Swallows, deer and sparkles...

Ahh, finally summer seems to have arrived just as we are nearing the end of September! The weather has been gorgeous here over the last week, I love it!

So, over the weekend as well as enjoying the sunshine I added some of my latest Bonbi Forest jewellery to the store... the new pieces feature swallows, deer, vintage floral details, sparkling Czech glass and little owls and can be seen RIGHT HERE!!



In other news my brilliant web designer Pensandpencilsandpens (aka Mark, my beau) has re-designed his portfolio site. It features a grand selection of his bespoke web design work including The Bonbi Forest Indie Emporium, Urbindimo, Bat For Lashes, Hennie Haworth, and Urban Fresh Fruit.

Being very interested and inspired by books, music and film he will also be featuring snippets of inspration and interesting finds in a new blog which will be well worth checking back for...You can have a lookie HERE!

ErinT...

I have just added the gorgeous jewellery of ErinT Accessories to the store! Hawaii's Erin Touuke is the lady behind the label and she uses earthy materials such as wood, Tiger Ebony, gemstones, and silver combined with glass, lucite and pops of brilliant colour to make her fun yet elegant pieces...See and shop them all HERE!!

Nantes

I love this, it's a wonderful song and the video is so well done. It's filmed by Vincent Moon who made The National's A Skin A Night amongst other things...

Nylon Bonbi...

Bonbi Forest has a little blurb in this months Nylon magazine...Yay! Click the pic to read...

xXx

More paper cut love...

I was just made aware of these gorgeous paper cuts by artist Amy Soczka which are part of an installation gracing the windows of an Urban Outfitters store in Milwaukee in the US.



Such great shapes. I love paper cuts.

Bonbi Headbands!

My Bonbi Forest headbands are now in store as well!!


There are three different colours to choose from in numerous different colour combinations. They have a little bird and stars which depending on how you wear it can peek out from behind your ear...very cute!

Well I didn't do too badly at the competition on Saturday. Lauder was a bit excited and naughty but still managed a decent test (despite some uncalled for bouncing and neighing) and came away with a 2nd and a 3rd, and little Pia who I ride at competitions for my Mum achieved her best score ever (72.2 for all you dressage bods, not bad at all!!!), unfortunately we were pipped at the last minute by someone on another super score and came 2nd but I was still so pleased with her. Yay's all round!! Below is a little pic of Lauder and I, a rare moment of still and quiet from him on Saturday!

The obsession continues...

You don't get stuff like this on UK chat shows do you? Not that I have ever seen anyway...



Love. Love. Piano gave me butterflies.

Finally!

I have my newest Bonbi Forest t-shirts in the store, hurrah!! There are some brand new print designs and some old favorites in new colours and forms for guys and girls including a new slouchy sweater for the ladies too...I said in a previous post that it was my first long sleeve for girls but I totally forgot that a couple of years ago I made some long sleeve numbers with the bonbi tree and feathers printed on them, I even have one of each. I don't know how I forgot about them!!


Anyway, the new designs which feature thunderclouds, wise old owls and the Bonbi tree are available HERE. I will be printing more of my Owl Scarves in the coming week too, plus my hand printed headbands will be in store as well as some new Bonbi jewels too...


Tomorrow I will be getting up at 5am to polish and primp the Lauder horse as we are off for the day for a dressage competition and we have a very early start time. I usually avoid early starts where possible being more of an owl than a lark, but I am really looking forward to the day as I haven't been out competing for a while, yay! Wish me luck!!!

New designers!!

This week I have been catching up and adding lots of new items to the store with the addition of THREE new designers!!

First up we have the whimsical jewellery of Finest Imaginary. Choose from cute perspex pendants with Grrr! and Arg! speech bubbles taken from Finest imaginary creator Kim Lawler's monster drawings, a little love heart tea pot pendant or a happy raincloud with sparkling Swarovski rain drops...


We also have fun jewellery from stateside based Zlanarama! These colourful pieces feature stars, boomboxes, little puff hearts and sparkles...sweet!


These bold and bright shoppers are crafted by Ruthy Loves Retro. We have some of her little plush cats too, so sweet and made from vintage and vintage inspired fabrics and buttons and at only £5 a kitty are a cute treat!

