The Last Contemporary Craft Degree Show!

At last the Degree Show is here, I have been working up to this for 3 years now, and I didn’t know what to expect. I am so proud of all the Contemporary Crafters, and it’s been a rough 3 years but we have gotten though it….somehow!

I was overwhelmed with the good feedback from people which I was getting from my work, so good in fact that I won two awards!!! Not one, but two!! I was so very shocked, surprised and you don’t get me speechless very often but I was.

I won the Royal Exchange Craft Shop Award, which is a group exhibition in the Royal Exchange Craft Shop in 2012, and the other award I won is the Smithy Studios Graduate Award, where the prize is a 3 months residency at the studios and 3 months showcase for my Graduate Collection in the Glossop Studios.

It’s all very exciting and I can’t wait to get stuck in. I am going start up an esty shop to sell my aprons and also up cycled work.

I would like to thank the judges, Catherine Carr and Rachael Noone, and everybody who have visited the Degree Show.

This post is in memory of the first milkman in my life, Len Harding.

Finally Finished!!

Hello!

My hand in date has been and gone! The few days running up to it were very exhausting, and I have now had a couple of days to recover due to the lack of sleep.

I am very happy with the end result, I have worked so hard and just hope it pays off. The work up for assessment looks really good, clean and exciting!

In the end I created-  two different types of cup cosies, ones with my pattern that fit a normal sized coffee cup and ones that fit my ceramic cups with digital print. 

I also had four final wall pieces two with my digital and appliqued milk man, which are my favourite and the other two are bigger and have my screen print as the background. I also appliqued a milk man’s overall jacket with a couple of milkmen which I really like as well.

My upcycled work looked really good as a collective of vintage ceramics and newly made ceramics. In addition I had three aprons, and also my ceramic cups on show for my assessment.

The next stage now is tomorrow I have to take my work down and then help with the 3D degree show where my work will be shown, and also this week I am going to create pieces to sell.

Thanks for reading!!!

Two Weeks till Deadline!

For the past two weeks, I have been running around like a headless chicken trying to get my work complete. It is now progressing and my hard work is pulling off; my upcycling is going well, I am now focusing more on milk jugs. I am still upcycling cups and saucers as they look really sweet, but milk jugs relate to my project of the milk round and milk much better. I have been using my doorsteps to create a new patterns on the tableware, and I have also been using quotes from my questions about milkmen from forums. This gives my work that extra authenticity and also to show that milkmen our apart of the British community! This week I have started to add my illustrations to the floral patterns that are existing on the tableware, make the flowers blend in more with my illustrations and also so the existing floral pattern doesn’t stand out as much.

My screen printing is going really well, I have made a few repeat patterns to be made into aprons and other things. My wall pieces are starting to come together using the digital print and appliqued milkmen looks lovely, and gives my textiles more depth.

I have also created my cup cosies from the digital print, and my prints. There are 5 cup cosies and they tell a story about Ernie the milkman, whose milk starts going missing and goes on a hunt to find the bandit.

Thanks for reading!

Lucy

Upcycling!

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience- Paul Cezanne

Yesterday I spent the day in local charity shops, collecting vintage tableware as I want to use up cycling pieces in my work. Up cycling is taking discarded items which would normally end up in a land fill and finding a new use for them. It’s a very exciting turn in my work; I am going to apply my doorsteps to the pieces to create a whole new piece.  I have chosen pieces with bits of pattern already on them as I want to integrate the old pattern with the new. I really love the idea of up cycling, as another man trash is another man treasure. Up cycling can be linked in to my theme of saving milkmen as it is known that milk man were the first recyclers as you ‘rinse and return’ your glass milk bottles.  I have been mainly looking for china that has been made in England, because I want to support English industry, as I don’t think that we make any pottery or very little pottery in the UK, and like milkmen, the industry is dying out. Tomorrow is a very busy and exciting day, as I am adding my designs to the china and also screen printing!

 



Very excited to work with this pieces!

Just a little update!

Just a little up date about the work am doing at the moment! Its still based on milkman and my milkround, but I am concentrating on developing my surface pattern work, bring more detail in to it. I have been drawing doorsteps as they are iconic to the Milkman. Another reason why I want doorsteps in my work is because the UK sales of milk to the doorstep is just 4.7% and supermarkets are riding high with over 80% of milk sale, I want to bring peoples milk back to the doorstep. Here is a taster of drawings which will be screen printed when I get back to uni on Tuesday!

Am quite happy with the outcome of these drawings and developments, very excited to get printing them. What I hope to do is have the doorsteps as the background and then apply the applique milkman/woman over the top. Also I plan to have some just black and white printed up as well.

Hollie Brown

I can't get enough of Hollie Brown's surface pattern work. I love love it! I first saw Hollie's work at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair back October, and I still keep referring to it in my work. I love the layers in which she uses in her work, and the sketches are to die for. The kooky characters in her work, remind me of my elderly milk customers on the round. I think this is another reason why I adore Hollie Brown's work so very much. 'Betty Loves Tea' collection is my favourite, which is an award winning collection and I can totally understand why!

Betty Loves Tea

Sunny Day

Free As A Bird

A Sailor Went To Sea

No Milk Today Minor Project

For this project my inspiration came from my job which is delivering milk on my father's milkround, I am a modern Milk Girl. I wanted to show people that milkman are still about and that soon enough there will be no more. Also I want to use the milk notes which we get in from customers as the different handwriting is so visually appealing. I created textile pieces based on my doucmenting of the milkround, and also ceramic vessels which were half a milk bottle with my very only ceramic transfers on them.