all the fun of the Zombie Rockin' fair

I thought perhaps I should share some pics from Zombie Rockin' - these photos are all from Joe Pop who makes wonderful kitsch cards - go check him out!

Clockwise from top: the fab Naughty Monsters stall featuring monster and zombie plushes by my awesome friend Emma, my gorgeous friends Kate of Kate's Fascinators and Alice of Stitch Your Soul, various zombie-inspired costumes, and finally it's me in my derby gear all calavera-ed up.

It was a day of immense fun, hence the lack of photos - we were all too busy chatting/selling/making friends with random members of London Rockin' Rollers who turned up *swoon*

I didn't get any pics from the day of Miss Fran of Monsieur Monsteur, Nicola of More Brains, Vicar or Fabrice of Kaiser Calavera, but they were all there too...

Woooohoooo, a fun day indeed!

get your zombie on

If you're free and in London this bank holiday Monday, come and visit Zombie Rockin' at The Lexington, Angel.

There will be lots of stalls selling zombie goodies - including a few of my friends: Nicola will be selling cute gory accessories, Kaiser will be selling papier mache sugar skulls and screenprinted t-shirts, Emma will be selling her monster plushies, Joe will be selling his kitsch cards and Kate will be selling her gorgeous rockabilly fascinators.

There will also be all sorts of ghoulish activities, with a film screening and plenty of music (plus I think I heard a rumour about a bit of burlesque!) in the evening.

The FB page is here, if you want more deets.

In anticipation, my desk has been covered in things like this for the last week or so:

It looks as though it will be an ace day out! Hurrah!

popping up a pop-up

It’s been a bit of a while… and it’s been an insanely busy couple of weeks.

On a bit of a whim, I decided that I fancied opening up a pop-up shop. An hour after seeing a property I thought would be a good one, a deposit was left, and 16 hours later I started moving in.

I had 4 days to prepare for the opening weekend; four days to fully clear and clean the unit, paint it, furnish it, contact friends and potential stockers, design the logo and advertising, set up email and a website, write and send contracts to the stockers, pick up/take delivery of stock, set out the stock and decorate the unit, send out a press release, give out leaflets promoting the shop opening and plan the actual opening event – cupcakes and Bucks Fizz for all!

In those four short days, we managed to source 23 designer/makers to stock their goods in our little shop – and for the first week everything was going super duper well.

It was almost inevitable that something might go wrong after all the awesomeness, and sure enough, after just over a week we found out that the unit we were occupying did not actually have the correct paperwork to be rented as a retail unit. Not wanting to get in trouble with the council, we decided the best course of action would be to leave the unit. We ended up losing our rent deposit, the “landlord” refused to return it despite him receiving it under rather strained consequences, but to be honest I was just glad to be out of there.

We found a new unit for the shop almost immediately - the new one is in a much better location and much more likely to attract our target market. Let’s hope this one goes better!

We open for business later this week…

visiting the orchids at Kew

Last week my granny and I had a South London Adventure - we visited Kew Gardens to see the last of the orchid exhibition before it closed.

They were really rather spectacular, and brightened up the otherwise rather grey day.

Here are some of my favourites:

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the rest of the gardens - inside the hot house, the cactus house, looking at all the David Nash sculptures, and after some effort we finally found the tiny hidden-away Bonsai house - woo!

I'd forgotten how much there is to see at Kew! When we normally go there it's to have our big annual family picnic, and we don't normally do much wandering round due to the size of our group, so it was a nice change to go with just granny and explore the gardens properly :)

kris kross will make you jump(er)

Woohoo, the boy and I are off to Budapest for a few days of adventuring while he has some time off work. And it's almost my birthday, double awesome!

It's been a long time since I last went, and he's never been, so it'll be über exciting! Last time I was there it was the height of the summer, so this time will be slightly different... the highest temperature will be about 7°C, brrrrr.

And who can think of a better excuse to purchase some new pretty woolies? Here are a few that have caught my eye recently...

