Just had a bit of a chuckle to myself looking at some of Captain Haddock’s insults and exclamations from Tintin (I don’t usually spend my spare time doing that, maybe I should, I was just looking for an interesting title for this blog post!)
Well, this is a Tintin lampshade I made yesterday for a client. I haven’t read the pages I chose to check for any Captain Haddock insults, maybe I should! I hope the seven year old boy / “young monkey!” / “whippersnapper!” / “Fuzzy wuzzy!” I made it for likes it as much as I do. More quotes available if you want a giggle at Tintinologist.org…
It’s time to look back at the last twelve months at gilhoolie and make some real plans for 2013. Sometimes I can’t believe some of the events below only happened a matter of months ago and I have to say, I’m really looking forward to more fun and learning in the next twelve months.
So, goodbye 2012, when gilhoolie (kind of in order)…
gilhoolie in 2012
1. …drew lots of retro kitchen drawings that I later machine embroidered onto tea-towels; I still have my favourite ones on display in my kitchen and you can buy them on etsy…
2. …learnt how to make hand-stitched lampshades at Homemade London. I was taught by the very lovely and incredibly talented Angela Constantinou from Cocoon Home. I think this was a real turning point for me in terms of where I wanted gilhoolie to go…
3. …taught my first lampshade workshop which was featured in From Britain With Love coursenotes. I now teach regularly at Make & Do in Caversham and will be teaching at Hands on Art Adventures in Old Windsor this year too. I taught a lot of 1-2-1 lampshade lessons at my house in Maidenhead in 2012. I love it; it’s so nice to be with other people and see their faces light up when a lampshade comes together looking beautiful!
4. …felt ready to change my logo to represent what I wanted to do with gilhoolie. I still like it a lot, luckily, it’s very me!
5. …dabbled with machine embroidery a bit more, to give my drawings another dimension – I really want to do more of this soon…
6. …made my first big hand-stitched lampshade commission for an Interior Designer in Maidenhead. This was very exciting, if a little nerve-wracking but it turned out amazingly after an awful lot of hard work and dedication…
7. …made lampshades from wallpaper and comic books including Tintin and Spiderman…
8. … drew lots and lots of house pictures for various people – more on those soon…
And hello 2013 when gilhoolie plans to…
…make a collection of big hand-stitched lampshades to sell on my website
…improve my website to make it more professional but carry on blogging too
…continue working with Interior Designers to make beautiful lampshades that match a room design
… do more of the following – drawing, teaching, sewing, machine embroidery, decorating my house
… learn a new skill – can’t wait for my crochet workshop at Make & Do later this month!
So you see, still lots to do and lots to learn in 2013, Happy New Year everyone!
I have to be honest, I’ve found it a bit hard getting back into things after the summer holidays (hang on, it’s Autumn now, right?!) but this week feels like a turning point. Yesterday I had a lovely day making a bespoke comic book lampshade for a client who had seen my Tintin ones on my website. This is quite a fiddly process; making lampshades with paper is much less forgiving than fabric as you can’t take it off and start again once it’s stuck down. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it, so much so that I didn’t want to stop for lunch, a sure sign that I’m having too much fun! I also finished off some drawing but I’ll save that for another post…
So here it is, next to one of my Tintin ones, looking equally neat and retro, finished off with off-white fabric on the top and bottom rings (I love that bit, very satisfying to see it all neatened off!) I’m off to post it now, will let you know the feedback, hope they like it…
One of the first things I did when I started writing this blog was decorate a wall in my son’s bedroom by using pages from a Tintin book as wallpaper. Have a look at the post I wrote here. Well, I’ve been wanting to make some paper lampshades for a while so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to make a matching Tintin lampshade for his room with the rest of the book… and here it is!
I had some old lampshades left over from our hallway so I decided to just recover them. I really should write a tutorial here at this point and I will one day – it wasn’t hard to do, a bit fiddly but like most things easier than you think, especially if you have the right tools for the job. It all feels very different to the hand-stitched lampshade I’ve been finishing this week – lots of double-sided tape involved (feels like cheating but very neat, especially with some white bias binding finishing off the top and bottom of the shade).
I now have to make two for Jacob’s bedroom, including a bigger pendant lampshade for the middle of the room, it’s about time his room had a makeover. Maybe we should go for a different comic book this time though – any suggestions?!…
We decorated the boys bedroom a while ago but it was a bit plain so I decided to paper a small section with pages from a Tintin book as an alternative to wallpaper or stickers. This was so easy and the effect was great, I love the muted colours of blue, green and orange. Just shows what you can do with a second-hand book, if you can bear to cut it up!