ALSO, there are some brand new fun leather jewellery items from Emma Ferguson (sunglasses and feathers!) and beautiful upcycled bracelets and stud earrings from Kirsty Kirkpatrick in store too!

See and shop them HERE!!

Adventure time...

After the design fair I took a much needed few days off and my friend Jemma came to stay. She was only down for a couple of days but we managed to cram in some jewelery making and a couple of excursions.

The first was to a tiny secret beach that only locals know about, I have never been to it though which is really disgraceful seeing as it is just around the corner from where we live but my brother came with us and showed us how to get there. To get to it you have to turn off the cliff path through a tiny and very spiky gap in the brambles, where a narrow and bumpy path winds down the cliff side through lots of blackberry bushes (lots of scratches and nettle stings were acquired and you can't even see the path from the beach!) to a small but gorgeous beach in a little bay all of it's own. The path was so steep and slippery in places some kind soul had put some ropes down it to aid the inching down! It was so pretty down there, and the sun even managed to come out and make the sea look blue and warm us up a little bit...

Then we went to Eden!! I love it there so much and knew Jemma would too. I manage to go about twice a year and it's so interesting seeing the different plants in bloom. If you ever go though make sure you head to the Mediterranean biome first. It is interesting with lots of fragrant oil plants, fruit trees and really beautiful flowers, but it isn't quite as impressive as the absolutely massive Rainforest biome, with it's enormous palms and unusual plants. My favorite is a little shrub that closes all of it's leaves when you touch them...!

I was suprised how much Eden itself has grown since I went last December. It's a proper full day out now with not just the biomes but loads of fun stuff for kids (den building this time around...) and has the newer 'Core' building with interactive educational machines, films and animations as well as art exhibitions with pieces that explore the environment...really good stuff!!

Design Fair and new tees and stuff!

Last weekend was the Hidden Art design fair at Godolphin House (previously posted about HERE) and was a chance for me to get my newest designs out and about for the very first time and also the chance for customers to nab some Bonbi bargains to boot. It was a really good show for Bonbi Forest, despite turning up for the set up and finding that I had booked a smaller stand than I initially thought. I always forget how much room the tees take up when they are on display!! With Mark's help and his excellent hammering, stapling, sticking and pinning skillz though it turned out to be a great success if a little crammed in, but then nothing I seem to make is ever minimalist anyway...!

So over the next week I will be adding all of the new designs that you can see in the stand pictures (click the pics to see them bigger if you like), including new shoppers, Bonbi headbands, new jewellery, cards, all of the new mens and womens tees and my first womens sweatshirt, more owl scarves (which were all sold out by midday on the second day!) and I will get the Love Cat Mini Canvas in store as well as previously promised on this very blog...! Phew!

Heart Art...

Well it's been a while coming but I finally have my Love Bird Heart Art Mini Canvasses available in store!!! Yay! I know I have put pictures of the canvasses online before but here's a couple more to remind ya:


They are ever so slightly different from the version I sent to Fred Flare for the Next Big Thing 2008 store as they have a super bright Fluorescent red heart now instead...(I don't know why but this really doesn't show up in the images, perhaps computers just can't cope with those kinds of colours?). They are all hand printed and stretched onto wooden frames by myself and are so sweet as gifts with a little space on the back for a personal message. You can get them HERE!!!

I have more heart art on the way over the next week too: Love Cats!! So stay tuned for them...

My lack of posts (again...) this past weekend is because we spent it in a little village near Basingstoke called Rotherwick, where Mark was on best man duty at his best friend Rich's wedding!! It was a beautiful (and by the end of the reception a rather raucous dancing) day with a sparkling and magical theme. My camera ran out of battery so I'm afraid I have no pictures of the gorgeous reception decorations (or the Swarovski sparkling beautiful lady Natalie bride) but imagine if you will an old red brick hall decked out with leafy and Gerbera flower arrangements, giant pink and turquoise butterflies, twinkling fairy lights, jars of sweets with neon polka dot lids, rose petals, paper lanterns lots of bubbly and delicious BBQ food and you can kind of get the magical picture...It was so much fun and congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs Zabrocki!!!

