Carousel animals

Here are three of the twelve carousel animal embroidery designs I have finished this weekend for Ashlea over at Bunnycup. They are simple but cute black and white illustrations. Someone mentioned  that these line drawings would be good to print out and use as fun coloring page for their children on a rainy day or as a indoor party activity, so if you think your kids would find that fun too then let me know if it was successful!

Other posts on this blog that might make good colouring pages for kids are:

Karate Kids 

Gingerbread men (could be good at a Christmas party)

Blossom Babes (They are like little flower fairies)

Playful Cats 

So feel free to print and colour and if you'd like to stay up to date, I'm now on twitter @madamebogg

The Drawing Room: My Thoughts

Photos By Andrew Foster. Wanna see more? Check out The Circus of illustration facebook page.

We made it as democratic as possible, which funnily enough resulted in what looks like anarchy. It was free to join in and the only rules were no swears and no saucy body parts (the rule was broken, but David used his skills to transform the offending article into an elephant). People of all ages, cultures and abilities got stuck in together. Families and individuals arrived to find a welcoming lively creative space. 

The room was a shop front, so passing pedestrians would stop, and have a good look at the hustle and bustle of the spectacle inside. Some were intrigued enough to join in and find out more, others took photos. The public seemed genuinely amused with what was happening.

PHEW! It got so hot in there! The south facing glass frontage magnified the heat of the warm September sun. The smell of marker pens mixed with the odour of busy bodies wasn't exactly fragrant, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. Everyone who participated did so with much enthusiasm.

The naughtiness of drawing on walls and furniture, activities that are usually strictly forbidden at home really delighted the children who took part. 

We couldn't control what or where stuff was being drawn, so it was a surprise to walk around the room once the shop was emptied. So many little details (a beautifully swirly table leg), and written messages ('Paul Young woz here'), and naughtiness (a catheter attached to a whoopee cushion) and odd characters (a cloud throwing up a rainbow) were discovered.

The day was a huge success. The final head count was almost 250 people over the 6 hours the pop-up shop was open for.

If you want to see the fun results of a day of collaborative buzzing doodling energy, the Drawing Room is at 24 Mill Street in Bedford until 23rd of September. It's opened to go into on Saturday 22nd where you can check out Anne-Marie Stijelja's Mail Art  exhibition in the adjacent room!

Finally, a HUGE THANK YOU goes out to Kayte Judge of We Are Bedford. For the Circus, putting on this event has been a doddle compared to all the boring admin, fine-tuning and stressful meetings required for organising these empty shop projects. The behind the scenes work shouldn't go unnoticed and it's not easy to do. So Kayte, on behalf of the Circus of Illustration, we salute you. Thanks for giving us this opportunity to put on our illustration show for Bedford.

Preparing the Drawing Room

The Drawing Room is an interactive art installation taking place at 24 Mill Street in Bedford on Saturday 15th September between 10am - 4pm. It's free and open to the public.

The Circus of Illustration have been busy in our evenings and weekends preparing the room. We've collected old furniture and trinkets to create a pure white room shop front, which will act as a canvas for people to doodle on throughout the Saturday. We want people to scribble on the papered walls, floor and furniture.

It looks very clean and snowy, but it won't stay unpigmented for long! Andrew Foster took all these superb photos after our last night of prep. We ran out of white duck tape during this last papering session, but thankfully Rachel rushed to the DIY shop before it closed to restock. David struggled to cover the armchair without making it look like a puffer mushroom, but he managed to maintain it's shape after a few swears! 

Here's a photo of Rachel Lovatt and myself (on the right) enjoying the chessboard that Andrew brought in. A chess set where all the pieces are white is rather curious! (And check out that cool lamp stand that Scarlett managed to salvage for our project. I think it looks lovely.)

I do cutes!

During the day, I work as a cute artist for Doodle Press. I've been there since 2008 working in-house. They are an amazing illustration and design company based in Lancastershire. We provide design and illustration for greeting cards, packaging, product design and crafts. I usually work on cutes but I have done traditional scenes and florals too.

This a small selection of my cute work taken from the brand new and gorgeous Doodle Press website so if you're interested in our work you should get in touch.

The Drawing Room

The Circus of Illustration, the collective of local illustrators who I like to hang out and plan events and workshops with, are planning an event called The Drawing Room . It is taking place in an empty shop - 24, Mill Street in Bedford on Saturday 15th September from 10am to 4pm - as part of a series of events organised by We are Bedford. 

The Circus and the public are creating an installation in one of the shop windows, so come and check it out! The idea being that at the beginning of the day we start off with a plain white space with white furniture and objects and by the end it will be decorated with all sorts of fantastic doodles. We encourage people of all ages and abilities to come along on the day and join in the fun - you don't have to be a great artist. You can stay all day or just pop in for 10 minutes. 

In the Drawing Room we will be doodling on plain wallpaper and pieces of furniture. There is no theme to the drawings - anything goes - just keep it clean!  It could be patterns, people, animals, diagrams or even an underwater scene. I'll post some photos of how it goes!

Linoleum cut #2: Little girl

I'm still experimenting with lino cutting at home. Still a few tweaks needed on this one, but here is my progress so far.

Karate kids embroidery designs

Here are three of twelve little illustrations I've just finished for Ashlea at Bunnycup Embroidery. They are karate kids. Ashlea will eventually stitch them out using her amazing skills on her digitzed embroidery machine and make them available to download for other embroidery hobbyists to use in their projects.