Aloha

I am off to the land of the luau, grass skirts, flower garlands and the hard-to-miss Hawaiian shirt for six weeks. My flight leaves at 11.15 am tomorrow. I am probably going to be in a bit of a two & eight after the parties tonight... Eeeeek. A holiday it is though and hopefully there will be a few moments here and there to relax and catch a bit of sun. I shall update the blog with tales of my adventures and perhaps a photo or two if I can steel a few minutes here and there on someone's laptop xx

Better late than never...

For those of you who aren't on our mailing list, this is what you would have received in your inbox if you were. Let us know if you would like us to add you to the list and we will send you lots of colourful junk in the future. Hope you're all had a festive one xx



Photographs (kindly and patiently) taken by Jess Bonham

(Please click on the image to enlarge. The quality of the enlarged image isn't great but i'm sure you'll catch my drift.. (haha) The full quality images will be up the website soon)

XMASSSSSSS!

Yep loving the christmas cheer. We've been having events left right and center, parties by the bucket load and everyday santa comes in the form of the postie at my door! The best pressie being Volume mag!!! Thanks Ruby for the hand delivery. We have a fashion shoot in the issue shot by Jess Bonham, show-casing recent RCA graduates of women's and men's wear. It's a special Birthday issue and looks great.

After the joy of our fruit machine down at the V&A Metal Rocks Late that we did a couple of weekends ago, we decided to embark on another live event called Design Grotto. It takes place at Somerset House on The Strand this weekend. It starts on Friday at 6pm and goes on until 10pm and runs Sat and Sun 10 am till 6pm. We are making a big ol' 'Goducken Dip' so come and win a prize while stuffing your hand up our oversized turkey!! Hence all the postman action, we have searched far and wide for some cracking prizes. It's also my birthday so Saturday will be a day of celebration and champers sipping over there!

I brought my self a little birthday treat off ebay, soon to make it's debut in a shoot for Neo2 magazine. Well I say debut but if you count all the travelling it did in the front of the van today then maybe not...
We are working with a great photographer called Rafael Perez Evans and have spent the evening making an exciting set. Keep your eyes peeled....

Willy's Stocking Filler. Ho Ho Ho

You can and SHOULD buy this HERE!!!

It has been a long time coming due to the somewhat elusive nature of Grime MCs but trust me all ye online gift buyers, this is not one to be missed. Will Robson-Scott's powerful portraits of some of London's most notorious Grimesters are like gold dust. A snip at £9.99, my Grandma will be ignoring her champers, turkey and brussels when she reveals this exclusive feast for the eyes on Christmas day... Not to mention the jealousy of her friends as she flips to reveal a new man each month. Another lovely project tucked under that Muksy little belt of his. You can also check his website here and his daily-life shenanigans here.

The Deptford Project

In between pound shop visits in Deptford and Dalston for a fun little project we are working on with YCN for the forthcoming edition of 'Ideas Illustrated', Anna and I grabbed a jacket sweet potato and a cuppa aboard The Deptford Project Train... Phew that was a long sentence. Designed by Studio Myerscough, the colourful edition to Deptford High Street, certainly brightened up my day. Check out the site for the proper blurb. Deptford - It's coming up, it's coming up.

Verner Panton

I was lucky enough to experience one of Panton's environments when I was in Vienna a couple of years ago with James. We went over to Austria because the Summer of Love exhibition was on at the Kunsthalle and I had missed it at the Tate Liverpool. It completely blew my mind... Particularly Panton's stuff. Check out this sight dedicated to his stuff (although some of it isn't uploaded yet and the frustratingly small 'coming soon' thumbnails are too much of a tease for me): www.vernerpanton.com

I first became aware of Panton's massive mark on the design world after reading an article about Lenny Kravitz' house about 12 years ago. His Miami ranch house, designed by Michael Czysz, is a hybrid of psychedelic influences which include an environment very similar to 'Visiona 2', the exhibit that I was fortunate enough to immerse myself in during my trip to Vienna. I kept the article and probably have it tucked away in an old sketchbook somewhere but can't for the life of me find it now I want to read it again! Just like me, Michael Czysz was clearly a big fan of Verner Panton's super-sexual, psychedelic-styles too.