{1} {2} {3} {4} {5} {6} {7} {8} {9} {10} {11} {12}

Are you looking forward to jumper season as much as I am?

Street Feast opening night - tonight!

OK, so this is a little bit last minute, but...

...if you're free tonight, come down to the opening night of Street Feast in East London.

This will be the first night market in their new winter location - Hackney Downs Studios - and as it is the opening night you can expect live music, a film screening, 16 awesome food traders as well as some very special arts and crafts stalls...

More deets can be found >here<

a wintery day spent at Cake & Bake

A grey blanket of clouds greeted me upon waking, and feeling decidedly wintery I put together the following outfit before setting out on a grand adventure...

Miss Kaz had received tickets to the Cake & Bake Show in Earl's Court for her birthday, and she took me along as her official photographer (!) and macaron enthusiast.

Here's a little of what we saw and got up to:

It's amazing how exhausting it can be to spend all day eating cake, playing with airbrushes and looking at pretty things...

a little trip to Renegade (and photos thereof)

Woohoo, Renegade was back in London this weekend so I obviously had to go and visit it...

I met Susie there and we started off our crafty spree by doing one lap of the entire fair without making any purchases. It's our rule of craft fairs, otherwise we often run out of money by the time we get to the last stalls. That first lap alone took over an hour, since I kept seeing people I recognised and chatting with stallholders about their blogs. I flippin' love Renegade, and it's super exciting to play the game of craft-celebrity spotting!

First up was Miwary's stall. I always want to buy everything whenever I see her at various craft fairs, last time it was a tiny mouse brooch... but this time I had to resist, boo.

{Miwary}

Miso Funky is always full of such cute stuff - I was on a very strict budget so had to stop myself from getting a "What Would Delia Do" sampler, but Susie couldn't resist getting an "In Case of Emergency Breakdance" sampler - and who could blame her.

{Miso Funky}

Next to Miso Funky was Kim's super cute stall Finest Imaginary - check out the cute fox face!

{Finest Imaginary}

The next awesome stall we came to was Alexa's stall, Foamy Wader. She had the most original display methods I have ever seen at a stall - her gorgeous necklaces were hanging off huge vintage spools!

{Foamy Wader}

Plus look who was manning the mailing list!

Our next stop was Deb's stall, where I just had to buy a sleepy hedgehog pin, and Susie bought a teeny tiny ice cream pin...

{ladysnail}

I think my favourite stall of the entire fair was 'hand over your fairy cakes' - and look how cute Sally and {unknown name chap} are! So cute! I loved Sally's stall, it was so bright and cheerful and gosh darn adorable! And I am totally now stalking Sally on Pinterest and Twitter. She's my new favourite craft celeb - and she's a doctor! Awesome, non?

{hand over your fairy cakes}

Susie bought a stag head necklace from her stall, and I spent about 20 minutes working out which of the incredible brownie/scout badges I wanted - I finally went with an Akela one. Oh yes.

{hand over your fairy cakes}

Next was Sarah's stall Magasin, which I have always loved. Again, I wish I could have bought everything, but I was very restrained and just got a teeny green V pin. If she had had any plonker pins in stock I would totally have bought one, but there were none left, boo.

{Magasin}

When I first saw designosaur I had to high five Jacques (I think it was him) for the amazing pun. Genius. And then, obviously, I had to buy a tiny silver triceratops brooch. Rarrrrrr! Whilst perusing I suggested perhaps making an ankylosaurus (everyone's favourite dinosaur, right?) and apparently he's already in the works - wooooooop!

{designosaur}

I got some adorable wooden gift tags from oh hello friend you are loved, and loved their display. What an ace way of using vintage cupcake tins!

