The Sandwich Defender!

A fantastically brilliant plate designed and handmade by James Ward of 'Jimbob Art". This is available from "from the wilde" a website that sells amazing art and designs from some of Britain's most exciting illustrators, artists and designer/makers. Go check out the rest of their selection here

Also to see more of James Ward's work go and visit his esty site here

Pug Dreaming

This image came to me after going to Vanfest. I have loved pug dogs since I was about 8, and me and Joe have wanted to get a dog (but done nothing about it!) for a few years. Vanfest was awash with dogs, and I was absolutely beside myself with excitement to spy about 5 different pug dogs over the weekend, cementing my desire to own one!

Amazing mixtape

A few pics of the amazing mixtape that me and Joe got sent as part of the mixtape project.

We had started to get worried that we wouldn't be receiving one, and then got very excited when an interesting envelope arrived on our door mat yesterday morning. This is the work of Sergio F Gallardo and Barbara Ana Gomez Isn't it great!? Loving the 50's adverts, and it has a great selection of music on it too. A lot of time and thought has gone into this one. Thanks guys!

Vanfest 2010

Just a few lovely pics of VW loveliness from Vanfest 2010.

Two Door Cinema Club

 Two Door Cinema Club

On wednesday we went to see Two Door Cinema Club play at the Birmingham Academy. We queued up, feeling well, rather old actually; surrounded by 15 year olds swigging carling excitedly. We rolled our eyes, seeing carful after carful being dropped off by their parents, and we began to wonder where all the adults were! Turns out most of them turned up a little later. 

Once inside the fifteen year olds bobbed up and down madly after downing cans of monster, and the girls screamed, we rolled our eyes.

However, the music was fantastic! Support came from Kowalski who like 2 Door Cinema Club hail from Bangor, Northern Ireland, and site some of their influences as being Death Cab For Cutie, Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire. They were much in the same vein as the  main act, and were really very good. 

Next up was We Have Band an electro-pop trio, who got everyone's head's nodding at the very least, as their music pulsated around the room.

Then came Two Door Cinema Club, who were flawless and very humble. The crowd was deafening, as the band thundered through their set, with great gusto, punctuated by the band sincerely thanking the crowd. We left feeling exhilarated. 

Our first Mixtape!

You may have seen me mention this before, but the mixtape project is a simple, but fantastic idea. Basically you sign up to the project (more info here) and once a month you are given a name and address for the person you need to send your mixtape to, and someone gets your address and sends you one. When I say mixtape I of course mean CD. You can pick any type of music and pick any theme for your selection, then as an added bonus you get to design and make artwork for it! To see some of the lovely artwork created by people involved in the project click here 

Above is the first one that my husband and I have created, (the project is in it's third month). We picked the music together and I created the artwork. I tried to make it look like a mini record. We already have plans for our next one, and can't wait to receive ours in the post! Expect another post about that one!

Meet El Cactus Magico

A new character I have created. Another submission for a character book. One of the categories that you could submit to was 'cactus' so I had a brainwave and thought, why not make a Cactus that is also a Mexican Wrestler!? So meet 'El Cactus Magico', well that's his stage name anyway, his real name is actually Carl, and he's not even Mexican, he's a house plant from basildon, but even a Cactus can dream!

The paper toy will be available for download for free off my website in the next few weeks.

Leeds!

 We went to the Leeds festival for the day last Saturday and it was amazing!

We saw Motion City Soundtrack who were excellent as usual. The King Blues were solid, but swore too much at that time in the morning, being the second act on. Holy F**k had some sound problems but still put in a good performance. The Local Natives were haunting and anthemic. You Me at Six were solid and managed to get 6 circle pits going. Limp Bizkit were good fun and a trip down memory lane.  Weezer were amazing, Rivers was a bundle of raw energy and really interacted with the crowd, even running out into it at one point and disappearing from sight as a rush of fans made their way towards him. As well as performing a good mix of their own songs they performed a crowd pleasing 'Teenage Dirtbag' of Wheatus fame and also MGMT's 'Kids' which turned into Lady GaGa's 'Poker Face' complete with Rivers donning a fetching long blonde wig!
Paramore were great, but people struggled to hear Hayley Williams due to the sound set-up

Next up was Blink 182! Who we had been waiting to see for a long time (about 12 years really!), and they did not disappoint! It was everything you'd expect from a Blink 182 gig; the tunes were there, the banter was there, Travis' phenomenal drumming was there and the atmosphere was electric! In fact the singing of the crowd was so loud for most of the set that you couldn't hear much else! The band were clearly humbled by the reception with Tom yelling 'That was awesome!' , and smiles rarely leaving their faces.
The encore included a showcase of Travis' drumming, in which at one point he drummed upside down (shame I'm short and didn't get much of a view of that!) Everyone left happy, and eager for them to grace our shores again, hopefully with some new material next time!

Smart illustration goes live!

So you saw my post about my submission for the OutSmart 2010 project, well now it's gone live on the website, go check it out, alongside the work of so many talented people, including the likes of YemaYema, Gaia Bordicchia and Peskimo! A privilege to have my work up there with  them!

Behind the mask

One of the great things about working at The New Art Gallery Walsall is the fact that when I'm there I get to have a look at their exhibitions, and they always have a fantastic one on, what's even better is that they're free! The one on at the moment until 12th September, is called Behind the Mask. It brings together a number of artists working across different mediums on the subject of portraits.


There is the famous photography of Cindy Sherman, in which she acts as model, director, stylist and photographer. Her latest series of work, of which some are included in this exhibition, depict women of status and wealth. Though they often look like fading beauties and have a sense of isolation and sadness to them.

But of all the work there, the one that made me pause the most (which is significant as I didn't have long to look around the exhibition!) was the work of Zhang Xiaogang. With his large scale stark and haunting paintings. The colour palette he uses is very limited and the work has more impact due to this. To me they seem like old photos of people long forgotten.

If you have a chance, before the 12th September, go and check it out, as these are just 2 of the wonderful artists who have work on display.