Papa Stour

Papa Stour is one of those great little finds if you have ever had the pleasure to stumble across it, as I did several years ago. Bringing together the finest contemporary craft designer-makers based in Scotland, it has a huge range of unique and beautiful household items, stationary and jewellery which would make the perfect gift for friends, family or even yourself!

And I now have the pleasure of announcing I am one of their newest recruits with a selection of my current work available for sale from the Papa Stour website...so make sure to pop along not just to check out GraceInk but the other wonderful design work they have to offer.

And one last thing, new design work at Papa Stour has been recently blogged about at the design sponge blog (which if you're not already a fan of, you should really visit the possibility) www.designspongeonline.com/2010/07/new-at-papa-stour.html

I have been forecasted...WGSN

For those amongst us with a membership to WGSN then the news is good as you can now view my work as part of the Interiors Trend Analysis for New Designers Part Two, for those of you without (including me) you'll have to take my word for it...I did get a sneak peek at the article and I get name-checked below!

'WGSN loves Grace Smith's tactile, hand-printed linens featuring birdcages and folk art references'

WGSN is a fantastic trend forecasting and analysis website providing the lowdown on anything and everything design from fashion to product, illustration to furniture as well as the coolest boutiques and exhibitions worldwide.

New Designers: One Year On Update

Thought you might all enjoy some pictures from inside the One Year On stand at New Designers Part Two this year. If you couldn't make it then you missed out but hopefully the pictures below will go someway to making up for it! If you want to check out the designer-makers that were there then head over to www.newdesignersonline.co.uk.

Lisa Connolly and GraceInk Design

Paul Cummins

Kate Usher

Sarah-Jayne Guest, Tamar Balakjian and Edward Robinson

Andy Murray

Home Addict by Caroline Gauci

Lauren Revell and Leah Wade

New Designers: One Year On 2010

New Designers has come and gone for another year and while I'm busy collating all the lovely work on show at One Year On to get online I thought I would direct you towards the Arts Thread Blog to check out some of the lovely people that took part.

Arts Thread is the World's Only Creative Graduate Website and allows those of us in the creative industry to get their portfolios out there to be seen by the right people at the right time.

Check back soon for more...

Craft and Art Residency, Kilbowie 2010

I'm just home after a great week with some fantastic students from around North Lanarkshire, who all took part in a week of intensive art and design training. I was focussed on the screen-printing and what an amazing selection of work we had by the end of it, everyone really got stuck in and got their hands dirty (quite literally)! Check out the heat changing t-shirts we managed to squish in between some more serious work.

The beautiful sunset on the longest day of the year.

Managed to get the students painting onto the screen, as well as the opportunity to draw down by the harbour and collect objects on the first couple of days. Everyone worked from the early hours till late at night and really got a lot of the experience, teacher and student alike I reckon.

I really liked going exploring when I had a couple of minutes to spare, I just love the sea!

There wasn't just screen-printing either, other opportunities included jewellery with Suilven Plazalska which looked absolutely amazing in the next room as well as Music, Digital Imagery, Fine Art and Film/Documentery Making.

Concrete Wardrobe

GraceInk hand screen-printed purses and greetings cards have been dropped off this morning at the Concrete Wardrobe in Edinburgh for the masses to enjoy...check out the shop at www.concretewardrobe.co.uk. They stock amazing art and design by a whole host of wonderful British based artisans which now includes me!

Kilbowie 2010

I've just been asked to run a series of workshops over on the west coast of Scotland towards the end of this month at an event for school-leavers wanting to head into the art and design field at College or Uni. Very excited about taking part and in a part of Scotland I haven't had a chance to visit yet, so double excitement!

T-shirt to your left is one I whipped up yesterday while organising what I would need for such an adventure with the fantastic Tony. I had a great time showing it off to all and sundry yesterday afternoon and now it's even been fixed so I can wear it out in the rain...whooo! (lets hope for none of that while I'm on the west coast)

Hopefully I'll have some more exciting photos to show from the actual event in a couple of weeks time.