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

Switch off the big light...

In all the excitement of studio moves and wallpaper development I forgot about my little Illuminate book and having been shouting about it much lately. I had a royalty statement last week though and I was pleased to learn that it is doing very well out there without me. Today, thanks to the lovely Sharon Dale at the Yorkshire Post I have a big feature all about it...and about the wonders of hand crafted lighting in general. It features House of Chintz, Holly Ross and Amy Adams of Perch! ceramics in Brooklyn. It's a great piece and you can find it on page 6 of the Property Section. Thanks Sharon x

I went to the wallpaper factory yesterday and it was beyond awesome. I will be back soon with lots of photos. Wallpaper could be as little as ten weeks away!

British Craft Trade Fair 2013

I couldn't have hoped for a better response to my wallpaper at bctf. Thanks to everyone who stopped to have a look and pass comment. Your feedback was very valuable and has fueled me up....I was already pretty stoked so I'm really raring to go now!

The wallpaper really made my stand and created the perfect backdrop for my lamps. 

I listened very carefully to everyone's comments so I can decide which designs to take to print.

The fair was the best ever and I am going to be very busy fulfilling lamp orders for the next few weeks. I picked up twelve new outlets this time. This will all help to save my pennies for my wallpaper manufacturing! YES!

I was pretty much glued to my stand so didn't get a chance to take any pictures of all the AMAZING work at the show. As always it was wonderful to see everyone, makers and buyers alike. Having been away two years it was great to be back. I've had such a lovely few days x

And the winner are...

Here are the lamps for the winners of my giveaway. 

They have all been on their outing to the British Craft Trade Fair for the last three days and have adorned my stand and inspired a few shops and galleries to offer personalised lamps to their customers :)

Thanks so much for all of your entries. There were so many and I really would love to send a lamp to each and every one!

I'm going to track down the winners now and send them to their new homes.

I'll be back soon with news from the show. x

Trade Show Time...my wallpaper is making an outing!

In a couple of days it's The British Craft Trade Fair and I am very excited to be dressing my stand with my wallpaper. This morning I collected my digitally printed samples (thanks Print Bureau) and it was so much fun rolling them out (with a little help from my friends) and seeing them in real size for the first time!

I've got five designs

all in neutral colours

and they look reeeeeaaalllly pretty.

There are some new lamp designs too. Feathers,

Ferns,

and Fritillaries.

Today everything came together. 

The sign got finished, the final lamps were made (including the winners of my giveaway..will reveal them once my stand is set up),

 PAT testing was done, the toolbox got tidied, boxes got packed,

and the brochures got delivered. 

I'm ready and I'm excited!

Who's coming? Stand 149, Great Yorkshire Showground, 7th, 8th and 9th April.

Dream for life competition

If you are a reader of my blog you will know that I share my studio with photographer Sarah Mason and you'll have seen all the lovely shots she has taken of my lamps and my studio. Sarah is running a competition at the moment to launch her 'Dream For Life' photo shoots.

Children can choose their dream and Sarah will make it come true with a styled photo shoot. Perhaps they want to be a pirate, have a teddy bears picnic of make perfume in the woods.

Jump over to her blog to find out how you can win a Dream for Life shoot for your child. Hurry though, there's only a few days left to enter.

Featured in Made in Paper

Today my studio is featured in a brand new lovely magazine called Made in Paper. It's a sister magazine of the beautiful Simple Things magazine so when they emailed me to ask if they could do a feature I was excited because I just KNEW it would be beautiful!

On a very very sunny day in January me and Sarah had some fun doing a studio photoshoot knowing that on March the 21st we'd see the pictures in a pretty magazine.

There's a Q&A too so you can find out more about me and my studio.

They have excelled themselves again. 

The pages are full of beautifully put together, colourful, papery projects and ideas

and interviews with paper artists from around the world.

I spotted Cecilia Levy (i love her work) and the lovely Jennifer Collier too. 

Made in Paper is for sale in the UK, the U.S and Australia so look out for it or you can order it from Future Publications.

Personalised lamp giveaway

I need to make some new personalised lamps to take as samples to the British Craft Trade Fair. 

I don't want to use fictional names and dates because I'd like them to have homes to go to after the show. 

Who would you like one for? I have four to give away. One will be a Tree of Life like this picture with a name and a date, one will have Moons and Stars, one will have Dandelion Clocks and one will be  a Wedding Lamp with the couples names on and a wedding/anniversary date.

Please leave a comment below with the name and a date and which design you fancy. I'll choose my favourites next week and make them in time to take to the show.

After the show I'll send them to you.

Sound good?

Closing date Monday 25th March.

Connections

I've just had a visit in the shop from a lady called who drove all the way down from Northumberland to Radiance see me. She was inspired by my last 'Art of Asking' blogpost and thought she would 'ask' if she could pay me a visit. We sat and drank tea and had an inspiring chat about life and creativity which was very pleasant on this wet and dreary Friday.

Jan Baxandall is in her final year of Textile Surface Design at Newcastle Uni and wondering where to go next with her work. She is pursuing her creative career later in life, after working in education for many years and raising her now grown up children.  It's time to 'just do it' she says. This is her being brave and taking some work out into the wide world. 

I took a quick snap and I hope she doesn't mind me sharing it. It's lovely work. Needs to be seen don't you think?!

I love it when blogging brings people together. When we can help each other along with nudges of encouragement.

Gratitude and the 'Art of Asking'

These last few days have been pure perfection. They have been everything I hoped for when I dreamed of having a new studio. Everything I have long desired. I have been absorbed in designing. Inspired. Calm. There has been space around things.  Peace. Time to plan, dream, draw and design. I am grateful that this time that I have carved out (and it has taken some doing) I have been able to step into and get on with being what I want to be. 

There's so much going on. I'm drawing fritillaries, ferns and feathers, making teeny lamps out of Japanese Kouzo paper, playing with patterns, dreaming up wallpaper and planning for the British Craft Trade Fair which is 4 weeks away. I have been designing a new brochure for the show and I thought it would be really lovely to include some quotes from owners of my work. Do they sit at home of an evening thinking nice thoughts about their lamp? I'd love to know those thoughts.

The night before Robert had showed me this wonderful TED talk. It's only a few days old but apparently taking the internet by storm. 

I LOVE this. And she inspired me to ask. In the spirit of connecting to the people who buy my work I sent a request for help to my mailing list.

I got so much back from doing this.

Heartfelt thanks. 

More than I could have hoped for. I mean someone wrote a haiku! I had so many beautiful quotes. I will use them all somewhere.

I am so glad I asked. x