Papercraft Keyboard Cat

Since you're on the internet right now, I presume you're familar with Keyboard Cat. The musical little fella seems to have spawned something of a renaissance amongst the crafty community. From t-shirts to embroidery, the cult of the cat knows no bounds.


One of my favourites is this adorable knitted puppet by natashafatele on Craftster. You can see it in action here.

And when I saw this papercraft version, I had to give it a go. I knocked him up in my lunch hour yesterday.

I used a pencil instead of the paper handle because it wouldn't hold -- but yes, his little paws really do bash the keyboard! Get the pattern to build your own here.

Edit to add: here's a video of it in action.

My weekend

It was a gorgeously sunny weekend here in London and I fully made the most of it. Saturday was the Bust Craftacular in Bethnal Green. I went over with some girls from my knitting group; it was an excellent event, probably the best craft fair I've been to. A lovely space, a brill pop-up tea shop and loads of lovely crafty stalls, of course.


Tatty Devine were building the world's biggest charm bracelet with help from fair attendees.. you could sit down and add a charm, and also build your own little bracelet to take home.


Mini Patisserie jewellery; their dollhouse-sized doughnut charm necklaces are so cute.


The pop-up tea shoppe provided by Lady Luck Rules OK was out first port of call. Each table had a theme from a different era, from 70s bright Formica to our elegant Thirties table.


Gorgeous jewellery by Never. Each unique piece is made using found objects, from teaspoons to broken watches.


Claire Platt's embroideries of anatomical drawings. I love the sequins and pastel tones! Check out her blog and Flickr.


I had the pelaseure of finally meeting my long-term Twitter friend Kate, a.k.a Little Doodles. She'd worked very hard getting all these lovely items made for her stall and it all looked gorgeous. I bought a teacup and some see-through decals.

After the fete, we popped into the very nearby Museum of Childhood, which is currently hosting an exhibition of Quentin Blake drawings for Roald Dahl's books. It also has an amazing collection of antique dolls' houses and lots of vintage board games which brought back memories.





Lots more photos on my Flickr. In case you couldn't tell, I'm still really loving my E-P1!

New from Lomography - Diana Mini

Lomography has just released their latest plasticy camera of joy, the Diana Mini. I think I need one.

First of all, just look at how dinky and tiny and cuuute it is! Second, it's a more practical choice than its big sister the Diana+ because it takes regular 35mm film rather than the awkward 120 format, and you can take both square format photos and half-frame - which gives you twice as many shots per roll.

I already have both a half-frame (the equally cute Golden Half) and a Diana+ but I don't think I can resist getting one of these too. Onto the Christmas list it goes...

Travelling Moleskine

I was recently asked by The Culture Vulture (a rather excellent website promoting cultual goings-on in Yorkshire) to take part in their Travelling Moleskine project. The concept is pretty simple: they send out dozens of Moleskine sketchbooks each with a theme, which the recipient then has to fill a page in, and pass on to another doodler. Then at the end they all get returned and there's a big exhibition of all the finished books in October. Lovely idea which I was very happy to be involved with. I received the 'Crafty' themed book rather appropriately, and here's what I did on my page.






As you can see, I decided to try out some paper embroidery. As I'd never done it before, it could easily have messed up the whole book right from the start but luckily it turned out pretty well.

I found the quotation (if you can't read it, it says 'The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne') online somewhere, it's attributed to Chaucer but I found it appropriate to me too - so many crafts, so little time to learn and practice. It appeals to my graphic designer side as well; the typography style is influenced by my hero, Herb Lubalin.

Some bits came out a little squiffy but overall I'm happy with how my page turned out. It feels lovely and tactile from the raised stitches.

Now to find someone to pass the book onto...!

More photos including work in progress on my Flickr.

Weekend in Amsterdam

We spent last weekend taking little trip over to Amsterdam. It's the perfect place for a weekend break - a super-quick 40 minute flight from our nearby City Airport, a quick train into town the other side and a stroll to the hotel from there. It's a great city for exploring by foot (or more traditional bike or boat, of course), and every corner you turn presents a picturesque view of bike-filled bridges over the canals. It's also full of flowers, be it carefully grown around peoples' front doors or windowsills, or wildflowers growing through the pavement cracks.


It's great for shopping too, if little boutiques are your thing. The Negen Straatjes ( '9 Little Streets') area to the west of the centre contains most of the coolest little shops and it's great for a wander round.




My favourite one we stumbled on is The Otherist. Styled up like a curiosity cabinet, it sells trinkets and goodies by indie designers, as well as yummy Manos yarns. You can buy online on their website too, hurrah. I also liked vintage store Episode which contains a nice selection of original accessories as well as restyled and reconstructed skirts and tops. The fabulously pink Kitsch Kitchen is a little trove of kitschy kitchen and homeware. I picked up some melamine spoons and some toys for the cat.




There's a fair bit of food and drink on offer too. We went to the Noordmarkt in the north of town which hosts an organic food market on Saturdays (and had the most packed cafe I'd ever seen next door, with everyone eating specialty Dutch apple cake with whipped cream). We were hoping to stock up on beers at the Cracked Kettle too, but realised we wouldn't be able to take it back on the flight with us.




We did enjoy a few beers out at the Brouweri 't IJ though - a windmill-turned-working-brewery which serves yummy wheat and white beers all made on the premises. They do tours but only on Fridays so we missed out.


My favourite thing though was definitely (and perhaps unsurprisingly) the Katten Kabinet, a whole house turned museum in honour of cats! Housed in a typical canal-side building, it's been restored to 18th-19th century grandeur and contains all feline-related ephemera imaginable, from advertising posters to sculptures to a pinball table made of Chinese 'lucky cats'. Best of all, there are 3 real-life furry exhibits who didn't mind being cuddled and fussed over at the end. So sweeeet!







Amsterdam is full of cats, actually. I saw 14 over the course of the weekend, lazing on windowsills, sitting by the canal and even one chilling with its owners outside a bar. I can definitely get on board with a city that loves its cats!



If you're planning a trip there yourself, you can see all the places we visited on my Google map, and here's some more photos I took on Flickr.

Constellation embroidery

Oh gosh, I'm in love with these constellation embroideries by Jessica Marquez, aka Miniature Rhino on etsy. I've long been an extremely amateur astronomer (in that when I leave the smog of the city, I like to point out Orion and the Plough to anyone who'll listen) and although I'm new to embroidery after my Make Lounge class, I've got really hooked on it, so this is a dreamy combination.



And here's yet another love of mine, typography, in embroidered sampler form.



And what a cute idea - custom embroidery of a child's drawings. Precious!



Oh so inspiring. Visit Miniature Rhino's etsy shop and Flickr to see and purchase all her lovely work.

via KitsuneNoir

Schoolblock typeface

Schoolblock® is a new typeface in development by Aaron Byrd of Armchair Media. The evolution of the letterforms is documented on a Flickr stream, and if you add it as a contact, you might see your name used as a test piece. It's shaping up to be a lovely blocky face with several unusual curvy letterforms. I especially love the K, V and reversible Es. The font will evenutally be made available as an eps download for designers to play with - I'm looking forward to it.



Follow the typeface's development on Flickr.