This month, we've been busy making lots of Staffordshire dogs and cats for the Stafford show and the dogs made the cover of the latest issue of Crafts magazine!!
The magazine have done an article about my work written by the lovely Teleri Lloyd-Jones and you can see a sneak preview of some of the work for Stafford in the piece.

We've just had a delivery of the new Roger La Borde cards to the studio. They're foil blocked onto recycled card and come in packs of 10 with sweet little foiled envelopes. Three designs will be available from Ryantown this weekend.

I'm in the middle of preparing for 2 solo shows of my work in November, one in London and one in Stafford. The London show will be mainly brand new papercuts and prints and a couple of little suprises too! Stafford is going to be a big ceramic show, along with the original papercut illustrations from Carol Ann Duffy's new book 'The Gift' and new papercuts and prints. All info is on the picture above. Come!!!

NEW TAPE!!!!! It's always an exiting day at Ryantown HQ when a new tape arrives and here's the newest! I designed this in conjunction with an exhibition that I am going to be putting on at the Shire Hall Gallery in Stafford from 13th November. The title of the show is 'Your Job Is To Take This World Apart And Then Put It Back Together Again... But Even Better!!!' and will be a mixture of ceramics and papercuts. The tape reads the same as the show title and is available from my etsy and Ryantown this weekend!

British Airways Highlife magazine asked me to create a postcard sized papercut for their charity auction. All proceeds go to Flying Start, the global charity partnership between British Airways and Comic Relief. The auction ends at one minute to midnight on 1st November.

Yesterday, Emily Peacock brought around the tapestry kits and this amazing cushion she had made from the first ever 'Give Me Work' tapestry!
The kits have gone onto both mine and Emily's Etsy this morning and will be available from Ryantown and Emily's website as well as Liberty's in London.

To celebrate their 25th anniversary, the design and publishing company, Roger La Borde have collaborated with Liberty of London to create a pop-up shop in the Carnaby Room of the department store. I have worked with Roger La Borde for a few years now and was invited to create a limited edition print for the pop-up shop shown here. Also on show is one of my bigger papercuts and original artworks from other brilliant artists such as Su Blackwell, Aya Kakeda and Elise Hurst.

The amazing Emily Peacock and her daughter Ruby came to visit me yesterday. They brought with them the finished sample of our Tapestry which will be available to buy at the start of October.

Here is a full-length photo of the scarf as promised! Hopefully you can get a better idea of the size from this picture taken in the yard outside the studio.

We have just seen the beautiful first sample of a silk scarf I designed in collaboration with NV London Calcutta, an ethical accessories company run by the lovely Naomi Cornelius-Reid. The silk is hand-spun in a small village in West Bengal and then hand-screen printed in Calcutta using non-toxic inks. It will be available to buy sometime next month from Ryantown, NV London Calcutta and selected outlets. The scarf measures 2.5 metres long and looks absolutely incredible!!! You will be able to buy the scarf on it's own, or alongside the ethically made buffalo leather bag as an ingenious handle.

Here at Ryantown, we screen print these thank you cards to go in the package with every etsy sale from my online etsy shop as a little thank you for buying something from me. Every once in a while I like to change things up with some new designs. So here they are!!

At the studio we do enjoy creating and making products to sell online, in my shop 'Ryantown' and 3 or 4 selected suppliers, unfortunately that is about all the quantity that we can handle.
In the last year we have been inundated by requests from all over asking if they can stock the wares and I have always had to regretfully decline because we just cant produce that much stuff without becoming a factory, so for the past year I have been working with a licensing company - Wild and Wolf - on producing a small range of products with them that will be more generally available.
These should be in the shops for November and include some stationary, ceramics, bags, umbrellas, and and more .. I think there's a watering can too !
I was always very reticent to cross the line into any form of mass production because I have produced a lot of stuff in the studio myself and always retained total control - if I was to 'let it go' then I was worried the quality could slip and nightmares ensue. The best thing about working with W & W is my principle contact is a very old friend Marlene who would be devastated if I was unhappy with anything - and this is the biggest and best reason for I am working with them, thank you Marlene.

