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At the moment we are working on an edition of 30 cats. Its a lot of work. I'm taking inspiration from all these here cats I made for the show last year at the Shire Hall Gallery in Stafford.

You may know that every so often, I make a new edition of height rulers to sell in Ryantown.

This is the newest edition and is slightly different to any I've done before.
The rulers are made from ply wood, this particular one has a hand-painted yellow strip down the left side and a flash of orange down the left edge. Over the bare wood are hand-painted light blue clouds, the rest of the wood is left bare to show the grain. They are then hand-printed with red ink for the illustration and indigo inks to show the measurements. The rulers measure up to 7 foot and are signed in an edition of 20.

Available in the shop this weekend for £315 each!!!

Studio Music is a brilliant website listing artists/designers/photographers top 10 tracks to listen to in their studios whilst they're working. A new artists' top ten is added at the beginning of each week and this week, its me!!!

Every artist writes a little about why they love to listen to each track and you can listen along whilst reading, its really quite brilliant!

You can read and listen by visiting the website here

Stylist magazine in the UK ran a competition for their readers to vote for their favourite cover out of all 75 issues of the magazine. A little while I designed a cover for their 'Perfect Picnic' issue. I meant to blog about it but I forgot! But this week it was announced that my cover won anyway so thank you to anyone who voted!!!

They also featured Ryantown as one of the '100 addresses Stylist wants you to know'

I'm sorry my blog has been a bit neglected for a while, as you may already know, I've been working on a new book which I have written and illustrated myself. At 60 pages long, it's been a bit of a mammoth task to cut them all in 4 months but we've almost finished!!!
The book is called 'A Sky Full Of Kindness' and will be available to buy in October of this year.
After each cut is finished, they are coloured using spray paint. Right now, we're at spraying and sticking stage - hopefully these photos will give you an idea of how these final steps are done and why I've been so quiet recently!!!

Tomorrow is your last chance to bid on the Royal wedding plate I designed for the magazine Living Etc to raise money for homeless charity, Shelter. You can bid by going here. This plate is a complete one-off, made here at the studio in Royal blue with hand-painted gold lustre rings. All the proceeds go to Shelter, so you are investing in a worthy cause by bidding.

If you miss out on the auction, you can also get a version of the plate in black and yellow at Ryantown or Etsy.

If you're reading this in the UK, have a great day off tomorrow!!!

I have just done a little interview with 'Heal's Reveals' the blog of interior design shop, Heal's. You can find it on the Heal's website here!!

Here is the new teatowel which is now on sale on Etsy and will be available in Ryantown this weekend.

After some sampling, we've got a design and colourway for the new teatowels!! Jackie has been testing out loads of colours this morning - here you can see the whole process.
The first colour is printed with water-based ink and then cured before the keyline is printed over the top. These will be in the shop this weekend and maybe even a few on etsy, look back for a post tomorrow with the chosen colourway.....

All of this work year has so far been dominated by working on a new book. I should be finished in about a months time and the book itself will come out in the Autumn. It's been a bit of a mammoth task to tell the truth but hopefully it will be worth all the effort. Here is the first page and it will be called 'A Sky Full of Kindness'.

A while ago, the magazine Living Etc asked me and 8 other artists and designers to design a plate to celebrate the Royal wedding in April. Here is the article in the May issue.

I designed and printed my plate in Royal blue and finished with hand painted gold lustre rings, this is the only blue and gold one in existence.

The plates are now up for auction with all proceeds going to the housing and homeless charity, Shelter.
You can bid for the plates by emailing your closed bid to livingetcplates@ipcmedia.com. Put your chosen designer in the subject line. Bidding ends at midnight on 29th April 2011. Winning bidders will be notified shortly afterwards and will need to pay via a PayPal account.

Egg cups are live on etsy!!!

During the winter months fumbling around for keys in the dark to lock/unlock the studio is now a thing of the past! Not just because the clocks have gone forward but because we have had our beautiful blue and frosted glass installed in our lantern by the door. BIG BIG thanks to stained glass wizard SASHA WARD for making it all possible.

In my new role as art critic I get tough on the prime ministers wife in todays Guardian newspaper.

The fifth issue of Its Nice That has just been published and there's an article all about me!!! Check those guys out here

We needed to put our mugs for the shop in boxes, and since I couldn't be bothered to make a new design, we just used an old print but I think it still looks pretty cool.

Every year I make a St Patrick's day card.

Canvas versions of the 'My other bag is made of solid gold!' bags are now in the shop, here you can see me using the bag in my everyday life.... both sides are printed, one in blue and one in pink!!!

We're currently sampling a new tea towel design and have tried a few different colour-ways. I'll eventually choose one of these colour-ways to print for the shop but they looked so jolly all together that I thought we'd take some photos for the blog!!!

Honestly, it is... and it's really heavy and impractical. So you're better off with one of these!!!