Sea air and wild woods

Last week I visited my lovely friends in Hastings. 

This little chap was only a baby last time I saw him so we had a lot of catching up to do.

It's one of my favourite escapes. Wide views, bright light, sea air and the best company.

 I love this lot! Me and Wendy realised that we have known each other for TEN years. We met when we were newcomers at bctf and it was friends at first sight :)

We took a walk in the woods, through the Wild Garlic

and a sea of Bluebells

and there were a few cuddles along the way.

The Wild Garlic made our breakfast pretty. As Ffion put it, it looks like a Pinterest breakfast!

Such a lovely lovely time.

Cyanotypes in the woods

Yesterday eleven people gathered together deep in the woods at Gibson Mill in Hardcastle Crags for a day of foraging and creating to create these marvelous cyanotypes. The workshop was led by lovely Moira who has a business called Hunt & Gather and makes beautiful  products with this fascinating process.

So what is a cyanotype you may ask (as did the man with his dogs that I met in the woods did while I was gathering foliage). It's an early form of photography where light sensitive chemicals are painted onto paper and then exposed to the sun. If you lay shapes on top before exposing, it captures their silhouettes beautifully, sometimes creating ghostly effects. 

The chemicals start out green and when they are in the sun they change colour getting darker and darker until after about half an hour (depending on the appearance of sun and cloud) they are cooked and ready to be rinsed...

..and hung up to dry.

It was wonderful to play all day, walking in the woods and looking for great shapes.

This larch caught my eye. Beautiful shapes but they didn't make a very good print as the light got in under the twigs.

Sarah went for delicate plant life.

Sophie experimented with circles

and David with ferns and feathers.

It wasn't all nature though. Caroline experimented with forks and they looked great. Shame I didn't get a photo. The forks came in handy as weights. I wanted to move the ferns around at different stages of exposure to create different intensity so I didn't put glass over the top.

It came out nicely.

We made some cards to take home.

My favourite print of the day was this one. A mixture of my laser cut fritillary and some real plants and grass.

I'm framing that one :)

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day with lovely people, a brilliant tutor, great sandwiches put on from Gibson Mill cafe and loads of fresh air and creativity.

Moira is running another workshop here on the 19th of July and there are some places left if you fancy it. Get in touch. It's so much fun.

In the studio...

It's all go in the studio at the moment. BCTF brought in lots of orders and among them are twelve new stockists AND a huge order from The National Trust Scotland who have asked for candle covers for eleven of their properties.

Among them is Hill House, one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's creations and they have ordered my Fritillary design to sell in the shop. Have you seen Mackintosh's fritillary drawings? They are exquisite. They make me go all funny and make me inspired to get my pens out immediately and draw...

Today I've sent out work to The Congregational in Northumberland and a gorgeous looking florists called The Olive Tree on the Wirral.

 And this lot below are going off to The Bath House in Cumbia, Made Just So in Bristol and Allium Interiors in Barnard Castle. BCTF is just fab and all these orders are helping me to fund my wallpaper empire ;)

I'm nearly ready to send my wallpaper designs to print...my designs are coming together nicely.

Walking...

Yesterday after a day on the computer (making patterns though, it was fun) I saw Brene Brown tweeting about a Ted Talk called 'Got a meeting? Take a walk' and I went to have a listen. Nilofer Merchant tells the story of how she was supposed to be meeting with someone but they couldn't fit her in to their busy schedule so they said 'look I have to walk my dog, shall we talk while we walk?' and this gave her the idea for 'walk meetings'.

Why meet in a stuffy office of a coffee shop? Why not get out in the fresh air and get some exercise  and look after yourself whilst having your'e working. I love that idea. There's nothing like a walk to get the ideas going. 

It made me want to get out immediately and even though I didn't have a meeting as such I took a walk on my own. The leaves were unfurling and the birds were singing and I thought about how much inspiration this simple activity gives to me.  I can pinpoint certain places where inspiration struck, like here on this hillside above the archery fields looking out over Hebden Bridge where I once marvelled at the structure of a dandelion clock and it gave me my the idea for one of my best selling lamp designs. 

Time out walking is never wasted. It's one of my favourite things.

Thankyou too!

I seem to be gathering quite a collection of thankyou cards recently. Today I got a very sweet card from a little girl called Scarlett (her writing sure is neat for one so young ;) and it made me SMILE. It reads:

Dear Aunty Hannah,

Just a tiny note to say a heartfelt THANKYOOOOOOOO for my gorgeous Christening lamp that you made for me on behalf of my Fairy Godmother Sally.

It really was a total surprise but equally an absolute delight. I may be only 1 (almost) but I know a glorious work of art when I see one and yours is always something that makes me smile with joy. I've been fascinatedly fiddling with the ON/OFF switch all week and I think I've finally figured out how to turn it on myself. Cooool! Thankyou. 

Tiny hugs and kisses

Scarlett Grace xxx

The wonders of the wallpaper factory

It was awesome. 

Me and my friend Claire (who also has plans for a range of wallpapers) arrived at Anstey Wallpaper Company in Loughborough early Friday afternoon just in time to see the last hour of the printing machines in action before they clocked off at 2 o'clock for the weekend.

The printers were incredible and we loved watching them feed in the huge rolls of paper, gracefully winding it up and down and picking up ink from big vats along the way.

Sabrina, our friendly guide, introduced us to all the different printing methods along the way. Surface printing, flexographic, rotary, gravure, block printing, screen printing and state of the art digital to name a few.

There was a silver and red paper printing here on the gravure machine

and on the rotary machine (kind of like a screen print but the mesh is in a cylinder) they were printing this lovely palm wallpaper. 

 This is their colour chart.

When the colours are signed off they are stored in these tubes for their reference. I loved all the tubes.

and I loved all the coloured squeegees in the screen printing room.

The screen printing tables were sooooo long

and the screens were so huge!

They have expert colourists on site

 who can mix up the colour of anything that they see. 

They have created a colour wall for inspiration

and when a design is ready to print they offer up many colourways and let you choose your favourites. I'm looking forward to this bit.

After the tour we sat down with a cuppa to talk about our designs and which print method would be best to produce them. As my designs are tonal it looks like gravure is the best for me. This is where a copper plate is engraved with the design and wrapped round a metal cylinder.

All the gravure cylinders are stored in a big warehouse. It's nice to think that mine will soon my amongst them. 

Everything felt possible after this visit. It's a whole new beginning and a very exciting one. The next step is to finalise my designs. Even though I want to take LOTS to print and offer them in a myriad of colours I have to start small. I'm going to take three designs to print to start with and build from there.

Soooo I hope I can find lots of people with walls that are crying out for some peaceful nature inspired patterns because I'M MAKING SOME! :) Hannah Nunn wallpaper could be as little as ten weeks away x