My first handmade book

It's been a mad mad week and just a week left before I'm off to my holiday to India and I still have sooo much to do. So as part of the course I'm doing on creating an artist book using hand printing and basic book making & binding techniques, we were taught how to create a very basic three-hole binding technique that I used to create my very first book. It's quite simple but the results that come out are fantastic. I think the toughest part is to cut the paper precisely because even a millimetre off can look quite shabby. I decided to bling it up with this hand-drawn, hand-cut type S and send it as a present for my blogger friend Serena. Hope she likes it.

Robochef packaging

Ever since I attended the rubber stamp carving workshop at The makelounge with the amazing artist Louise Best, I've been pretty bizzy carving loads of stamps for my Etsy shop and have been happily creating wrapping paper to go with all the My Cuppa mugs.

GIANT everything

So everything at work seems to be GIANT today! First I spotted my friend Ross drawing with this MASSIVE pencil and then I spotted this BIG purple balloon in the meeting room! So exciting... I can't wait to see what's next?

Bob the snow angel

Just a lil doodle I did in my sketchbook that I quickly coloured in photoshop. Hope this is what Bob's been doing in Cat heaven. Just miss that boy so damn much!

Winter balloons: Miss Boobie

A new series of illustrations I've been working on called Winter Balloons and the first in this series is Miss Boobie. This illustration was inspired by the dancers of Moulin Rouge. Miss B loves purple and that's all she wears.

A visit to the Museum of Brands

So anybody as fed up of the "the snow" as I am? I still haven't started going to work properly without the whole drama of, will I reach in time or how long will it take me to get there. That's exactly what happened to me last Friday when I got a text from my boss saying there's no point coming to work and that I could take the day off... so to make the most of it and not wanting to battle tubes etc I decided to go the Museum of Brands close to home. It's been on my list of places to visit for a while now. It's hidden in a mews in Notting Hill and is about 15 mins away from Notting Hill gate station but totally worth the effort.

It's not a very big museum but I ended up staying for couple of hours going through the beautiful collection with original products dating back to the late 1800s. Most of the collection use to be a private collection of consumer historian, Robert Opie.


I spotted a lot of brands that I grew up seeing in India and are still available there but had disappeared from the UK markets long ago.

Also spotted a point of sale display and packaging for Real Indian Curry in the 1930-40s section!!! Can't believe people were having curry even then!


Was really interesting to see a lot of know brands with their packaging in linear timeline to see how they've evolved over the years. Some of them still there after 100 years.
The museum also has a online shop. A definite recommendation to anyone who loves packaging, typography, advertising or even just have an interest in history from a consumer point of view.

A walk in the park

Five shadows... Headless Mr. S... Stacked up logs... A snowball fight... A black dog...A lot of snow... A walk in the park...

White before Christmas

So it turned out not to be a White Christmas after all in London. After the madness I faced because of the snow I'm glad that it didn't snow again. This year was a very quiet holiday for us, just relaxing and watching loads of bad bad TV. I decided that with all the meat eating frenzy everywhere I'll give balance it out with not eating meat this year. And even though fish for me is technically meat I had a very fishy Christmas! Just the thought of no prawns or sushi was too much to handle.

Merry Christmas

Hope everyone has a wonderful time!

Postcard Teas

My never ending obsession for Postcards recently led me to the Postcard Tea Shop in the heart of London just off Oxford Street. They source out teas from small scale producers from India, Sri Lanka, Japan, China. The store not only sells amazing teas, hand made ceramics and other tea accessories but has a tea school where they have regular events & tastings. You can try any of their teas before you buy them.




But the icing on the cake for me is that you can actually post the different varieties of teas in a postcard shaped pouch to anywhere in the world!