M-u-m-m-y

I've been inspired by my daughter who came home singing 'm-u-m-m-y, she's my mummy' - apparently they're learning Mother's Day related songs this week at pre-school (who knew there was such a thing - but I'm not complaining as it's very cute and not very often I get such attention!!) - so I thought I'd post my Mother's Day cards so all those other Mums out there can have a little bit of attention too!
They're all available in my shop.

New! in the Luckies catalogue....

Having always sold directly from my own range I've never experienced having products I've worked on in any catalogues other than one of my own so I was rather excited to receive my copy of the new Luckies catalogue which features the Word Map range including the new USA version alongside all their other products.

Shop love

I've followed Present & Correct for quite a few years and bought beautiful bits of stationery and gifts from them so I was very excited to see they've opened a bricks and mortar shop in London (only pity is living so far away). I find it exciting that despite the digital age of online shops there are sites which have become very established online and still feel they can have a physical shop presence. The age of the shop and shopping experience isn't dead! It's still a thrill to walk into an exciting shop full of things you know you'll love positioned and displayed in a way which makes your heart race a bit. It looks like the Present & Correct shop is every bit as design streamlined, geometric, understated and beautifully organised as the website. 'A place for everything and everything in it's place' must be their mantra!

Calling all Love Birds!

Let your 'someone special' know you're thinking of them. And if you purchase a card from the Valentines range in my shop between now and midnight on Monday I'll even throw in a free Mother's Day card. Two for the price of one.... what a bargain!
Enjoy the weekend.

Introducing the USA word map

Good morning.
Back in October last year I hinted at having just finished something involving small paint brushes and a bottle of Indian ink. Finally I am very excited and proud to be able to announce that after being kept under wraps for the last few months the Word Map of the USA has arrived!
The statistics make interesting reading....
6 months of research
73 hours of hand painting
919 words
&
x1 pencil
x1 rubber
x4 01 size paint brushes
x1 bottle of black Indian ink
&
well over 100 cups of coffee!!

As with the previous maps this has been a commission by Angus at Snowhome and he was the one one who tirelessly researched the whole of the USA to seek interesting facts and titbits of geographically based culture and history before passing those lists to me to transform them into a typographic hand drawn map of the USA.

I am extremely happy to say that the Word map of the USA along with the whole of the Snowhome Wordmap range will now be exclusively distributed worldwide by giftware brand Luckies of London.
The USA map was launched by Luckies at New York International Gift Fair last week and I've heard that the response was great. I can't wait to see where they go from here....

Other map-replated news..... I've been asked to do a talk at the upcoming British Cartographic Societies 50 year anniversary event in London talking about the typographic maps I've done over the past couple of years. They're looking at a fresh approach to maps and have asked me and a couple of other contemporary map creative people to talk about our work. Scary but exciting!

My week...

It's been a busy week of designing in the studio. I've been fulfilling orders on evenings and spending my days working on my new Christmas card designs for 2013! (Very early I know but some stockists need the samples early so they can begin the choosing process...). It's made a very welcome change to dedicate my time to creating and I've really enjoyed the week. I even managed a tiny bit of screen printing also. It feels like I've achieved the right balance in my working week for once.
Designing the cards and producing samples is quite a different process from this time last year when I was still screen printing them. Now I produce the artwork (in the same way as before - brush and ink, cut outs and mac) and then instead of heading to the print room to begin the colour mixing process I reach for my pantone colour chart. I did think it would make me enjoy the process that bit less but it doesn't seem so - I love looking at colours so whether it's mixing them by hand or choosing them from all the lovely colours on the chart it's still very much a creative process for me.
I've been favouring the warming burgundy and orange combination which will be a bit of a theme running through some of the new Christmas cards. A snuggly 'keeping warm by the fire' sort of combination I thought....!