I discovered these beautiful porcelain hearts today entitled Corezone. Corezone is a closed ceramic space, where you can place your thoughts, feelings, emotions. Write them down on small pieces of paper and put them inside the heart. You must then physically break your own heart to free them.

You can see images of how these beautiful objects are made here ›

I’d never heard of the artist Ran Hwang until today – I was using the new Google image search facility – which I absolutely love as it’s just so organic now – and just happened upon an image of some of her work. I clicked through to her website and was amazed. She uses buttons and pins and large expanses of wall and creates the most amazing images. I guess it could be a modern day take on pointillism in that when you see the work up close, it just looks like a load of dots, but when you stand back and your eyes adjust, the dots merge to form birds and cherry blossom etc.

I wonder how many buttons it takes to make this bird? I wonder what happens to the buttons after the work is dismantled – do you think she [...]
read more »

Just found this really lovely illustration/print by Allan Peters on the Grain Edit website and I love it. It’s so cute. I gues I’m a bit partial to bicycles at the moment as the Tour de France is on every day and so I’ve got bicycles on the brain.

It’s dedicated to their very own baby to be and I think it’s lovely…

The colours are just perfect. You can see the artist making the print here – go see it getting ‘born’…

As you all know I’ve been busy making lots of stuff for my up and coming craft fair and one thing I’ve been using  a lot is my sewing machine to run up lots of paper garlands. Well it’s a very very old machine (older than me) and the speed on it has always been temperamental in that it either zooms away manically or marches on with a steady pace – there seems to be very little control over this with the foot pedal anymore.

This isn’t so bad when sewing fabrics, but when sewing paper it always good to get a steady slow speed and over the past few weeks I’ve found this totally impossible and the thread has got tangled on too many occasions. It’s been a bit frustrating.

So I put out a call on Freecycle to see if anyone had a modern simple machine stashed away in [...]
read more »

Did anyone catch the latest episode of Imagine on Tuesday night on BBC One? It was brilliant. Entitled ‘Art is Child’s Play’ it delved into childhood experience of play and tried to make a connection between early creativity to artistic endeavours later on in life. Lots of Britain’s leading artists were interviewed about their practice by the lovely Alan Yentob and offered fascinating insights into the transformative power of their early creative experiences.

You can catch it on the BBC iPlayer until the 13th July. Click on the image below to go straight to the programme.

A few of the artists featured were people I’d not heard of and who’s work i was unaware of. I loved on of the pieces shown by Mat Collishaw. It’s a modern take on a Victorian zoetrope but instead of using flat images within a [...]
read more »

Since I started making my Paper Garlands from maps, music and envelopes, I’ve started noticing garlands of all kinds online. I guess it’s got something to do with the fact that we’re entering into the ‘wedding season’ and garlands are quite popular. I discovered these today and I not only love the bright colours, the felt and the way they hang, I also love the way they have been photographed and the post processing on the images… enjoy.

I found the garland in this old post from December 2009 on the Small Bird Blog

Have a look at the lovely jewellery made by Colby June. I love these oak branch earrings and the whole Compose Decompose range. The branches remind me of the coral shapes I sketched earlier this year and wanted to use for some of my sea glass jewellery. I ended up making polished silver claws instead to hold my sea glass but I still feel that something a little more rugged and crooked would work well too. These images have inspired me  and I might try and cast some coral shapes in pewter or silver and play around.

My most recent collection is Compose Decompose.  This body of work is a study of two basic elements, sticks and stones.  I use a variety of metals including silver, bronze and gold.  Weighty rock forms are carefully integrated with delicate stick forms.  The juxtaposition parallels nature’s cyclical process of [...]
read more »

I came across this set of artists videos via a link on the Makers-Online blog. It’s amazing to watch an artist create and here you get to watch 6 artists make some of their work. The films are speeded up and it’s great to see the pieces take shape so quickly – it almost makes the processes look effortless, when in fact they’re not. Watch the videos below and be inspired.

Miju has just released some fresh new spring items and new materials in their latest collection Plonge. I love their Arrow Rings – they’re adjustable and made in copper that has been dipped in seafoam rubber. One size fits all and they come in a few different colours too.

Started in late summer 2008 Miju is the brainchild of Furni owner Mike Giles and his lovely ladyfriend and design champion Judy Lawrence. Their aim is and always will be to create aesthetically pleasing, thoughtful designed jewels and other magical items. All items designed, made, packaged and shipped from our workshop in Montreal, Canada.

I’ve just been sent a link to this lovely website by Teresa at Mimi Pearl – Have you heard of Jurianne Matter? If not, I insist that you go and check out here lovely work! She makes the loveliest things out of paper and I did actually notice her work on the Upon a Fold website a while back and added her to my list of favourites. I now want to share here creations with you.

I fell in love with these paper boats which she calls ‘Wish Boats’.

The little boats sail out to celebrate weddings, new babies, new jobs, birthdays, anniversaries or sometimes even as treasure ships (with money or candies). Before you start folding, give your little boat its own name and write a personal wish or message along the railing.

I also love these paper [...]
read more »

Just the name makes me smile. I love stationery and I certainly ove Happy Tape. Happytape is colored Japanese masking tape. It is made of Japanese washi paper and is perfect for decorating packages, gift wrapping, scrapbooking, card making, fancy labels, and artsy collages. Apparently it’s a little transparent, so it looks great layered and it tears nicely, too!

It comes in a vast array of colours and patterns and thicknesses. I want to buy the whole range!

Visit the bigcartel shop to find out more: http://www.happytape.bigcartel.com/

I was dropping off some new stock at Concrete Wardrobe this week and on their desk I found a set of brooches and earrings made from recycled felt tip pens – I thought they were amazing. Suspended in cream resin, slices of pen lids in lots of different colours and shapes float about as if immersed in blocks of white chocolate and look almost edible! These unique items come from the jewellery bench of Jo Pudelko and I’ve just done a bit of googling to bring you some of the delightful items she’s made.

Jo is another modern day magpie who hoards and collects and I read her personal statement with a smile on my face as I’ve found another person who sees treasures in what others discard and throw away:

Much of my work stems from a personal interest in the amount of waste [...]
read more »

I’m stretching my Milomade wings and exploring ways to get my products noticed more online and in the process I discovered The Handmade Gift Guide – it’s the sister site to Shop Handmade UK which has been around for a while and is a directory with over 1300 UK makers listed on it – Milomade being one of them. I needed to change my details on this site and that’s what brought me to The Handmade Gift Guide.

I contacted Belinda who runs the site to find out more and she kindly answered the following questions – this will give you a good idea of what the site is all about and how it works.

1. Where did you get the idea to start The Handmade Gift Guide? The idea evolved from read more »