Monday 26 November 2012

New In

I'm just beginning my Christmas shopping and so I'd guess you'll have started too. I have a few new things in my shop that might be the perfect gift for someone on your list... or perhaps even for yourself!

Image of Boxed Set of 8 Note Cards
Image of LITTLE RINGED PLOVER - note card

Image of BOURKE'S PARAKEET

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Cockpit Arts Christmas Open Studios





My second and last Christmas fair of the season! If you haven't visited Cockpit Arts it's the best time to come. There are over 100 makers, all opening up their studios to the public  so you can come, look, buy Christmas treats and chat to the people who made them.
The Christmas open is the best because there's such a lovely atmosphere, mulled wine spices wafting through the corridors and twinkly lights and pretty decorations. Each year we have a Christmas tree full of decorations made by makers that can be one at the end of the weekend. There are activities for children and great food for sale... come along!!!

Thursday 8 November 2012

See me at the Selvedge Fair!




That's right... I've been so busy making I'd forgotten to tell you! This Saturday, 10th November, is the Selvedge magazine's Christmas Fair. Being held at Chelsea Old Town Hall in London, from 10am till 4pm, there'll be lots of beautiful treats and surely some cake. It'll be wonderfully Christmassy and I'm so excited to see what new delights Samantha Bryan, Emma Cassi and Julie Arkell have to show. There's a huge long list of exhibitors so surely plenty of Christmas gifts to be bought. I have lots of new things, necklaces, brooches, card gift sets, gift vouchers and new birds. Hope to see you!





Tuesday 9 October 2012

New Press Features


A couple of pieces to add up this month, one British, one German and one Dutch. You can find all my press features on the press page of my website: www.abigail-brown.co.uk.



Textiel Plus, Netherlands, Autumn 2012, pg 36-38



Wohn Idee, Germany, October 2012, pg42, 45





Good Housekeeping, November 2012, pg 136


Tuesday 2 October 2012

COMPETITION WINNER




Thank you for all your entries - PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE TO ENTER.


The winner is Nikki Hagan, congratulations Nikki! Your little bird will be winging it's way to you as soon as I have your postal address.

Sunday 30 September 2012

COMPETITION - one more day



Thank you all so much for your contributions to my cause, I have a total of 85 entires and £218!!

There is one day to go, the end for the draw will be   MONDAY 1st OCTOBER - 6pm GMT.

PLEASE DO NOT SEND MONEY AFTER THAT TIME

I have to have a cut off point to choose the winner and get the money to my friend, but also checking the total every couple of minutes has been very exciting and incredibly distracting!! I haven't got any work done this weekend!! I need to do some so I can pay my own bills!!

I hope hearing this story and being part of something positive that could actually help this one person, might have inspired you to do more for the homeless in your city. It has me!
In London we have many charities working to support homeless people - helping find them homes, helping them with addiction, with mental health issues, feeding them, and some just offering comfort and kindness.
You could do your little bit by buying the Big Issue each week, or setting up a monthly direct debit of as little as £2 to one of those charities, or if time is all you have you could help at a food shelter - I was hugely proud when my little brother started doing this.
Reading your messages it obviously struck a chord with you all and wasn't just about winning my little bird. Let's see what more we can do!!

But on the subject of the little bird, one day to go till I announce the winner!!
Best of luck!

xx

Saturday 29 September 2012

COMPETITION


I am opening up a raffle for which the prize will be this little bird. The raffle is to raise money for my local Big Issue seller. For those not in the UK the Big Issue is a magazine for homeless people to sell in order to make money to help themselves off the streets.


For just £1 you will stand the chance of winning this little bird... sound good??


I've been buying the magazine from the same guy for over a year now and enjoy our chats each time I pass,
usually he has a good old laugh at me and all my bags, trekking to and from the studio!
The other week when I stopped he told me his world was caving in on him as his benefits had been stopped and they are what pay his rent. The money he makes selling the BI buys his food, so without the benefits he faces eviction from the place he has made his home.
He had some pretty traumatic things to deal with in his life, I know because we've talked about them, and as consequence he suffers from mental health problems. 

The government have decided that because he is on medication for these problems he no longer deserves the benefits and should get a job... knowing him the amount I do I'm not sure that's a possibility for him at this stage sadly.

