Today is the birthday of one of my dearest friends.
Alice (co-creator of 'A Yuletide Tale') is one of those rare and special friends you just instantly click with and know you are going to be great friends with for life.
Special friends deserve special presents, so I decided to make Alice a little book of the story of our friendship so far.
Yesterday I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend the day at The Arter, run by the lovely Paula and Rachel. This is a beautiful shop filled with the produce of local artists and craftspeople. Everything is handmade and everything is absolutely gorgeous- I've not yet managed to visit without coming away with a few goodies!
The Arter
The shop is part of Hall's Croft which was the home of Shakespeare's daughter and granddaughter. It's a fantastic setting and I thoroughly enjoyed eating my lunch in the beautiful gardens. I was also given an excellent tour of the house by the lovely Rory. For my fellow foodies, there is even a café on-site. I was in heaven.
Hall's Croft
I am very proud that my prints, greeting cards and notebooks are stocked in the shop amongst such talent. The Arter also has a special place in the collective Smith family heart because Paula and Rachel also stock lots of Mum's ceramics.
It was such a treat to spend the day surrounded by so many beautiful things.
Jenny Knight's super colourful ceramics
More Jenny Knight- we have a few of her pieces at home
Jacqui Law's quirky copper and enamel jewellery
Vicki Lafford-Garside's delicate embroidered jewellery. Again, I have one of these at home!
See if youcan spot the Lit Smith necklaces here too!
One of my prints behind the till sitting proudly next to the Best Independent Shop Award!
My lunch time walk through the garden
Perfect picnic spot
Unfortunately, I can't show you my shopping haul from yesterday as it was for a very special friend's birthday present later this week!
Thank you so much to Paula and Rory for a wonderful day and I look forward to seeing you soon!
We have just returned from a fantastic holiday to Ardnamurchan (the most westerly point of the British mainland). The West Coast of Scotland is one of my very favourite places. We have spent many a family holiday visiting the islands, but Ardnamurchan has a special place in our hearts, hence this being the fourth visit.
Ardnamurchan, known as 'Europe's rainforest' for the spectacular plant and wildlife, is far too beautiful for me to ever be able to justify it in words. Our wildlife sightings this year include deer, pine martens, otters, seals and mink.
Last night the Smith Family went to see our very favourite band: Fleetwood Mac. This was the 4th time we'd seen them live and, as always, they didn't disappoint. The band has a collective age of 338 but, like a fine wine, they only seem to be improving with age.
Things kicked off with 'The Chain' which is the ultimate gig opener. Just listen to that bass...
The entire concert was absolutely fantastic but Stevie Nicks is one of my ultimate ladies (up there with the mighty Kate Bush), so it was her songs that I enjoyed the most. Anyone who can pull off twirling around the stage clad in various lacy shawls, brandishing a tambourine and belting out songs about Welsh witches, snow covered mountains and sisters of the moon is my idea of wonderful.
My favourite song of all time is Rhiannon and Stevie really gave this one some welly to haunting graphics of a lady emerging from a lake. If you've never seen a live performance of this song, watch it. Watch it now.
In the words of Mick Fleetwood, "much fun was had by all"!
In December, Alice Brunt and I created our very first children’s book together for Christmas h.Art. ‘A Yuletide Tale’ was received very well and the sales meant that we were able to reach our goal of funding a trip to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. This is the major international children’s publishing event of the year.
We spent four days at the Fair in Bologna. There was an incredible atmosphere at the Fair - the exhibition halls are enormous and are packed with representatives from publishers, agencies and rights agencies from across the world. (There were also a couple of ice-cream stands for a bit of light relief!) The Bologna Fair is a trade-only event, and everyone there is a professional in the children’s publishing world. We worked hard beforehand to secure a series of appointments with a range of those professionals; we were delighted not only to have had the opportunity to talk to these people, but also to have had incredibly positive feedback from everyone we spoke to.
