Collage Inspiration: Sarah Eisenlohr

Sarah Eisenlohr's collages are so great because they feel like you're looking at alien landscapes filled with giants and Lilliputians with simple clothes and pleasures. Everything is so pretty and wondrous in these spacey little worlds. And they are really like worlds. They have this kind of soothing milk and hay look, which I like so much. It's like you could dive into the sky.

I wish I could walk across tiny forests.

all images taken from saraheisenlohr.com

Diary: Nap Demon

I'm in sleepy mode (as usual) today because it's all gloomy and rainy and I spent yesterday dogsitting. I got up early today, but now I am feeling the deep desire to nap. Why is it so mesmerising? Sometimes it's like I have a little nap demon inside me. If only I could draw in my sleep.

Collaging Experimentation: 1000 Worlds

Collaging feels so organic and playful and ruthless. You've found something in the world to make yours. It's not like painstakingly painting your own creation or curving a felt tip to the shape in your head. It's more like ripping little pieces of yourself, your presence, and stitching them together. There's a little bit of you in everything, and a little bit of everything in you. The world becomes your reflection. Other people's words and visions become you, too, flailing and folded and quick. It's great. Collage is like my own little paper world and I love it.

I started a book that I want to fill with collage, to try out a few different ideas. I feel like mixing in text adds more of a narrative. It feels like you're looking at a weird storybook, almost. Even just one word means something is happening, something is being described with letters.

I also wanted to cut pictures up into little pieces and then put them all together. Then the separate pictures become one. All spliced together like a warped version of natural cohabitation. All the shapes sinking into each other by osmosis, by their nearness.

Also just paying attention to the colours. The washed out grey textures of newsprint, the brightness of flowers and citrus fruits against cloudy wisps of hair. And my pink and yellow brushstrokes making fruit salad on the page.

I'll make a thousand worlds and then choose one to live in.

Sugar Bunny Shop Wishlist

I recently discovered this adorable webshop full of cute little original characters, and as I love cute stuff (and especially stationary), I thought I'd make a fun little wishlist featuring my personal favourite items.

Neapolitan Sticker Sheet

Sugar Bunny Shop has a really nice selection of stickers available, but this design was my favourite. Look at those adorable little ice cream bunnies! This kinda makes me want Neapolitan ice cream right now. I really love stickers because they have so many useful applications. You can use them to make notes and reminders cuter, to decorate parcels or letters, or to put on all sorts of things. I like to put stickers on my 3DS, and I have one lonely little blue heart sticker on my oyster card. Someone once showed me their oyster card which was covered in cat stickers. It was the best thing ever.

Neapolitan Sundae Necklace

You can also get the ice cream bunny trio on a necklace. I love the way the chocolate sauce is starting to drip down their heads and they don't even seem bothered by it! I guess you probably wouldn't if you were literally made of ice cream, but who knows?

Cupcake Kitties Sticker Sheet

This is another set of stickers I liked, and it's also another food/animal hybrid, so clearly this is a bit of a soft spot for me. They're kittens, and they're cupcakes. It's beautiful.

Fat Sheep Scarf

Another thing I picked out was this spring-friendly scarf with such a sweet design featuring some sheep frolicking amongst the flowers. I just love the design. It's so relaxing. I love watching sheep and cows in fields, just lounging on the grass. I think I want to be a sheep, just a bit.

Mashimaro Bistro Mug

My final pick was this mug. Like everything else in the shop, the design is super cute, but I also liked the rounded shape of the mug, and the glitter detail. This would be a very cosy mug to have a hot drink from. The bunny is supposed to be a marshmallow, which I guess is why it is comfortable sitting in a hot chocolate.

I hope seeing all these cute bunnies and things makes you feel a little bit warm and fuzzy inside. Which item is your favourite?

Chunky Magazine Collages

I'm trying to experiment with a lot of different stuff like I did during my A Levels. I decided to do some big magazine collages focused on folding down sections of pages and affixed, torn images. The folding creates a really cool protrusion effect with parts pointing and sticking outwards. I feel like it gives more of a gravity and largeness to these pieces in person. I'm really pleased to bring a bit more dimension into my work as I'm so used to working with a lot of flat and digital pieces which sometimes lack an impactful physical presence.

