Above: The final cover of Ethad Inflight

I'm so excited to announce that one of my photos has been nominated as a finalist, in the Travel and Tourism Photography category at the 2015 Travel Media Awards.

The image was taken during an assignment on a live-aboard experience on Tiger Blue  in Komodo National Park, and was used as the cover shot for Etihad Airways Inflight magazine.

     
Above: Tiger Blue, the ever-happy Rizal and a sunset swim for the live-aboarders

The indonesian guy up the mast is called Rizal, who's best descibed here (taken from the Etihad Inflight feature) by Jamie Lafferty;

"...it is Rizal who quickly becomes everyone’s favourite. He performs many roles on board, from frontman of the ramshackle Tiger Blue Band to our snorkelling guide. The Sumatran has a face made of horizontal lines: lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, lines the width of his forehead, a fat line for a moustache. When he smiles, which is often, the lines reconfigure themselves, turning this way and that to make a picture of weathered joy. This in turn makes everyone else smile and it is mutually profitable to make sure Rizal is having a good time.

The 45-year-old is lithe but strong-looking, as though every calorie he ingests is essential. He is a dedicated man of the sea, in and out of the water, with decades of experience that have given him what we foreigners quickly take for a sixth sense in spotting sea life. Experience has also taught him to carry a pink diving knife for every swim. “For sharks?” I ask. “No, bumphead parrot,” says Rizal, making biting and squealing noises, motioning that one of the beaked fish once had a peck at him. He smiles at the memory, and so do I.

Rizal’s job as my snorkelling guide is made easier by a moratorium on fishing inside the national park. The biggest beneficiary of this is, quite literally, the manta ray, several of which have taken up residence here, safe from poaching. (Though not widely eaten, like many of the planet’s great creatures, they are occasionally killed for bizarre Chinese remedies.)"

 The awards will take place on the 9th November at my favorite building in London, the forboding St.Pancras Renaissance hotel.

I've just finished printing some tees ready for the summer. The designs were hand carved from lino blocks and printed using Speedball fabric inks.

Above: Wood grain tee, Moby tee, Origami Crane tee

Last year I redesigned the supermarket magazine, GoodTaste. It's a free publication available in Choithrams stores in the UAE.
Here are a few covers that I've designed for them:

Above: November, January and February covers for GoodTaste Magazine.

Here's another print and tote bag for y'all - this time it's a linocut graphic of an Origami Crane. I have the lil' suckers all over my house and even got married with them as the backdrop.

Above: The finished Origami Crane tote bag and a print on recycled brown paper.

Get in touch if you'd like to order a tote bag or a print. Totes are a cotton blend with a turquoise or black Crane. Prints available in turquoise, white or black on your colour choice of background.

It's taken a while, but I finally got to ink up my Sperm Whale lino-cut today. Originally it was just supposed to be a quick card for a friend's birthday, but I couldn't stop carving once I got started. I'm pretty happy with the print, so I've decided to pop it on tote bags and make it available to y'all.

Above: my original sketch on the lino, the blank tote and materials (I use Speedball fabric block printing inks) and the stamp getting inked up.

The design is my own, inspired by a life-time of chasing Cetaceans and my husbands obsession with Moby Dick. The tote is available with a turquoise or black
print of the Sperm Whale. For more info or to order, please visit my Teeny Wee Shop.

Above: The finished Moby Dick tote bag.

I've beening experimenting with air-dry clay... To get the leaf pattern I just amputated one of my house plants and stamped it into the clay. This is my first attempt:

I used Fimo basic air-dry clay, stamped it with leaves and then painted it with turquoise acrylic paint when it was completely dry.

I first had Takoyaki (small balls of dashi flavoured batter usually with Octopus in the centre) when my husband and I were working on a volunteer project in Japan.
They are now one of my favourite foods and something that I've tried to make for a while. After a fair few failed attempts at making them, it seems that I've
got it. Hazaar!

Left: my Takoyaki pan. Centre: us and our Takoyaki in Osaka, Japan. Right: covered in Japanese worcestershire sauce, mayo, spring onions and dried bonito flakes.

After this culinary success I decided that I needed a dedicated Takoyaki bowl. I ordered some ceramic pens (I prefer the Pebeo 150 Porcelain markers), picked up a
plain white bowl and sketched one of my favourite creatures, the Kraken onto it. After finishing the design, all I had to do to make it food and dishwasher safe was
to bake it for 30 minutes until the paint set.

My finished Takoyaki bowl with Kraken design using the Pebeo ceramic markers.

I've recently been experimenting with linocut wood grain textures.

Linocutting is a tough discipline for me. Being a magazine designer most of the time I'm stuck in columns, anchored to baseline grids and always colouring inside the lines. Printing however, is messy, unpredictable and imperfect. My Mo.C.D is struggerling, but I love peeling back the lino each time and seeing the results and just how wrong I got it.

I wanted to create a cushion suitable for outdoor seating - harder wearing and water-resistant. This is what I came up with:

The design is my own, hand cut into lino and printed on heavy linen blend cotton fabric.

A wee while ago I found a pattern by the nauseatingly talented knitwear designer Stephanie Dosen, it's called the Beekeeper's quilt  and it's made up of hundreds of knitted hexagons or 'hexapuffs' as she calls them.

Above: Stephanie's Beekeeper quilt, her 'Woodland knits' book and another one of Stephanie's patterns I want to try, the 'Oh my Bear' hooded jumper

Earlier in the year I was commuting to London and managed to knit a steady one-a-day. But when we moved to Dubai the hexapuff project was neglected a little. So, now I've made it my 2015 craft resolution: a hexapuff a day and it's going great so far.
The hexapuffs use a small amount of 4-ply or sock yarn (perfect for using up odds and ends) and are knitted in the round using 3 double-pointed needles.

My Dubai hexapuffs... one day they'll be reunited with the others that are in the UK and sewn together to make my own Beekeper quilt.

Just finished my 'Pishing it doon' hanging mobile for a homesick Scot in the desert.