Me in Vienna:



Hippies back in the day:



I was blown away by the quote on Verner Panton's site too:

"Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.” (Wassily Kandinsky)

Although doing a bit more research it seems that 'harmonies' is replaced with 'hammers' in different versions of the quote. The first person to set me straight on this wins a psychedelic kiss from me, inspired by this:

Metal Rocks @ the V&A this Friday

This Friday, we will be helping to host an activity at one of the popular 'Friday Lates' at the V&A Museum. The event is in conjunction with the new exhibition 'Metal Rocks' and is made up of various installations, workshops, stalls and activities. Jiggery Pokery will be collaborating with Lucie Gledhill and Autumn Abebrese to bring you a fun-packed solution to all you gambling and bling needs in the form of an edible jewellery arcade machine called 'The Half-Baked Arcade':

A few things I have been getting up to recently in between working and sleeping.

Visiting a really inspiring exhibition (following text taken from the Makezine blog):

"A derelict and soon to be demolished block of flats close to Elephant & Castle is the site for Art Angel's and Jerwood's latest commission Seizure by Roger Hiorns - a seductive cave of cobalt blue crystals. The realisation of the art work is a chemistry experiment on a grand scale. One of the bedsits in the block was made into a watertight tank and then filled with 90,000 litres of copper sulphate solution. As the solution was drained from the premises, over the space of a few weeks, it revealed a mesmerising space of sparkling blue crystal shards."

Unfortunately it finished on the 2nd November. For those of you who didn't see it and are sorely disappointed why not give it a go in your bedroom. Easy peasy.





Catching a quick Vietnamese on Kingsland Road in the planning stages of our upcoming shoot in the birthday issue of Volume Maggzine. You know how people say that dogs often look like their owners or vice versa... In a city that never sleeps, could this be the futuristic version of that observation??



A little trip to Argos in Haringey educated me as to just how far you can go with nail art i.e having 3D acrylic shapes molded and stuck onto your nails. These are the most eccentric I have seen. Apparently they were done in a shop down on Crown Dale near West Norwood if you fancy a pair.



Steppin' out on Halloween couldn't have been more exciting after we found these badboy little hat numbers in our favourite shop. Not sure who that is pretending to be Anna cos her hat definitely isn't in our gang.

IdN Magazine - v15n5: The Geometric Issue

We are featured in the new issue of IdN Magazine. Go get yourself a copy and cop an eyeful. Our good friend Vaughan Ward has a nice little feature too.





Also, if you haven't been yet, take yourself down to 'With Others' Finding Home, an exhibiton of photography by Liz Hingley and others (Ella Charles, Sara Smith, Katie Waters and Thomas Forsyth).

The exhibition responds to the activities and philosophy of the Emmaus communities and all proceeds go to the organisation.

Workshops and Fair trade coffee are available along with beautiful furniture and other odditys that are for sale including garments from Emmaus Community Shops that have been re-worked by fashion designers.

Tomorrow is the last day and as a big fan of Liz' and the others' work as well as the ethos behind Emmaus, I feel it is a very sensitive and beautifully executed exhibition - one not to be missed.

Big Blag Blog

Do you have any space-filling stuff that you would like Anna and I to take off your hands? Make some space in that house/garage/shed/skip of yours and help us out at the same time?! Or perhaps your family/lover/flatmates have stuff they want to get rid of?

We have a large personal project where we need to build 5 sets on a limited budget and could do with all the help we can get. Free would be amazing but if something is a bit special and you want a bit of money for it we can work something out. (Damaged stuff is cool too, we can work wonders on others' rubbish!)

We are looking for:

Coloured paint - as much as possible all bright colours gloss/matte/silk - Tins, tubes, spray paint. Full, half empty, scraps...whatever is going.

Fabric- glittery, sequined, silky, satin, parachute material, velvet, psychedelic, 50s, 60s, 70s (old curtains, bedspreads, dresses... any form whatsoever that these fabrics might come in, we'll take them!) + cushions (large and small).

