Rattycatcat Cards & Prints

LIBBY. Creator of RATTYCATCAT. From BRIGHTON. Rattycatcat specialises in greetings cards and handmade paper based products. I love old photographs, found objects, small furries, eighties new wave music, PRINTMAKING and cats.

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The Trundle: A Nerdy Day Out in Sussex

The South Downs in Sussex are particularly interesting to me, having lived on the border of them for over ten years and having an interest in the ecology of the chalk grassland and other specialist habitats that can be found within them. The grassland habitat that is present on the downs today is only there as a result of the clearance of trees starting with early humans right through to the…

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Impacts of invasive species on native freshwater populations in the UK

Freshwater habitats are amongst the most vulnerable in the United Kingdom. The anthropological impacts on freshwater environments are disproportionate to those of terrestrial environments as fragmentation, pollution and climate change have greater impact on an already unstable habitat (Eatherly, 2019). As a result, the impacts of invasive species in aquatic environments are greater than those in…

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I have recently got in to galls. I call the act of going out and looking on plants to see if there are any tenants on them ‘galling’. John Wright, the author of A Natural History of the Hedgerow describes galls really well: ‘Galls can be formed by insects, bacteria, fungi, nematode worls and even other plants, and are one of the most remarkable features of the natural world. Created by the invader modifying the growth pattern of the host to suit their needs, their purpose is to provide shelter and food for the invading organism.’

I have found them to be a lovely addition to birdwatching – particularly this time of year – as they’re an extra little nugget to keep an eye out for.   Today I travelled a grand total of 0.6km up the end of my road to Dyke Road Park in Brighton for a spot of galling, and it was extremely successful.

The first find was not a gall, but a rust fungus – Gymnosporangium sabinae – which affects Pears and Junipers, both of which it needs to complete its life cycle, using Juniper as its winter host and Pear in the summer. It creates spores which protrude from the blisters on the underside of Pear leaves (pictured)  which become airborne and infect the twigs and branches of Juniper. Interestingly, the NBN Atlas shows that there are many records of this fungus in the South, but next to none in Cornwall or Wales. I am more than under-qualifed to say why, but it’s a nice little nugget and would very much like to find out. I would assume it’s simply under-recorded.

  The next find was nice, it’s a gall wasp on Eucalyptus which was only discovered here in 2005. I am going to stand by my ‘not native, not interested’ motto and not spend too much time on this one, but I will say that it’s pretty easy to see as the gall encourages leaf drop, so if you see a Eucalyptus tree then check the leaves on the ground for little swelling on the leaf.  The identity of this gall wasp is currently uncertain, but it is close to an Australian species, Ophelimus maskelli.

  I was well excited for this next one, a gall mite called Aceria erinea on Walnut.  It causes blistering on the upperside of the leaves, with indents corresponding on the underside. The indents are lined with a felty layer of hair, in which the mites live and feed.  According to the NBN Atlas there are only 93 records of this gall mite in the UK, none of which are in Sussex, or even in the South. That’s not to say that this gall is rare, but it does show how under-recorded galls are.

  THIS ONE IS GOOD:

Witches Brooms!  They look like birds nests, but they’re actually bunches of stunted sticks. These particular clumps are on Birch but it can also be found on Hornbeam, Gean or Wild Cherry.   This gall can be caused by a number of organisms but the most common on Birch is the fungus Taphrina betulina. The galls start off as clumps of buds and then, once the fungus starts to lose hold on the host (sometimes after several years), the buds grow into the shoots you can see in these photographs. This was a gall I was hoping to see as it’s so easy to identify, and I did do a little hop when I saw it. Funny, I’ve walked underneath it a hundred times and never looked up.

  Nearly finished – the next was found on Elm, Aceria campestricola is a mite that overwinters in the bark crevices of the Elm before attacking the leaves as soon as they open in the spring. The pimples are a light green but redden when exposed to sunlight.  This is a mite that will undoubtedly be affected by Dutch Elm disease (which, by the way, comes from North America and is actually named after the country which did the research on it) which is a bit sad, as I feel like the under-recording of galls will mean that Aceria campestricola will be a silent victim. I mean, it’s only got 63 confirmed records. Come on LET’S RECORD GALLS.

