Brooch the subject

The subject of beautiful monogram badges, yes please, M please.
Buy them here.

By Anita at Bena Clothing

Chocolate shavings

It's chocolate in pencil form with a pencil sharpener, now I usually hate pencil chewers but get me one of those pencils to gnaw!

I'm a little skittish with excitement, this post came from an unbelievably fabulous blog that I've just discovered, style-files.com

Vetiver

I have been hoarding this poster on my desktop for weeks and decided to track down its illustrator and do a little investigating.

It comes from the creative talents of Ben Javens, Vetiver are a folky band who are in the country at the moment supporting among others, Fleet Foxes, who I happened to see on Sunday night at the Roundhouse. Sadly, Vetiver were not there and nor was Ben's lovely tree poster.

(PS Fleet Foxes were great!)

Life on the slant

Presenting the Italic Poster, quirky idea from Eivind Søreng Molvær,

www.eivindmolvaer.com

You can buy it for 35 Great British Pounds here. Take a look around the site, some interesting ideas, especially the cross-eyed clock on the home page. Cross your eyes et voila!

Ain't life grand?

This happens to be true, which is not a laughing matter, and I'm not making light of it, but I just found it accidentally at Aintlifegrand.co.uk and it tickled me. Do you ever have conversations where your opposite number manages to pull out a conversational killer (so to speak, I'm not being deliberately morbid).

The point of the post is to nudge you in the direction of aintlifegrand, because (i) it's a great sentiment and (ii) it has jolly good, light-hearted stuff.

His name is Chris Gray and you can also see his stuff over at TOY illustration

Painting process

It's been a while since I did some painting, but I was set Valentine's as a deadline. I really enjoyed the process, always hard to know when to stop, I think I prefer some of the work in progress images.

Today I am enjoying green

Sage, mint, lime, leaf, grass, verdigris, olive, pea, sea, emerald and jade. All greens, recent finds on Ffffound

A* for Zara

I'm a little jealous, ok very jealous of the skills of Zara Picken, I found her work featured on Cookie's blog and it's beautiful. Muted colours and lovely textures illustrate quirky ideas. Zara is a recent graduate and is already picking up accolades and commissions.

The nodding woman in no way represents my current state, but let's say I can relate. The idea of x-raying beards to find out what's harbouring inside is inspired. Keep up to date with Zara's blog here.

www.zaraillustrates.com

Close to my heart

My friends over at Sennep have just launched this petition campaign for British Heart Foundation, it's a good cause, sign up and enjoy the beautiful origami animation.

Hold your breath

VIEW LARGE

Spectacular images by Narelle Autio capturing swimmers in a foamy struggle with the water. The middle one in particular looks like a giant effervescent hand grasping his body. Simply magical.
More premium images over at the Stills Gallery.

Love poetry

I spotted this image over at estupipedia, which despite not quite understanding the spanish lingo, it's fast becoming one of my favourite sites for inspiration.

Anyway, love the love image, images/fonts in bookshelves is quite a la mode and it also illustrates the Feist lyrics that have been playing on a loop in my brain recently. Perhaps by writing them down I'll exorcise them.

Intuition - Feist
"And you choose, you chose
Poetry over prose"

Breaking news!

I posted a while back about slings that tell stories, well they should make one for my friend who did her arm a mischief playing Korfball. Don't worry I don't know what korfball is either and Jemma's explained it to me several times now...

In short I thought I'd show some of Jemma's latest work, so that when the cast comes off you may commission her and her nicely rested drawing hand.

Jemma has many diverse clients but her latest spell of editorial illustrations for The Independent is high on my radar at the moment. Did you spot the Gordon Brown in the cliff face? Magic.

www.jemillo.com

While you're waiting...

My latest read, The Book Thief is with me at all times, it's a great story narrated by Death, no less, anyway I'm taking my sweet time over it, because it's excellent and I don't want it to end.

