Part One to a fantastic adventure!

Hello,

I have been on a fantastic adventure to the South West of England visiting Bristol, the beautiful Bath, Wells, Glastonbury, and the wonderful Cheddar Gorge.

Bristol is an amazing city and I was so taken with the creative atmosphere. Bristol is BIG on art, design and crafts from streets covered in amazing art work (you just can’t call it graffiti) to little quaint streets with craft shops with studios.

In the heart of Bristol’s Christmas Steps Art Quarter is Blaze Studio a combined studios and craft boutique, there I met Hanne Rysgaard who was downstairs hard at work, before I disturbed her.

 Hanne creates funky ceramic pieces by slip casting quirky objects to create fun contemporary home wares decorated with a mix of vintage and modern patterns and colours. I couldn’t resist not buying anything, but it was so hard to choose, as there was a mixture of milk related objects which I loved and I think I might order one, but I decided I would get a lovely tea light jar with a beautiful flower pattern around the side. Hanne Rysgaard shares the studio with a very talented textile artist, Kay Morgan who makes beautiful leather purses, corsages, and handbags in the upstairs studio. So glad I rang the bell, as it was really insightful to talk to an artist who is living the dream!

Blaze Studio

Window Display

My lovely purchase

Another studio in the Art Quarter, I visited was ‘SNAP’ which is a printmaking co-operative run by eight resident artists with an art gallery upstairs, and studio space downstairs where they run screen printing workshops from.  The gallery space was really quaint and the all work was amazing. I think my favourite work was by Freya Cumming who is a printmaker and Illustrator. Her shopping series of patterns are beautiful and really shows the perfect balance of narrative drawings and surface pattern which Cummings has perfected over the years. A really good place to visit!



My two prints from SNAP

Freya Cumming

SNAP studio

Well… part two of my trip to the South West is coming really soon, and also some other exciting news about new work.

Thanks for reading xx

New Experience!

Our lovely stall

The only source of knowledge is experience.
Albert Einstein

Hi,

Today I was a part of a wonderful event in Bolton, Saint Andrew’s Court contemporary art and craft fair. Mine and fellow contemporary crafter Leah Fletcher’s stall ‘Contemporary Craft by Leah Fletcher and Lucy Harding’; looked really good, clean and very well thought out. Even though we didn’t actually sell anything, the experience was a fantastic. We now have a foundation stock that we can keep adding too and sell. Hopefully we are going to have another craft fair very soon, and also very exciting news that I start my residency at the beginning of October at Smithy Studios, Glossop.

Upcycled Jugs

Upcycled cups and saucers

Fellow Crafter- Leah Fletcher



More of the lovely Leah's work



Thanks for reading.

Exciting News- Saint George's Court, Contemporary Art and Craft Fair!

Hi All,

I have some exciting news; me and my fellow contemporary crafter Leah Fletcher are going to have a stall at a wonderful fair, St Andrew’s Court, Contemporary Arts and Craft Fair in Bolton on Bank Holiday Monday 29^th August! It is very exciting for us, and we are trying get to everything and make enough stuff to sell. The event will have more than 20 local crafters and artists, there will be face painting, and also unlimited tea and coffee. The event aims to encourage local artists and crafters back into the area as Saint Andrew’s court is currently being regenerated, so it’s an great event to be apart of.

A wonderful opportunity to sell our work and meet other talented makers, please look at all the different artists which are going be there http://saintandrewsfairs.tumblr.com/ or join the facebook group http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=177197615684697

Also take a look at the brilliant Leah Fletchers work, her work is so pretty and unique. http://leahfletcher.wordpress.com

Please come down and visit us on Bank Holiday Monday!

Thanks for reading!

One Month On!

Day, n.  A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.

Well life after university is going well… I had a lovely letter in the post with my university results and I am very happy to tell you I got a solid 2:1 which I am so satisfied with. I am so proud that my hard work has paid off. I am so delighted that all the Contemporary Crafter got 2:1’s as well! I am honoured to have had them as my course mates through three rough years and I know that all of us will work hard and achieve our dreams.  

Since the degree show I have had a little rest and break from drawing and designing, but I am now itching to get started again on different things. I am saving up for a screen printing kit so I can screen print my own patterns for both fabrics and cards, which is very exciting. So this week am going design birthday prints for my cards to sell.

I have been developing photographic prints so some lucking people can buy my work. They are 4 different limited edition prints, which I have mounted and framed. They look really nice! Also I have been busy getting to grips with Etsy, the online craft shop. I have registered my shop; I just need to put something in it which I am going to do this week.

 

I had a lovely night on Saturday at an Charity Art Auction at Unit 12 in Stafford, where I gave a signed framed print for the event, and was nice to see all the wonderful work there, raising money for a brilliant cause.   I will have more information and pictures of that in my next post.

Exciting times, am really looking forward to my residency and am looking for to getting stuck into my work again.

Thanks for reading once again and I will blog soon again with more exciting news!

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