  This one isn’t from Dyke Road Park, but from a site near Blackstone in Sussex. This absolute banger of a gall is a Robin’s Pincushion:

It is caused by the gall wasp Dipoloepis rosae and develops on wild roses, mostly on the stem. Each gall houses several grubs which feed on the internal gall tissues over winter and emerge as adults in the spring.  Most of the adults are female and lay fertile eggs without mating – males of this species are very rare. No comment.

LASTLY, in non gall-related news and back to Dyke Road Park, I spotted an interestingly chomped leaf and, after conferring with my friend and nature mentor Graeme Lyons, found out that it was an Elm Zig-Zag Sawfly, and that we were very lucky to see the grub still attached to the zig-zag chomp. It’s not native and therefore I am not interested, but it may well be a first record for Brighton and I am actually quite pleased with that.

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  I am going to leave this post with a call to action:  please keep an eye out for galls. Record them, acknowledge them, and spend time researching them. They are so interesting!  I am fully recommending the book Britain’s Plant Galls: A Photographic Guide by Michael Chinery as it is extremely accessible and is a really good starting point.  Thank you.

This is a Gall to Action I have recently got in to galls. I call the act of going out and looking on plants to see if there are any tenants on them 'galling'.

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It's Hard Being a Bird

It’s Hard Being a Bird

I am going to write about two of the most stressful days that I can remember.  They occurred at the end of April, when, walking down my street, I saw a little blur of brown run underneath a car. I bent down to look and saw two fledgling House Sparrows.  There are lots of Sparrows and Starlings on this particular street, and nesting season had been particularly noisy, it had been chaotic and great…

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Little Plover at Top Drawer 2019

Little Plover at Top Drawer 2019

Little Plover has gone from strength to strength since I started designing last summer. It started with a commission from the Museum of Rural Living, and since then it has been stocked across the UK in shops such as the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. It’s also been selling well online!

  The next stop for Little Plover is Top Drawer 2019,The UK’s leading lifestyle trade show for design-led brands and…

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Throwing shapes #printmaking #printing #wip #cardmaking #etsy #shapes #blockprint #block

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Little Plover

As you may have picked up from my previous blog posts, I’ve got myself into birdwatching. It’s become a compulsion and something that I really, really enjoy. Here’s a Linnet.

I also work for an organics company and in doing so, spend time talking to a lot of independent farmers and growers. They all talk about the decline in the wildlife and the problems that the lie of cheap food bought at…

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I’ve been living in Margate for just under six months now. After living in Brighton for nine years I didn’t think that it would be easy to live anywhere else.  It was difficult leaving a city where I could walk into a pub knowing that I would find a familiar face and moving to a place where I knew absolutely nobody but I’ve loved the transition – and as for living on my own in a two bedroom flat? Bloody amazing!

Margate does a lovely sunset too. It’s got the best beach, and in the winter when I moved here there were loads of lovely little waders & sea birds – I’ve seen Knots, Dunlins, Redshank, Cormorants and even a stray Guillemot knocking about here. The surrounding nature reserves (particularly Stodmarsh and Sandwich Bay) are amazing too – there’s a real wealth of wildlife in the surrounding areas.

  Being here has allowed me to spend time on my work and to really get used to being in my own company for long periods of time. It’s been really productive and having a work room overlooking the sea is really quite something. I’ve created a lot of new work for Rattycatcat and have started a secondary design company Little Plover which incorporates two of my favourite things, design and wildlife. I’ve got my cards in the Turner Gallery now, which I’m really quite proud of.

