In the new year, these mugs that I have designed for McLaggan Smith mugs will be available to buy from various shops. I am donating all of my royalties from the design to Maggies Cancer charity.

This is the last blog post of 2011. Thank you to everyone who reads about what I've been up to, its been a brilliant year and I'm looking forward to sharing some of my projects of 2012 on here. We hope you have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!!!!

Luv Rob, Lorna, Hazel, Libby, Jackie and Michelle

This year I was asked by St Judes gallery to feature in a new publication called Random Spectacular. The book includes work by artists such as Angie Lewin, The Gentle Author and me along with many other brilliant artists. The first issue is an edition of 750 and the profits from the sales of the first issue are being donated to Maggie's cancer charity. You can get a copy here!!!

If you're coming into Charing Cross train station in London this winter, look out for (although you can't miss it!!!) the Coutts bank window on the other side of the road. I have created a Christmas window for them to raise money for Kids Company. Incorporated into the windows there is a stuffed Elephant, a Dolls House and a Rocking Horse which are being auctioned off with the proceeds going to Kids Company. You can also make a £5 donation to Kid's Company by texting KIDS HELP to 70700.
Thank you to Ltd Limited who did a beautiful job installing the display and Coley Porter Bell who made the whole thing happen!!!

Untitled from THE POPULAR SOCIETY on Vimeo.

For the last four years I have designed a Christmas card for the fantastic Modus. The very talented John Brown makes my design come to life and each year I look forward to seeing how John will animate it.

I will be doing my second Christmas fair this year at the annual Mangle Christmas sale. The Mangle is where I share a print studio with Dan Holliday and RAD skating company Lovenskate!!! I will be selling my Christmas wrapping paper, as well as slight seconds of ceramics and possibly some other bits too!!
A few of my other good friends will be selling bits and bobs, including Hazel Nicholls, Suzie Winsor, Lorna Ryan of Barbara Bearo, French, Kim Jenkins and Lilli Cowley-Wood & Jazmine Miles-Long and that's not even everyone!!!
The sale will be taking place at DreamBagsJaguarShoes this Saturday 10th December, 11am - 6pm.

Today is the first Christmas Wednesday on Columbia Road of 2011. Every year, the shops on Columbia road open their doors on Wednesday evenings (usually only open on weekends) throughout December.
For those of you who are close-by, its a lovely way to spend a cold winters evening. Shops open around 5pm and close at 9pm, including Ryantown.

If you are unable to get to any of the evenings, I have put some of my screenprinted Christmas cards on etsy today, which you can see here, along with lots of other handmade products from Ryantown.

Tomorrow I am off to JAPAN for ELEVEN days !!!! I'm pretty excited about it and I am going to blog about my trip as it unfolds on my personal blog.

youcanstilldoalotwithasmallbrain.blogspot.com/

We're still a little way off from 2012 yet, but not long to go now!!! The new design for our desk calendars have just arrived and will be in Ryantown this weekend!

This year, I'm taking part in Bust magazine's Craftacular sale and have produced this (cheap!!!) Christmas wrapping paper for the sale!!! Its printed on newsprint and will be available in blue, red and green.
I'm going to be selling these, alongside brilliant artists and designers such as Hazel Nicholls, Lilli Cowley-Wood and Jasmine Miles Long, Kim Jenkins and Tatty Devine

I was asked by Graham and Green along with 15 other artists and designers to customise a plain white resin stags head.

The heads will be auctioned off with all of the proceeds going to the homeless charity, Centrepoint. You can bid by going to the website here
They will also be selling the plain white stags heads from their website, with 16% of the sale also going to Centrepoint.

My good friend and brilliant handbag designer, Mimi Berry is celebrating the 10 year birthday of her company by having a wall of her handbags in the Tatty Devine shop on Brick Lane throughout November and December. She asked me to design a birthday card on which a Tatty designed leather brooch (based on a silhouette of Mimi and her beautiful dog Dora) sits.

Happy Birthday Mimi!!!!

We're currently in the process of printing a version of the papercut I did for the Mapping show (see below). It is called 'The Map of My Entire Life' and is a three colour print.
Unfortunately it won't be available to buy on Etsy as it is too big for us to post out but it will be available at Ryantown or from TAG Fine Arts.


The print reads:

'I used to live in one of those little houses down there and I still remember every road and every field and every brick and stone. Everything you can see was the map of my entire life. The raging battleground of all my victories and defeats, from up here just looks like a pretty pattern. Every single minute was a struggle but not a second goes by when I don't wish I was back down there... mixing it up again on good old planet earth.'

TAG Fine Arts (who sell my work for me) are having a map related art exhibition quite soon, it looks pretty interesting and I have made a small piece that will be in the show too !

