Crafty Ladies: Meet Zeena Shah

This week's Crafty Lady is Zeena Shah - regular readers might remember that I attended one of Zeena's lino printing workshops at the Handmade Fair a few months ago (so much fun!)

As well as running fab workshops, Zeena sells a range of homewares decorated with her charming designs. You can find her cushions, prints, tote bags, and other hand printed creations in her shop, heart zeena.

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Hello! I’m Zeena Shah a printed Textile designer / maker / stylist / creative tutor living & working in East London. I run my own brand heart zeena – a collection of hand screen printed and hand made goods for your home. I started the brand in 2010 and have been designing and making happily for the last four years and I can’t believe how quickly time has flown by!

 

I also run workshops from my east London studio and pop-up at venues and businesses all over London spreading my love of screen printing and hoping to inspire you all to screen print and create. I also like chocolate a lot.

 

Recently I’ve been...

... running lots of workshops for lots of different people from Google to UCL, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Kirstie Allsop & more which is keeping me rather busy. I’m also gearing up for my next Christmas event, the Renegade Craft Fair which I’ll be selling my collection at and some new work too.

[Zeena sent me her Crafty Ladies answers before Renegade took place a couple of weeks ago - you can read about my visit to the fair here]

I’ve been working on…

Most exciting of all is that I have just signed a book deal and am working on my shiny new book which will show you how to print fabric and make lovely things too so keep an eye out for sneaky peeks on my instagram feed. The book will launch in September 2015. I can’t wait!

 

I’ve been blogging about…

Hmmm now I’ve been a terrible blogger and neglected my blog over the last year, so I’m going to tell you about all the blogs I’ve been reading instead. I’ve been reading…

Deliciously Ella’s blog I love, she has some great recipies and I’ve been trying really hard to look after myself and think about what I eat more especially after working such crazy hours.

Pinterest – I’m really a little (ok a lot) obsessed with Pinterest at the moment, I find it a great resourse for diy projects and makes that I wouldn’t necessarily stumble across.

Garance Dore’s blog is lovely her illustrations are beautiful and I’ve also been keeping an eye on goop and Preserve as I like the recipies mostly. I’m getting a bit food obsessed.

Design favourites are Bright Bazaar and Little Big Bell’s blogs, they are always making me lust after new things!

 

While I print...

... I love listening to Desert Island Disks on Radio Four, it’s my favourite! They have a fabulous back catalogue too which I’d definitely recommend checking out. I also like listening to This American Life for the weird and wonderful stories about Americans!

 

Zeena’s 3 Top Tips for Running a Creative Business

People often ask me for advice on running your own creative business and this is what I say...

1. Trust yourself and you will make things happen. If you really believe in what you’re designing/ making/ creating people will see that too reflected in your work.

2. Be nice to people, lots of wonderful things have happened to me because I not a horrible mean person! You never know who you might meet and who they might tell about you so always treat everyone how you would like to be treated and good things will come of it.

3. Stay motivated, make friends doing similar things and share your problems and experiences, it can be lonely on the road to solo business success so it’s important to make an effort to go to networking events. The Fashion & Textile Museum have a great series of events for women in creative businesses which I’d recommend too!

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Visit Zeena's shop to see her range of homewares or check out her upcoming workshops. You'll also find Zeena on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. 

Click here to read more posts in the Crafty Ladies series.

The Handmade Fair

Last week's Nice Day Out was a very crafty one as I had a ticket to The Handmade Fair!

After attending the taster event at the V&A this summer, I was delighted to be sent a press ticket to the Fair itself. A day of crafty goodness is always nice and I was very curious to see what this new event would be like...

The fair was held in the grounds of Hampton Court (which you know I love) and although the morning started out a little chilly and overcast, it soon warmed up and we had lots of autumn sunshine.

 

You know you've arrived at a fun event when this is the first thing you see - hundreds of pompoms!

The Fair was very making-focused, with each ticket including a "skill workshop", a "grand make" and a talk or other event in the "super theatre". Unfortunately I missed my super theatre session thanks to the traffic (rats!) but I arrived in plenty of time for my "grand make" - making origami flowers.

 

The "grand make" aspect of this (hundreds of crafters all making together) didn't really happen as there were only a couple of dozen of us making flowers that session... but it was still fun to sit and make some origami for half an hour.

Samuel from Sesame's Origami was a great teacher, and very entertaining giving us lots of tips and chatting about his origami business. Apparently his most common customer is husbands buying bouquets for their "paper" wedding anniversary. He talked us through folding a little paper t-shirt, then a paper tulip. Here's my tulip...

 

... and here's how a whole bunch of the tulips look when made with pretty multicoloured origami paper:

 

You can find lots of beginner-friendly video tutorials on Samuel's website, along with info about his upcoming workshops.

