Jen-collins - Jen Collins · Blog

pocket-sized palm reading. i made an edition of little lino prints for the wonder that is crawl inclusive (the second coming), taking place in dundee this friday. they'll be distributed by the lovely ones of pitch & strike because they are nice like that. so, y'know, if you want one, maybe show up? that said, you might not be able to come, so there's another way you can bag yourself a tiny fortune. i'm going to include one with the next five orders* (over £6.50/$10 inc. shipping) from my shop. yes? yes. *EDIT: all gone! thanks guys.

new year

a slightly belated happy new year! this little blog has lacked updates over the past few weeks for various reasons (working, living in two places, festivities, getting tinnitus) but i feel it in my bones that this is the year for getting back on track, blog-wise & otherwise.

there have been a couple of big changes that have been stewing for months. firstly, i'm finally living in glasgow. whilst quite a bit of my stuff is still residing on the east coast (including the contents of my desk), i'm now in this city full-time. our new flat is lovely, quiet, bigger, better. we live close to big parks, transport to the city centre, a greengrocers & lots of good places to eat. i'm very excited to be somewhere new.

secondly, something that isn't full-time anymore is my day-job. i'm really happy i can still work part-time (it's a bit of a commute away) but i'm also really happy that there's more time than ever before to spend drawing, making, printing. this is something i've been dreaming about for years, & now it's time to get to work.

2012, i have high hopes for you.

providing i've not completely misjudged time-zones, this queued post should be appearing in your blog-roll whilst i celebrate the wedding of two friends in new zealand. i created a small edition of lino prints that they could give out to guests, created just a few days before we had to leave to catch our flight. it's been a few years since i've made a successful lino-cut so i'm pretty pleased that it worked out. happy wedding times, dave & jenni!

pushpin bookmark

i was pretty happy to find an email in my inbox last week from marceline of asking for trouble, querying whether i'd like to produce an artist's bookmark for her new zine distro, pushpin zines. of course, i said yes. above you can see some detail from my image, a girl engrossed in nick hornby's high fidelity whilst curled up in a cosy reading nook. you can get one of the bookmarks from pushpin for £1 or free when you spend £6 or over on zines.

• for 1,000 shop sales • for your patience with how long it takes to restock my ceramics shop • for checking out my new little project (maybe)

I read The First Bad Man by Miranda July. Then I did a thing.

peek

one of the pages from my sleeping on the sleeper zine. finally managed to finish it, now to print, photocopy & bind.

new website

take a peek at my new website layout, freshly uploaded to the internet last night. a better balance of text & images, & approximately a thousand times easier to update. everybody wins!

speaking of website updates, my lovely boyfriend added lots of new work to his. go visit!

this year

this year has been so different from last year for me, work-wise. the majority of 2010 in illustration terms was making things to sell, screen-printing & taking part in lots of exhibitions/projects. this year one the other hand... well, for one, i haven't screen-printed at all, which saddens me. however, i've mainly worked with clients, which has been a nice experience; before 2011 i didn't really have that under my belt. i'm now coming to the end of a few jobs & am excited to see those pulled together by the people i'm creating them for. as well as that though, i'm looking forward to getting some personal work done. really, really looking forward to that.

in the meantime, above is a snippet of something. i'm not sure how it happened, but almost all the jobs i've worked on this year have been food-related (though i don't personally view pigs as food).

also in the meantime, here are some incredibly talented ladies whose work i've been swooning over, either just recently or for some time. take a look: tuesday bassen / kaye blegvad / carson ellis / lauren gentry / mary-kate mcdevitt / hannah waldron / ping zhu