We have really started to see the cold weather here now and he faces a very real possibility that he will be back living on the streets at the worst time of the year.
There isn't really very much I can do for him myself and I'm finding it very hard to accept... 
... but the other night I had this idea and I hope you will feel you'd like to help.

To enter my raffle it will cost you £1, which can be donated to me via my Paypal site, and your name will then be entered into the draw.
On Monday night, 6pm GMT, the competition will close and when all the names are taken, I will draw one at random and that person will receive this little bird.
All money taken will go to him.

So would you like to help?????
I really don't know what else to do for him.
It will only cost you £1 and you stand the chance of winning this pretty little bird to the value of £120!!! Good deal huh?!
To donate £1, please log onto your Paypal account and choose to 'send funds', enter my email address: abigailbrown81@hotmail.co.uk, and choose to send £1. 

When all the money is collected and I've drawn it out as cash, it will be given to Michael with a little note that explains where it all came from. 

The more of you that take part the bigger the difference it will make... so please join in.

Thank you!
x






Photo Shoot




Last week I had a little photo shoot at my friend's house. Kate and Adam are the people behind Dead Dolls Club and Tinker Tailor. As well as upcycling old bits and bobs into beautiful items for the home they run pop-up drinking and feasting events... they are a team to watch out for!

With £500 they turned an empty building into a home and the results are delightful. It was the perfect location for photographing some of my British Birds collection... although a few more tropical species sneaked in too.

Here are a few of the shots. They'll be used for a new range of postcards, notecards and a gift voucher I'm launching in October, just in time for xmas. I hope you like them!




Here's one of the little friend they made...





Saturday 25 August 2012

Too early to think about Xmas?!


Now I know it's still Summer and no one wants to think about the cold months coming... really... but I wanted to encourage anyone thinking of ordering a little bird for a Christmas present this year, to think about doing it in the next couple of months. I continue to make my work entirely myself and during busy periods this gets increasingly difficult. Unfortunately last year I had to leave some Christmas wishes unfulfilled and I really want to avoid that this time.
My normal making time for orders would be 4-6 weeks, so during a busy time that increases.

If at all possible please think about placing an order in September/October, if it's too early to have saved up I do offer part payments so you can pay in instalments to spread over a few months. Email me for details.

Also available again this year will be my sets of wooden Christmas tree decorations, £20 for 4, £30 for 8. I'll also be introducing gift vouchers this year, they'll be appearing on my website in the next month.

Monday 20 August 2012

New Species!

A very special friend of mine got married this weekend. She's a Yorkshire lass such as myself, who fell in love with New Zealand on a trip after university and took herself bravely back there alone to set up a  new life for herself. She's a talented artist and a beautiful friend and I was delighted to be asked to make her some birds as her wedding gift.

Emma wanted one bird to represent her roots in England and one bird to represent that of her husband's in New Zealand. She chose the Blue Tit and the Fantail.
Here's a photo of the little fellow himself...


You can find him in my shop if you would like one yourself...
...and here's a look at the pair atop the wedding cake...



If you would be interested to commission a wedding duo please get in touch.
Cake photo by Craig Goode

V&A - 'Stitched Specimen' workshop


On Thursday 20th September I will be at the V&A running a little workshop making butterfly brooches. It's free to take part and will run from 11am until 4pm... hope to see some of you there...

Thursday 19 July 2012

Press

A few bits of press I had this month to share with you, the first was a shoot in my home for 'Home' magazine in Taiwan, my very first bit of Taiwanese press!!...








Next up, French magazine 'Il etait un fils'...



And finally, my Flamingo featured in the FT Magazine's design barometer a few weeks back...


Monday 18 June 2012

Visit from The Queen of Shops



Mary Portas dropped in on open studios at Cockpit Arts this weekend. She had this to say about her visit:

"I like shopping this way. It feels like a wonderful, spirited, creative environment. We are at the heart of great talent and community spirit - I think that’s very British. For me this is somewhere I would like to drag 25 pals back to. Actually when is your next Open Day? "

Photo by Jamie Trounce

Saturday 2 June 2012

What do birds mean to you?



What do birds mean to you?

