Crafting History

Here are some photos of the process of making my piece for the Crafting History exhibition that opens at the Craft Centre on 14th July. The tenants were asked to respond to the Collecting History exhibition that is currently on at the Craft Centre as part of our 30 year anniversary celebrations. I chose to create an intricate papercut depicting 18 fish representing our 18 studios and celebrating the past life of the building as a fishmarket. All the fish are native to British waters and many would have been served up here at some point (except the Pike!). As part of the exhibition the public sent in words that they feel represent the Craft and Design Centre. Each fish contains one of these words. I enjoyed the challenge of making something away from my usual practice and it has proved really satisfying. Come down on Saturday 2-4 to see all the work made plus ceramics by Carys Davies and help us celebrate!

FutureEverything Workshops

Hello! I'm way behind on posts, I've been super-busy running, cycling, printing and teaching workshops! Here are some photos from the HANDMADE workshop at Victoria Baths. It was a super-fun, busy, hectic day!

More photos on my Facebook page! The next workshop I'm running is on the 30th June at Fred Aldous for the Ministry of Craft. In August I'm running some workshops for 10-15 year olds, so if you know anyone who'd like to have a go at printing in the summer holidays, send them my way! Details here: Craft Academy

Papercutting at The Whitworth

Last week I ran another paper cutting workshop at The Whitworth for the Crafternoon Tea Adult Learning Programme. I learnt a lot from the last one I did and had all-new cutting mats, fixed blade scalpels and lots of templates for people to use! I tried to keep things a bit simpler too and everyone produced some lovely cards and seemed very happy, so that was good!

I've got a busy month of workshops next month, some for the Ministry of Craft and one for FutureEverything, which is a collaboration with jewellery designer/maker Julia Roy-Williams (Wonderhaus). We'll be taking inspiration from the beautiful surroundings of the Victoria Baths and using a lasercutter to produce stencils for screen printing. Exciting stuff!

Not On the High Street!

Trumpet! I'm super-excited to let you all know that my Not On the High Street site is now live! Have a little looksee here.

I've just added my Bouncy Bunny t-shirt to the site too!



P.s, Happy Mother's Day to one and all x

Mother's Day Offer

It's Mother's day in just over a week and to celebrate I'm doing a little deal on my hand-printed aprons and tea towels! This offer is only running in my bricks-and-mortar shop and the stock is very limited, so come on down and show your mother some love!

Gone foragin'.

A couple of Sundays ago I went for a rustle in the undergrowth of Fletcher Moss Gardens with Andrew. I had booked us on Cracking Good Food's Late Winter Forage with Jesper Launder as a Valentine's treat. I am plus de romantique, nes pas!

It was a great experience, Jesper is so knowledgeable, I could listen to him all day! I would highly recommend going on one of the next sessions running, I felt really inspired. And got to gobble down delicious fresh mushrooms with scrambled eggs at the end!

I didn't think we'd find much, but we got a right haul, including Scarlet Elf Cup mushrooms, Velvet Shank mushrooms, wild garlic, sorrell, bitter cress and 3 cornered leek. (Disclaimer, I may not have remembered the names correctly!)

It was lovely to be out and about all day long, you'll definitely find me furtling in a hedgerow in the near future!

Giveaway! Win some hand printed goodness...

Ok, you don't get owt for nowt, so I'm running a little competition in exchange for some help with getting the funding I previously posted about. Up for grabs is one of my best selling Owl print Amercian Apparel sweatshirts, in XS, S or L, plus 5 runners-up prizes of handprinted treats, including badges, notebooks and tote bags!

This takes 1 MINUTE!!! You will be helping me receive funding to progress my business and thus you will become a Good Egg.

1. All you need to do is follow this link & vote for Nell in Fund101! http://www.enterprisenation.com/funding-applications/nell/

2. Have a little read of my Fund101 application if you like!

3. Click where it says SIGN UP on the left.

4. Type your name, email address and password. (there is an option to click if you don’t wish to receive any emails from Enterprise nation! They just need emails to make sure makers aren’t voting for themselves!!!)

5. Click VOTE

6. Once you’ve voted, LEAVE A COMMENT about my work at the bottom of my Fund101 application and LOG YOUR VOTE NUMBER AND EMAIL ADDRESS THERE TOO so I can contact you! (you’ll see other comments there already)

I will be choosing the winners at random from the comments once I’ve reached the 325 votes needed to receive my funding! If I don't get the funding there can be no winner, so please help me to spread the word!

I will contact the winners and announce them on my blog, facebook, twitter etc!

GOOD LUCK!