Interestingly I was in a Post Office queue for 30minutes the other day and it was lovely because I read the whole time. Queuing, so ordered, so British. Why am I uttering this drivel? Oh yes, books are great for swallowing you whole, as this advert neatly shows. The fact it happens to be Penguin is merely a coincidence, although as you know, I love them too.

Cut to the chase

I've been doing some background research on Alanna, and she's done a load of Penguin prints that sadly are too beautiful and too expensive for me to even contemplate, so instead I've added this gorgeous scissors in situ, isn't it grand? In case you're super loaded and/or super loved up, could I please request one of the Penguin prints for Valentine's day please. Thank you.

Sometimes you see trends in illustration and this week I am seeing scissors. Scary I know, if this were a dream analysis the forecast would not be good, however I am not dreaming I am seeing. These snippy entries are from Harry Malt, Rex Design and Alanna Cavanagh respectively and they're all worth checking out. So cut loose and go see for yourself.

Paper cupcakes

Mmmm paper patisserie and cardboard confectionary served up by Patianne Stevenson.
Patianne is somewhat of a gourmand and has created these inspired pieces in her 'cardboard kitchen', the texture and colours are just beautiful, you can buy then over at her etsy shop.

Her food obsession also stretches to painting, so if you're feeling peckish, indulge here.

www.patiannestevenson.com

Link via estupipedia

Spatial Awareness

I couldn't post these before now, as they were for a pitch for a certain airline, but it's been and gone now sadly, despite some frankly sky-high thinking and epic efforts from the Digit team.
So may I present a few characters I was playing around with that should have graced the kid's section. What skyscape isn't complete with Laika, a few friendly aliens or a space hopper?

Raising the Bar on simplicity

Noma Bar illustrated the BAFTA programme and is worthy of his own post. At first these striking images seem obvious, their bold shapes and high contrast colour. But look a little closer, his (and I have only recently learned it's a he not a she, my profound apologies, I'd clearly make a terrible journalist) illustrations are succint to the point of verging on frugal meaness and have incredibly clever and witty undertones.

Take the example of Slum Dog Millionaire (Bar illustrated all the nominees for Best Film), the blocky image of Dev Patel, the leading man (formerly of Skins fame). His facial features are sharply cut out and detailed in with four 'Who wants to be a millionaire' category boxes and a question-mark mouth. Bravo.

Noma Bar is represented by Dutch Uncle

The BAFTAs Darling!

No, no, I didn't go, maybe in a few years on my own merit, but last night my boss, Andy went along and I've been poring over the brochure and the invite all day. Digit won a BAFTA a few years back for the forward thinking Habitat website design and my bosses now sit on the BAFTA panel (maybe it's the trustees or something equally prestigious and jealousy-invoking, I think I should check my facts).

The invite is housed in a beautiful, simply designed mini box, and is quite unassuming until you open it, by pulling on a tab on the right hand side and then by magic the left hand tray pulls out and reveals the night's planned events.

Magnetic Photoboard

At first I was interested in these geeky/designer Adobe photoboards in a purely aesthetic way but then I started thinking, shouldn't Adobe be churning out this merchandise? Where is the line between copyright and intellectual property. Is it bordering on piracy? AT $80 for the big board and PS kit, it's pricey piracy at that!

Just one to leave you mulling over, in the mean time check out more quirky gifts from meninos.

Rachel Griffin

I came across this website a while back but was recently reminded of its interface. It's far from perfect but the act of simple clicks to enlarge/close content, click through images combined with the main sentence to sort content is a refreshing change to an indexed portfolio. I like how there's a sense of exploration and that you can keep content open throughout the page.

There are also some interesting ideas in her site, anyone for a swing skirt?

www.rachelgriffin.net

Well as much as the country is aware there was a little dusting of snow on Sunday night. London got a fair dumping and it fell on it's knees Bambi-Style. The buses were all cancelled for the first time since the Blitz! Wowsers. Anyway, we're very busy at work so I diligently walked the 5 km, what a hero, thought I'd share those titbits.

Photos from my trek in, on my Flickr.