Also it's nice to work with found and re-purposed images instead of my own. It feels fresh in a way because I don't see the creation process of these images, I just see them as they are, already completed, and then I get to interpret them and apply new meaning to them and distort them. It's very different from working with my own things that I've made from scratch, and in a way that adds another layer (or a different layer) of density to the compositions.

I like the size of them too. A3 pages feel big and small at the same time. I want my work to be portable and compact - a mini world - but I also would like it to feel large and engrossing. You can see a smaller one I tried, taped to the wall above the six A3 collages. I like it, but A3 allowed me to insert more compositional elements and make more folds.

Look at my dorky smile in this photo! I should be wearing some peach coloured overalls with a big daisy on the front pocket.

Diary: Ruby Fruit & Diamond Glitter

I feel a bit more spontaneous this week in terms of writing my diary and doing drawings and things. Everything feels a bit loose and comfy and breezy. It's the best when creativity gets like that. It's way too easy to get rigid with anything artistic because I naturally do a thing, like that thing, and want to keep doing that thing. At some point this means I'll be inadvertently trying to replicate something, and then I have to realise and remind myself to shift into something a bit different, to jolt myself back into a flow. That's why there's always this process of spontaneity and newness and excitement followed by a fall back into an unconscious way of making. Totally thoughtless. And then something about a movement or shape or idea hits me and all the awareness of being alive, and how drawing makes me feel alive, is back.

This week I painted my nails with dark red and iridescent glitter, watched bad UFO shows, ate a really good pizza, and chopped up a couple of magazines for collages.

Let's Play Pokémon Yellow #4: Evil Fashion Bloggers

So, last time we made it through a cave. This time - well, my Oddish has reached its difficult teen years. It's borrowing a Taking Back Sunday album from me. Hopefully that will help.

We are heading to a new town (we're getting pretty well travelled now).

In Celadon City, Pikachu and I spot this mysterious figure dressed all in black. Maybe it's Dan Howell.

Oh, right, it's a member of Team Rocket.

Up on the top of a building with extremely lax security, we find this room. Clearly it is occupied by a kindred spirit.

Same.

So Celadon City is "The City of Rainbow Dreams" according to the shiny tourist sign. That's nice. Gay pride parades run through about every twenty minutes. Pikachu and I have purchased coconut bras and glowsticks from the impressive department store nearby. And possibly some tequila. We are ready for pride.

We stopped into a little restaurant at the bottom of the town and made the grave mistake of talking to a stranger. We seem to have upset him.

And then he threw his wallet at us.

At least this guy is enjoying himself.

I decided to check out the slots in town. Pikachu tried to hold me back, but I said "look Pikachu, I'm the one with the cash, so I make the decisions here".

Apparently no one here is keen to talk, to the extent that they'll pay you to go away. Unfortunately for them, this only encourages me to talk to them more.

Why?

Oh.

We found a SECRET ENTRANCE. Well, I hope we're not killed.

So I came across a Team Rocket member and I was like "lol Team Rocket sucks" and he got all mad.

It turned out we needed to get into the lift to get to the bottom of this weird secret base, but fortunately Team Rocket are hapless goons. I distracted this one with some gummi worms.

And then who do I bump into but my old friends, the colourful hair gang. They are evil fashion bloggers.

But I have a big monkey who can scare them away. Thanks again, Bryan.

This hench Italian bloke in a suit is apparently the leader of this troupe of incompetent goons. I'm guessing he pays them less than minimum wage, so I can understand their misdirected rage.

Anyway I beat him up because I'm much stronger than beefy men, and I got some kind of scope for my efforts. Everything looks pretty normal through it, so I'm not sure what it's for, but I'll hang on to it. I love a good scope, me.

This was a particularly mean comment slung at me on my way out. Rats are nice. And I love cheese much more than your average rat. You can actually summon me by saying "applewood cheddar" into a mirror three times.

After all that fuss, I thought I'd take a break and visit the games department at the store.

Apparently in this game you can buy Pokémon games. So Pokémon games exist inside the Pokémon universe? Wow.

Nice one, game.

Okay, I think we've done enough for this instalment. Tune in next time, where hopefully we will not be attacked by evil fashion bloggers. My baseball cap and backpack are very stylish, thank you very much.

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