Jo Clark

This weekends wondering was much different to last week, the snow is melted and the sun was shining. I went out looking for inspiration and I found it in the textures of the beautiful trees and some precious antique finds!

This weeks greetings card is this subtle and simple illustrated card Purple Stalks which captures the essence of the early signs of spring. Simple budding wild flower design with a touch of colour.

Some shots of some of the patterns and shapes that caught my eye, enjoy.

One of my favourite places to visit are the antiques shops on Gwydir Street, I go there in search of inspiration and this time I most definitely found it. Two fab books one on ‘Baby Birds’ complete with beautiful colour book plates from 1940′s and a poem on each bird as well a description of each of the birds their habitats and individual traits. I just love the way the pages have aged with tea colours spots and fluffed edges to pages, even the spine has gone but someone has taken the time to stick it back together.

Then we spotted the second book, a stunning scrap book.  It is full of beautiful ‘Brooke Bond tea cards’ all different subjects and about forty pages full of cards, thats a lot of tea! Lovingly collected over many years and carefully stuck into the pages of this book, I can’t wait to sit down with a cuppa sometime soon and turn the tactile fragile faded old pages, which you can’t do with an ebook! I may have to start my own a scrapbook!

There is a lovely page with a collection of dog breeds, I felt inspired and just had to draw this chap!

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See you soon!

How time flies when your doing your tax returns, ah I’m glad thats over.

I had a lovely visit from Ella Walker of the Cambridge evening news, who interviewed me for a feature on their website. I must admit I was so nervous but Ella did such a fantastic job of putting me at ease, and wrote a lovely article even makes me sound like I knew exactly what I was talking about ..hehe, I’m not sure I do, I just like drawing things. You can read the article here

As the weather continues to get colder this week, makes it impossible to imaging flowering plants emerging in the gardens. Well already snowdrops have been spotted poking through the ground at Anglesey Abby  So the obvious choice of card this week is my brand new ‘Snowdrops’ card. this design also features in the Floral 2012 Calendar.

Its been a very busy few weeks and lots of things are happening, all at once! I’ve just received my copy of the gorgeous little book by Charlotte Rivers called ‘I Love Stationery’ which is (as you might of guessed) filled with beautiful examples of stunning stationery and a little bit about the artists and makers too.

This lovely book is packed with inspirational and contemporary examples of bespoke stationary and appeals to a wide and varied audience from designers to craft fans and collectors. Read professional advice directly from the artists on techniques, tips and breaking into the stationery industry.

The left page features the work of Anna Fewster from Brighton who works with letter press techniques and produces beautiful crisp prints book plates and invitations. Anna’s work has a real art deco feel and I love the flat block colours throughout her work.

On the right page shows the work of printmaker Katherine Watson who resides in Washington DC. Katherine’s work has a lovely tactile feel enhanced by carefully chosen papers for her woodblock prints.

I managed to put together a Animal Calendar after I had several requests to make one. The 2012 Calendar features many of my little animal characters baby rhino, field mice, little fox and a few brand new ones. A little late but hey its here! If you would like to buy one of these please drop me a line and I will make one just for you!

Even more exciting news…(by the way this has been an exceptional week for being in things, I’m sorry to go on about it, but I am very excited) my Seed Spheres print has been featured in the March issue of  ’House Beautiful Magazine’ its is very tiny but its there. I’m so very flattered to have my work shot in the same room as the beautiful St. Jude’s fabric covered furniture, I am a big fan and truly made up about it! Thank you ‘House Beautiful Magazine’.

This is a photo I took walk through beautiful Cambridge, its getting cold the river Cam is trying to freeze over. A lovely bright day but bitterly cold and I couldn’t wait to get back indoors.

Its a farewell to the two english language students who have been staying with me for the past few weeks, they both have long journeys returning to the sunshine in Brazil and Taiwan. They had to suffer through my vegetarian cooking for long enough. Good luck guys!

 Finally I’m now pleased to offer framed prints for sale in my online shop, and this is a photo of my little Daisy wanting to be in on the photo shoot of my framed pine tree birds print.

Bye for now, stay warm and remember to feed the birds!

A very Happy New Year to everyone, I hope that 2012 will be a year filled with fun times, good health, happiness and success!

My blog has been seriously neglected over the past few months and I’m really sorry about that, so I am starting the new year as I hope to go on…by becoming a regular blogger.

Thanks to everyone that came to visit me and supported me at any of the craft fairs that I exhibited at over the last three months around the UK. Its always so lovely to meet my customers face to face and I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas.

So this year is going to be a very exciting one for Jo Clark Design with lots of big things happening in the coming months, so much so I’ve made myself a calendar to keep track of things! You can get hold of one of these from my shop if you need one too. This was a very popular item at craft fairs over Christmas, and  I hope it is brightening up the start of the new year for all of you who bought one.

I’m looking forward to exhibiting at the British Craft Trade Fair in April, and again in June at Pulse Trade fair London which is all very exciting, I’ve actually been dreaming about setting up my stand already.

I’ve been working on new designs, products and ideas for the new year, and I can’t wait to launch them. This is one of my popular card designs digitally printed onto lovely cotton fabric and beautifully made into a soft cushion ideal for the living room or to decorate the bed with, you can get hold of these now!

Its been a very busy year with not a lot of time for new drawings or ideas, but I plan to keep on drawing and showing you my latest ideas right here, so I hope you will like them.

This is a little fish doodle for Kate who has just transferred her lovely fish into a bigger better tank, but we are all a little worried about the little crabby guy.  Look…he’s just fine see, my gold fish of tanks gone by are looking after him now.

I was so flattered to be asked to do a commissioned piece of my little Fox character, he does always get a lot of attention on my stall.

This piece is made with collaged papers pen and pencil…and I loved getting my scissors out for this one. It was great to get back to collaging, its been a while since I used this in my work, but I can’t wait to do some more.

Ah pigeons in love!

Watch out for these guys…they look like trouble to me, they will be making an appearance very soon.

Speaking of trouble makers…here is one of my new products with some cheeky little squirrels on, the red ones and a grey, but they are all living in harmony here with enough nuts to go round and keep everyone happy. Just don’t forget where you’ve stashed them chaps!

These were a very popular gift this Christmas, did you get one of them? These will be back in stock very soon and a matching squirrels card coming too!

So thats my first epic blog post of 2012…I hope you’re not asleep yet! meeeooooow yawn… like the very lazy Daisy cat!