BUST Craftacular, Bethnal Green

What a market!

My first time with BUST Craftacular and while I started out a little nervous, it was fab!  It helped having some friendly and familiar faces - Claireabellemakes, Ladybird Likes, Ceridwyn Hazelchild - around to have a quick chat and natter with.  I also had my awesome sister and her husband helping me out and keeping me company, which I wouldn't of liked to be without!

 My 'Bookshops of London' and 'Amsterdam' ranges got lots of lovely attention.

 New and old products alike were out for all to see.

There was so much going on at this market, I'm sure people made a day of it and enjoyed everything that there was on offer - market stalls, workshops and a cafe for refreshments.  Well I hope people made a day of it!

There was a £3 entrance charge - if you were in the first 100 in, then you got a free goodie bag! - I was unsure what to make of this charge, as I've not done a market with one before, but it didn't seem to hinder people, and the market seemed busy nearly all day - winner.

Contact me at charlotte_vallance@hotmail.com for more details.

For me this market was a success, and, it even got me into gear to produce some much needed flyers for my bespoke watercolour house illustrations.

The above cheesy photo is a still from a video that the lovely Claire from Claireabellemakes put together!  You can watch the whole thing on her YouTube page here: https://www.youtube.com

Did you see me at the market, or were you selling?  Share your thoughts and links below if you were!

An Amsterdam Home

Many of you are familiar with my Amsterdam screen prints, lets be honest, they are one of my favourite pieces and I do tend to use the illustration on quite a few bits...screen prints, cushions, greeting cards, pocket mirrors...the list goes on!

This request, was for a thank you present.  I'm a huge fan of a bit of travelling, the odd holiday etc (well who isn't?), and this client had stayed with a friends parents whilst in Amsterdam and commissioned me to illustrate their home as a thank you for having her and a few friends stay.  Such a lovely, thoughtful idea for a gift!

Cushions, cushions, cushions!

With the success of last years Amsterdam cushions, I've done a second run.  This time I have opted for a thicker material and gone with a dark, navy blue as well as the bright, peacock blue - a nice contrast I think.

You can get them via my Etsy shop at www.charlottevallance.etsy.com

And as a last minute decision I attempted to print a limited edition of 4 in red (slightly larger in size with an added triangle border).  But unfortunately they haven't all worked out so they won't be going in the shop just yet!

Great Oaks from Little Acorns grow

If you live in England, you might of seen an Entertainer shop around when you're out and about.  Well, that business started up where I live in Amersham.  Over the years it's been in 3 different locations in the town, the one it's in now being a very recent move.

I was commissioned to illustrate both the oldest and newest shops next to each other, showing the progress of the shop, toys and the Entertainer as a brand.  It's come such a long way!  It was a pleasure to capture these shops in an illustration and it'll make the perfect gift for the recipient at Christmas.

Amsterdam Cushion Covers

I absolutely love my screen printed Amsterdam prints and books and have enjoyed having them on cards too.  I've had it in my head to do cushions for a while now and figured that using my imagery from the Amsterdam print would be a good place to start.

I haven't ever printed seriously onto fabric before.  There has been the odd bit as a test, but nothing solid.  Not having a soft printing bed (as I think you should have for printing fabric no?)  I mounted up my pieces of fabric onto a thin card stock - possibly made it easier for positioning too.

I've gone for a peacock blue and gold.  This gives a slight variation from my prints on paper and makes it it's own product!

The gold went down first, and looked great on my paper tests but seemed a bit pale on the canvas material.  I then double hit it and I'm much happier with the result.  The blue was similar, a bit thin on one pull but a lot better so I've done a mix of one hits and two hits.

I also have sewn these myself!  The cover is removable, so if you spill something on one, it's not the end of the world.  But please be gentle when washing.

The cushion is shown here on my craft fair table at The Old Fire Station for the Hand Made Makers Market where they were shown a lot of love!  They measure just 35cm x 35cm although may vary slightly due to my sewing skills.

Printmaking and Polaroids

Printmaking and
Polaroids












For the past couple of weekends I have been frantically getting together material for my upcoming exhibition and this has involved two sessions at the East London Printmakers.  Unfortunately last weekend wasn't so successful as my images weren't quite black enough for exposing a screen with (silkscreen printmaking).  So it was really frustrating, but I literally didn't even get one colour printed.  This weekend however, more pressure to get it right!  I went away and got my images improved and came back fighting!  Last weekend I had had my trusty helper and loving boyfriend with me, this weekend, it was just me.

I did it. I printed an edition of 27 two colour MASSIVE Amsterdam silkscreen prints.  You can see how massive in the polaroid where I'm holding it up!

I am so relieved that I managed this small feat.  If I hadn't, it wouldn't of been the end of the world but I would of been a bit disappointed.









HURRAH!


