Having Tea with a Tiger & Other Nice Days Out

It's been a while since I've blogged about a Nice Day Out, but I've been continuing to squeeze them into my schedule whenever I can. I've totally abandoned my original plan of having a fixed day off each week and am instead taking them in little flurries in the quiet weeks between deadlines. This is working pretty well - especially as the days out feel like well-deserved post-deadline treats.

Here are a few of the things I've been up to so far this summer...


... having tea with a tiger at the Jewish Museum:

The current exhibition at the Jewish Museum is Tiger, Mog and Pink Rabbit -  a retrospective of author/illustrator Judith Kerr's life and work. I adored the Mog books and The Tiger Who Came to Tea when I was little, and really enjoyed this BBC documentary about Judith's career and her family's escape from the Nazis... so I was really looking forward to this exhibition. It didn't disappoint!

It manages to be moving, inspiring, informative and very fun with lots of interactive elements for kids (and nostalgic grown-ups!) - including having tea with the famous Tiger :)

There's also a daily storytelling session and free craft events and the museum are screening the BBC documentary at weekends (see here for more info). The rest of the museum is also well worth a look. I visited last year and enjoyed it hugely, though - be warned - you may need tissues when visiting the very moving Holocaust gallery.


... exploring tiny worlds at the Museum of Childhood:

The V&A's Museum of Childhood is a wonderful free museum filled with toys and other childhood artifacts from the 1600s to the present day. It's a total nostalgia fest, as you'll recognise lots of things from when you were a kid! They have a great collection of dollshouses, and they're showcasing twelve of them in their current (free) exhibition: Small Stories (with 20 more on display elsewhere in the museum).

The dollshouses in the exhibition are utterly charming, and are accompanied by special audio recordings where the inhabitants of the houses tell you their stories. The houses are arranged in chronological order, so the exhibition also doubles as an introduction to developments in architecture and home design over the centuries. A couple of the rooms have been reproduced at child size so your kids can play in them (so cute) and there's also a fun art installation of 20 miniature dream rooms created by artists. My favourite? Home Is Bear The Heart Is.

... going behind the scenes at the Bank of England:

I visited the Bank of England Museum earlier this year and loved it. Who knew money could be so interesting? As part of the City of London Festival, the Bank held a couple of open days this month with free guided tours of parts of the building that are usually closed to the public - including the famous committee room where the Monetary Policy Committee meets each month to set the interest rate.

As you might expect of a free tour of a famous building that's usually closed to the public, the queue for this was rather long! It was almost a two hour wait for a half hour tour but totally worth it, and the time passed quite quickly thanks to the friendly ladies I chatted with as we waited. After the tour, I looked round the museum's current exhibition then enjoyed a special talk about the history (and future) of English banknotes.

If you'd like to visit the Bank of England, there will be more free tours of the Bank running during Open House London this autumn, or you can take a virtual tour here. The museum is open on weekdays and is free to visit (no queuing required).

... being inspired by plasterwork and poetry at the Foundling Museum:

The Foundling Museum is a wonderful little museum, telling the story of the Foundling Hospital: a home for abandoned children which opened in the 1700s. I've visited it a couple of times before, but read about the current exhibition, Lines of Beauty, and decided to make a return visit to check it out. Inspired by the fabulous plasterwork ceiling in the Hospital's Court Room, this was an exhibition all about decorative plasterwork - with sketches and models from the creative process and lots of examples of finished pieces. This was gorgeous and quite fascinating and I know I'll never look at a fancy ceiling the same way again.

Also on at the Foundling Museum at the moment is an exhibition of 26 poems, each written by a different poet and inspired by a different object in the museum. The poems are dotted around the building, next to the objects they were inspired by and you can also read them online here. I found this poem by Andrew Motion to be especially moving.

... discovering centuries of history at the Tower of London:

I'd been meaning to visit the Tower of London for aaaaaages (I've been in the moat but that doesn't count!) so I was thrilled to see that it's free to visit with an Art Pass this summer (thanks to the Tower being one of the finalists for the Art Fund's Museum of the Year prize). If you've been thinking about getting an Art Pass now would be a great time to buy one, as the Tower of London is usually not cheap to visit! (You can also get free entry to the Jewish Museum and the Foundling Museum to see the exhibitions mentioned in this post, hurrah!).

I went with my mum and we had a fabulous day, admiring the magnificent Crown Jewels (SO SHINY), going on a guided tour led by one of the Yeoman Warders, walking the Tower's walls, and watching the ceremonial collection of the Word (the daily changing password for entry to the Tower after hours).