One of the brilliant illustration walls
We sought out these appointments because we wanted guidance from the best in the business. ‘A Yuletide Tale’ is to be part of a series of books and we thought that it would be helpful to discuss the best way to go about this new project with those who know what they’re talking about.
Everybody was very impressed with ‘A Yuletide Tale’, particularly given what we’d achieved in the short window of time we gave ourselves to produce the book. We made sure that we had come prepared, and it boded well for us that we were able to produce and sell our own books.
We were told that there is nobody else like us, and our teamwork and traditional English handmade approach is something that makes us stand out from the crowd. One of our USPs is that we’ve made our books ourselves, and we want to continue to work independently which means we can explore our ideas with freedom.
We believe that children’s books should be treasured, and the stories that we have in mind currently buck the trend for the UK publishing market. Many people we spoke to commented on the commercialisation of the UK market at present; as we were walking around the Fair, we noticed a greater variety in the European market and felt creatively much more at home amongst the continental publishers’ stands.
We loved seeing so many creative displays
We were thrilled with the comments we received over the four days, and we feel very proud that lots of people suggested that our book was too beautiful to sign over to commercial publishers. Everyone was very impressed at our dedication; they thought that we had the ability and more than enough chutzpah to take on the challenge of producing our books ourselves.
We would like to continue exploring our mutual creative ideas, and we are very excited to announce that we will develop the next few stories in the series independently under our own publishing name… Watch this space for news of our new name and for more information on our next books!
Well January didn't exactly get off to the productive start I had planned. I was summoned for jury service and placed on a particularly tough case made all the more bearable by a wonderful bunch of fellow jurors. We kept each other upbeat with good conversation, snacks and my latest addiction- Boggle.
I am, however, currently working on a number of very exciting projects which I will be able to fill you in on over the next few months. One of these is that I have been accepted into the Hereford Arts Markets. The markets take place in Hereford High Town and are a chance to meet local designers and makers and purchase their work. Entry is free. Come and say hello!
The Hereford Arts Markets dates for 2015 are:
Saturday 11th April 9am-5pm
Saturday 12th September 9am-5pm
Saturday 12th December 9am-5pm
Sunday 13th December 10am-4pm
Further information is available at the Brightstripe for Culture website here
In other news, I visited my brother Harvey over the weekend. He is a real film buff and we always end up watching loads of films together because he usually despairs at how little I've seen. The film I really enjoyed over the weekend was 'The Boxtrolls' by Laika Animation Studios. It's pretty dark for a children's film and would definitely have frightened me when I was younger, but the story is great fun and the stop motion animation is incredible. I really enjoyed watching the special features and seeing how much work went into each movement in the film.
Over Christmas I realised I'd accidentally been subscribed to Audible for the last few months and decided to quickly use up the credits I'd stored up in my ignorance. I stumbled upon 'The Art of Asking' by Amanda Palmer. I must confess (and I'm very sorry if she ever reads this!) I had not come across Amanda Palmer before but she had me at the description of being a living statue. Who doesn't want to learn more about the life of a living statue?!
Amanda Palmer is an artist with many strings to her bow and is most famous (although not so me as I seem to have been living under a rock for the last few years) for her million dollar funded Kickstarter campaign and her 3 million view TED talk on the subject. 'The Art of Asking' is basically about how nobody successful has reached their level of success without asking for help along the way with lots of examples from Amanda Palmer's life along the way. A lot of creative people shy away from doing this, me very much included, and her message is 'take the donuts' (take the help that is offered to you and don't be afraid to ask for it either).
I'm really pleased that I didn't google her before listening to the audiobook because Amanda Palmer is quite a controversial figure online and I didn't have any preconceived ideas about her beforehand. When I was listening to her book all I kept thinking was 'what a warm, kind person'. I truly admire her ability to make friends wherever she goes and how open she is to new experiences.
I found the book very inspiring, listening to it in just a couple of days, and recommend it to all creatives. Particularly with fresh starts and new projects in mind for the beginning of 2015!