The first time I visited Margate I went to the Turner to the Wasteland exhibition. I saw a Paula Rego triptych in the flesh which was really exciting as I’ve loved her since I was twelve. There was also work by Paul Nash, Peter Blake and Turner himself. That was the day I put down the deposit on my flat because I knew that Margate was a place worth exploring. It had a strange edge which I was really drawn to, and as I’ve spent more and more time here the edge has sometimes gotten a bit much, but it’s always been something that I’ve been drawn back to.

  Margate is an unusual place. There’s a lot of movement here at the moment – lots of people coming in from London and buying it up. It makes for a strange mix of people. I have to say I’ve warmed to the people who’ve been here forever and not so much to the Londoners who don’t seem to have the same amount of soul as the former. I’m living in Cliftonville in a third storey flat and I know all of my neighbours. It’s nice because I never knew any of my neighbours in Brighton, as we just didn’t have the time for one another. Now I can go outside for a cigarette on the steps of my building and still be there over an hour later, talking to whoever is around. It’s a lovely community and they’ve all got an excellent sense of humour. There’s nothing better than having a cackle with the women who live on my road about ‘bloody men’ or having a pretend row with one of the guys that lives next door to me.  It’s like the land that time forgot – there are no real rules and everybody just seems pretty happy doing whatever they want, which is nice.

The reason for writing this is that I’m moving to Suffolk next week – I’ll be living on a farm in the countryside, as far removed as I can be from Margate. I’m moving to Suffolk for work, and whilst it’s really exciting, I feel like I’m leaving my story in Margate unfinished. Poetic I know, especially since I’m sitting in a flat in Cliftonville with the police outside arresting a man for being drunk and disorderly. This place is brilliant.

    Little Mo does Margate I've been living in Margate for just under six months now. After living in Brighton for nine years I didn't think that it would be easy to live anywhere else.  

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This February I took part in the Spring Fair at Birmingham NEC. I was really excited after how well the Autumn Fair had gone the previous September.

I went with a different theme this time – my stand was done up to the nines in the style of a tea party gone wrong. It makes things a bit more interesting, doesn’t it?  I was trying to lure people in as my handmade cards are such a niche product. Once I’ve got their attention, I find it fairly easy to keep the potential customers talking about what makes my products so unique. I’m a prop maker too, so it makes sense to utilise my skillset.

  With all the help in the world from Steve Carey who I was sharing a workshop with at the time, we created a scene based on a combination of Alice in Wonderland, Classification and Victorian Etiquette (or lack of).  Complete with resin tea spills and wonky shelving, my stand certainly turned some heads! Steve even bought one of my illustrations (a mouse flipping the bird) to life in the form of a Fast Cast model, which I adore. The laundry mangle with which I make all of my cards was there too, and together we spread the word about Rattycatcat – unique, handmade, environmentally friendly cards.

The show was a success – I took a repeat order from the Tate Turner Gallery, along with other galleries and independent businesses up and down the country.  I love doing these shows – the people that you meet are always worth the money that you spend on the space, especially when they say nice things about the things that you make!

Rattycatcat at NEC Spring Fair 2018 This February I took part in the Spring Fair at Birmingham NEC. I was really excited after how well the…

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Happy Campers

Over the past year I’ve been getting really into birdwatching. If you’d said to me a few years ago that I’d be wandering about with a pair of binoculars I’d have laughed in your face. But still, here I am. I went camping in the New Forest with my best mate Bob for a few days – all of which we spent twitching. We saw Stonechats, Linnets, Lapwings (I promised I’d get Bob one and we were delighted…

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It’s been a while since I wrote anything. There’s been a whole load of stuff going on – the main thing being that now I live in Margate.  Which is lovely – I now have a work room in my flat and my very own sofa, both of which make my life infinitely better.

More on Margate another time. Right now I want to talk about something very close to my heart – the Gaslaternen-Freilichtmuseum.   This is kind of a graveyard for old gas-lit street lights from across Europe in Berlin, which I visited at the end of last year. There are around ninety of these lamps that have been sat along a path at the end of Tiergarten Park, and going to see them was a really magical thing for me.  I visited Berlin alone for a few days in the middle of December, so it was really quite cold. I walked through the Tiergarten in the snow and by the time I’d got to the gaslight museum it had gotten dark, so the lamps were all on. I was the only one there and I wasted nearly an hour wandering around underneath these oddball streetlights in the snow, and it was an absolute delight. Some of them were really cute – I never thought I’d describe a streetlamp as being cute but you’re going to have to deal with it because it’s true. My photographs are terrible but I’ve borrowed one, just to prove that this place is real. Everyone I met whilst in Berlin didn’t believe that it existed and just thought that I was being weird.

Earlier that day, I’d gone to see Spreepark – once the ‘Disneyland of Socialism’, it’s now a derelict theme park on the outskirts of Berlin. Again, it was snowing and really really cold but this kind of added to the surreal feeling of being in a totally alien place completely alone.  This theme park has been derelict for around fifteen years – it was massively successful until the wall came down and the park was privatised. The father and son who owned it are in prison for drug smuggling – cocaine was taken from Peru to Germany within the parts of the rides in 2002. Since then, the park has just been left empty. In 2014 a lot of the park was destroyed by a fire, but the ferris wheel is still standing, along with a few other structures. It wasn’t possible to sneak in because there was some sort of work happening on the site and telling a workman that I liked his hat in German wasn’t enough to flirt my way in.  Walking around the outside was good enough though, it’s dead creepy and it looked beautiful in the snow. The ferris wheel creaks in the wind which makes it feel like it’s a set from a horror film.

To get to the park I walked through a really ugly park called Treptower Park  – definitely a relic from the GDR days. All square and concrete with angled architecture, it’s also home to the Soviet War Memorial. (Little nugget – it was also used by the band Barclay James Harvest for the first ever open-air concert by a western rock band in the German Democratic Republic.)

The BEST thing about Berlin for me though was the Museum der Dinge. It’s a museum mostly dedicated to the history of the Werkbund – the German Association of Craftsmen. It takes you through the history of German design from handmade products to mass produced branded goods. It’s difficult not to fall down a big hole with this because there’s so much great information on the Werkbund – the ‘Deutches Warenbuch’ for one – a catalogue of everyday objects which were ‘first class in form, material and usability‘, published in 1915 by the Werkbund and the Dürerbund (an organisation of writers and artists who had a strong influence on the German Reich). The selection committee of this catalogue decided that Germany could only succeed internationally with products designed after generic types, so the 1600 products in this catalogue are all presented as examples of excellent product design.  There are examples of this ‘excellent design’ on display throughout, although I didn’t photograph any of those because I didn’t like them. I liked the examples of poor design better:

The Werkbund was shut down by the Nazis in 1938, but its legacy concerning modern design and aesthetics continues to influence thinking on matters of taste to this day.  A prominent member of the Werkbund – Gustav E. Pazauret said in 1912 that ‘if we want to discern what good taste is, we must first eliminate bad taste.’ He opened a “Cabinet of Bad Taste” exhibition at the Stuttgart Crafts Museum and developed a complex system to categorise all kinds of design mistakes, demonstrating them with actual examples. This has been recreated at the Dirge – it exhibits absolutely everything from old mobile phones, toys, mannequin parts and retro kitchen items to war memorabilia and cereal packets, which have been categorised by the curator with Pazauret’s classifications in mind. It’s an odd mix of historic objects that have been juxtaposed with a selection of contemporary products — from mass commodities to designer objects.  I LOVE junk so looking at lots of junky things piled up in display cases was a pretty great experience in itself.

The exhibition at the Museum der Dinge also shows examples of how a change in customer expectations and the increase in choice for buyers throughout the early 20th century  leads to packaging and advertising with emphasised trademarks taking prominence over the products themselves. There’s also little nuggets like displays of ‘Communist crockery’ – which are cheap household ceramics with sprayed-on decoration from 1925 that were labelled by Nazis from 1935.

AS IF I wasn’t excited enough about classification, there was another exhibition in the back of the museum (which is really small, by the way) exploring the classification of PHOTOGRAPHS. It had areas labelled ‘mit auto’ (with car), ‘auf der bank’ (on the bench), ‘am watter’ (by water) etc.  The huge collection of photographs  has basically been categorised under different headings. I found this very exciting and really quite overwhelming. It got me thinking about how individual minds would classify these photographs differently according to their own idea of logic. Thinking too much? Maybe. Hours of fun? Yes.

I went to the Ramones museum which was ace too.   If you’re travelling by yourself then I’d tell you to go to Berlin. It’s cheap in the winter, full of the best people, and you can be kept occupied for days and days. I definitely preferred the East side to the West side – architecturally it’s far more interesting and, unsurprisingly, there’s an awful lot of history compacted into it. Saying that, there is a a Twin Peaks themed bar on the West side.

Bad Taste? Bitte, Please. It's been a while since I wrote anything. There's been a whole load of stuff going on - the main thing being that now I live in Margate.  

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I’ve just finished an print based on a bird I met earlier this year in Portugal. He was a Black Winged Stilt and took great offence to being watched. He kept shouting at us, which I found really entertaining. He also had some little cat bird friends called Kentish Plovers, who’ll be coming next. They were super cute and I totally fell in love with them.

So this is a 4 layered print. The base colour was done using water based ink and the rest was built up using oils.  I wanted to test myself, to see if I could make a) a larger print than I’d usually make and b) a more serious print. I succeeded with the former (this is A3 which is pretty large considering I make cards) but failed on the latter because I ended up doing this:

I don’t think I’ll ever be a serious nature artist type. Still, I like him.

My Leggy Mate I've just finished an print based on a bird I met earlier this year in Portugal. He was a Black Winged Stilt and took great offence to being watched.

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I was in London a couple of weeks ago, visiting Bankside Gallery –  the Gallery of the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS), and the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (RE). It’s a really great place to go and visit because they really push both new and established artists.

Despite the fact that there was no printmaking exhibition on, there were still racks of prints available to flick through and a lovely guy (a printmaker called Richard) was picking through and getting out his favourite pieces and we were having lovely chats about them. THEN I came across this print by Jim Anderson that stood out because it was so bright and because it looked kind of like a 1930’s book cover – like a more colourful Bawden or Ravilious print. I liked it. It was this one:

Mob Rule – Jim Anderson

The variety and softness of colour on the nightingales and the owl is amazing! I’m really curious to know how many layers this cut took – the attention to detail is incredible. The sky has this beautiful gentle blue gradient, and the smaller images that frame the birds are so beautiful. The colours that Anderson has used clash off each other so beautifully. His work has this fantastical feel about it which, I have to say, is something that is often missing from mainstream linocuts and wood engravings, and is something that I have always loved about Ravilious. ‘Mob Rule’ reminded me of this image (here we go):

This is ‘A Heron Landing’ by Eric Ravilious, created for an edition of the “Natural History of Selborne” by Gilbert White.

So it’s black and white, but it still has this real dreamlike quality about it, and I for one just can’t get enough of it – there’s so much movement in it, and it’s just lines!  Anderson’s work has the same effect – but the cutting technique and the way in which he has printed his work is much softer. Whilst Ravilious uses nature as his subject, I’m pretty sure that Anderson has more to his ideas than what’s directly in front of him. There’s definitely satire and I reckon a bit of a weird sense of humour thing going on in there which I really like.

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I’ve spent a silly amount of time trying to figure out the connections between the main images and those around the outside and whilst I have come up with links for some, I’ve stopped because it’s maybe a bit weird and there probably isn’t one. But it’s not very often that I find work that makes me stop and really, really look at it and analyse it – and that’s usually because it just doesn’t strike up any sort of spark with my imagination, and this really does.

