The Heal’s Modern Craft Market

The Heal’s Modern Craft Market officially opened at Heal’s Tottenham Court Road store last week.

Designed to celebrate the best in British contemporary design and craftsmanship, it was great to ‘meet the makers’ and try my hand at some new craft. The market was made up from selected independent designers and a collective of RCA graduates.

I was really impressed with Heal’s as a whole (we explored a bit as well as looking at the Craft Market section) the kitchen section was amazing! 

It’s definitely worth a visit; you could pick up a future craft classic at a reasonable price. 

So chic!

This knitted table was amazing

I wanted all of these Art Deco style cushions

My results from an ink craft workshop

The leather workshop

This portrait table was great, it really brought the guests together

Stitched Vogue Covers = Amazingness by Inge Jackson

Seriously, Vogue should hire this girl to do a real cover, they could do a craft-inspired issue. Makes me want to rediscover cross-stitching!

http://illusion.scene360.com/art/16974/vogues-cover-sewn-up/

Feeling Crafty

If there is one thing I am ruddy loving at the moment, it is crafting. It seems I am not alone-the whole of London is practically feverish about cross stitch, DIY jewellery and the like. No longer an activity to mock your Mum about, in the days of poverty and 'staycations' now we can get truly creative and make-do-and-mend to produce one-off, super original things! Beats spending your hard-earned pennies on beer every night, doesn't it? Here are my pics from 'Craftacular' held one lovely afternoon in Bethnal Green...

A Very Crafty Sunday

Bored of whiling away my precious Sunday afternoons in front of the idiot box, I began to consider other potential pursuits. My friend Jayne had the perfect solution: Crafternoon. What could be lovelier than spending Sunday afternoon with your closest, delightfully creative friends? Snubbing money-gobbling pub roasts and tirelessly terrible TV, we whipped out our pens, pencils and inks and got to work.

For the debut Crafternoon, we took inspiration from an exhibition I had read about in December’s fantasy edition of Vogue (did anyone else love this as much as me?!)
The Dulwich Picture Gallery featured an exhibition entitled: ‘What are you Like?’ last December. The collection had been inspired by the Victorian game of describing yourself with images of your favourite things: basically a self-portrait.


45 people in the public eye (including Quentin Blake, Andrew Marr, Brian Eno, David Shrigley, Donald Urquhart, Eric Clapton and Jack Penate) were asked to illustrate their 8 favourite things from a list of 12. Here are the questions so you can join them as we did!

What is your favourite:-
-Animal
-Book
-Item of clothing
-Comfort
-Pastime
-Place
-Possession
-Music
-Pair of shoes
-Weather
-Pet aversion (which creature do you love to hate?!)

Don’t be limited by this list, try to think of some questions of your own. We wondered about each others favourite smells, items of underwear (!), shoes and drinks! I have put a picture of our list underneath the Vogue article.

We got some varied results (shown below) and had a lovely day to boot.

Crafternoon Suggestion: invite a friend who is good at baking or ask everyone to bring their favourite treat, then you can combine the activities with diet sabotage!