New Cards

After a week away, I've been itching to get back to my cutting board and create all the new ideas for Quite Contrary which have been swimming around my head!

The first collection are ones I made a few months ago for my fairs, but have been quite popular so I thought I'd better list them on here for you lovely bunch! These number cards are perfect for any age, from 1 to 101, and come in a variety of bright colours - they seem especially popular for gifts for the little folk of 1-5.

One of my lovely fair buyers also asked if I could do a 'romantic' version for a First Anniversary of their friends, and here's what I came up with - again you could have it for a 42nd Anniversary or a 2nd, anything goes!

My Number cards have been picked for this lovely 'Numbers of Etsy' treasury, thank you Flapper Fashions! Go show it some love please :)

I'm back!

After 10 days away visiting friends and relatives down South, and a lovely trip to France, I'm back at Quite Contrary HQ - full card cutting services can now resume. Thanks to all my lovely customers who've been happy to wait for their orders upon my return, they're now winging their way over to you.

So here's a few of my 'holiday' snaps for you. Firstly, we spied this awesome taxi creation when we were mosying through the back streets of Greenwich - how cool is this! It's royal transport for the Pearly King & Queen.

And then it was on to France! An early present for my lovely man, we went to see the famous beaches of the 6th June 1944 landings (admittedly with a lot of cheese noshing inbetween!) Although we were only there overnight, we managed to fit in all 5 beaches including the very famous Utah and Omaha beaches, and had a picnic stocked from the shelves of the nearby Carrefour (including a very yummy Cider cheese!) under the somewhat grey clouds on Ohmaha.

It's overloooking Omaha beach where the American memorial is for all their fallen soldiers. The French actually gave this land to the Americans. It was vast, and quite affecting too with the very precise rows of white crosses (and stars for Jewish soldiers) which never seemed to end.

There were suprisingly few Unknown Soldier graves, but they were very touching if you found one.

This is the view from our hotel window, which overlooked Cherbourg harbour

And, when in France...this year's 'What??' find in the Supermarket is Pigs brains, yum yum... (yuck)

And now we're back home - typically it was brilliant sunshine on my first day back! I've got lots of new ideas for cards and Papercuts that I can now put into action though, so keep your eye peeled soon! :)

Folksy Friday - a hint of Pink

Last weekend I was a Bridesmaid at Dan's sisters' wedding - a gorgeous Pink affair! Admittedly I didn't jump at the colour choice (pink and Gingery hair don't really go!) but I was quite surprised - seems baby pink isn't too bad after all! We were wearing Ivory and pale pink dresses, and the Bride was in a stunning 'Princes style' baby pink dress, with delicate pearl details. So, I've chosen today's theme to go along with that - here's a nice selection of pink goodies!

Unveiling my hidden Art side...

As promised last week, I've been very busy over the last few months creating 2 pieces for the Sotheby's Staff Exhibition, 'Objets D'art', which is currently on at Sotheby's London for this final week.

My first piece was a delicate Papercut, as I wanted to tie it in with my card business and fit in some more hours on the cutting board! (Pictures are in my earlier post)

So now for my second piece. This is something I've kept quiet for a while; it first started when I decided to create something special and unique for my Brother when he turned 21, and as he'd collected beer mats from an early age, it lead me to this... my custom Beer Mat Canvases.

Specially for this London-based Exhibition, I chose to do a London-themed canvas again (last year I also sold one).

It was created from only UK Beer Mats (sourced from hours & hours spent on Ebay!), and includes 19 hand painted customised Beer Mats along with various special London-themed ones. Can you spot them all? Each painted mat took 2-3 hours to create, and the assembly of the whole piece on to the canvas took 2 1/2 days. Quite time consuming but well worth the effort!

I finished the canvas off with a single black line mimicking the London Skyline - I really think this brings the piece together, and creates a nice central feature.

My favourite beer mat for this piece has to be my little Tetley's Bitter Man morphed into Beefeater, hehe!

I've got so many favourites - here's a couple of my other ones I was quite chuffed with how they turned out.

I've just found out today that it sold at the end of last week too, so I am absolutely over the moon!

