A few sample pages from The Thousand Nights and One Night illustrated with papercut silhouettes by Meg and Mog author Jan Pienkowski.

Pienkowski is originally from Poland, home of the Wycinanki tradition of paper-cutting:

Many of the images have been backdropped with vivid photographic elements and pattern, which strongly captures the sense of the exotic associated with tales of the old East.

The technique and style of the papercuts harks back to the pioneering (and completely inspiring!) work of Lotte Reiniger, specifically The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving animated film:

Magical stuff.

New printables, and soon to be, prints. Drawn in pen as separate ‘bits’, scanned into the computer, outlined in Photoshop, then filled with colour (like a cartoon) in Illustrator – in case you were wondering! Anyway, how this Summer should have been.

Manchester based Graphic Nothing has kindly included some of my prints in his new e-com project.

Some Prints also features work by Stanley Chow and Kate McLelland, with new artists being added weekly. Prints available from a super un-prints-ly [very poor pun] sum of £5. Interestingly, there are currently quite a few music/band themed prints currently on the site: Graphic Nothing’s ‘remixed’ record covers, Serge Gainbourg and some Smiths’ lyrics.

Clockwise from top left: Kate McLelland – ‘Maze of Sparrows’ (screenprint); Graphic Nothing – ‘Mona Lisa remix’ (giclee); Sally Boyle – ‘The Smiths Cross-stitched’ (giclee); Stan Chow – ‘Serge Gainsbourg‘ (giclee).

Just had a framed and mounted sample made of my current A5 size prints as I ‘m planning to offer both print options – framed and mounted or just the print on its own. The latter are currently only available as archival quality prints on watercolour textured paper from From the Wilde and – lo and behold! – they’re included in the site’s Summer Sale!  Peacocks, owls, fawns, fish, Hansel & Gretel, Red Riding Hood – its all there. For everything else that’s currently available in my Folksy and Etsy shops, including the matt silk versions of my prints (just to confuse matters) I’m giving £1 per sale to the DEC Pakistan Flood Appeal until the end of August.

If you’d like to know when the site’s live, you can join my e-mailing list HERE.

I know what you’re thinking – its the plan view map of King Solomon’s Temples, guarded for centuries by the Knights of the Cracked Pisspot. No! but its a hell of a lot more use to the ordinary mortal. You go to this website http://qrcode.kaywa.com/, give it your website address and kaboom! you have your very own unique qr code thingymebob. You then copy the graphic and add it to your promotional matter. That’s your bit done, because now anyone with a smart phone (not a dunce phone, like my phone) can take a pic of your code, wherever it may be, while they’re – i dunno – on route to the chip shop, and it will instantly translate that back to your web address. Pointless? Maybe, but it’ll look good on the back of a business card (where I’m about to put it).

On a more serious note: this is for WEBSITES, not HUMAN BEINGS. I don’t wanna see some MP proposing that a qr code across the wrist is a GOOD idea. I’ve read Revelations.

Have just been sorting out my greeting cards for sale on From The Wilde, available individually and as sets. Should be up soon. Been having fun tying them up with ribbon and tags; slightly less fun trying to photograph them on a rubbishy little diggie in Dark Age style lighting (its August. Its hailing. Go figure!). Oh well, it still beats a real job.

Just need to sort the Christmas ones out now.

Have had a new sample peacock wall decal printed (finally!) and can’t decide between vivid, near fluorescent new colours (above 1) or more ‘adult-like’ hues of previous version (above 2), bearing in my all previous versions – as far as I know –  have been bought by women for themselves. Advice please! Which would you prefer? Everyone who comments before August 15th will be entered into draw for a Tiger and Jungle sticker set (below) on the 16th.

The 40 mark stamp gives the impression that the real moral to the Red Riding Hood tale is this: ‘don’t go on a booze run for your gran’.

Anyway! As a result I’ve spent the last hour excitedly browsing through all the amazing Fairy Story related stamps that have been printed. Visual heaven:

Snow white’s wicked queen. She looks like a dance teacher…

‘The Wolf and the 7 Kids’? don’t know this tale. Wolves get worse press than Piers Morgan, and less deservedly.

Love the text design on this ‘Snow Queen’. This looks like the bit where Gerda gets waylaid by the witch. 1972

from 1974.

Hansel & Gretel: probably my favourite. Really a cautionary tale about what might happen without the welfare state. Really. Starving old ladies, see?