 

After making my tulip it was time to explore the Fair!

You had to buy a show guide (£5) to get a map of the site, but luckily it was quite easy to find your way once you'd walked round once and got your bearings and there were lots of friendly staff around to ask for directions if you got lost. There were two big shopping tents and some smaller tents where things like drop-in workshops and book signings were happening at various times during the day.

My first stop was the Etsy tent, where a selection of Etsy shop owners were selling their wares and folks from Etsy's UK team were running business workshops and answering peoples questions about opening a shop.

I loved Neon London's bright stationery, Anna Wiscombe's charming wooden jewellery and Spin City's yummy handspun yarn. 

 

 

Throughout the day I bumped into lots of lovely people I know from Etsy and blogging, and spotted lots of famous faces from the world of crafting - including Tilly who was teaching a sewing masterclass.

 

As well as taking part in drop-in workshops and the three sessions you signed up for as part of your entry ticket, you could buy tickets on the day for extra "grand makes" and "skill workshops". Each tent had a blackboard up outside listing the times and details of the events happening that day and the number of tickets left, so you could see what was still available. 

Lush were running drop-in workshops including one on making hairpieces with fresh flowers which really added to the "crafty festival" vibe of the day as there were lots of people walking round with flowers in their hair!

 

Food-wise there were lots of food trucks and a vintage-themed tea tent (with live music, which was lovely). The food was a bit on the pricey side but there was lots of variety and I had some seriously delicious icecream (yum).

 

The two shopping tents were packed with a mix of different vendors - handmade and indie-designed products rubbing shoulders with vintage loveliness and crafty supplies like fabric, sewing kits, yarn and scrapbooking supplies.

Here are some snaps of just a small sampling of the wares on show... 

... vintage pretties at Simply Vintage Designs:

 

... awesome giant knitting needles from Rachel John, handmade treats from We Make London, paper loveliness at Paperpoms, and sweet homewares by Jessalli:

 

... coastal-themed decorations by The Wooden Fish Company and fab dolls & felt mobiles by A K Traditions:

 

... colourful craft supplies from one of my blog sponsors, Blooming Felt:

... gorgeous block printed designs by Molly Mahon, deliciously scented soap by Odds and Suds, colourful haberdashery from Millie Moon, and beautiful homewares & prints by Sarah Hamilton:

As always at events like these it's so nice to be able to chat to the makers and artists about their work. It was especially delightful to see some printing and painting in progress at Red Hen Originals.

After lunch it was time for my "skill workshop": lino printing with Zeena Shah. This was a huge amount of fun - I blogged about it earlier this week - but it was a shame we didn't decorate something that we could have taken home with us.

Finally I met up with Fiona for a cuppa and a chat about bloggy stuff in the Hotchpotch Vintage tea tent.

 

Just look at those cakes! Yum. Our tea was served in vintage teacups too, which was lovely. 

Then it was time to head home, tired but happy. I have my fingers crossed that there's another Handmade Fair next year as this one was a lot of fun!

Disclosure: I attended The Handmade Fair as a guest of the organisers who sent me a free ticket.

Lino Printing at The Handmade Fair with Zeena Shah

I had a very fun day out on Friday at The Handmade Fair - a new, crafty fair with a focus on learning and making. One of the lovely bloggers I bumped into described it as being "like a crafty festival" and it really was, with lots of tents for workshops and talks plus shopping and eating... lots of famous faces from the world of craft and sewing... and lots of bunting! :)

I'll be blogging about the day later this week, but in the meantime here are some snaps from the workshop I attended: lino printing with Zeena Shah.

I'd never tried lino printing before so I was quite excited to give it a go at the Fair - although I was a teeny bit nervous about using the sharp lino cutting tool! Me + sharp objects = usually a bad combination.

We started by drawing a design we wanted to print. I had a bit of creative block but I eventually settled on a simple star design and drew it onto my lino. 

Then we carved out our designs, leaving raised areas where we wanted to print and cutting away the sections that would be white space. The lino was easier to carve than I expected but still quite hard work after a while (I suspect lino cutters elbow might be a thing!) and you had to be very careful with the cutting tool as it was indeed very sharp - as proven by one of the ladies on my table who cut herself (ouch!)

It was really fun to see the design gradually appearing in the lino and really nice sitting and chatting with the other ladies as we worked. We laughed about the mistakes we were making, admired each others designs and talked about the things we'd done at the Fair earlier that day.

My design was finally finished...

... just in time for me to do a couple of prints before the workshop ended.

I used too little paint (oops) then a too much (double oops) then my third print was just right. Hurrah!

Trying new crafty things = so much fun!

If you'd like to try lino printing, Zeena runs lots of lino printing workshops.

Disclosure: I attended The Handmade Fair as a guest of the organisers who sent me a free ticket.