Exciting news! The first issue of ink+PAPER is out this week. This is a brand new comics magazine put together by the fabulous David O'Connell, and it includes a photo essay by yours truly. I haven't seen a hard copy yet, but David assures me it looks fantastic. That's his cover illustration up there. London Underground nerds can have fun trying to work out which tube line he's illustrated, but it's a bit of a trick question because he's incorporated several elements from different tube lines (the seating is the Design Research Unit's 1970s District Line moquette design, though).

If you're in London, come to the launch party at Orbital Comics this Friday from 7:00pm.

ink+PAPER will also be on sale at Saturday's Comiket fair on Saturday as part of this year's Comica Festival (another brilliant line-up of events this year). This year Comiket is being held at the newly refurbished Bishopsgate Institute. I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like.

If you can't make either of those events, it will be on sale in Orbital Comics and Gosh Comics, or you can buy it online from here.

The other big comics news this week is of course the release of Nelson, the ambitious comics anthology/exquisite corpse story told by over 50 of the UK's best comics creators, with all profits going to homeless charity Shelter. (You may remember I made some fan art of the cover.) I've been looking forward to this one for months, not just because loads of my friends are involved or because it's for a good cause, but because everything I've seen of it speaks to the dedication and creative brilliance of the people involved. I'm very excited be getting my hands on a copy tomorrow, courtesy of Alison at Space In Text. (I will be buying a copy as well. I just haven't decided whether to pick up a hardcover from the Blank Slate table at Comiket on Saturday, or one of the Frank Quitely bookplate softcovers from the Nelson launch/signing at Gosh Comics.)

November 19-25 is Nelson Week, so look for more about the book then. I strongly suspect that you're going to be hearing a lot about it in the run up to Christmas!

Which just goes to show how wrong you can be, because I totally bodged the first attempt on the face, and got started on another face. My second attempt dissatisfied me too, because I'd made the mouth too wide, so I made a third version. Third time lucky on the mouth, but I'd messed up the eyes and ended up going back to the second version, adding the hat, hair and lettering. (It's slightly three-dimensional because I padded her hat and her face.)

In the end, what was supposed to be a quick exercise took much longer than I anticipated. Rob's design looked deceptively simple to copy, but  probably took me longer to sew it than it actually took Rob to draw it, and that's despite me bodging it in places because I was trying to speed the job up. (I always forget that often my favourite part of making stuff is working out how to put it together, and sometimes I find the actual putting together a bit, well, dull. I suppose a lot of creative people feel like that, too.)  

Here it is with Rob's original version, to compare. Looking at them together makes me cringe because I can see all the places I got it wrong, but then that's an occupational hazard with all creative work, not just the stuff adapted from other sources. (You might ask why I would copy someone else's work in the first place, instead of creating something brand new. Well, sometimes you just have to get your creative juices flowing somehow, and like I said, I wanted to pay tribute to all of my friends' great work.) 

As an exercise in creativity it had an interesting result besides the finished product, as it reminded me that, while I can draw in thread (better than I can with a pencil, go figure), some things that look very simple to make an exact copy of aren't that simple after all. In other words, don't take anyone else's work for granted, even if they do have a knack for knocking brilliant drawings out in the space of seconds.

(oh, and I'll probably end up doing something with the two bodged versions, so they're not a total loss, either) 

The frustrating thing is that I had the same problem yesterday, when I had a whole day with no plans, a big pile of old magazine pages and various bits of paper ephemera, a nice sharp scalpel, a big creative desire and absolutely no bloody inspiration. You ever get days like those?

Finally, after an unsatisfying evening of unfulfilled creative urges, I decided to clear up, and in the process of clearing up, I made this:

I rather like it. I rather like this song by the Rosebuds, which gave this post its title, too.

Last night my friend Viv Schwarz had a launch party with Alexis Deacon to celebrate their new children's book A Place To Call Home. Viv was one of the winners of this year's Booktrust Best New Illustrators Award, and already has a few great picture books out, and she writes one of my favourite blogs (she posts a lot of interesting work-in-progress and says sensible things about ebooks, and makes up bread recipes that actually work!)

The party was at Colour Makes People Happy, a nice posh paint shop in East Dulwich which also sells nice plates and books.

Sarah has a much better post about what happened and who was there, so I'll just leave you with some photos.

Here are Viv and Alexis making their official launch speech. Alexis appears to be phasing out of this dimension, but to my knowledge he's not actually a pan-dimensional being (I've only met him a couple of times, though, so maybe he saves that revelation for people who've known him longer).

Viv was wearing a fab Moomin dress that I didn't manage to get good photos of because she was moving around so much being the life of the party! I did manage to snap the fab vintage dresses that Sarah and Holly were wearing though.

Colour Makes People Happy is in a long building, with four or five rooms going one-behind-the-other. Viv has her studio in one room, which is nice and light, although a bit chilly.

Even further back, there's a workshop with a paint-spinner for making spin paintings. I used to love making those when I was a kid — I bet it would be fun to have another go.

