First day of the Christmas Craft Fair today at The Plasterwork Studio, Southend, Essex. Great to see lots of local designers and makers with fabrics, ceramics, knitwear and other stylish handmade products. Penelope Barritt was one of the winners in the Paisley Power "Guess the paisley celebrity" competition and she chose a rat-pattern cushion as her prize. She also decided to buy one, so now she will have two in her home. She brought her dog George with her today who was wear

I attended a very constructive course today at Somerset House, London with 25 other students learning to make modern folk designs for printing on fabric. The reference for our designs was traditional paper cut-out art from Poland, Sweden and Denmark. The tutors from The People's Print taught us how to convert our traced paintings into vector files so they could be enlarged and digitally printed as large scarves. #folkart #illustrator #textiledesign #makerversity #painting #pa