Period Living

I've been featured in the April edition of Period Living magazine (on sale now!).  They have a feature behind the craft on the last page and for this issue they interviewed me.

Laser Cutting

Last week I did a short course on laser cutting at Metropolitan works in London.  It was great fun and really interesting to try something new. As part of the course we got an introduction to the whole process of Laser cutting (and water jet cutting).  We had to bring in a project that we wanted to have cut. The course is free so its a great way to learn about to the processes first hand.  The other members of the course were all artists and designers so it was great to meet some new people and see their work.

My initial thoughts were to have a bird laser cut in paper but after seeing the machine in action I decided to use plywood instead, as it something I couldn't do myself.

The hardest thing was getting the hang of transferring my drawing to a vector file.  Learning new software is always a challenge, though illustrator makes it relatively easy, but that is something I will need to work on if I want to get some more things cut.

So here's the process

My original drawing.  Its important to make sure the file is as clean and tidy as possible before you import it to illustrator, this saves a lot of time deleting vector lines in illustrator, which is a very time consuming job.

And here's the image after its been changed to a vector line drawing ready to be cut.

 

And then the laser is ready to go and start burning away.  It's a mesmerizing process.

 

And here's the finished article

And I must say I'm very happy with it, its interesting to seemy work in a different material and not cut by me.  My relationship with it feels very different, I know its my drawing but I almost don't recognise it, as I didn't physically make it. I do feel inspired to do some more, I'm imaging a whole flock, maybe painted or printed on, or plain wood. Time for some experimentation I think.

Metropolitan works is a great place, Ed and Barry who ran the course were amazing and so full of knowledge. They do all sorts of training courses you can find out more about them here Metropolitan Works

A Recent Commission

Before Christmas I was commissioned to make a piece of work for a landmark hotel in London (I don't know which one yet).  Here are a few photos of the process of making it.  I finished it and it was shipped last week which felt good, though now don't know what to do with myself.  I will post photos of the finished piece once it is installed.

The finalists

ready to be cut

which one to do first

cutting....

cutting

cut

ready to be collected

Marrakech Inspiration - 1

The BF and I went on a long weekend to Marrakech a few weeks ago, it was an amazing place, I loved it.  So much to see and do and so inspiring.  Here are some of my photos.

Beautiful arches

the walls of the medina

lots of sacks of stuff

Amazing baskets

We drank a lot of this

There were lots of cats

blurry photo taken from a car window

There were lots of carpets - damn that 1 piece of hand baggage rule!

Dinner in the main square

Cats waiting in hope

I got a bit obsessed with the cats

Beautiful tiles

Upcycling

I picked this up at Merci, when I was in Paris before Christmas and had completely forgotten about it until I was sorting out some papers at the weekend. I thought it was rather fitting