wooden circles. As always I'm sticking to the bright colours and adding some other bits and pieces in there like coloured o-rings (love these!)

Ill hopefully have some in the shops soon but if not they will debut at the St Peter's Street Christmas Market. More on that soon!

Please let me know what you think.

Hot Hot Hot! Market Weekend

It's been a while since I last had a stall at a market but i've only just uploaded the photos with the madness that has been work recently. So here are some pics of my stall and my products from the I Make Fun Stuff Maritime Weekender Market on 18th and 19th August. It was a very hot few days!

Some of these products aren't available in the shops currently so if you're interested just comment or pop me an email to hello@hellopushkin.co.uk

Doodling patterns

It's been a busy few weeks and so I've been missing in action! Apologies to all as I'd just got back into blogging again after too long an absence.

I don't know that work is going to get any less busy, we've been preparing for this year's intake of students. They start on timetable in just over a week so things won't quieten down so I need to pull my finger out and keep the momentum up.

The picture shows some random doodling I did on brown paper to wrap some presents in. It was good to do as I've felt a bit blank for ideas and just some patterns on a page have reminded me to mess around once in a while. There will be more to come!

Suffolk Sketchup

Are you local??? Do you live in Suffolk and would like to meet up with illustrators and designers to chat, have a drink, compare notes, get new ideas and inspiration?

Then pop over to the Suffolk Sketchup Blog and find out about where and when the first Sketchup is on!

New Things!

Do you remember those green triangles you used to get in tins of Quality Street at Christmas? Noisette triangles they were and they were my favourite! Maybe that is because of my deep rooted love for all things geometric, maybe i'm just off on some mad ramble but whatever it means, my newest addition to Hello Pushkin is triangles.

I have been having a whale (is it that whale or the other one?) of a time playing with screen printing onto wood, oh yes my friends wood! I can't tell you how happy it made me. After I had printed patterns on to wood I needed to cut them out in some way so I went and got myself a new bit of kit. It was like being in DT at school all over again. But better!

I have so far made 3 of these but there will be more to come. As soon as I have finished decorating our front room/dining room. More about that soon (i hope!) Until then, these are available in my Folksy and Etsy shops and at the upcoming St Peter's Street Maritime Weekender market in Ipswich on Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th August. Pray for good weather for us! 

Printing and Iron-On Vinyl

This weekend I had the house to myself. Chris was away helping 8 of his work buddies do the Oxfam Trailwalker Challenge. They walked 62 miles in 30 hours!!! Chris was part of the support crew feeding them, looking after them and motivating them to continue. He really enjoyed himself and it left me time to get on with some artwork and play around with new things.

The images below are of a jersey scarf I printed probably this time last year with the black geometric crystal form pattern. The print went wrong because of some badly mixed print paste (Grrrr! my own fault) and some smudges from mucky fingers (again my fault) so I hadn't looked at it since. But the want to print scarves came back and I decided to carry on and use it as a prototype.

I'm sorry about the bad light. My studio is in my basement so there is no natural light and the spot halogen lights have been placed at very odd points in the ceiling, but it does give you an idea of the print as a length.

A slightly lighter shot and here you can see the colours properly and the small gold triangles which are the iron-on vinyl. This is cool stuff! I did a test wash of a sample I did previously and washed it at 40 degrees. No problems!

Finally a bit of a detail shot so you can see the colours in their full glory and the iron-on gold vinyl. Sorry (again) for the shadow in the bottom. They are just quick snaps I like to take as I go along.

The print turned out lovely and I was really pleased witht he colour combinations, but little did I know that sewing jersey is an absolute arse! Not happy! I am going to try some interlock jersey and hope the same annoying issues don't occur with that too. Any help???

Totally New Bags

I apologise for the title, it was just so obvious I had to go with it.

I realised that I posted some taster photos of some screen printing I did but never posted the finished products. How foolish of me!

I've gone back to playing with layering colours which I absolutely love. It's why I love screen printing so much which first began when I did my National Diploma 11 years ago. I now teach on that course and my fascination with shape and colour hasn't wained. Only increased! It seems to subconsciously creep into my work when I don't even know it. 

I've only printed a few of these bags to see if they sell. If you like them, i'll do more and in different colours too!

Available from my Etsy and Folksy shops now!