After I had finished up at the printers I headed on over to Brick Lane to meet up with my cousin Tom Wright as he'd just held a Polaroid workshop there that morning (Impossible Project Workshop)...I was a bit late for the workshop, but I did manage to get a few photos taken on my little but chunky Fuji Mini Polaroid and even a few on a 'proper' polaroid camera of Tom's.  I let Tom take my polaroids back to Manchester with him so i'll have to share those with you another time!

Myself & Tom

Me & Lauren

THE Goat

Ahem...I think maybe I need to clean my scanner.

The Red Gallery aka Material

My lovely little '(Delft) Blue' Amsterdam book has made it into a shop - HURRAH!  Lucy, from The Red Gallery spotted it at The Whitechapel Gallery, London Art Book Fair and got in touch to sell it at both their London shop and their Ludlow shop too.  I am so excited about this!  I got to the shop quite late so the photos are a bit dark, but you can see what a nice space they have and all the other great books and artwork they have for sale by various artists.

You can find The Red Gallery @ 1-3 Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3DT

And the Ludlow shop @ 131 Corve Street, Ludlow, Shropshire, SY8 2PG

Alternatively you can have a browse on their website: www.materialmaterial.com

The Amsterdam book has had the pleasure of being in this shop a month or so now, it looks like it's made itself at home nicely.  This week I dropped off a few of my 'Down Your Street - Old Amersham' books as well as a selection of my Christmas cards for some lucky Londoners!

All of these are also available in my Etsy shop if you can't make it to The Red Gallery or are not local, which you can find at www.etsy.com/charlottevallance


Thank you for reading,

X

Amsterdam Greeting Cards

A little collection of greetings cards from my '(Delft) Blue' Amsterdam silkscreen book.  I found that the book was so popular that maybe people would like to share it a little, and how better than in the form of a card?  These bad boys are printed onto a matt paper stock and are A6 in size, come with brown envelopes and are being sold in the pairs you see here in my Etsy shop, which you can get to HERE.

A nice little gift set if I do say so myself.  I'm going to look into getting some nice boxes for them to go in...Keep an eye out!


Thanks for reading,

X

London Art Book Fair 2011

Today was the last day of the Book Fair, unfortunately I wasn't able to be there over the weekend {so no photos!) BUT i did make it to the preview night on the Thursday so I have a few from then for you all.  It was really packed, a great atmosphere, nicely laid out space and lovely people!

The AMBruno table where there was a lot of blue.

My lovely little blue book.

(Delft) Blue

My Aunt suggested that i get in touch with some friends of hers who frequent the Artists Book Fair scene when I saw her before the summer, as for the (then) upcoming London Fair at The Whitechapel Gallery they had a table and a theme of 'blue' that they were inviting other artists to participate in.

I thought, why not?  And got in touch with Sophie Loss, who was lovely and said they would be pleased to have my work on their table.  The group is known as AMBruno and consist of a group of friends who all have film influences and beautiful books!

I took the theme of 'blue and came up with '(Delft) Blue'.  I seem to be spending a lot of time recently in Amsterdam, due to my boyfriend living there, and to be honest I'm not complaining!  It's a lovely city, and we always have fun when we go out, whether its with friends for drinks or during the day to galleries and sight seeing.  I have wanted to illustrate Amsterdam for a while, for those very reasons, and decided that for 'blue' I could happily illustrate in my fine line style but use a blue pen rather than my usual black.  I then felt that maybe I should give the blue more depth, and I thought of watercolours (see above image - this was also used in the leaflet AMBruno put together for the table), but then the opportunity to silk screen came my way and I thought that the 'blue' book could be done this way with shades of blues.

Now, I haven't silk screened since university.  Thats a good 2 years.  Neither had Charlie - the girl I was going to be silk screening with.  Between the two of us we figured it out and were so happy with the results!  Now for some photos showing the process from sketch to finished lovely book.

'(Delft) Blue', along with 12 other 'blue' themed books are on show/exhibition/for sale at the London Art Book Fair THIS weekend Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th September at The Whitechapel Gallery. If you can get there, I would recommend it.  The preview night last night was packed, and I have heard only good things from fellow Artists Book-er Louise Atkinson about the fair today.

Deciding on a layout, type of fold (inspired by Rachel Hazell)

Making the bike badges that will be tucked in the hidden pocket of the book.  I used 'shrinkles' a lot of work as I had thought I could print from the computer onto the sheets, but I couldn't so each is lovingly hand drawn!

 The negatives for the screen on top on one another.  I had 2 colours, therefore 2 negatives.  I quite like how they look in black and grey.

First colour, peacock blue, fills mostly brick work on the buildings, some windows but no outline.

Second colour, navy blue, fills mostly outline detail as well as some brickwork, shutters and windows.

Prints everywhere!

 The lovely, little origami boats that I made out of copies of a vintage map of Amsterdam.  These also come tucked in the secret pocket of the book.

Finally the front cover, I kept it simple with only text and no imagery.

All in all, I'm really pleased with how this little book turned out.  Folded it measures just under A6, and unfolded it concertinas out to be nearly as long an A3 width.

*PROPER PHOTOS OF FINISHED BOOK ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE*