Pixies & Sprites

We don’t just use our framing equipment for our handmade frames.

The wall mounted cutter in the workshop cuts mountboard for our bought-in mid sized frames. The Sprite loves the Fletcher which quickly cut multiple mats & boards for these sizes.

Whereas I prefer the table mounted Keen-cut. Recently relocated back to the house from the workshop, it’s now in our little storeroom next to the studio.

The Keen-cut primarily cuts apertures to frame the pieces, although I do use it to cut batches of mounts for our smaller pieces.

Before this we bought in smaller aperture mounts. They worked for most things but we didn’t have ones which fitted our mini roses or our smaller shapes.

Now even our 6” frames benefit! Our mini roses have smart little hand-cut mounts in solid core boards.

And our new little hexagons can get offset mounts. So that’s where all the sides aren’t quite the same size. Great for fitting around our irregular shapes.

It’s little changes, but they make such a difference.

If you get at chance to catch up with us at a market, come and have a look at the changes & let us know what you think.

I know it looks chaotic but I think it will work.

Comics are always tricky to work with. Riots of colour and often with typesets and layouts that work against any attempts with modular origami, which spins and rotates the details on a diagonal 🫣

I’ve been trying to create a rectangular A2 ish sized piece from vintage Beano comics, something we can then frame in our flat matte black handmade frames - another for his to-do list.🤭

Twenty-four squares in so far and this module size takes roughly a 5x7 tile to be A4 ish. So will cut out and fold the same number again and see if 48 works.

There’s just about enough margins showing to help balance the piece, so it should work.🤞🤞

The way to tell is to focus on the outside ‘kite’ shapes. These will be the predominant colours that show once the piece is folded. Our eyes are naturally drawn to what’s inside a shape rather than focussing on the margins. This is the fun and also most challenging part of the composition.

Not looking forward to folding another big batch, but it’ll be worth it when it all comes together.

Maybe the plan for next year will be to leave them in this raw state. If each module had a plain, say white, lining. But that’s not for today.

Thank-you Blickling & The Aylsham Show!

A very long day & my feet are refusing to do as they are told.

Not surprising since we managed to throw up 2 gazebos today with nearly 30 very different large pieces displayed on the walls.

Got to watch the very well behaved cattle make their way back into the ring, then the pack-down.

Thank-you to everyone who stopped by for a chat. We love our quirky artwork and so many of you got the concept today.

Loads of discussions for bespoke pieces, from maps to books to comics.

Lead-time is currently 6-8 weeks for commissions so please don’t leave it too late for those Christmas plans.

As we say goodbye to August, we kick off September with two shows next weekend 🫣😊🤭

All set-up at The Aylsham Show.

Overcast but holding.

Got our gallery wall up & undercover so good to go!

Just up by the ring which means I can watch all the ‘best in show’ line up at the end of the day.

And who says he never cleans 🤭🤭

Part exhibition, part shop window, part market stall.

We often feel like we’re Amazon, with a cumbersome set-up and often a weary pack-down.

Envious of the stalls who pack down in seconds & have pretty much sold out.

But the reality is ‘that’s just not our business’.

Part of what we do is to showcase, to explain the concept…..

And then the important bit, giving customers the time & space to decide what they want.

The sales theories tell you that if they walk away, then that’s a lost sale.

It makes you feel that your products don’t have that wow factor, or desirability and are missing something.

Our artwork is very different. It’s individual, each piece is unique and it doesn’t have the same scale-up possibilities that an artist’s print may have. It just is different.

It’s been a tough market season for a lot of small artisan businesses, with market sales all over the place.

Yesterday we sold on the day, had repeat customers, took orders on the stand and talked through possible commission pieces for the future.

So as we wearily empty the truck & repackage for a big event tomorrow, trailer & all, well….

…you just do what works for your business, be grateful and celebrates the wins 😊

Back to a soggy Welborne Common.

Thank you Creake Abbey for a great Summer Fair 🥰

Our Boba Fett piece is just one of the pieces off to their new homes.

We also had orders placed on the day & lots of discussion for Christmas pieces.

If you’re thinking of a possible piece, just drop us a message.

We’ll be keeping our eye out for some more Star Wars pieces, no promises because not every comic works. It’s all about finding the right ones 😊🫣

All set-up at Creake Abbey.

The first leg of our Bank Holiday Weekend Madness.

Here from 10-4 will lots of quirky pieces.

Love seeing them all displayed together inside the gazebo - Gallery wall🥰🥰

Latest map commission ready for despatch.

This time last year we could only plot and scheme about the possibility of our own in-house framing.

We wanted to create maps pieces from vintage Bartholomew maps like this but they just didn’t work with the square frames we had available.

Last August we decided we really could look to making frames ourselves.

The reality has been 12 months of upheaval, chaos and a huge learning curve.

We produced our first customer frame in January for a 3 map piece. By the end of this month we think we will have produced a hundred ish frames of different shapes and sizes, many of which have found their new homes.

Our latest flat-mounted map is this gorgeous WHSmiths folded map of Yorkshire.

It’s always a risk mounting a map of this age, 1870’s!

It’s spent several weeks unfolded under acrylic sheets to ease out some of those folds.

Today it’s been mounted onto conservation board using a potato starch based adhesive.

Positives, the map has very little stretch and has adhered well.

Unfortunately there were a couple of areas where the
canvas & paper layers have separated. These have been repaired & are holding well.

There’s just one area to the top right that needs a little more attention. At 150 yrs old, it deserved that little bit more effort 😊

Then this antique map will be framed up and ready for our Ripley Fair in September.

So we talk a lot about conservation materials and adhesives but why do we need them?

That basic question comes down to how paper is made and what happens when it ages.

From the mid 19th Century paper switched from linen and rags to wood pulp.

Alum or Aluminium Sulphate was added as a sizing agent to primarily stop ink bleeding.

This compound is acidic and over time attacks the plant fibres, weakening the paper.

The plant fibres also contain lignin, which holds the fibres together. When exposed to heat, light and basically the air, the polymer reacts and causes the paper to break down. It basically rips itself apart.

So two conflicting processes, and that’s without any wear and tear from usage.

So what can we do? Well we’re unable to reverse the acid process, that’s where the professional conservators can work their magic. But we can do things to stop further damage.

We use conservation grade adhesives and mountboard, so we’re not adding any extra chemicals which can cause further damage (acid and lignin free)

We can’t remove the air, but we can remove the harmful UV rays. Which is why all our handmade framed pieces come with UV resistant acrylic as standard.

Why don’t we do this as standard on everything? Well more modern papers from 1970’s/80’s are a little stronger.

We may end up replacing glass on all our frames with UV acrylic as standard, but currently we’re doing this on a case-by-case basis.