Lastly, I noticed when reading about Anderson in the gallery, that he won the 2016 T.N Lawrence prize in the RE’s annual exhibition for ‘Sargasso’ (below). Whilst it’s not coincidence of the year or anything, it made me smile because when I first moved to Brighton I got a job in Lawrence’s. It was there that I was introduced to the world of printmaking and if it wasn’t for that job I wouldn’t be printmaking now.   Anyway,  Jim Anderson sent me this image of ‘Sargasso’, along with the images that I’ve used in this post (thank you), and I hadn’t seen this one yet. I’ve added it in because THE GRADIENT! Particularly on the white, I really do love it.

  Please, if you get a chance, go to either Bankside or For Art’s Sake Gallery (both in London) and see these prints up close. They really are amazing.

I was in London a couple of weeks ago, visiting Bankside Gallery -  the Gallery of the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS), and the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (RE).

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I was in Waterstones earlier on this month, totally looking at their wrapping paper and card selection for market research and not sniffing new books on the sly. (They smell great.)  I was having a lovely time – I had just reached the art section and was overly excited by the number of books they had on Eric Ravilious and Beatrix Potter (different books) available and was in a state of pure delight.  All of that was about to be shattered, however.

As I passed through to the photography section my attention was drawn to the books that had been put face forward to draw in more attention. There, amongst the Magnum collections and volumes of work by Diane Arbus and Man Ray, at the forefront, were Brooklyn Beckham and Kim ruddy Kardashian.  Yeah, so they’re photographers now.

Let’s start with Brooklyn Beckham. Putting aside the fact that he’s like, twelve, has famous brand names for parents and I’m pretty sure that last week he was a model, the photographs are out of focus, and putting it nicely, pretty pants. SOME OF THEM AREN’T EVEN Some of them aren’t even by him. Exhibit A:

‘my friend took this picture in la. i think i look pretty cool’

Brooklyn Beckham’s ‘What I See’ is a collection of photographs offering a ‘look at his day-to-day life and famous family.’  It’s Instagram. In a book.  What I find particularly enraging is the number of photographs that are really out of focus and the inane quotes that accompany the photographs that either he, or one of his mates, have taken.

Eleanor Bailey, writer for GQ magazine reckons that “critics should give Brooklyn Beckham a break and encourage this budding photographer. After all, David Bailey didn’t even get his first photography job as an assistant until he was 21.”

David Bailey has been in the industry for nearly sixty years, not sixty minutes. The two are not comparable!  The idea that this teenager can possibly be accomplished enough to have earned a place on that bookshelf amongst the Wildlife Photographer of the Year collections (photographers who have spent days, weeks, months trying to get that one photograph that might get them a bit of recognition) and Diane Arbus, who broke boundaries and worked with an incredible passion, is quite simply, insane.

Brooklyn Beckham

Diane Arbus

  Kim Kardashian’s book of selfies is simply called ‘Selfish’. I could leave it there, but you know I won’t.

It’s FILLED with photographs that she has taken of herself, again, a lot of which are out of focus.  Can you imagine being vacuous enough to think that putting a whole tonne of photographs of that you’ve taken of your own face into a book?

What does this have to say about anything? What even is this? I have so much I’d like to say about this book, but it’s more of a tidal wave of bewilderment with a slight touch of rage, rather than words.  I just don’t understand. There’s no heart in what this is. There’s a whole load of ass, but no heart. It’s a book designed to glorify a single person with not a trace of talent. It genuinely makes me sad that this is what people want to buy.

Think of the number of incredible photographers that could only hope to get a single photograph featured in a book, let alone have a beautifully finished hardbound one with their name on the front of it.  It seems farcical that people who slave away with a real fight and passion for their projects and the work that they do struggle to pay rent, whilst Baby Beckham is established enough to have his own book after just a few months playing with a camera, and Kim Kardashian can Dropbox over a few thousand selfies to a publisher and create a book out of them. And then a revised edition, ‘More me! With new selfies!’ What is the reason for the existence of either of these books? OH YEAH. MONEY.

This was another book face front on the shelf. This is our future. Anybody can be famous!

