I do love a good rummage...

The past couple of months I seem to be spending more and more time rummaging through old boxes or dusty warehouses. This week my Nan asked my Step Dad to empty the attic and I am so happy he has. Her garage is now filled with lots and lots and lots of boxes for me to sort through. Heaven. 

I have had an initial look through the stuff for her and found some amazing things. I am obsessed with anything floral, old fashioned and remotely vintage looking and Nans attic is like an aladdins cave filled with this type of thing. She even has a really old Singer sewing machine. It needs a lot of fixing and things, but I’ve wanted one for so long and the fact it belongs to Nan makes it more appealing than buying one that works and is in better condition. This is something that is definitely going to feature in the Strange Case Collective studio. (When we eventually have one.)

I am also becoming a little obsessed with the Royal family. I blame the Royal Wedding entirely as it well and truly swept me away and drew me in. So you can imagine how excited I got when I found a 1983 Royal Family Year book!

Of all the pictures they could have chose, they chose this one. Brilliant. 

I also found a really old, slightly falling apart, book about The Life and Times of King George V. The images in this book are amazing, they include pictures of the fashion in the 1920s, and every significant moment of King Georges reign. As a designer its great to have books like this to use as a reference when designing, plus as it belonged to my Granddad its something I am definitely going to look after.

I have a bit of an obsession with old books and this weekend I am going to be going through the many many many boxes to see what else I can find.

According to the inside cover, this is from 1913!

From 1935 or 39. I can't remember off the top of my head

Me and Mum also came across this amazing art folder from the 70s! I’m loving the wallpaper. It also included lots of art work my Mum had done at school. I always assumed I got my creativity from my Uncle John, but maybe Mum has something to do with it too.

On a different note, I was featured on Design Juices this week! It was really great to be asked to feature and its been great getting such positive feedback from everyone who has had a read of the interview. Thanks again to the lovely Jared of Design Juices for asking me to be featured and his very kinds words about me! You can read the interview in full here.

Darkness in Light

If you read my blog at all you will know that the past couple of months, most of my posts have been about rummaging through antique warehouses, making brains, talking about brains and trying to blag as many props as possible. Well last Friday it all came together and we transformed The Mezzanine in the CUC. I can now very happily announce (if you follow me on twitter this will be old news) that I am officially 1/3 of Strange Case Collective. (Follow us on twitter!) SCC consists of me, Jen and Laura and as we worked so amazingly together for Darkness in Light we thought we'd come up with a name and look for more work as a three, rather than individually. Between the three of us we can do so much and I am getting very very very excited about the 'future'. We don't have an official logo or anything yet, but we made this up to fit within the set, so it will do for now.

A massive blog post is due to come from Strange Case Collective talking all about the night, but for now I'll try to summarise it very quickly. (Im not very good at being breif) The event was brilliant and I can't get over how busy it was. It was hard to move upstairs as even the floor was taken up by people sitting on it. The performers and music were brilliant and it went so quickly. Everyone who we spoke to was so kind and nice about the work we had done and I haven't stopped smiling since then. Here are a few photos and you can see a full album of pictures on the Strange Case Collective flickr.

Jekyll and Hyde within the set

Me, sitting within Jekylls experimentation area! I drank too much poison, hence my glowing eyes!

Again a massive massive massive thank you to Boneface (follow him on twitter, his work is boss!) for the two amazing illustrations he did for us. They are so good!

Everything seems to be coming together now since leaving Uni, I'm really busy but I wouldn't change it for the world and I'm really excited about working with Jen and Laura more and seeing what the future brings. Hopefully we will get to do a lot more in the CUC, as like I've said in previous posts, its my new favourite place.

BegBlagBorrow

A few photo updates of some of the things me and the girls have been blagging, buying and working on. We are meeting up tomorrow and having a full day of working on all the stuff we've got. I'm really looking forward to seeing it all together and getting a better idea of how much we have and how we are going to lay it all out.

The lovely man at MPAC is letting us borrow a big bag of these!

They fit in perfectly and even come with their own added rust ;)

The amazing poison bottles we found in an antique shop.
Have included the smaller cider bottle to show just how big they are!

Detail for one of the bottles. Our first investment in #teamjekyllnhyde

Me, Jen and Laura have a set like this each that we are working on at the moment

Mystery Prop... Can you guess what we're going to do with it?

Laura (@pye05 you should all follow her) went to a car boot sale this week and here are some of the wonderful things she found there.

I wonder what's inside...

BOOM!

Laura has been working on it to age it, how brilliant does it look!

The official poster for the night is out now too and you should definitely come along... Amazing event stlying ;) Great music and in a brilliant venue... Did I mention its free? So you have no excuse really. The wonderful Craft Creative will be there too so again, you should definitely come along!

So again, if you have anything you want to donate, help with or just find out more about the event tweet me @sophiescouse Jen @thechatterpie Laura @pye05 or give us an email jekyllnhyde@live.co.uk

Royal Wedding Fever!

Being an event designer it would have been practically illegal for me to not do anything to celebrate the Royal Wedding. Being obsessed with anything wedding related and over the top, it seemed the perfect opportunity to do some baking and get my craft box out.

Mum kindly allowed me to use our lounge for this and we invited over some of the family. Including our very own Queen Mother who had the best seat in the house and stayed put all day. I also made it a rule that anyone watching had to wear a flower, so my hair accessory collection was out in force.

My Nan Alice, with one of my flowers <3

It was a really nice day and getting to talk over future family weddings and having the wonderful baby James with us too was lovely. Nan even let me use the beautiful china tea set I'm promised "when she's gone" which believe me is a massive deal!

The strawberry heart cake I baked

No tea party would be complete without home made cupcakes

My beautiful china tea set

No Royal Wedding party would be complete without Pimms

It was also a great excuse to get the Cake Stand Nan gave me out