T&C Inspired: Jessica Gowling

After all the excitement of uncontained, we've finally had a moment or two to catch up on the interweb, and welcome our creative friends to our blog! The lovely Jessica Gowling has shared some of her favourite work with us <3

Name: 

Jessica Gowling

Where are you from: 

Canada, the great white north

Tell us a little bit about your work: 

I am an avid animal lover, and my company name is "nature's my friend," (because we make art together). I am obsessed with textures: fur, scales, and similar repetitive natural patterns have always been some of my favorite things to draw. I suppose I would label my work as "animal portraiture" since I mostly focus on individual creatures; I view them as special beings with their own stories to tell.

Who, what and/or where inspires you: 

Wild animals, line, process, detail, nature, texture, time, voids, fleeting moments, drawing, touch, learning, memory, intimacy, nostalgia, narrative, chance, love, anatomy, letters, postage stamps, and Canadiana collectively motivate my practice.

What’s your favourite tea: 

Green tea is always a go-to but I am currently loving a loose leaf Mango Apricot tea as well.

Links:

BLOG: http://naturesmyfriend.wordpress.com

SHOP: http://www.etsy.com/shop/naturesmyfriend 

TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/jessicagowling

I adore these postcard sets, not just because I am the fan of a creature, but how she's photographed them for her shop too. I want a nice rustic door to put some pretty things on

We love a wolf as well! 

x

New work by Fritha!

Hello! did you miss me? its been a while..
WELL I'm pleased to say I am back! My little boy is now almost five months old (crazy!) and I'm finding time for illustrating again. Maybe not as much as before granted but a little here a little there, life is good!
I've been working on a few different commissions lately and am pleased to be able to share my latest one here with you all. It was so much fun working on this wedding invite, i couldn't help smiling when they told me penguins were a must!

If you want to find out more about my custom designs then just head over to my blog and say hi!
Tea and Crayons have so many exciting things in the pipeline 2012 is going to be pretty fun! (ok I know its May but for me its the new year ok? ;) )
You can also find me at Bristol with Kids!
xoxo

Tea & Crayons Etsy Shop Now Open!

Hope everyone has had a great bank holiday weekend? We've been busy sorting out behind the scenes of our Tea & Crayons Etsy shop and we're pleased to say it's now open for business!

Over the next few weeks all of us will be adding signed prints, original artwork and other goodies for sale; so you can now buy from all 6 of us in one happy place! At the moment we've got A4 & A5 prints from Rachel L for sale, soon we'll have sections for all of us!

Have a little browse and be sure to add us to your circles if you're also a member of Etsy - we love to discover new artists and gorgeous handmade things!

Click here to view the brand new T&C Etsy Shop!

Author Shoes Boutique Launch

Hi loves! Are you enjoying the sun as much as we are??

We're invited to a party! Author Shoes are opening a new store in sunny London town and we're popping along for the launch.  Themed as a 1920's speakeasy, we love a bit of vintage, it'll be so very glam - cocktails, nibbles, goody bags and best of all - lovely shoes.

See you there!

YCC WEEKLY SCORE FEATURING TEA & CRAYONS

read our lovely interview by the even lovelier Young Creative Council <3

What a week! It's been a busy one! Last week I mean, haha, this week is set to be even busier for us crayons! And our collective, sort of late Valentine's present if you will, was our lovely feature by the fab-u-lous Young Creative Council! Thanks to them lovelies for our wonderful feature and letting the world have a little peek at our loveable collective, also massive thanks to awesome crayonette Rachel L for her massive contribution to the article. (We love you Rach!) Also, definitely check our all the other Weekly Score features, amazing work featured and the YCC's other awesomeness, including their live briefs, which are great for all you fellow creatives!

T&C Inspired: Kerri-Ann Hulme

Hi loves! Hope you're all having a good week.

