'Endangered Species'

So it has been forever since I last managed to post! Crafting has taken a bit of a back seat to the inevitable xmas preparation, although some long term projects are finally reaching completion as xmas gifts! I will post a run down of these after the big day to avoid spoiling the surprise!

In the meantime, today I accidentally found myself at a new exhibition...........

I had a work meeting at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and on my way out decided to check out the new exhibition by Donna Wilson which is currently inhabiting the upstairs space of the main building. The work Endangered Species consists of a collection of knitted animals, trees, clouds and foliage creating a completely fabric world. Alongside this there are paintings, ceramic plates, screen prints and knitted direction signs. The knitted trees and clouds are amazing when put together to make a 'forest' and the creatures within are in turns cute and creepy. All of the work in the show is for sale and I had to force myself out of the shop before I succumbed to some of the gorgeous blankets (if someone would like to lend me £50 I wont say no!)

A few photos of the main exhibition (apologies for the crappy phone camera)

I was also drawn into the frankly awesome YSP shop, where I could quite happily fill my house with arty tat! I found an amazing cassette tape rubber stamp which had to come home with me. I have a minor rubber stamp obsession, and this is my favourite so far! Just a shame I've already wrapped my xmas presents as it would make great labels!

Movember

Last year, to join in with the Movember cause I designed a felt moustache brooch to sell in aid of the charity. I'm doing the same this year, with the addition of some new colours!

These are available to buy over at my shop, with 50p from each sale going towards Movember. Stupid expression optional!

Bonfires burning bright, pumpkin faces in the night......

So Halloween finally came around. As I mentioned in my previous post I ran out of time for pre-halloween crafting (so much for the sugar skull wall hangings I had planned for my Rescued Rags shop!). However, I did manage to put together a homemade/vintage halloween party!

I always go slightly crazy on the halloween baking front, which has become a bit of a tradition. As we were having a party this year I went a little cupcake mad!

Bloody Brain cupcakes (from the Lilli Vanilli cookbook used for the Vampire Bite cupcakes). I was a little bit dubious about how good these would look as Ive never really attempted piping icing before, but I was very happy with the end result. They also went down a storm with party guests.

Chocolate Graveyard cakes with gingerbread tombstones (again, Lilli Vanilli) but with my own take on chocolate frosting, replacing fancy American frosting with good old fashioned chocolate buttercream.

'Ghost Cakes' - one of my housemates at uni used to make these, and they have become part of the halloween baking tradition. Really easy fondant sheets and a few blobs of black piping icing.

And gingerbread spiders complete with web plate :)

I also managed to make my costume this year. Halloween has always been a bit of an inspiration for me and an opportunity for me to dress up like an idiot. Previous years have seen Poison Ivy, Warhammer Orks and Zombie Morrisey, but this year I opted for the Corpse Bride. In my terms this was a pretty last minute choice (I usually start planning months in advance) but I think I managed to pull it off pretty well, despite having to explain to several trick or treaters that I wasn't in fact a smurf!

The dress is a vintage shop find which I managed to get for £10! Such a gorgeous 1950s shape, but sadly not quite big enough to zip up all the way at the back. With the help of my equally crafty mother, I added an extra panel to the back to make it fit. I also added some darts in the skirt to lift it up in places to show the net underneath(I have been dead after all!). I also added some beige lace around the neckline to make it a little more like the corpse bride's dress.

The veil was made from scratch, using a pound world alice band and 2 vintage scarves with fabric flowers to disguise the stitching.

Add on some blue tights/sleeves and some blue facepaint and I was good to go! I also dyed my hair blue for the occasion (cant stand wearing a wig for any length of time) but this may have been taking things a little too far!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Odds and Sods

After a mega busy couple of weeks, I'm finally back to craft central!

As is tradition, all of my best laid plans have gone terribly wrong and I have managed to run out of time for Halloween crafting! Halloween is my absolute favourite celebration (my boss described me as a recreational pagan!) and I always go massively overboard on my halloween crafting, decoration, costume, food, the lot! I had meant to make a load of halloween things but have simply not had the time to do it. I have been up to lots of interesting arty/crafty things over the last few weeks though:

1. My momma came to visit for the weekend, and we went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the Jaume Plensa exhibition AGAIN! I have been to see this at least 4 times now, and I still enjoy it. The massive metal sculptures made up of different lettering are amazing. There were a few new sculpture that I hadn't seen before, and a new exhibition of drawings and animations by Rachel Goodyear that I liked a lot.

2. I did manage to do some Halloween crafting and have made a bunch of felt 'day of the dead' sugar skulls. They will be attached to ribbon for hanging when I manage to grab a moment!

3. The Halloween decorations went up! I tried to keep the madness to one corner of the room, but it has gradually spread out over the whole downstairs of the house. Most of the decorations are from various pound shops (and the now defunct hyper extra value in Newport) . The bat lights are from the current Sainsbury's range for a fiver!

Light Night / Steam Punk Market

I've just enjoyed a rather hectic and exciting weekend of arty doings for Leeds Light Night which has taken over the city.

I have to admit that I knew nothing of Light Night until I was given a flyer at last weekends Alternative Comics Fair and was asked to go along by a friend. There were so many events happening at once that I felt rather flustered as I wanted to see everything RIGHT NOW! Luckily common sense prevailed and we managed to pick some things to go and see.

Sadly I forgot to take my camera with me, so I apologise for the lack of photos with this post!