{ohhellofriend}

Another of my favourite stalls was Brendan and Ruth's super pretty stall, i am acrylic. They hand cut all of their acrylic jewellery using a fretsaw, making it super unique unlike most other acrylic crafters who use laser cutting for their pieces. Susie bought an awesome rocket necklace from Brendan, and we both enjoyed his badge and the fact that he was wearing a flat cap. On their stall was a tiny version of them and their stall, which I couldn't resist photographing:

{i am acrylic}

~~~~~

Phew, after all that excitement I needed a bit of a sugar hit, so I headed out to my favourite sweet shop on Brick Lane, Madhubon Sweet Centre, and bought all of the burfi: almond flavour, pistachio flavour and mango flavour:

Burfi is pretty much the best thing ever invented. And an excellent way to round off such an awesome day of crafty fun!

powder paint fight, tea dance and a silent disco? Yes please!

Ooooh, look what's happening next weekend...

Anyone wanna join me?

bouncy bouncy fun times

It was a drizzly grey morning as we left to meet Laura for bouncy bouncy fun times at Hampstead Heath. We weren't at all sure if it was going to be worth it upon seeing the stretching queue of people waiting and the impending dark clouds overhead, but we patiently waited in line, willing the clouds to hold out for just a little while longer.

We reached the front of the queue and the giddiness of excitement overtook us. With our shoes tucked neatly behind the small fence surrounding the bounce area, we leapt onto the air-filled monument and the senses went crazy. Bouncing as an adult is vastly different to memories of bouncing as a child, but no less gleeful.

We can't have been on the thing for more than about 15 minutes, but man did we get a lot of bouncing done in that time - there was regular bouncing, landing on your bum bouncing, trying to jump up from a seated position bouncing, and at the end we even had a race around the inflated stones.

As the whistle blew to signify our time had come to an end, we felt the first splodges of rain. Perfect timing.

Kam's disposable camera swap - come and sign up!

The very first blog I ever started reading was Kam's blog, Campfire Chic. Kam is super awesome, she's little and feisty and loves adventures! Her blog is full of all those adventures in climbing, hiking, mud running, and, of course, camping!

Her most recent project is one that I just couldn't resist - plus it will encourage me to have all kinds of Kam-inspired adventures in order that my pics are awesome for the receiver!

What is it all about?

• You sign up
• You get matched with somebody else
• You buy a disposable camera
• You take photos using the camera (keeping in mind any requests you get from your match)
• You send your disposable camera (filled with photos) to your match
• You receive a filled disposable camera from somebody else
• You develop the photos, upload them, and share!

You have until Monday to sign up, and you can do so on Kam's blog

>here<

Anyone else want to join me in this project?

jubilee weekend days out

This weekend is Jubilee Weekend here in the UK - and here's a little rundown of some of the things I am planning on doing/seeing/going to:

Friday

"Celebrating the Queen's Jubilee with the launch of Emma Block's Illustrated Tea and Cake Book. Drop by for a complimentary cuppa courtesy of Tea Pigs and a slice of cake baked especially by our booksellers. All cake sale donations will go to the Evening Standard's Get London Reading charity." 

Jubilee Tea and Cake Launch Party

3pm - 10pm

Watermark Books

London Kings Cross Station

Saturday

"Join us on Saturday the 2nd of June for a truly East End knees up! We’re celebrating the Jubilee with our very own “Street Party”. You’ll have everything you need to celebrate and we’ll be doing it in a “1950′s” style from traditional games, DJ (Tony Tunes will spinning some vintage tunes!), face painting for the little ones, our very own ice cream van, lots of vintage shopping to themed craft workshops but most of all with a good dose of fun!"

Jubilee Street Party

Wood Street Market

Walthamstow E17

Sunday

"The festival has been organised by the local community and will be happening on the Sunday of the Diamond Jubilee Bank Holiday, so expect some bunting action to be occurring. The festival features live bands and DJ sets, a tug-o-war, zumba, a street mural, a bouncy castle, a cake-making contest, and more."

Victoria Road Festival

Walthamstow E17

Phew, it's all rather Tea and Cake themed, non?

If you fancy joining me at any of them, let me know - the more the merrier!

