The 10th Manchester Artists' Book Fair

Manchester Artists' Book Fair is one of my favourite fairs I do.  The hall it's set in (The Holden Gallery) is just lovely, with a great big sky light giving everyone natural light to display their products in.  The people are awesome, sellers and shoppers alike - everyone is friendly and asks questions about my work.  It's really nice to think I'm helping to inspire todays art students - young and old alike!

Best sellers this year - book marks and magnets!  Lucky Dip bags went down well, and my buildings all got a lot of attention.

I've signed up for more Artists' Book Fairs next year so fingers crossed you might see me in a city near you!  If you have one to recommend, do leave a comment and let me know.


You can find more information for the fair on their website : www.manchesterartistsbookfair.com

The 8th Manchester Artists' Book Fair

Myself and Kate Bufton behind our tables!

Back in October I took part in my 3rd Manchester Book fair which celebrated 8 years of the fair!  It's a great couple of days and I try and get caught up with what everyones been doing over the year.  Also a good opportunity to see family and friends in Manchester.

Hosted by Hot Bed Press in the Holden Gallery (part of Manchester Metropolitan University), you can see on their lovely new website the book artists that participated this year (and 2012 + 2011) along with photos - www.manchesterartistsbookfair.com

The old amongst the new - 'Statues of Europe'

Brand spanking new book!

Books and prints, bookmarks and postcards

Lucky dip bags and amazing folding books

Did you stop by and see the fair?  If not, don't worry, it'll be on around the same time next year so keep an eye out for a 'pre-fair' post on here, tweets on Twitter, and mentions on Facebook.

A new book - HURRAH!

This has been a long time in the making...sorry for the delay folks!

As always this book is based on my travels.  I haven't been able to get away properly for a while, so short, sweet and perfect city breaks have taken priority.  Back in June I had a lovely long weekend in Paris with my sister and a friend of ours (met in Melbourne Australia, many years ago!).  It was fantastic as we saw a Parisian's Paris rather than a tourist one - makes a nice change seeing a city with a local.

I'm pleased to say that this book has had a great reception at book fairs and craft markets a like!

Book Print

Three colour ways - fluro pink, gold and blue all with a purple outline

This book pattern print came about because I wanted to make some nice bags to give out with purchases at Manchester's Artsists' Book Fair.  Turns out it's actually quite versatile!

 Various colours and sizes of bags

 I stuck to one colour with the tote bags and aside from trying to print it in lime green, am really chuffed with how they've come out.  The more I print the more I learn!

 Drying in the rack and being folded into books

I've printed this amazing folding style book before (back in uni, see the background of the blog, and in this post here) and I've often felt that people buy it a lot for the fun of the fold!  I've been selling them rather cheap for the amount of design work and concentration that goes into them - just £5!  So, as I'm coming to an end of my stock of the current book I've given this fold a re-vamp for those who are interested in the fold, and perhaps print, but weren't too keen on the illustrations.  For £5 you can now grab one of these beauties!  In either 2 or 3 colours, an edition of 30 books with the book print on them are now available - hurrah!

I had a few off cuts and hate to see paper go to waste so I'll be popping these book marks into people's bags when they purchase something at book fairs and craft markets.


Keep an eye out for this pattern popping up on other items as well :)

Book Fair coming up in October!

The Eighth Manchester Artists' Book Fair

My table at last years fair.

HURRAH it's back again!

The Manchester Artists' Book Fair happens every year and this is my 3rd year exhibiting - I'm excited to be going back!

Read about previous years here:

2011

2012

The Hot Bed Press - a printmakers studio in Salford - organise and put on a great 2 days of Artists' Books.  The Holden Gallery is full of creative loveliness spread over each Artists' table.  It's lovely to see everyones different take on the 'Artist Book', meet new people, catch up with customers and friends and enjoy little bits of Manchester for the weekend.

2013 will be held at The Holden Gallery on the 18th and 19th October - come say hi!

Have a browse on the website and keep an eye out for updates on Twitter - find me @charlsvallance.

www.manchesterartistsbookfair.com

The 7th Manchester Artist Book Fair

What a great weekend!

This year Hot Bed Press managed to secure us two days in the lovely Holden Gallery, within the Manchester School of Art.  This meant that on Friday we saw lots of students and Saturday bought in people having a browse - I even recognised a few faces from last year!

I was honoured with one of the first tables as you walk in the room - can you believe it?!  Myself and Sarah, of Big Jump Press had our tables set up to welcome people in through the doors and to bid them a good journey on their way out too.

Over the two days I did manage to leave my table for long enough to enjoy a look around everyone else's tables, however, I only got photos of mine and Sarah's! Oops.

I had two new releases for this fair, my 'Down Your Street : York' screen printed book and my 'Lucky Dip' bags.  Both went down great and I had some awesome feedback.  I love hearing what people have to say about my work, it's even more fun when people are really not holding back.  I was lucky enough to hear my table be described as an 'Illustration Wonderland' - how gorgeous does that sound!? As well as '...and shit that's amazing!'  I also managed to get stocked up with more lovely stripy paper bags for future fairs in return for an Amsterdam card.

You can find a list of all the contributors here, be sure to check them out, some really stunning works.

p.s. everything on my table is available to buy and will be found in my shop here.  If it's not in the shop, send me a message and I can do a custom listing specially for you at no extra cost.


You'll find posts about the 7th Manchester Artists Book Fair on many other blogs, but after this one, you can have a look at Fishink's blog fishinkblog.wordpress.com :-D be sure to let us know if you got here from the other!

Risograph Printing

Two Times Elliott run a Risograph printing social night once a month in West (ish) London.  I've followed them for a while on Twitter and Instagram and decided enough was enough - time to have a go myself!

  

With the Manchester Artist Book Fair looming over me and no new books to speak of it seemed logical to illustrate a small book to print using the 'Risograph' technique.  Now, I really didn't know much, but I had seen posts and flyers by Two Times Elliot so I had a general idea, and picked up that it may be similar to screen printing.  With that in mind I designed an A6 book that could be created from an A3 page (which is the size printed via 'Risograph') with simple folds and a single cut.

I used Lisbon as my inspiration as after spending 5 days there in August, I really loved the city and it's colourful buildings.  I opted for 4 single page illustrations and one double page spread as well as a front and back page - all of which could be cut up individually incase the fold and cut technique didn't work out!

It just happened that I had friends visiting from California, so I persuaded them to come along with me for company and for something different to do :-D The Great Western Studios was easy enough to find, and somewhat challenging to navigate within, but over all a great place - I'm only sorry that we were there so late so no one else was around!  I selected 2 paper stocks (as I couldn't make up my mind) and went with a contrasting purple ink that was a lovely dark shade.

I'm so impressed with how quick and easy the whole process was, and the results were great!  Personally my favourite is the 'gold flecked' paper, but I had many compliments on the more textured grainy stock as well.

I'm pretty sure that I'll be back next month - MUST do a new design now :-D

25for25 is just what it says on the tin - 25 prints for £25 (+VAT) - you can book via eventbrite, and bring a friend if you're too chicken to go by yourself as I was!  Everyone was friendly and helpful and didn't mind all of my emails making sure I had 'got it right'.

Excellent, thanks guys!

p.s. Look out for the finished book at the Manchester Artists Book Fair!