Particular favourites for me were the Craft Garden in the old victorian cells underneath the town hall, which had turned the cells into different crafted worlds. My favourite was the autumn/urban room complete with crack fox rooting through an upturned bin, knitted mice and snails and demonic creatures with red glowing eyes. Well worth the 20 minute queue!

We also experienced the Caravanatron - a Barbarella / Sleeper themed installation. After a 45 minute queue in the frankly freezing cold each participant was given a silver pill (a Smartie) and indiviually entered the caravan. Inside was a silver room, where you lay on a silver bed/cushion and were strapped in to experience a projection about the stars and a vibrating bed.

We also got to see the takeaway poetry van operated by Morely Literature Festival , paper nests in the Art Library, an 'art trail' across the city using flashing buttons as beacons (mine fell off at the Caravanatron), free cocoa on the 18th floor of West Riding House and a knitted interactive keyboard from 'Knit a Bear Face'. Some of the events we fancied were fully booked by the time we got to them, so pre-booking is a must next time!

On Saturday it was also the Leeds Steampunk Market in Headingly. This was a tie in to the Semaphore Office which appeared as part of Light Night (although we were unable to find it!).

Loads of fantastic stalls full of shiny things, comics, memorabilia, costumes and of course tea and cake. I was horribly underdressed compared to the good gents and ladies of the market, but was complemented on my 'fox fur' scarf several times!

I managed to miss out on the goggles I wanted as they had sold out by the time I'd gone to the cash machine (Note to self: get money before attending market!) but I did managed to come away with this awesome stuff:

" Kill your Velocity, Not an Air Kraken" poster

"milk 2 sugars" and octopus patches

and this amazing leather cuff (technically for my boyfriend but still awesome)

I have also been trying to craft in between all of these arty doings, so there will hopefully be some Halloween decorations appearing in the next few days.

Leeds 3rd Alternative Comics Fair

On 1st October it was the 3rd Leeds Alternative Comics fair at Nation of Shopkeepers and like a good nerd I went along! I have managed to miss the last 2 of these, so was really keen to go along and check out the local comics on offer.

Despite it being the hottest day for quite some time (vest tops in October. IN YORKSHIRE! What is going on?!?) it was reasonably busy, and everyone seemed to be enjoying the comicy goodness. I had a bit of a splurge and got some really awesome comics I thought it would be worth sharing!

'The Steampunk Literary Review' by Dr Geof which features fictional reviews and adverts of all things Steampunk. And smut. Lots of smut! My Favourite is the 'REDUCE YOUR VELOCITY - SAVE A SKY CRAKEN' poster!

'Hermit' by Andrew Waugh about a guy who goes crazy in the modern world and tries to escape to the wilderness (I mainly bought this as the font cover looks a lot like my loveable housemate who is also keen on a little hermitude)

'Find Comet Hit Comet Watch Comet Sleep' by Hugh 'Shug' Raine about the end of the world if it were to happen in Dewsbury!

Some gorgeous hand printed cards from Hello Memo

And this little guy! He has a moustache and boss eyes...whats not to love!

Bananarama

Yet more baking!

In my office, there is a tradition of having a positive ending to our weekly staff meetings. Sometimes this takes the form of Pictionary but more often than not its rather cake-based. I was warned before I made my first cake to avoid bananas as our finance guy is allergic to them. So it was decided amongst the rest of the office that I should make a non-banana banana cake!

The cake itself is a chocolate tray bake from Beautiful Baking by Jane Asher. This was my first 'baking' cookery book and has some really good simple recipes for cakes, biscuits and random stuff like crumpets. Its pretty much my go-to book for easy but yummy cake.

I then chopped the corners and middle section off to make a basic banana shape (or wonky moon as by housemate described it!)

I then coloured some ready-made icing yellow (using trusty Dr Oetker) and covered the cake to make the 'inside' of the banana. I forgot to buy jam to stick the icing to the cake, so improvised with golden syrup!

I wasn't happy with the overall bananary-ness of it, so made some half peeled skin using a darker shade of yellow icing. I folded back the tops of the 'skin' pieces to make it look more realistic. Some scored lines down the banana and skin later and tah dah! One novelty cake!

This is my very first novelty cake and I am unbelievably proud of myself! Whether the finance guy will feel the same way is another matter!

Interior Lighting

I was invited to the opening of the Interior Lighting exhibition on wednesday. The exhibition features work by very talented employees of the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield and has a wide range of artwork on show. Some of my friends were exhibiting work, so I had no excuse not to go!

The gallery building is almost as impressive as the exhibition itself, and had all of its original wooden pillars and woodwork as additional features to the room. It is round the corner from the shiny new Hepworth building as part of the dock regeneration, we can only hope that it stays a gallery/performance space and isn't turned into flats!

The exhibition had a variety of photography, illustration, textiles, paintings and installation which was displayed using the natural alcoves and structures of the space. Lighting was kept to a minimum, creating pools of light round each piece of work.

Anyway, I'll let the work do the talking! Here is a selection of my highlights of the show:

Tribute to Martin Creed!

Beautifully printed textiles by Hayley McColl

awesome wool installation (my favourite!)

"Food Porn"

Painting by Rachael Gorton

Fab bird illustrations! Sadly the lighting prevented me from getting a clearer photo, but the sequence shows a series of birds performing magic tricks!

The Interior Lighting Exhibition is running until Sunday 2nd October 12 - 5pm so if you are near Wakefield this weekend go and check it out!