I'd really like to start selling these properly - I think it would have to be done separately to my Paper goods though, as it's like chalk and cheese really!

Nestled in the Ribble Valley lies a beautiful garden...

So, to totally go off a tee to my normal bloggings, here's one for the green fingered (or cake lovers like myself!). For anyone wondering what to do with their Sunday afternoon, there's a lovely Open Garden Event in Lancashire which is raising money for Perennial, the Gardener's Royal Benevolent Society.

As well as a brilliant range of planted areas to wander around, it's a working garden so you'll get to see the ins and outs of life there, including the field turned into a Vegetable Garden! I had a peek there this week and the Veg has grown so much you'd think they were feeding the 5,000! There's also the yummiest of yummy scones, cakes and cups of tea (yes, I've sampled a few so can definitely vouch that they're droolable!), along with some gorgeous plant stalls to browse, and a Plant Wizard (aka. Peter Foley) there to answer any plant or gardening questions you may have! I'll also be setting up a little stall there with some of my takings going to Perennial, so plenty to keep you busy for the afternoon!

So treat yourself to a day out on Sunday, and spread a little Charity love...especially with those cream scones awaiting you! More details can be found on the Perennial website here.

Featured in the Sotheby's Staff Exhibition!

I'm very pleased to have been able to take part in this year's Staff Exhibition at Sotheby's - a lovely 2 week event where the public (and the employees!) get a glimpse at the talent hidden behind the scenes at this famous workplace. Luckily I moved back up North late enough to still take part in this, and was completely immersed in making my pieces for the last few months before the big move!

For my main piece, me and my trusty scalpel have stepped up a notch from card cutting and went for a delicate, multi-layered 3D Papercut. Quite different from the simplistic designs of my cards, I really enjoyed creating this piece, and am very happy with how it turned out.

The cut out daisies on the white card at the front are backed with a cheery yellow paper, and on the larger daisies I then cut through this on the petals to expose a darker yellow backing, and creating a double petal effect, to give it more depth. Looking at this now with the rain coming down really cheers me up - bring back Summer!

Let me know if you'd be interested seeing something like this appear on my shops - I can't decide if I should try something, perhaps a smaller version?

This fabulous Exhibition is free, and open for the next two weeks - so if you're in London, pop in! It's got sculptures, jewellery, amazing origami using lottery tickets, painting and photography - something for everyone!

I'll show you my second piece along with some great pictures from the Preview night, and the winning piece next week, so stay tuned!

Super Duper Fair

Wow, what an event! So, on Sunday I packed up and took the Quite Contrary goodies for a day out in Blackpool, for my first ever Quite Contrary stall. And it was fab!

The Super Duper Itsy Bitsy Handmade Fair was organised by the Grundy Art Gallery, and despite the horrible wet weather, the marquee was packed; seems not even rain can deter handmade buyers, yey! It was my most successful stall yet, beating any of the shared ones I did at Greenwich, and I was over the moon when one lady bought my large pink rose papercut, one of my smaller papercuts, and 3 cards - what an amazing purchase!! Here's my stall for the day, with my brand new sign I made the day before.

I also decided to go all out and print little price labels this time, instead of using my handwritten ones. I think it gave it a more finished look - and each had a little butterfly in the corner :)

We were all in a very cute marquee, which created a lovely friendly atmosphere. It also had windows and a mat floor - I've never been in such a posh one before!

There were 35 stalls all together, each looking very lovely, and amongst that were 4 of us Folksy Folk that I could find, which was great! Was lovely to put some faces to names. I met Lynsey from Purple Schmurple, and Rachel from Element Images - who both also had fantastic sales on the day!

Jacqui from Print for Love of Wood had brought along a Letterpress for the day that the kids could use - it weighed an impressive 4 stone, phew!

So there you have it - a fantastic day for everyone, buyers and sellers alike; Blackpool Handmade won't be defeated, even in the rain that caused the band to cancel (not sure the electrified look is too hot at the min...). Thanks Kerry and everyone at the Grundy Gallery for such a fab organised event - here's to the next!