My needlepoint tapestry design that was produced in collaboration with the Rug Company has been nominated in the Best British Pattern section of the 2010 British Design Awards. There are lots of nice things up for nomination, I love the Richard Woods rug & Ella Doran wallpaper!!! You can vote online Here

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London have asked me to submit a piece of work for their Cherry on The Cake III : The Paper Collection.
In response I have produced a limited edition series of lasercuts exclusively for them, in an edition of 500, each one is signed, numbered and comes in a hand screenprinted envelope.

These Lasercuts will not be available from my Etsy shop or from my London shop - Ryantown. They are totally exclusive to the V & A shop and website and will be available from Wednesday 15th September.

In the September issue of Elle Deco you can find an exclusive preview of the mug I designed with Elle Decoration and John Lewis in aid of the homeless charity Shelter and to celebrate Elle Deco's 21st birthday.
The mugs are available for £7 from John Lewis and associated stores from September 1st and 50% of the cost of each mug will go to the housing charity.

I'm featured in volume two of the book, Interviews-Artists by Nicholas James. The book is a collection of interviews with 21 artists including me, about the progress and development of their practice.

I have been working on a collaboration project with the brilliant Emily Peacock. Emily creates beautiful tapestry kits and I have designed a round cushion to add to her collection. The kit will be available in shops (Including Ryantown) in September.

Here is the original papercut artwork from a cover I did for the book 'Wandering Stars' by Sholem Aleichem. The book will be out soon, published by Penguin.

I was asked by Elle Collections to illustrate a tribute to the late Alexander McQueen. The issue is out soon, if not now and you can find my illustration on page 157.

They went for the green !!!

If you live in a city in the UK tomorrow you might be able to get a copy of the free magazine 'Stylist' for which I've done a papercut for their cover.

Last week was model making week at the studio, chopping away at bits of foamcore all day to make a scale model of my ceramic show at the Shire Hall Gallery in November.

At the moment I am working on 2 exhibitions for November. One will be ceramics the other papercuts so I'm feeling a bit dizzy from flipping between the two, but they do feed each other so I guess it's all good, this could make a cool dish... but then again...

A paper dress I created a few years ago specially for English Vogue has gone off on its own little adventure around the world as part of a touring exhibition 'Paper Runway'. At the moment it is staying with some new friends it's made at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, 4848 Main Street, Houston, Texas !!! Big thanks to Suzanne Sippel for sending us the photos !

It is my shop RYANTOWN's second birthday on the 28th of this month, and I have made this special editioned screenprint to celebrate the big day ! It is available only from the shop itself and also online via the Etsy shop. How time flies !

After a papercut is completed we color it by spraypainting it. The huge papercut we did at Somerset House's 'Pick me Up' exhibition was too big to spray indoors so we took it out into the yard, good from the point of dispersing the paint fumes but not so good when sudden gusts of wind appear threatening to blow this extremely delicate artwork halfway down the street !

A new print from last week . . . . in YELLOW !!!

I have been trying to get some new screenprint designs made at the studio recently.I'm quite into bright yellow at the moment, not that it's been too sunny in London this June, maybe it's just wishful summer thinking... more yellow on it's way though I feel.

More than anything else I love it when a box arrives at the studio containing 100s of a new tape design. Lorna was buying tapes marked 'Fragile' to use on packing parcels for things I sell on Etsy, then I thought "why not make my own FRAGILE tape ?" So I did !!!

Over the last year and a half I have been working on the pictures to go with a new Carol Ann Duffy childrens story called 'The Gift', it really is the most beautiful and moving tale. Eventually it is all finally coming together and begining to look like a book - these things seem to take forever - and will be coming out in September.
Exciting !