Furniture- Tacky bed headboard (plastic, 80S... fake plastic versace esque... large and lavish or something along these lines that we can paint/adapt) Dressing screens, a vintage style wardrobe, a long dining table and chairs, any faux regency/grand looking chairs/sofas that are past their sell by date or just don't match the new roasted bracken paint job in your living room? Any heavily patterned rugs, unwanted dinner services, a Roll-top bath (metal or plastic, we'll find a way to transport it!), a corner sofa...Mirrors...OR ANYTHING that you might think of that isn't on this list but could be in keeping?

I am sure there will be more but if ANYONE can help with ANY of this, we would be eternally grateful!!

*PLEASE FORWARD TO ANYONE ELSE WHO MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP TOO!! OR LET US KNOW IF YOU KNOW PLACES WE COULD LOOK! THANKS xxxxxx*

Lauren- 07976 796 789
Anna- 07931 348 00

P.s If you think this is a tall order I just saw an advert on Freecycle for two lifesize cutouts of RZA and 2PAC made of good old durable MDF- guaranteed to last a lifetime. Bargain and 'n' 'alf. So you just never know what you might find...

Creamy

To document the change from summer to Autumn these are now making up a window display - a sticky mess amongst autumn leaves. Sarah Fotheringham and I were up super early today to document our recent projects but I don't have the final images back yet. I am going to wait and put them up on the website when I know how to do it properly. In my recent attempt to update the site I got a bit over ambitious and kind of messed it up... Oh well it could have been worse and I have to learn somehow!

I made some post cards today. They are for a RCA show where you don't know who the post card is done by untill you buy it. I made one inflateble, after a long day at work I'm sure it's taken me longer than it should have to do this! They all have the pound shop in common! I knew buying all these bits and bobs had a reason! Long live the magpie inside me.

Whoooo

Don't you just love it when you meet people who are on the same wavelength and you sit and talk through ideas for a project and it feels a bit like there is magic in the air. Well that's what happened yesterday when Anna and I went to meet up with Chloe Richardson (Stylist) and Julia Kennedy (Fashion Photographer)...Even if I was totally hungover, with a bruise the size of a large fried egg on my leg and no recollection as to how I got it. I am fairly certain that a big adventure is about to begin...

Ice-Cream Sunday

A big thanks to everyone who made it down. The vibe was cosy and colourful, the tunes made us smile and the ice-cream cone cakes went down well. Thanks to our brilliant DJs, Mr Wonderful, Mr.Bit, Alex Sheridan, Moxie, Rattus Rattus & Klose One (and Session for making it on his way back from Marrakech even if he didn't get to spin any tunes in the end!). We will be hitting the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane to decorate it up for a big Halloween party on the 31st October so make sure you get your fake blood and fangs out and come and join us for a bop.



In the meantime, if you liked the music you heard at Ice-Cream Sunday or didn't make it but want a good night out, check out Nuts to Soup and Onra where Mr Wonderful will be playing amongst others tomorrow night: www.myspace.com/nutstosoup or www.myspace.com/onra

or City Lights next Saturday @ Bar Rumba: www.myspace.com/thecitylightsclub (Sorry hyperlinks not working at the moment so you'll have to do a good old fashioned bit of copying and pasting)

Sometimes it Helps to Look at Ice-Cream Upside Down...

Summer is very much coming to an end despite the sunny few days we have had over the last couple of weekends. Researching a window display I am about to embark on, I wondered whether an upturned, melting ice-cream was a bit of a morbid way to describe the transition from hot to cold. I decided I could put a bit of humour into it and make the ice-creams into characters with wooly hats, a bit like Mr Potato Head or something. However, the thought of a lonely melting ice-cream that some poor kid has dropped and the rivers of creamy liquid filling the cracks in the pavement, always makes me feel a bit depressed. I decided to go with the idea anyway and see how where it took me. Looking for a good shape to build a prop, I consulted Google Images. My-oh-my was I in for a surprise. Melted ice-cream doesn't have to be sad, it can be glossy and sexy and super-alluring and it would seem that other artists, designers and makers would agree with me. I have always been a huge fan of ice-cream and ice-cream imagery but up until now, mainly when the ice-creams were the right way up...