I feel the need to say that I’m not blaming Brooklyn Beckham or even Kim Kardashian for for publishing a book – I simply find it increasingly frustrating to be part of a society that is glorifying the rich and famous and handing them everything on a plate, at the expense of people with real talent and passion and experience. No wonder it’s getting more difficult for all of us to carve our own careers outside of the box – our platforms are already filled up with celebrities who can model, release an album, star in a film, become a photographer or even a politician, just because. No talent required.

The ability to be creatively diverse should not be reserved for those that are rich enough to decide to do it. People should be questioning the barriers that are in place in their own lives, and breaking them down.  If we can make an active effort to break the desire own a piece of these celebrities lives, maybe we could make room on those platforms for people with something to say. Somebody that wants to make a difference to the world that we live in, and not give a toss about how they look whilst doing it.

                I was in Waterstones earlier on this month, totally looking at their wrapping paper and card selection for market research and not sniffing new books on the sly.

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Last week I took part in the Autumn Fair at the NEC (3rd of September until the 6th.) I feel like I should write about my experience, because I met so many incredible people and had so many great things happen to me whilst I was there. It wouldn’t be right for me to write about it without over analysing it though, would it? So here it goes…

The Autumn Fair is one of the UK’s largest and best known trade shows. It is a wholesale gift and home trade event, showcasing ‘amazing brands, new products, retail insight and bucket-loads of inspiration.’

I signed up on a whim because I had just got back from holiday and wasn’t feeling any pressure. Because I don’t work well unless I’m totally stressing out, I thought that it would be a really good way to push myself to make new stock and to move myself and my business a little bit further. I wasn’t expecting much though, I just wanted to see what the next stage of Rattycatcat might look like.

Rattycatcat Stand at Birmingham NEC Autumn Fair

I researched a lot into the do’s and don’t’s of trade shows, but struggled with finding any advice on exhibiting at a trade show with a creative brand. The only stand references I could find by brands that I felt I could relate to were: A) much bigger than mine (at £200-and-something odd a sq. metre these things aren’t cheap!) and B) dare I say it – not particularly inspiring or different. For a while, I worked on the basis that my stand would look like the others that I had seen, which were very linear and simple, with neat clean branding and not much else. This didn’t sit right though, and I found myself getting demotivated. So I scrapped my original idea of keeping everything very straight and neutral, along with all of the advice that I had read online and decided to go with my gut feeling of making up for what I lacked in stock and experience by making a display that stood out.

I created a display based on the concept of a 1950’s chaotic kitchen. This is because I print all of my cards, books and prints using a vintage laundry mangle, and I wanted to take that with me to really draw people into the fact that everything I make is truly handmade.  I’ve learnt from organising craft fairs that people LOVE a process – once they can see it for themselves they’re instantly drawn in to the work that you produce.

I sourced bits of 1950’s furniture and household objects and sprayed them all to match my dress (and that AMAZING wallpaper I’d found online.) I used a record player I already owned which was coincidentally the same colour, and obviously I took the mangle up with me to demonstrate exactly how I made my cards. I arranged my stock so that it was jumping out of the toaster and the vacuum cleaner. I purposely did this so that I wouldn’t have to rely on shelves to display everything – by this point I was trying to create the exact opposite of everything that I’d seen other brands do with their trade show stands.

Walking past stand after stand with their perfect shelves and their tiny pieces of retail perfection on the set up day was terrifying. Every stand had digitally printed cards in meticulously placed rows, most stands with various ranges in different styles aimed at a different company to ensure that there was something for every buyer. (If I was going to be obnoxious then I’d suggest that an awful lot of them had gone for quantity over quality but I’m not.) It was extremely intimidating setting up, I could feel the eyes of the seasoned exhibitors watching every prop being put into place and I felt as though I was being judged. But anyway, the set went up and we thought it looked pretty good.

  The next four days were incredible. We met so many people who loved Rattycatcat and described the stand as ‘a breath of fresh air.’ At one point I burst into tears as three women kept giving me compliment after compliment. One of them was Ellis from Pastel Elixir who makes beautiful cards and badges with gorgeous illustrations on them. Go see.