memories of a glorious French summer

In my second year of uni we were advised by our tutors to spend the summer getting some work experience. I decided to get some life experience instead, and spent a long, glorious summer living in the south of France, surrounded by families who knew very little English.

It was quite an experience, and one of my favourite summers ever. Staying just outside a small village, there was nothing in the immediate vicinity, so every morning I rode an ancient bike into the nearest town to buy fresh bread for breakfast and anything else the family needed.

Mornings were spent writing, drawing and making pretty things. I was just a little obsessed with beaded animals at the time, and spent many hours creating tiny butterflies from rocailles and bugles. One morning, while beading in the garden, I was kindly informed by a local artist that there was to be a craft fair in the town centre the next weekend, and that I should set up a little table selling my beaded butterflies and some bracelets I had made. It was quite a challenge as a shy, foreign 21-year old, but once I'd got my head around the currency and money-related words, I was good to go. My French teacher would have been proud to see me selling my wares in French!

Mornings may have been for work, but afternoons were for more adventurous pursuits - canoeing in the local river, chasing tiny lizards in the garden, wading around watching kingfishers, cycling through the nearby forest on the search for butterflies, or swimming in the nearby lake.

It was absolutely incredible, and feels totally surreal thinking about it now - I had forgotten loads of it, until I found a bag of beaded butterflies in my studio a few days ago and the memories came flooding back!

How did you spend your favourite summer?

peacock + chocolate = peachoc!

A few years ago I spent a couple of days in the state of Tyrol, Western Austria, in a city called Innsbruck. Located in a valley with mountains surrounding it, Innsbruck is the perfect destination for winter sports enthusiasts. It was not for that reason that I was there, however: Innsbruck is pretty much half way between Verona and Munich, one of which I had just come from, the other I was travelling to. It made sense to split up the journey, and Innsbruck seemed like the perfect place...

Ah, beautiful Innsbruck! I often think about the fun I had when I was visiting you, for it was within your city walls that I made one of my favourite discoveries ever: peacocks LOVE chocolate! Now, it could just be Austrian peacocks, or perhaps it could have been just that particular peacock, but I'd like to think it applies to all peacocks.

Let me tell you how the discovery was made:

Unable as I am to resist European castles, one of the days I was in Innsbruck was spent at Schloss Ambras, the castle just outside the city. In the grounds of the castle I witnessed a peacock eat an entire lawn of buttercups, saw a goose chalet, met a hyper-intelligent duck with an enormous head, cheered on a duck dance-off, saw a tiny woodpecker and fed a duckling.

After feeding a couple of dancing geese, I sat down on a nearby bench to have a square or two of chocolate and take in my beautiful surroundings. A squawking sound stopped me mid-bite and I looked around to see another peacock marching towards me. I think he must have been annoyed about not being given any seeds, as he came over and snatched the chocolate out of my hand with his beak! Luckily, it was only a couple of squares, but he swallowed it in one go and then ran off! Hurriedly I gobbled up the remaining chocolate, but on the last piece he came back and tried it on again, the cheeky scamp!

Austrian peacocks are rascals!

As I was reminiscing about this little adventure of mine, I decided to make a treasury all about peacocks and chocolate. That's a normal thing to do, right?

{peacocks love chocolate}

You may have won this time, but I'll be back!

my annual expedition to the Swedish Christmas Fair

As the sun was setting over north London (16:06 - can you believe it?), I was sitting on a train journeying towards the Christmas Market at the Swedish Church in Marylebone. It was the first proper Christmassy thing I have done this year, and now I'm super excited about it all, and am increasingly tempted to 'Scandinavia-up' the festivities this year.

I was very well behaved - I only bought one box of pepperkaker biscuits, an advent candle and a pretty wooden robin ornament - but there were plenty of other tempting Swedish goodies: housewares, nyommy food and pretty textiles to name but a few!