We invited T&C friend Kerri-Ann Hulme this week to share her wonderfully delicate and beautiful pencil drawings with us. We're adoring the little caspian seal she created for creature mag's endangered animal project and her hand drawn type 'We could be kings and queens'. Kerri-Ann shares alot of the same inspirations through fairytales and story telling as us crayons which is probably why we love her work so much :)

Name: 

Hello, my name is Kerri-Ann Hulme.

Where are you from: 

I'm from a small town called Widnes in Cheshire.

 

Tell us a little bit about your work: 

I would describe my work as whimsical, which reflects on childhood themes. I am particularly interested in children's books and hope to one day write and illustrate my own story. I love painting with acrylics on a large scale or drawing true to life portraits doing tone and shading with pencils. I'm currently just starting a few personal projects and sorting out my portfolio as it's a new year and time for brand new work. Also, I am one third of the collective Pencils, Paper, Scissors and we have just sent our first collaborative project to the printers and are expecting it back any day now. It is a circus themed colouring book and we are so excited to share it with everyone.

Who, what and/or where inspires you: 

I am inspired by many things including fairytales, magic, animals and people. The golden age illustrators such as Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen and Harry Clarke have been one of my main inspirations since I first decided I wanted to illustrate because I find myself getting lost in their pictures as they are so full of beautiful detail. I have recently discovered two amazing book illustrators, the work of Inga Moore (she illustrated The Secret Garden) and Jill Barklem (author and illustrator of the Brambly Hedge children's books), if you love children's books as much as me they are definitely ones to look out for.

What’s your favourite tea:

I don't like tea! :( (It always surprises us when people don't like tea)

Links:

Blog: goodnight-neverland.blogspot.com

Website: www.kerriannhulme.co.uk 

Twitter: @kerriannhulme

Collective: pencils paper scissors collective

♥

This Week, We Love...

Well, as you probably know yourself, this week has been freezing. So, it seemed appropriate to share some beautiful winter and cold weather essentials with you this week! We hope you like them! (Click on the picture to find out more).

Have a wonderful weekend!

T&C Inspired: Joanne Hawker

Hi loves! Hope you're all having a good weekend.

We have a new T&C inspired section where we'll be featuring some of our favourite illustrators, designers and general creative types and chatting to them about their beautiful work.  

Our first is the very lovely artist, Joanne Hawker who sent us some gorgeous illustrations (the owl is a personal fave of mine, she must've known we like a bird drawing). She has such a lovely delicate and organic style to her work.

Name: 

Joanne Hawker

Where are you from: 

I’m from a little village in a small corner of South Somerset.

Tell us a little bit about your work: 

My work tends to be quite varied as I still feel that I haven’t found my one true style yet so I like to experiment with lots of different techniques and ideas. Everything I do starts as a little biro doodle in my notebook and then I draw it neatly, ink it up, scan it in and render it digitally in Photoshop or illustrator or sometimes both! A lot of my work focuses around the natural world, as I tend to have many obsessions with woodland animals so expect to see a few foxes or owls in my work. I also have bit of thing for paper textures so they also play a huge part in the backgrounds of my creations.  This year I’m going to try and experiment with being a bit more minimal as its something I find difficult. Basically, I like to try and do a bit of everything when it comes to my work!

Who, what and/or where inspires you: 

As I said above the natural world plays a big part in my work, so a trip to the woods or the beach can spark off a variety of ideas. Or even the early morning cycle ride through the country lanes to work has been known to throw up a few ideas. There are a huge number of people on twitter who inspire me on a daily basis but there are too many to name so if you want to know who just read through the massive list of people I follow! :)

What’s your favourite tea: 

Tea! My favourite drink! Yum! I have to have at least 3 cups minimum of PG Tips or Clipper Tea everyday. Can’t beat it! Or as a treat I love love love Whitards fruit tea. Elderflower or Summer Fruits being my favourites.

Linked:

Website: www.joannehawker.co.uk

Blog: www.origamichicken.com

Twitter: @joannehawker

Etsy: www.etsy.com/shop/joannehawker

Society6: www.society6.com/joannehawker

You can buy her wonderful little calendar (pictured below) on her etsy shop, we'll be wanting to get our hands on one of those to keep our plans in order :)

x

This Week, We Love...