The number of people who got excited by what I had created made all of the hard work worth it. It wasn’t just about the hard work though – all of the days that I’ve spent feeling sick to my stomach because I don’t know where I’m going or whether I’m doing the right thing by sticking to my guns with the whole handmade thing are now worth it because I was told time and time again on my little adventure that I was doing the right thing, that people were impressed with the cards.

I’d been told not to expect any sales on my first fair, and just to try and gain as much experience as I could. That wasn’t the case though, and I’m still getting sales coming in now, a week later! I also got nominated for an award, got featured on this blog, will be featured in two magazines next month and very nearly got on This Morning!

This isn’t me just showing off by the way. (Okay so I feel proud of myself for the first time I can remember which is amazing, and I’m now super excited about the future of Rattycatcat because I know I’m on the right track.) The reason I’m writing this is because I am a very small person with a small business in a sea of bigger and better businesses who went and exhibited at the NEC and I think that more little independents should be doing it.

I couldn’t find any information online that made me feel better about the whole experience on the run up, and I very nearly pulled out several times. If it wasn’t for my bestie Bob being that goon voice on the other end of the phone then I wouldn’t have gone. She also helped throughout the fair and I couldn’t have done it without her (ta love).

I would like to be a voice that someone accidentally finds on the internet that says ‘DO IT! FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS!’ Because I did it and now I’m looking at Rattycatcat seriously hanging out with the big boys, and I’m dead set on making it work for me because that little voice telling me that I’m being dumb and who even buys handmade stuff anymore anyway has been drowned out by all of those total strangers telling me that they loved seeing something different. So yeah, it’s super scary, and some of the other exhibitors did try to intimidate me, but then, if I wasn’t a threat then why did they bother? Hark at me, being all confident and stuff! It’s addictive, this achieving malarkey.

  Let’s also take a second to talk about Liz and Treeve from Jupp Illustrations. They are a power couple who sell cards which are reproductions of the paintings that Liz makes.  They’re nature inspired and really gorgeous – please go find them and have a look. They became our best friends, we even stayed at their house because our Airbnb was a disaster. I’m wearing the slippers that Liz gave me as I write this. They became our family over those four days and guys, we love you.

Rattycatcat does the Autumn Fair at the NEC Last week I took part in the Autumn Fair at the NEC (3rd of September until the 6th.) I feel like I should write about my experience, because I met so many incredible people and had so many great things happen to me whilst I was there.

[helloyoucreatives]

The Creative Industry Translation Guide.

Guest Spot for HYC

Part One by Darren Kimble.

“Just have fun with it” Translation:  “I am hoping I’ll work out what I’m meant to be doing from your work” 

“What’s our social idea on this?” Translation: “Client asked us for an integrated idea, we promised them that we’d make sure it was, however we just blew the budget on a location”

“Our target market is everyone” Translation:  “We really have no idea who uses our product or service”

“Our target market is millennials” Translation:  “We really have no idea who uses our product or service but we know baby boomers makes us sound old and we’re not sure what term comes after millennials.”

“We don’t have a budget in mind” Translation:  “We have a budget in mind but want to see what you’ll do if you think we’ve got unlimited budget”

“We’re the home of the big idea” Translation:  “We make big TV adverts”

“This will be a very social focused campaign” Translation:  “We’re putting the TV advert on Facebook.

“Design experience is a focus for us” Translation:  “Some of our designers have dribbble accounts”

“We don’t do advertising, we create things people want to see” Translation  “We do advertising”

[rattycatcat]

Hahaha, yes.

[rattycatcat]

Leaping in to the Void

Leaping in to the Void

I was in my workshop on Wednesday and I began printing with some of the first linocuts I made just over five years ago. One in particular I enjoyed working with was a little blackbird. It occurred to me that the only reason I had made that blackbird in the first place (sad story alert) was because I had seen a real one outside my house with a hurt wing. I was leaving my house to go in to town and…

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