More hand-made lovelyness for my future Etsy Shop!

Hope you like!

Anja's Homemade Christmas Part 1

I know its only October, but it's my half term holiday and I need to start early if I'm going to be able to decorate the flat for Christmas without a last minute dash to Wilkos...

So the above are my salt-dough Christmas tree decorations, pre-painting, pre-decorating and generally pre all the bling that will make them look less like a blue peter project. Actually, they may still look like a Blue Peter project, but hopefully an expensive one. I feel all creative à la Kirstie Allsopp. Except I've done the work myself rather than handing it over to a slave-army of primary school children....

Matt Sewell's Birds of the Week

I haven't had a chance to just have a wander in Central for a while now, so it's not surprising that after a lovely walk round the Seven Dials area yesterday I found myself once again drooling over the most beautiful illustration pieces in Magma (if you don't know these two sister shops go and have a look, they're ace!) Naturally I had to buy a little something and I came back with this wonderful badge set made by the very talented Matt Sewell. And having checked out his lovely website I've seen that his birds also adorn hotel rooms and underpasses! Genius!

Amnesty International Party 2010

All over London people have been spending the day recovering from Amnesty 2010 - our friends' yearly quest to save the human. This year the ways of raising money included a human fruit machine and a silent auction, in addition to the usual set of wonderful performances. The framed illustration shown above was my contribution to the auction, having decided I could not possibly risk singing again this year.

The other picture shows my 'Save the Human Biscuit Men' - recipe courtesy of Kate Slater, heart decorations courtesy of Kate and Ant's wedding leftovers...

The Big Draw 2010 - Illustrating the Body (Inside and Out!)

Some of you may know that October is the month of The Big Draw - The Campaign for Drawing's international campaign to get absolutely everyone involved in exploring the delights of sketching. And so I was lucky enough to spend most of Saturday at the fascinating Hunterian Museum, assisting the House of Illustration with their own serving of drawing magic. It was a brilliant day with so many people coming ready to turn the museum's collection of bottled specimens and grisly tools into weird and wonderful illustrations, and we even managed to persuade a few very doubtful visitors to have a go at sketching.

Toya Walker's drop-in illustration work shop proved extremely popular and it was also amazing to see some of Britain's best Medical Illustrators at work in the gallery. The above are a couple of my somewhat less impressive sketches from the day (jotted down in between handing out pencils and gawking at bottled moths...) So thank you to the lovely Emily Jost at the House of Illustration for such a fantastic day, see you next year!