My family has a long standing tradition of giving homemade presents. My mum would build up our arts and crafts repertoire each year to help us think beyond classics like handprints on mugs and photos in frames. This year we thought it would be funny (and ridiculous) to make mum a photo book, recreating pictures from our childhood.
With the football season on break for the summer, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. So I’ve been screenprinting. Tea towels and pillowcases. I was given this kit as a gift and ordered lots of plain textiles to print on.
Inspired by a really nice Aesop wash bag that was given to me as a gift, I wanted to make one like it, just a little thicker. I used gingham cotton as lining on the inside and dark blue cotton on the outside. The yellow drawstring is made from polyester grosgrain ribbon.
I am 5’2 and half. If I stand really tall I can be 5’3. this makes me about two whole feet too short to reach up to the top bar in a football goal. Why is this information relevant you might ask? Because most weekends, Saturdays and Sundays I (and I’m sure many other football players, parents and coaches) have the rather frustrating task to putting up the football nets on full 8 foot goals.
Spotted in Notting Hill: a wonderful place to stoop.
I got this cookie embosser last week and it’s pretty special. I highly recommend getting one. Who doesn’t love an embossed biscuit?
Today my mum turns 60. For months my sister and I tried decide what we should do for her. What sort of gift or gesture would do justice everything she has done for us, our family, friends and the community. Our mum is an incredibly modest woman. She is never boastful, never seeking attention or reward. She is relentlessly positive and acts altruistically nearly all of the time.
So we decided to make a little book. A book that would share with people the wonderful person that she is and the life lessons she taught all of the children she helped raise.
Mum, if you’re reading this, your physical copy is in the post. It’s just a little late – like me and Missy when we were born.
Big love to Zoë Quirk and Alex Johns for helping us pull it together – Zoe for producing and sympathy crying throughout production; and Alex for late night lessons in book binding lessons and for laughing at us crying. Thank you x
This beautiful dress needed a new lease of life. You see, it had a pretty big hole in it from an incident that involved climbing a fence. Not good. And not very lady like. The material very nice and a shame to go to waste so I decided to repurpose it into a yoga mat carrier. Here’s how ..
This week I found these treasures near my house in a skip. Rather conveniently when stacked, these orange boxes make an excellent bookshelf.
Falling in line with the Robinson/Hui family tradition of homemade Christmas presents, this year I chose to work with one of my most favourite things: maps. Back in the summer I went to Hay-on-Wye (great place, ps) and I got an old atlas that was missing pages and a bit tattered. I also had a lot of scrap paper and a 2010 cat calendar. So I made map notebooks. It was super easy and quite satisfying.