Nest

Yesterday I found a nest on the ground outside the studio...

It is so perfect and neat and on closer inspection seems to be made up from moss, grass, baling plastic, sheep wool, tiny twigs and tail hair from our smallest pony, the little and palomino Carrianne...

Back for the time being...

A few colourful shapes from a very wet festival time...


The gloom followed me to London, bah! Field Day was SO wet and as usual I was mighty unprepared (surprising since I spend so much time outside with the horses and other animal folk!), all I had was a £2.99 umbrella bought on the way there. My shoes held up until the last hour when my feet got rather cold and wet and the festival itself was ok with so much effort put in to make it more of a day out than last year but it was still massively lacking in lady loos which is a big shame...

Anyhow, I shall stop harping on about that as on Sunday we headed to Derbyshire for the wedding of my cousin Angeline at Bolsover Castle!! It was a wonderful ceremony and they had the most amazing wedding cake I have ever seen - It was made up from lots of gorgeous little lemon cupcakes which had super pretty butterfly cases and were sprinkled with colourful edible flowers. The pictures I took don't really do them justice (er, a little inebriated to hold the camera in a suitably steady fashion) but I wanted to include them anyway...

And the native flowers accompanied by one of the cakes...!

Travels...

Well the sun has finally come out (for the time being at least) just as I am going away! The beau and I and a couple of other Cornish lovelies are heading to the Big Smoke this weekend to go to Field Day Festival. We went last year and while the bar and loo arrangements were less than savory it hasn't put us off going again this time around for some fun with London friends, some good music and hopefully some time away from the Cornish fog and gloom (I hope, it will probably follow us there...).

(Image courtesy of fielddayfestival.com)

Then on Monday we are going to the wedding of my cousin Angeline! I'm quite excited as I haven't seen her in AGES and I'm really looking forward to getting properly dressed up as I have a new dress to wear, yay!

So I will be back on Wednesday and probably starting to panic about the following weekend's design fair...What with all these weddings and parties (damn fun and dancing, getting in the way, hehe!) I only have 5 more making days left, eek!

Super Snappy!

Since I have been back I have also been adding some more new bits and pieces to the store. We have a new designer to welcome: Snappy Sausage! These super pretty jewellery pieces are the creation of Miss Abbi Kendall who uses a sparkling array of glass, Swarovski, plastic, wood, mixed chains and cute charms to make her unusual but very wearable bracelets, necklaces and earrings...

See and shop them all HERE!

Hidden Art

I haven't been on the blog of late, time has seemingly run away with me...It has been good time though as I went away with the horses for a few days and since I have been back I have been making, drawing and printing in preparation for the Hidden Art Cornwall Design Fair which is in a couple of weeks time over the August Bank holiday: Saturday 23rd - Monday 25th. I took part last year and you can see last years stand HERE! As you can see from that, my blog posting regularity hasn't improved very much!

The fair is held at the now National Trust owned Godolphin House, a 15th century part of Cornish history and last year as it will this year, had the extra attraction of a Hidden Art Curated exhibition and a show of work from recent graduates of the Falmouth College of Art. If the goddamn awful weather ever improves (greyness and fog for DAYS...where are you August sun??), it should be as great a fair as it was previously with games, bands, bars and all sorts going on. If you are in Cornwall that weekend I fully recommend it and if you manage to come along please come and say hello to me!

So at the moment I am full steam ahead! In the meantime I also have 2 weddings to attend and I am heading to London to go to the Field Day Festival this weekend as well. Again, I hope the sun comes out for that and I also hope that the bar and lavatory arrangements are better than last year...!

Sweet Silver...

I have been adding yet more items to the store in the form of this gorgeous fine silver jewellery from Cherry Creek Designs:All of the pieces are hand made and have delicate textures or cute motifs. I am especially loving the hammered sterling silver bangles, they are so elegant but have all these little imperfections from the hand made process that make them that little bit different. They can be worn either on their own or stacked. In fact I liked them so much I bought one for myself!!

See and shop all of the Cherry Creek Designs HERE!

Wonderfully strange

Devendra Banhart's colourful crazy video for 'Carmensita'!