Still here! Some creative finds from London

Yep, I'm still here - just busy busy after my sister's visit and the little trip to London.  Does that always happen to you??  When ever I have a little holiday planned, all of sudden things get busy and there ends up being a huge rush in the lead up and after getting back!  But anyway, being busy makes me very very happy!

Just stopping in with a couple of great little finds from the Spitalfields market.  The very lovely Mandy from Belle & Boo recommended I visit this market on Sunday morning and I wasn't disappointed!  First stop was yummy breakfast and coffee and then a little browse around the lovely market.  I came home with a gorgeous screen printed illustrated bag from Brick Lane   -no website... yet  :(   Photo above - That's the illustrator on the left - what amazing work!  And a super cute long sleeve top from Rock a Bye Baby for Yashar - it's the white one with the red guitar on the right..and it comes in a record sleeve - so cool!

The market is also surrounded by some fantastic little vintage stores like elemental. Elemental has some great light fittings, a huge collection of letterpress letters, and lots of little interesting finds and mini collections.  I just had a quick look at their website and blog too - I know I'm going to be spending any spare moments there for the next few days!!

Above is another shop with many gorgeous baskets hanging outside that we passed on the way back to the hotel...  check out the guy on the right's sneakers - awesome!  More on the London trip and lots of other things soon!  But now back to work  :)

Things have been quiet on the blog here but busy behind the scenes!  I had my sister Emily visit for a few days - after not seeing her for 2 and a half years!  It was fantastic but too quick of course.  One of the afternoons we headed in to Tahtakale - a crowded wholesale area here in Istanbul and we were not disappointed! 

The photo above is one my sister took on her iphone - I love it.  These are the funny icecream sellers - you've been warned!  If you come on a trip to Istanbul expect them to play a few little tricks on you when you go to buy an icecream!   My husband likes to quietly tell them to really play it up for some of our guests - it's hilarious!    Tomorrow I'm off to London to meet up with my sister there - so I will hopefully be dropping in with a few photos while I'm there. 

Have a great weekend!

A very 'small' photo shoot

Phew - where is the week going?!
You might remember a little while back I mentioned the logo and business cards I designed for my sister in law's children's clothing shop - Kebelek Cocuk Giyim.

Well a couple of weekends ago, she asked me to take some photos of Yashar and her daughter Belinay in some clothes for the shop to use in a brochure.  Considering that we had literally 5 minutes before the kids got bored and went to play in the dirt, an old wall as a back drop and and very little light - I was very happy with the result!   But then again, with these two little cuties pulling their best 'model poses' they were bound to turn out well!

New Work: Alone with the Sea

Good morning!  I hope you all had a wonderful mother's day!

To start off the week I wanted to share a new illustration that I have been working on.  For a little while now I have been working on developing my illustrations - my technique etc.  I have been experimenting - there were these illustrations I posted here and here.  And also lots of sketching, thinking etc!  I wanted to bring more atmosphere and texture into my work.

Now I finally feel like I am starting to get to where I want to be with this - which is both exciting and a relief!   I would love to hear your thoughts on it...

I will also be making this available in the shop...finally a new print!!  

ps thank you to Alara for the lovely shout out in the LOLA newsletter and a very warm welcome to my new visitors!  Hope to see you in at LOLA :)

An inspiring meet up with creator Secda Kaska

On the weekend I met up with the wonderful creator Secda (and her very sweet daughter!) ...she has an online shop Secdus, which I was lucky enough to design the banner for quite some time ago.  At the time she was making sweet little clothes hangers for children, but her work has since evolved to exquisite cushion, napkin and placemat designs.   And I was so excited to find out that she recently designed a collection of cushions for Mudo.

 
I was so happy to receive this present !!  Some of her beautiful linen postcard placemats - in the photo directly above.  And they are even better in person!   And I see that the vintage postcard cushion cover above that is on sale in Secdus's shop at the moment - so be quick if you want to snap that one up!

These are some more of her creations.  It was so wonderful to meet someone so likeminded.  Isn't the internet, and the whole world of blogging and etsy and all this creativity amazing?!   ... And I am very very happy because we are going to be collaborating in the near future so stay tuned!


-all images are from Secdus's shop-

Making Mondays: Geometric Paper Garlands

After last week's Crafty Gathering post - especially the paper garlands from Weekday Carnival and the watercolour paper cups from Stephanie Polli, I got inspired to make some paper garlands with Yashar using a mix of coloured paper and paper we painted using watercolours.

This was a great activity to do with Yashar!  He loved it - the painting, the cutting and then the important job of handing me the next piece to sew  ;)

To make them we first painted strips of watercolour paper with watercolour paint.  While they were drying we cut lots of triangles.  Then we cut the just about dry watercolour ones.  We weren't too particular at all about the triangles being perfect.  Yashar was very proud that he learnt to cut a triangle!  

Then we lined them up on the table arranging them in a rough pattern.  Then I sewed as Yashar handed me the next triangle for sewing.   You can see in the photo below that we managed to work a little bit of neon pink in!  (they were cut from post-it notes)

 That's it!  Nice and quick - which is great for Yashar's age and he was so happy to see them displayed up on the wall (and so was I!).

The wall sticker was a prototype for the deer party set of wall stickers I created - it seemed to be pretty happy to be hanging out amongst the garlands!