The exhibition runs from 14th - 26th November at The Air Gallery, Dover Street, London W1S 4NE.

A couple of weeks ago, I went up to Yorkshire Sculpture Park for a book signing. It was such a brilliant day and so good to meet so many people who want to read my book!!!

As an exclusive to my shop and YSP, I've done a limited edition screenprint of one of my favourite pages from the A Sky Full of Kindness.


Available from Ryantown, YSP and online at etsy

You may know that I have an online shop on the handmade marketplace Etsy. Every so often, etsy make a brilliant film about one particular seller, there have been some amazing insights into the work that goes into each sellers' products and this time they came to film me!!!

You can see more videos on etsy's blog here

My new book 'A Sky Full Of Kindness' has its official release date this Thursday, 13th October and to celebrate, we've produced this limited edition lasercut which is an adaption of one of the pages in the book.

The lasercut measures approx 59cm wide x 39cm high so is our biggest one to date!! It is in edition of 250, signed and reads:


"We promise by the spirits of all the birds that have ever been, that are and ever will be, that we will care for this child. Every feather, every bone and beak is precious to us and every bird in our small community and to the greater family of all the birds. We promise to keep the egg safe. We promise to keep the child safe. We promise to help this small, small bird in this big, big world."

Available from TAG Fine Arts

Those of you who read the brilliant 'Stylist' magazine may already have read the lovely article they have written about my new book 'A Sky Full Of Kindness'. For the unlucky people who didn't manage to get a copy, you can read the article here.
Also a MASSIVE thank you to everyone at Stylist for the cake they sent us along with a copy of the magazine!!! It truly was incredible - have a look!!!

Over the summer we have been working with SCP, the East London design and furniture shop (I call it the cool Shoreditch department store !) to produce this Ruler for the measuring of Human beings. We have been making these 7ft high rulers to sell exclusively in our shop for a few years now but it was good fun working with Sheridan and his team at SCP on this new design. The ruler was printed by our good pal Stuart Smith of Error Solutions screenprinting services (for all your screenprinting requiremnts !!) ably assisted by Lilli and Dave.

The words on the poem are quite hard to read on the photos, so this is what they say....

The village grew into a town and the town grew into a whole city. The tree grew up to the sky and the river grew as it flowed down towards the sea and the flowers they grew until they covered the whole field and from inside the depths of our hearts you grew as well. Every single day a tiny unnoticeable bit more and more of you, and all of the long days and all of the short days will add up to yet more of you until there is no more growing to be grown and the last mark on this ruler will have been made.

But yet still inside you there will never be a shortage to the amount of love your heart can grow and day by day and year by yet you can grow in your heart still more care and more sympathy and more trust and more kindness until it finally blossoms and its flowers cover the entire world.

To celebrate the launch of our wallpaper collaboration with Mini-moderns we decided to have a little drinks party at my shop, Ryantown.

What better way to show off our new product than by wrapping every item of stock in it !!!

I'm sure that people must think we have lots of spare time on our hands here at the studio, but honestly it's the opposite - it's just that we can't help acting on ridiculous impulses !!

This is the result of a collaboration between French stationers Rhodia, Japanese department store Plaza and me!!

These are our new cushion designs, hand printed here at the studio!! They are printed on both sides ,with beautiful open bird cages and birds flying free carrying the words 'Our Adventure is about to begin' .

There are four new colours in stock and you can buy them at our shop Ryantown on Columbia Road or at our online Etsy shop.

The countdown to my new book launch has begun as the official release date 13th October!!
For anybody who would like to get a signed copy, I will be signing 'A Sky Full of Kindness' on Saturday 29th October in my shop, Ryantown 126 Columbia Road London E2 7RG from 1pm - 4pm.

Hope to see you there!!

I've started a new blog, it's a bit different to this one which is principally about what I do work wise, this new one is more just a kind of diary sort of thinking about stuff and all that other kind of thing. I think that's possibly the worst description of anything ever !!!

Anyway, if anyone is interested it can be found here .

Last week my wife sent me a text telling me that Nick Ashford had died.

Him and his wife were, are and always will be my total and absolute heroes. Although they were most well known in their own right for the 80s hit 'Solid', Nick and his wife Valerie Simpson wrote countless songs of such beauty and tenderness and joy that I couldn't even begin to call myself any type of an artist in comparison.

'Ain't no mountain high enough' as sung by Marvin and Tammi is the best known of their compositions but there were so many others that I know I will listen to and sing along to in my awful voice and continue to love until the day I die.

Nick, I made this simple picture for my shop window last week and so many people came into the shop and told Cynthia my shop manager how much they loved your music and how much it meant to them.

Thank you so much for sharing your incredible gift with us Nick, you were such a beautiful man.