Ben Cooper

A good friend of mine, Ben Cooper, moved from London to Sydney a few years ago and is now working as a senior digital strategist at The Population, a digital communication company. To my recent discovery he also takes great photos and I saw these on his blog this week.
My favorite is the gate.

Tamarama bodies

Moon tree

The gate

Egg Press

I had the good fortune to meet Tess Darrow at the NSS who works with Egg Press in Portland, Oregon.
They are celebrating their 10th year of producing handcrafted letterpress greeting cards on antique presses. In addition to cards, they produce screen printed baby tees and design and print memorable custom wedding and birth announcements.

The pieces that grabbed my attention where the adorable stitch kits for kids. They come in 3 fabulous animals and have easy to follow instructions. two pieces of hand-screen printed canvas, ready to stitch by hand or machine.

I also love the father's day cards-they made me chuckle.

Pat's Poppy

My mother sent me an update on the poppy I showed last week and commented on how big it's grown. How beautiful is the inside !! Must be all the incredible sunshine London has been getting.

New work

Inspired by my house drawing I'm going to be doing a series of architectural illustrations and variations of these will be available at my store.

More from my mother

My mother has always collected recipes thus her amazing ability to make the yummiest meals. So, while cleaning through piles we found her collection and on the reverse piece of a 1960's Sunday Times page I discovered these wonderful fashion illustrations.
I find it interesting that I have been playing with line drawings and restricting the amount of color I add and these drawings do that so well.

I love the grids and note the 4th line down that shows "nightwear". Fancy wearing that-
"Crisp but dreamy; what most want from nightwear"-don't we after all !!!

Yellow Owl Workshop

Just before I went to London I spent a happy few hours at the National Stationary Show and met some wonderful designers.
Here's a selection of a few that caught my eye.

Husband and wife team Christine Schmidt and Evan Gross run Yellow Owl Workshop in San Francisco. They create hand crafted limited edition paper goods and items for the home using non-toxic water-based inks and 100% PCW recycled paper.
Christine does all the illustrations and design while Evan handles everything else.

I love the minimal line, splashes of color and slightly retro feel.

Jamaican postcards

"Jamaican band play calypso, quiet mento and also digging songs"

"Liza carry basket on head"

"Day dah light on' me wan' go home"

"Carry me ackee gone o' Linstead Market, not a quattie wort' sell..."

"Bongo! Bill beat the drum again"

In June 1962 my mother visited Jamaica and bought these fantastic postcards.
Fortunately she never got round to sending them so 44 years later we can enjoy them.
They're by a painter called Beverly Wasile who on further research painted similar subjects in the Bahamas.
I particularly like the titles.