This was the question I asked you all 2 weeks ago and the response was really wonderful! I received so many beautiful entires, carefully worded answers that were full of love and such immense appreciation of our little feathered friends.
It was very hard to choose one winner from so many lovely pieces, so in addition to the winner of the little bird I also sent out packs of postcards to a little selection of favourites and offered the rest of you a token discount for taking part. Thank you! It's meant a lot to me and I'm so grateful you wanted to join in.

I would like to share some of the responses with you and credit the writers for their beautiful stories and prose. In addition to this I'd like to also share with you some of my dad's stunning bird photography...just so we can really get in the mood!...


Michael's piece stood out very clearly as the winner, as soon as I received it I knew it would be. I think you'll agree:

There is a certain wood I know where nightingales sing in clear Spring evenings. At the edge of the wood their voices are faint and ethereal, and as I walk the path, bordered with shining white campion and stitchwort, I follow through thicket and pass small clearings, pulled as though by an invisible thread. I reach a fence and can go no further, but the song is stronger than it's ever been; there is one bird, nestled deep in a hawthorn tree, a small, dull thing no doubt, but with more nuance and skill than an opera soprano. I sit by an oak, and then lie back, so that the stars and I face each other. Starlight and song weave and thread together until the stars themselves seem to sing, and I feel myself fall into the sky. Far away to my left, another starts: the tentative, soft, beginnings of liquid, velvet song. Alone, at night, with nothing but the birds, a soft breeze, and occasional small rustlings from under the leaves and twigs: and yet not alone, for the song comforts, warms, and speaks directly to my heart in a way that only strong, true friendship can match. This is the song that Beethoven used, the song that inspired poets and artists. But you do not need an artist's brush, or a composer's ear, to listen or to paint the beauty of this creature. And yet it sings alone, and I alone am here to listen, for everyone else is inside, faces turned not to stars or trees but to screens of all shapes and sizes. Nobody listens to the little brown bird, and few could name the song when asked. But privately, I smile. I stay in the wood for two hours, more perhaps, unmoving, listening, and peace overwhelms me. To this, and to one of the most magical experiences of my life, I owe the nightingale. 
MICHAEL



This next piece was close second. It really touched me, probably mostly because it's about the writer's grandma and mine was so hugely important to me. It's a sad little piece but it ends happily. Deborah wrote:


One of my favourite people in the world was my Nan; she was smart, witty and only ever swore in Welsh! And she HATED birds. I don't mean she didn't like them, she loathed them. For the longest time I couldn't understand it, of all the things in the world to dislike you'd think that birds would be away down the list. But now I've come to realise that she spent her life in a cage. Trapped in a marriage that was suffocating and lifeless, unfriendly and lonely. When she was 18 she'd spent time in the homeguard during the blitz in London. A young girl
from rural Swansea, she once confided in me that it was the best time of her life and that she felt terribly guilty about that. I think to her birds represented the freedom that she briefly had and lost. When I think of how she used to scowl at a rogue Robin (and mutter something rude in Welsh), it makes me laugh. When I look at and smell the powder compact we bought her as children, adorned with birds, that she used every day despite her loathing, I feel love. And when I see a bird I think of her, now free and soaring. So I suppose that's what they mean to me, spirit, love and freedom. And naughty Welsh words!
DEBORAH




My father grew up on a farm in Idaho.  And I grew up at a time when grandparents were visited maybe once a year.  Visiting the farm was a child's dream.  Endless fields to tromp through with hip high grasses to hide in.  Ancient lines of trees to climb, and irrigation canals with sweet, soft mud to make the perfect mud pies.  And in the house, that was magic too.  My grandmother fed us confections to the point that our little bellies could do nothing but slow down for a little while.  And each night, as the youngest child, I fell to sleep on my parents' bed, but woke on a pull out in the main room.  And when I woke, all that I saw were birds.  Birds from wall to wall; birds of all colors and varieties.  My grandmother's collection of porcelain birds arrived from dime stores and by air mail.  Most were careful replicas of true birds, but some were fanciful creations.  My grandmother is gone now, and the farm is no longer in the family, but the birds have found new homes.  When I visit my brother, he has hummingbirds in his kitchen, and gold finches in his bathroom...and this is how I have come to have red winged blackbirds in my dining room, and a blue bird in my bedroom.  I chose my family's 1910 Portland farmhouse home, in part, because of the house my father grew up in.  And it isn't by chance that slowly, the birds are fluttering in, one my one, to enchant my daughter, and hopefully, one day, to become a thing of magic and nostalgia for another generation. 
REBECCA