This is Charles, who I made for Viv after she saw Maurice Morris and decided she wanted one of her own. Last time I saw him he had pride of place surveying her studio.

And speaking of hamster joy (which I only mentioned in the title, but they do feature in the book), here's a lovely post over at Quad Royal (and yes, I totally nicked the title of her post to use it in the title of mine. It seemed too apropos not to.)

Here's a hedgehog brooch I made for my friend Anwen's birthday

Here's a really terrible photo of the beaded moth brooch I made for my mum's Christmas present (this was the second version, which I started after I'd almost finished the first version and realised I hated it! What a waste of time… I'm not even 100% happy with this one, but my mum loves it, so that's all right)

This is Maurice Morris, who I also belongs to my mum now. (I started making him during Movember, hence his name and his moustache)

I made these two in October. They don't have names yet. They have pipecleaners in their arms and legs so they're poseable (so does Maurice Morris).

This is a sugar skull brooch I made last October

I wore it when I went to the last Alternative Press Fair and several people asked me if I was selling them. One of them, Chloe Cook, gave me her email address and commissioned me to make a brooch for her mum for Christmas.

I tried a different design for the second skull brooch, although I forgot to take a better photo than this one on my phone before I sent it off.

I also made a scrappy dog brooch, which I wore to Boring 2010 and later in the pub a drunk lady asked me to make her one but I don't know who she was…. (Incidentally, did anyone do a blogpost collecting all the reports and presentations from Boring? I can't find one, which is a bit annoying, as is the fact that I haven't taken a better photo than this one)

I also made a couple of lavender owls (not brooches), but I didn't take any photos of them before I gave them away! oops.

(the colours are a bit weird on my photos because my camera really hates the colours red and blue for some reason, so anything with a hint of them comes out looking weird and I don't always get it right when I edit in Photoshop)

Since the start of the year I have made over ten brooches, and have got started on three or four more. Sometimes the getting started bit is the most fun, because I like working out how things fix together, and building them, more than I like the straightforward sewing, which can be a bit boring. I didn't have many proper brooch pins, so I just used safety pins.

Mostly they've been flowers because I like making the roses and the little leaves (and I haven't seen the same style of roses anywhere else online, which is nice)

I also made a larger rose and leaf, which can be worn separately or together (though I'll make them with proper brooch pins next time).

And I made a robot brooch, based on the same design as Sunday George. This one doesn't have a name yet, though.

I don't really like the felt that I used to make it, as it's pretty cheap acrylic felt which bobbles and pills really easily, and isn't as nice to sew as the wool felt that I made Sunday George with (which I bought in Birmingham a few years ago). I don't know where to get some good quality wool felt in London, though, as all the shops I know which sell felt in small sheets (rather than by the metre) all sell acrylic felt rather than wool felt. Sometimes acrylic felt is just as good as wool felt, and sometimes it's just nasty. I did find this list of places I want to check out, but if anyone knows anywhere I can buy some nice wool felt (not online as I like to see what the fabric's like before I buy it), please leave a comment! I

If you want to have a go making some felt or paper flowers I just bookmarked a few different tutorials collected here. I haven't tried any of them yet, though.

Fradley Benford

Austin Flisk and Skeechy Dwippford

Mr & Mrs Treep, with the twins Klipsy and Fring

Lady Penelope Grimm-Fribbington
(note the FM logo on her scarf, designed by Woodrow Phoenix)

If you can't get to Selfridges to see them for yourself before December 24th, there are more pictures here.

(Incidentally, it looks like Jonathan is still selling copies of his ace silly gangster comic Aunt Connie and the Plague of Beards. Go buy.)

Here's the Abominabubble Snowman which I made for my friend Alex Milway last month (apologies for the poor photo; I only managed to take one before I handed him over). Alex has just finished writing his second yeti book and I still haven't even read the first! (But I am loving the work-in-progress pictures from his newest story, which he's been posting on his Twitter page.)

And here's the Sasquatch version that I made.

He's a friendly fellow.

And here's a weird news article about yetis being at war with bears in Siberia.

Sometimes I post pictures of what I've been sewing over on Twitter, although I haven't done so lately because I've been making Christmas presents and I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Back in August, I made a little squid, inspired by StitchLondon's Stitch-A-Squid night at the Natural History Museum, where Deadly Knitshade's Squidius Knittius Giganticus Plasticus wowed the crowd.

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I like the idea behind Stitch London's regular crafting socials, but I'm not a knitter, so I thought it would be neat if other non-knitters could have something simple to make on the night, but I didn't finish it in time. And then I forgot to do a pattern, until a week or so ago, so here it finally is.

Let me know if you make one!

Meet Sunday George who went off to have an adventure at the Wellcome Collection, where he was officially registered by the artist Keith Wilson, and given a dedicated calendar date of his own. February 11th is Sunday George Day, so remember to celebrate with robots!

You can see more pics here, and see the whole Things calendar here. Check it out; there are some great little stories to discover. Here are some of my own favourite things.