Rainy day.

How to build a city.

I love this work by at swim-two-birds. Collage made from paper trash, then embroidered. Beautiful.

Wrap yourselves up in love.

Link furoshiki are still for sale at Plastica, Etsy and Loopto.

Retna wall.

One of the things I kept from a magazine was this photo of a wall in a parking lot. I thought it was quite beautiful and found out more about it here. This work is by Retna as part of ‘Wallworks’ – a project inviting a select group of graffiti artists to create a series of murals in the parking lot of the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas in December 2010.

Little seeds.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted something. I guess I’ve been pretty distracted by various other things – ongoing projects, clearing, reorganising, reviewing, school, impending arrival of a new baby and so on. Yesterday I was throwing out some old magazines and found a few things of interest which I cut out and stuck into my sketch book. Things that interest me but I can’t always pin-point why, so I stick them in my notebook for future reference. I realised how liberating it is having a ‘physical’ sketch book to make notes in, draw and stick things down. Unlike posting things on a blog, where the desire is to share and have a ‘conversation’ about something (with that underlying pressure of presenting things that you hope will also be of interest to other people), in my sketchbooks I have complete freedom, knowing that I will be the only one to look through them. Unfortunately I’m not as much of an avid sketchbooker as I used to be, in fact more often than not these days I almost entirely forget about them. But when I get the chance to look through and review my visual thought process – in between many pages that leave me wondering why – I can always find something to inspire me. Those little ideas, little experiments, little seeds of things to come.

Happy Christmas & here’s to a great 2011!

Print Textile Festival of cocca 2010

Photos from www.cocca.ne.jp.

Recently I sent some work to Tokyo, to my favourite printed textile store, cocca. They were inviting work for a summer competition: ’Print Textile Festival of cocca 2010′. I feel very excited and honoured to discover that I have been awarded two prizes for my work – a Jury Prize, selected by Eguti Hiroshi (representative of a bookshop UTRECHT in Nakameguro) and cocca Special Prize “seeing Japan from abroad”.

There will be an exhibition, from Tuesday 24 to Sunday 29 of August, displaying the prize winners works at their shop in Daikanyama. If you’re in Tokyo please check it out!

Special thanks to my friend Jun for helping me out with translating all correspondence. x

At last … LINK is officially announced!

After lots of work, we are very excited to officially announce the launch of our limited edition furoshiki!

Two original designs, hand-printed in Japan on 100% cotton. Please take a look at our site: http://thelinkcollective.com/.

Keitaro Sugihara

I just discovered some beautiful work by Keitaro Sugihara.

Tokyo Project 22

Coming soon …

Recently I’ve been very busy working on a new project that we’ve named ‘LINK’.

Established with a good friend in Tokyo, LINK is a collective that produces collaborative textiles and design from around the world. With so many things to prepare and consider, while juggling work and our busy lives as parents, it’s been a long time coming …

but finally, very soon, LINK’s first product will be available – our limited edition furoshiki (traditional Japanese wrapping cloth) in two designs – one design by Hennie Haworth (a British illustrator) and the other is by me!

We will soon announce the launch of our new website showing when and where you can find our furoshiki, in the meantime please join LINK on facebook for updates!

Tokyo Project 21

The beauty of skill

Preparing and cutting red leather for gloves.

Hermes is not quite my style, however today I did enjoy looking at their site – especially where they show video clips of their craftspeople working on certain products. There is something so satisfying about watching a skilled pair of hands working, almost automatically, methodically and seamlessly on something.

Drawings

Some drawings inspired by an exercise found in a Mind Workout book that I was browsing recently during Aya’s piano lesson.

Work in progress

We just received a photo from our printer in Tokyo showing our new project in progress … I’m very excited. I’ll announce more about it very soon!

Marimekko

What can I say … I’ve always loved Marimekko, but these things … well, they’re beautiful! Both porcelain plate and teapot are designed by Sami Ruotsalainen for the In Good Company collection.

Tokyo Project 20

Tokyo Project 19

Tokyo Project 18

Tokyo Project 17