Star struck

Magnetic bead fastening, fallen stars, silk thread paper, reflections, cut outs, nets and shadows. 

Enclosed in soft black leather wrap. Made for poetic star gazing.

Beaming silver sun.

My favourite! Waves and straight lines, and a star collecting bag.

Or the one with black suede and gold leather wrap...

...version of the Starstruck below...

A place of romance for photographs, letters, tickets and the postcard that reads, Will you marry me?

Belongs to Indiana Jones

Ancient bones

Tree of life, turning to midnight blue

All things connect

'Thoughtful, sensitive, spiritual, alternative'

Stitched silver birch on cover. At dusk, a walker through a wood can navigate a way by the treeshine from the gleaming silver birch. Then keep private the thoughts of your journey with leather ties, folded handmade paper, hidden tucks, net, felt, and secured pages. The waxed paper stitched into the front cover is a memory paper. I'll tell you its secret when we meet.

Memories of the sea

Rockpools, sands, curious, delightful, surprising details, rubbing against your fingertips.

Or wrapping blue leather, soft, wind-beaten, with shells, picked from beaches far away.

Design inspirations: therapy

Here's a tale. Running a drop-in workshop making journey books, a woman came to me and said they were terrifically pretty, what are they for?

I explained how the journey you stitch into the book is one you can take literally, or metaphorically. You can walk about the gardens, or walk about your mind, or your soul, or your heart, or the places of your recollections and childhood. Whatever it is that makes you, you.

As you walk, think, choose, stick, write, you build a story of a moment. You need never put your name on your journey book. If you wish, you can hang your story from the branch of a tree and watch it spin and dance in the wind. Any passer-by can read it. Anyone might take your book, follow your steps, walk in your shoes and for a moment, they might know an altogether different you.

She spent two hours making a book, walking about the gardens, thinking, choosing her words carefully, making a journey that didn't have an ending or a beginning. Peeking over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of her words, I was glad she could take the opportunity.

She is a person I keep in my head, and she is the reason why I make the books always with spaces for reflection and quiet consideration.

Design inspirations: twistings & transgressions

Yes, I want to explore many design ideas! Many are given to me by way of commissions and requests. Like the one for teenage becoming, please supply in girly pink.

You don't get sweeter than strawberry bonbons, pink net, and soft ostrich leather (Hong Kong acquired offcut from Dior!).

I enjoyed making these limited pieces, yes I did, and they hit the craft stall ready to choose, soon.

But there exists that ugly, unruly, submerged part of my id. You know the one. The one who cannot pass a Cath Kidston shop without wanting to smash the windows in. (The id is a monstrous weight for my super-ego, I can tell you.)

The snarling id wants it all un-cute, un-nice, un-neat, un-wise with a dagger in the binding and a twist at the heart. It may start off by rolling its cruel, ungenerous eye to steampunk, goth, cult and fetish interests.

But wouldn't this be a very English thing to do? Imagine me in my Laura Ashley elasticated-waist skirt stitching crafted books for the fisting brigade.

Here, have a far more nuanced, truer, wiser and perceptive analysis of the Kidston brand than I will ever dredge up from my id before I can calm it down with a nice cup of tea.

Design inspirations: folk tales

One of the worst decisions I made in my life (first boyfriend excepted) was to take an English Lit degree. It totally destroyed my love of wide wandering reading, undermined the aspirations I held in my true place, gave me misleading goals, and did the unforgivable: made me snooty about childhood fairy stories.

Now I have outlived the grisly consequences of the EngLit degree, I have my stories back. I love fairy stories, folk tales, Grimm reading and Perrault. These stories contain wisdoms about the dynamics of relationships, fears about knowledges of women, and the minefields of sexual normalities and transgressions.

I want to stitch the fantasy note book where little red riding hood might have written her story. I want to touch the bark of the magic tree where the treasure is buried. I want to turn the pages where the evil goblin records the people whose hearts he has clawed. I want to make the book owned by the witch in the woods, the one who eats children, where she keeps her spells safe.