So, as you can probably tell, this week we're seeking all kinds of Candyland inspirations for an exciting project we're collaborating on. So, in the first post of it's kind, I present - This Week, We Love. This weekly Friday spot features 10 things we're loving this week (speaks for itself, really!)

Retro sweets! Visual and taste satisfaction. Perfect!

Bright buttons! We love getting crafty here!

Balloons! I adore this photograph.

Amazing trifle by Lily Vanilli. It looks incredible. We can't imagine a better dessert!

Beautiful hot air balloon photo. Ahhh!

Amazing vintage teacup!

How cute are these wooden heart decorations in pastel colours?

We think this teacup pin cushion is incredibly sweet. Teacups and crafting? A match made in heaven!

This clothbound series, illustrated by Coralie Bickford-Smith, is very inspiring. The colours, the designs, the feel and the Penguin Classics stories compliment each other perfectly. Now to start collecting them...

Finally, we love this Letterpress print. And we concur. Bake more cake!!

Fritha at Paperchase!

We have the most exciting news to share with you today at Tea & Crayons! Fritha's illustrations can now be found in Paperchase - in the form of cards, mugs, snow globes and more! Amazing! And the perfect Valentine's Day gift, I'm sure you'll agree.

It all began when Fritha decided to send a couple of her Valentine's Day designs to Paperchase in the hope they may be interested in using her illustrations on some of their merchandise. They obviously loved her style and thought her work was perfect for them. The illustration below was the final design they chose. It's instantly understandable why they wanted to purchase this illustration - the delicacy, the adorable character, the wonderful use of colour and the oh so cute heart balloon. We love it!

The following images, taken by Fritha, show her illustration brought to life in various products. I cannot wait to see them for myself. You can read Fritha's post about it here.

My personal favourites are those beautiful hand warmers, I need to get myself a pair! We're very proud of Fritha and perhaps we will see more of her illustrations at Paperchase in the future.. We certainly hope so!

DIGITAL ARTS: COLLECTIVE FEATURE

Hello lovelies! Well it's the weekend again, hip hip hooray and the girls and I are going to be raising a cheeky glass thanks to Digital Arts for their wonderful feature on us and our collective! Lisa Giles-Keddie has written a lovely piece about how we came together, what inspired us to become a collective, and there's tips and advice from us all. It's fresh on the news stands but I think they will be selling like hot cakes, our local Smiths only had a few left!

We're very grateful for the top support they've shown us, it's fantastic to be featured in a magazine that has inspirational content and a zest for fresh talent. I noticed as I was reading through the mag that the lovely editor Neil Bennett has a portrait illustrated by our very own Abby Wright!

It's overwhelming to see our work in print -after our collective was featured in Digital Artist in May, we felt ecstatic and inspired! Thank you to each and every one of you who goes out and gets a copy of the mag- we hope you find it a good read! We are very happy illustrators!

COLLECTIVE SKETCHBOOK

The Tea & Crayons sketchbook has made it's merry way through towns and cities all over the UK, from Bristol to London to Northampton so I can tell you I was very excited to see an ever so neatly addressed parcel with something heavy inside had made its way to the sleepy village where I live.

I opened it with eagerness and I was thrilled to see a pink note had been left for me from Kay, I originally thought it had been stamped because her handwriting is super neat! It was filled almost halfway with the most beautiful sketches (Rachel's florals and butterflies are gorge), hand written note (which i LOVE), thoughts ( I love Fritha's little notes and cutesy animal illos), receipts, papers, stamps and adorable illustrated bits and pieces. It is precious. So precious that I haven't done anything in it as yet, only carefully stick in Kay's note and draw some tiny hearts, diamonds and lightning bolts around it.

I wanted to share with you some of the gorgeous pages from inside, I'm so eager to fill it in with little illustrations and hand written notes, but I'm even more eager to see what Abby and Rachel will do once they get it! Once it's finished we are hoping to do something special with it. Hope you enjoy looking at these little snippets!

Natasha x