.... bonding with my dad over lots of awesome art and science:

Another Art Pass special offer was free entry to the Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair (did I mention that I love my Art Pass? I really love my Art Pass). I applied for my ticket and was delighted to discover it was actually a pair of tickets, so I took my dad for a Father's Day trip of coffee and cake and oohing over fancy art and antiques.

After looking round all the stalls at the fair (and doing lots of fantasy shopping, deciding which expensive things we would buy if money were no object) we headed to the nearby Science Museum for lunch and some happy hours of looking at exhibits while saying "OH MY GOD SCIENCE IS SO AMAZING".

When I'm in South Kensington I usually end up visiting the V&A or the Natural History Museum instead of the Science Museum, but I need to remember how much awesomeness is in the Science Museum and visit it more often! 

... and enjoying the sunshine in Kensington's parks:

Last but by no means least, I spent a lovely day wandering round London with Carina - chatting about life and our crafty businesses and enjoying the glorious summer sunshine.

We visited some galleries, chilled out in Holland Park's gorgeous Kyoto Garden with the resident peacocks, checked out the Serpentine's 2015 pavillion (very colourful but also uncomfortably warm on a hot day as it's basically a great big plastic tent!), and had an icecream (me) and a vegan cupcake (Carina) at one of my very favourite spots: the garden at Kensington Palace.  

P.S. Check out the video Carina took of the waterfall in the Kyoto Garden! Such a peaceful place to visit.

Crafty Ladies: Meet Flora Jamieson

This week's Crafty Lady is Flora from The Round Window.

Flora works in a very different medium to the previous Crafty Ladies I've featured - she makes wonderful things from glass! 

Flora's work has a charming retro feel to it, like the illustrations in an awesome vintage childrens book. She sells her hand painted glass in her Etsy and Folksy shops, along with colourful cards and postcards featuring her designs. 

  -------

My name is Flora Jamieson, and I’m a stained glass artist living in Dorset. 

Working from a (small, usually untidy) converted outbuilding at home, I design and make contemporary stained glass. I also work as a freelance glass painter for other stained glass studios in the UK and abroad. My partner Mike makes waxwork figures for museums, artists and exhibitions, and when we’re not working, we’re off exploring the South West in the campervan with our two girls.

Recently I’ve been making…

My workload varies so much from month to month. Earlier this year I took part in a group exhibition of contemporary stained glass with two other artists, called One Square Foot where we each submitted 3 panels of a 12” x 12” format. It was really liberating designing pieces with no brief in mind, the only restriction being the size.

 

Currently I’m doing some church restoration work for a couple of other stained glass studios – this involves painting exact copies of fragments from damaged windows. There’s often a bit of detective work involved if some of the fragments are missing to find out what should be there, which I really enjoy. I also paint the traditional roundels often seen in Victorian domestic stained glass, which usually feature birds or flowers (or both!) This is one of my favourite parts of my job.

And in the next couple of months I’ll be making some new stock for my Etsy shop in time for the Christmas period. I will be taking part in the Dorset Etsy Team craft fair in December, which is one of the few in Europe that has been approved and supported by Etsy, so it will be great to be a part of that.

I’ve been working on…

Recently I’ve been getting some requests for graphic design and illustration work, from people who have seen my stained glass work on the internet and liked the bold, graphic style of it. I’ve illustrated a set of 12 icons for a new app that will be launching in London this autumn called TreatNow and I also created the logo for my new local café, Soulshine, as well as doing some general graphic design work on postcards and flyers for them. Illustration is something that I’d love to do more of, or at least find time to do more of!

 

I’m also excited to be licensing a couple of my stained glass designs as greeting cards to a major publishing company. This is happening in January next year, so I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself but I’m really thrilled about this.

I’ve been blogging about…

Erm, very little lately!  I’m afraid Instagram has taken over in my affections, so I tend to post there on a daily basis. It’s a mix of my stained glass work and family adventures in the beautiful Dorset coast and countryside around us. It’s lovely to have a record of all the things we’ve done over the year, it’s become more like a visual diary.

 

I’ve been reading…

I’m not much of a reader I have to confess. I’m about half of the way through Wildwood, which I bought for my daughter and then started it myself. It’s a beautifully illustrated book and the story (so far anyway) is a bit like a modern day Narnia. Other than that I subscribe to Wrap magazine, which I absolutely love – it’s such a beautiful publication, and Elle Deco. I’m also rather fond of buying design/illustration/interiors books, (I like looking at the pictures… shhh, don’t tell my kids, I’m always moaning at them to read proper books)

Online, there are many blogs I always try to read – Fine Little Day,  Kirsten Rickert, Nina in Vorm, Plucky, Gems, It’s Nice That – oh too many to mention really, a random assortment of pretty things to look at and interesting words to read.