(They are all easy to find if you search for 'melted ice cream' in Google images apart from the second and fourth one which were under 'dropped ice cream')













And yep... I know this one isn't really melted but I just had to include it as it is f*****g cool! And for anyone that follows this blog at all, my second ice-cream throne!

love you longtime

It's been so long. Bad Anna.
Today I'm playing catch up, tax, emails, phonecalls, nails! Because the last few months have been hectic! We have been making and creating delights left right and centre. There has been little time to play on the blog. But here goes.
Yesterday I adopted 3 'NEW' letters. Saved from the land fill they will have a new lease of life one day, feeling them big time, and so was everyone else as I left work, asking me are you putting them in the bin? Are you mad? Dear oh dear!
Other from the usual bin raiding Lauren and I spent last week juggling the last few days of Orange work at Peepshow and making a castle for YCN. We spent about 6 hours trying to find plastercine. Sadly it seems kids don't play anymore, just sit on their xbox or playstation. We went to 4 different Woolworths, a W H smiths, Early learning centre and a few pound shops. Eventually we found this set (such fruity colours) and then revelled in covering our mountain in the stuff. It smelt really nice too...!
I have spent a lot of time playing with Ruairi's puppy. She is called Beans and so cute I cant leave her alone! Makes me want a pet to call my own. I keep telling everyone about a hedgehog I found for sale on the gumtree. £50 for a little african hedgehog. Apparently it was 2 years old and not getting along with the owners baby! It was so sweet. But my room is to full of stuff for any pets just yet. Maybe when I move to somewhere bigger everyone can come check my city farm all adopted from the gumtree.

London Summer

Before I went to the Green Man Festival (which was amazing) I went to see the Psycho Buildings exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. For anyone who missed it, it was so refreshing to experience an exhibition where health and safety had been tested for once. One of the most frustrating things about working as an artist of designer today is that health and safety regulations are so tight that you often have to really tame down ideas for public spaces. Somehow, the Austrian collective Gelitin had managae to push the boundaries and allow the Hayward to let them fill one of their concrete balconies with water, turning it into a boating lake. All boats and the jetty were made from recycled wood and found bits and pieces. It was the hottest day of the summer and my boat partner jumped into the water and had a swim which the stewards didn't even bat an eyelid about either. Fun stuff. If only it wasn't so difficult to change into a bikini in public. I would have joined him in a flash.

I drank jasmine tea and ate dim sum at Ping Pong after and then wandered over to the Photographers Gallery to see 'Fashion in the Mirror- Self Reflection in Fashion Photography' where I fell in love with this photograph by Grégoire Alexandre:



On my return from Green Man Festival, I went to see the boys down at the Cans Festival under one of the arches at Waterloo. Despite the overpowering fumes, it was proof again that London is brimming with exciting events to go to/get involved in during the summer. Oh and the caterers put on a right good spread. Bonus. Last but not least check out the amazing ice-cream van I spotted on my travels. Loving the vintage signage.

London Sweats No Fresh Country Air

Our mission: To take Tom shopping and give him a good, smart look. What a day to choose... I do not envy anyone working in central London in the heat. As well as finding him some dapper garments, I also managed to find myself some stuff including a shirt that is a good compromise for the blue/flowers western shirt I was after. It reminds me of mini-milks with reindeer antlers.



I also noticed this signage on Argyll Street that I have somehow managed to miss in the past. Good-ol' Coney Island style sign-writing. I need to go back to New York. My friend Leo was telling me he went to one of the sideshows when he was out there recently. We always managed to miss them and I know we were missing out big time, damn-it. Soon soon.



Now I am home and sorting images and ideas for a couple of up and coming projects. I fished these books out for inspiration:



My re-discovered love for Hairy Diamond's 'Givin up' has finally got Dizzee Rascal's 'Dance For Me' out of my head thankfully. Also I just checked out Bryony's video for Rod Thomas' 'Same Old Lines'. It cracked me up...Watch for yourself, she certainly had sock puppets coming out of her ears at the time of making:



If only he had a live sock monkey performance at Green Man Festival next weekend. I am off on Friday for just under a couple of weeks to be part of the management of the festival and listen to some more lovely music. Particularly looking forward to seeing Caribou (whose album artwork is pretty pretty pretty too) and sitting under one of the beautiful, solid oak trees in the fresh night air with a big cup of cocoa and a massive wooly jumper.