Now I'm back at home with a snuggly kitten and a nice cup of tea, munching on pepperkaker, listening to Abba and thinking about Swedish gingerbread houses...

{1} {2} {3}

If you're interested and free (short notice I know, sorry), the last day of the fair is tomorrow.

birthday weekend round-up

Although I share my birthday with King Tut day, I felt that the anniversary of the discovery of the young pharaoh's tomb was the more important news to mention here. I do love birthdays, but as I am getting older it's a bit of a weird feeling realising you're no longer in your early 20s... and you're almost a grown up.

I had a lovely day though - I was given an uber mathematical origami book by my boss following my 1000 cranes challenge (of which many were done at work), a gorgeous gift from one of my lovely Year 7 students, cards and chocolate bunnies in my pigeonhole and a bunch of other stuff from friends at work.

After work I got to open my presents from Jms - a backwards watch (after having bought myself a backwards clock about 10 years ago, I can no longer tell the time on a regular watch very easily - so this was perfect!), this awesome book, this awesome book, this awesome book and these ROLLERSKATES! Immense.

Kaz came over later that evening, for dinner and to hang out. She had made the most amazing chocolate orange cake - with ganache and everything. She had also bought me a pretty Momiji doll, who I named 'Murasaki' (the word for purple in Japanese), some awesome Edward Monkton coasters and the best thing pretty much ever, a tiny hand-bound, hand-written, hand-drawn book containing a story about me and my friends and our special magical powers. It was incredible, and the fact that so much effort had been put into it just made me swell inside with gratitude. I can't put into words how special it is.

Miss Yoyo had great fun making a nest with all the torn up wrapping paper, I had fun with all my new goodies, we all enjoyed the cake and the evening was grand.

On Saturday I went for a day out to Hampstead Heath with Phil and Laura - now it's properly feeling like autumn she thought it was about time we did some jumping in mud and kicking around in leaves. So we did. Then we looked for mushrooms and saw some robins and had tea and cake at Kenwood House, before returning to the station via Parliament Hill in order to watch the kites that were being flown against the rose-coloured sky. It was really rather lovely.

Upon my return home I found sherbet Double Dips attached to my front door - splendid!

Today is shaping up to be a pretty lazy day, which is wonderful. Socialising is all well and good and everything, but sometimes you just need days where you stay in your pyjamas all day and drink tea in front of the telly and just generally lounge about. It's an excellent way to see in my next year. But it doesn't half make me feel old.

Star Wars roller derby + pretty skates

It's all very well being "into" roller-derby, but in order to actually get into it, I thought maybe a little group of us should go and see a local team, the London Rockin' Rollers, to get a proper feel for it. Plus I had heard that their next event was to be Star Wars themed - and frankly, that was more than enough to get me there. Stormtroopers, Ewoks and roller derby? Yes please!

As well as cheers from those who are planning to join me in re-learning to skate, there were initial doubts from a feminist friend... Girls zooming around a track in skimpy outfits and overly sexualised nicknames? Not too sure about that!

Despite initial concerns, she and her boyfriend joined us in our roller derby adventure, and I'm pretty sure she enjoyed herself. And how can one not at a derby? It was super duper fun! We packed into York Hall in Bethnal Green, home of the London Rockin' Rollers, and took our seats on the balcony overlooking the track, so we could watch all the action from above.

The LRR All Stars were playing the Stuttgart Valley Roller Girlz who had come from Germany for the annual match, and who were promptly thrashed.

You can read Laura's opinion of the experience here, if you would like to.

Now that I've seen it live, I'm even more keen on trying it out. I realise that I'm going to have to get super strong and, more importantly, get back into skating. In order to do this I'd better get me some skates. Luckily, my birthday is coming up soon! Woooo!

What do you think of these pretties?

{disco skates} {white skates} {blue and yellow retro skates}

{red and blue retro skates} {purple skull skates} {blue and yellow skates}

I'm liking the purple skull ones. You?