While I work, I’ve been listening to…

Podcasts. Nothing I like more than a nice bit of complex leading and a riveting interview to listen to – brain and hands all perfectly occupied. Some of my favourites are Design Matters, After The Jump, Why Oh Why, Ted Talks and the Creative Mornings Talks. For music I like to dig around to find good playlists on 8 Tracks.

Flora’s 3 Top Tips for Juggling Motherhood with a Creative Career

1. Get your kids involved in the things that you do – that way you can all work alongside each other. Last year I opened an Etsy shop for my (then 9 year old) daughter because she wanted to adopt a Snow Leopard through the WWF. The sales of the cards featuring her illustrations pay for her monthly adoption fee, and she’s learning that people admire her work enough to pay for it.

2. During school holidays, get out the house with the kids as much as you can. That way you’re not stressing about work, the kids are having fun and the house is remaining (reasonably) tidy. I wake early and get a few hours done before my partner goes off to work, so that I can enjoy the rest of the day knowing I’ve pushed things on a bit. I also try to let clients know that progress might be a bit slower.

I remember reading a wonderful quote from one of my favourite creative entrepreneurs, Mandy Sutcliffe from Belle & Boo on the subject of juggling it all: "I used to go to meetings with Robyn when she was about three months old. I’d stroll in and apologise, but then carry on quite comfortably. After all, life is life and life has children." (from here).

3. Use your children as your inspiration. A lot of my designs for my smaller pieces that I sell in my Etsy shop were inspired by retro children’s books that we’d find while poking around in charity shops. When I print off designs from the computer that are mistakes or tests, I often give them to the girls to colour in or alter - sometimes their fresh take on things can lead me in a new direction.

Their creative process is inspiring to me too – the way they can just sit and draw or make without any fear of it looking “right” or “wrong”  is something I would love to be able to do more of.

 -------

Click here to visit Flora's website, and here to visit her Etsy shop. You can also read her blog and follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. 

For more in the Crafty Ladies series, click here. 

Corgi Love

I have to admit that don't really care very much about the royal family, or about the upcoming royal wedding (being self-employed, I won't even get a day off work!)... but I simply had to buy one of these teatowels designed by Gemma Correll:

Cutest corgi ever!

Gemma's royal wedding teatowels are available from fab teatowel shop To Dry For (photo from their website).

Lovely Post

I got a great Christmas card this week from the talented Alice Melvin:


A cut out and make angel decoration! So sweet.

You can see Alice's range of prints, books and crafty products over in her shop. I especially love her bird-themed stuff, like this mobile...


... and this poster which was one of the first things I bought this year :)



PS - Remember I'm closing up shop for the holidays tomorrow morning, so this is your last chance to place an order in 2010 (my shops will re-open on 17th January).

UPDATE: all my shops are now closed! :)

Super Biscuits

We're finishing up our Christmas shopping at the moment, tracking down the last few things for those hard-to-buy-for people...

A trip to our local deli helped tick a few people off the list, and as they're people who don't use the internet (and probably wouldn't read my blog even if they did) I can share some pics of some of the lovely biccies we've bought as gifts.

The Owl & the Pussycat biscuits!


And George & the Dragon biscuits! In a moneybox tin!


The biscuits are even shaped to match the illustrations - how cute?!


It will take a lot of willpower not to keep these for myself! If you want a pack of your own, the whole range is available HERE.

365 / 152 - Felt Doodles

I have been doing lots of crafty stuff but have no time to blog about it all as we have people coming round for dinner and I have to tidy up asap!

Quick 365 photo though - a rather low-quality scan in fact - of some speedy little felt "doodles" I did last night for Bunny & Heidi's Doodle Challenge. Each little felt picture was made by cutting out felt pieces freehand (no time to make a pattern) and stitching rather speedily, they took between 10 and 15 minutes each from start to finish:
They're illustrating "How big is a tiger?" (he's just a fat kitten), "Spork attack!" (an aggresive spork), "Snug as a bug in a rug" (or on a cosy velvet cushion), "No place like home" (which makes me want to make a whole series of felt houses) and "If I won the lottery, the first thing I would buy..." (would be a very fancy mug for my tea). They'll be one of a kind badges for my shop sometime soon. Right, gotta go and tidy things...