I love sharing new pieces of work with you, especially experiments. Last weekend I finished a wall hanging that I had been planning to make for a while, I am happy with the way it turned out and even happier that it combines my new found passion for embroidery with a well established love of typography.

Side by side, my embroidered version with the original page layout from Grafik magazine. I began to embroider each individual letter in the body text but they were just too small (especially as I need new glasses), so I settled upon indicating the type and I think it works just as well.

I have a head full of projects, more wall hangings based upon my own layouts and something more ambitious, but yes, lots more embroidery! Discovering that I can do back stitch has probably been the missing link for me this year, something so small and simple and yet it has opened up so many new possibilities. Making and creating has become such an essential part of me, sanity saving, truly. I heard this week that my exhibition in Wales has been postponed until next year, the public/Arts Council funded gallery is being refurbished, so dates have changed. This kind of news usually throws me and gets the paranoia germs a buzz, but I felt the possibilities of the situation instead. More time to learn and develop and create some interesting work. Hooray for craft sanity!

A little side note, I was thrilled to see the Lou Lou & Oscar banner featured in Artful Blogging magazine.

I was even more thrilled when Margie emailed me to say she had picked up a copy of the magazine and seen Lou Lou the wolf and Oscar the bird looking up at her from the pages. This is a good opportunity to shower praise and kisses upon Adam who designed the logo and banner, really Lou Lou & Oscar wouldn’t work without him.

This is Rats, a very cool typeface don’t you think? We chose this font as the new face of my post headings for no better reason than we fell for it at first sight. Rats fitted in with the content and style of Lou Lou & Oscar really well. If you check out MyFonts they will tell you that “Its small body height and tall ascenders support an oldstyle spirit drawn from early second-century Roman cursive scripts”. I do tend to be lead by my gut reaction and “tall ascenders” aside my tummy said “that is the one”.

Inspired by the personal hand of the illustrator Scott Nash, who was responsible for Flat Stanley and many others, Rats was designed by Jean Evans. We can’t use Rats as the license doesn’t permit it to be embedded in a web page. “Rats!”. My Type Tzar, Adam, is going to email the foundry that owns the font and find out if it is possible to buy an extended license but it is a pretty pricey typeface to begin with and I don’t think we can justify it. So bye, bye Rats. I have found something else and it is Freeware-hooray-of course I have just had a bickering session with Type Tzar (who may be demoted) who says that I can’t have the the Freeware typeface because it doesn’t contain accented characters. Apparently we are going to try and create our own font, when we are going to have the time to do this I have no idea! I foresee an extended debate on this issue-yawn!

To raise my jaded spirits I searched Etsy for some Ratties.

Marcel, the Dock Rat fromFing Toys.

King Chocolate Rat made from recycled or found tin cans and bottle caps from loranscruggs.

Second Nature print from Art & Ghosts.

My Tuesday Typeface this morning is Odette, keep reading to learn the special significance that this font has for Lou Lou & Oscar—here is a little clue—look up to my banner! Lovely Odette and a thought provoking quote from William Morris coming up.

I have noticed that the universe is trying to uproot me from my Island home and lure me across the sea to Canada. I have made some truly special connections with people from this marvelous land through Lou Lou & Oscar and today I hit upon yet another reinforcement of all things Canadian! As I was researching today’s typeface I was reminded that the type foundry responsible for Odette is named Canada Type. The foundry is based in Toronto and they are obviously very proud of where they come from; just look at that logo.

I think I may have to go and buy some snow shoes! This lovely coincidence aside, Odette is my chosen typeface today because it forms the typographic bones of the Lou Lou & Oscar logo. When I set out to choose a typeface for Lou Lou & Oscar I knew I wanted something warm and inviting to complement my creatures. It was important that the type didn’t look too mechanical, it needed to be feminine but not too pretty, pretty. I roped Adam into the search and we narrowed it down to a few faces. Odette won out as soon as we saw the alternate characters for the typeface and fell in love with the ampersand you see in the logo. Named after the Swan Lake princess, Odette was originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton and digitized by Rebecca Alaccari for the Canada Type foundry.

So, now you know! As usual I just had to see what an Etsy search would throw up for ‘Odette’ and ‘Swan Lake’. I am so glad that I did as I found a shop that is new to me and a lovely print from an old favourite.

The Odette Brooch pictured above is available from Tilly Bloom. I hadn’t come across Tilly Bloom until today, it is always fun to find a shop you haven’t discovered before. I love this bird cage necklace and the Through the Looking Glass bookmark too.

Be sure to go and take a look at the rest of the illustration jewelry on offer at Tilly Bloom.

I adore Caitlin Shearer’s art work, her shop Pepperminte carries some wonderful prints. I was so happy when Caitlin’s vision of Swan Lake appeared in the search results, it also gives me the perfect excuse to share a few more of my favourite finds from Pepperminte with you!

Secrets, No Magic and Nine pm by Caitlin Shearer at Pepperminte.

It had to be Tuesday or Thursday of course so that I could make use of the ‘blog friendly’ alliteration in the title. I am so excited about my first type Tuesday as it references one of my literary heroes. The manuscripts of Franz Kafka had such an impact on Finnish graphic and type designer Julia Sysmäläinen that she decided to convert his handwriting into a digital script, FF Mr K, and it is beautiful as you will see below.

Mister K Font

Unfortunately, the ‘FF Mr K’ font wouldn’t work for this blog. The search for the perfect font continues.

Etsy never ceases to amaze me. I managed to find some Kafka related goodies. I am particularly taken with the work of Iris Schwarz, her shop Paulette Edition carries the “Ceci n’est pas Kafka” print that heads up this post.

I also like this greeting card from Bunkleberry Studios. I am a sucker for quotes!

I am incredibly lucky to live with a talented Graphic Designer and self-confessed typophile. We both spend an unhealthy amount of time pouring over typography blogs and type foundry font specimens! I was really lucky to stumble upon the work of Jose Antonio Perona whilst browsing on Flickr today, I loved the image that you can see at the top of this post so much that I had to give it top billing. I am agonizing over the font styles for this blog at the moment and foresee many changes of mind over the coming days before I find something that sticks. I feel that I should have one of those signs up that reads “PLEASE IGNORE OUR APPEARANCE WHILE WE ARE DRESSING OUR WINDOWS!”. Get set for the Lou Lou & Oscar blog redesign that is coming soon.

In honour of my typographic travails I would like to share these amazing finds with you.

Victor & Susie -Designed and published by Brighten The Corners. Victor had a hole in his shell. So, armed with love and a steady supply of lettuce, Susie decided to nurse him back to health. —A story about caring, mending and letting go drawn entirely with letters and punctuation marks.

We adore Bembo’s Zoo. So clever and beautiful to watch. Give the link a click, I promise that you won’t regret it!

Beautiful letterpress posters from Cameronmoll. Made from type of course!

I would love to own the Super Ampersand t-shirt from Lorem & Ipsum. Think on lovely husband!