I love birds for lots of reasons. The small, contained, fragile beauty of a bird, belies it's amazing endurance and sense of industry. They are tiny yet the intricate melody of their song can fill a sky. The gentle softness a feather yet it's perfect design allows a bird to fly.  The myriad patchwork of rich colour and subtle tones of their feathers. A nest has become a symbol of home and safety.
Their quick, intelligent presence. A sign of spring, of hope and freedom.
CORRINA





I rescued a fledgling from the garden {and the dog} yesterday - I'd left it all day to see if it's parents could rescue it but it was totally waterlogged so I brought it in overnight - I told Nate it'd 99% likely be dead by morning :'(
we just released it and flew straight off across the garden :)
 good luck little birdy!" This was such a precious moment between me and my 7yr old son and one I'm sure we will always remember - it was so good to be able to do our very best to save a tiny bird and better still that it survived against the odds, the look on my boy's face was priceless when he told the baby bird to fly away and it did!
MEGAN
Well I guess really for me, birds mean Seasons. And I mean that by they sum up the seasons for me. You can't have winter without that archetypal image of a Robin in the snow. You can't have the summer without the housemartins nesting in your eaves. You can't have spring without the blue tits on the budding branches and autumn is all about the migration, thousands of birds filling the sky. I think my favourite season is by far the summer, waking up with your windows open, and hearing the gorgeous birdsong. Seeing all the swifts, swallows and housemartins darting in and out is just so uplifting.
HELEN






Seeing and hearing birds is like being in a kind of shangrila. I'm reminded of everything is in harmony and all that is good in the world kindness, courage, hope and joy when see and hear birds. 
WINNIE




As I sit and work in my studio at home, I am very easily distracted by the little passerines that visit my urban Bristol garden. We feed them and in return they connect me to another world. Just a few moments of observation and I feel as if I have quenched a thirst and satisfied an unbuilt desire to connect to that other 'bigger' world, the 'thin place'. My next door neighbour has stripped her garden clean of all life... Even laid down plastic grass! I simply can't understand how or why anyone would choose to dis-connect deliberately with such richness. Birds are like glimpses of richness in a sparse and struggling place, little messengers of hope and inspiration.
JANET




Birds are as important to me as my family, they wake me up sometimes far to early with their beautiful song, they give me hours of joy with their antics in my garden at the feeding tree, they fight, they woo they abandon their young for me to worry that they will not last the night with next doors cat on the prowl.........

My camera rests on the window sill ever ready so furtive glimpses can be recorded ......huge but very silly jackdaws (who are nesting in my unused chimney pot again! )hanging on for dear life on the fat ball, the tiny tits that peck the nuts like tiny jackhammers, the cocky sparrows that spat and squabble...the collared doves being too shy and waiting for me to leave food elsewhere especially for them, my beloved robin who hasn't quite got the hang of it all and finally my first glimpse of a song thrush yesterday .....I do so hope he comes back again. Yes my day would be so dull without my little friends and the pleasure they give me.
KAY




Birds are very special creatures. They can make your heart and soul lift up when you hear them singing at the top of their voices sometimes from the highest points in the trees. In the mornings when I walk my dog there are several robins that sing along on the journey or maybe it is just one little robin that bounces along with us I will never know. They can evoke childhood memories of long summers when you hear and see the first swifts in the blue skies which this year seemed to only happen yesterday. I remember being in my bed as a child and watching and listening to the hard working sparrows which would build their nests in the eaves of the house they worked intensely gathering debris to make their home just right for there forth coming family. This memory stuck with me as when my friend bought a house in Italy there was a discovery that the house was home to many sparrows nesting in the chimney and every other nook and cranny in the walls of the house making it a save haven for them. I spent many hours trying to ensure their young would not die when they fell  - I worked furiously to build safety nets for the family as it always broke my heart to find one that hadn’t survived and this year for the first time in four years they seem all to have made it through. On one occasion we entered this house after a long period and discovered they had made two homes in the two new metal pendant light shades that had been installed some months before - these were surely the most stylish nests ever seen!

LYNNE






Birds are a symbol for freedom and I love watching them while they are flying. I think they always must sing “jippieh” while flying.
SUSA





Thank you to all those who shared their thoughts with me x