Take a look at our new studio...

We've moved into our new Little White Dog HQ and we're absolutely loving the extra space to work in (Suzie) and to roll around on the floor (Milo).There's still a bit of confusion about who is supposed to be sitting at the desk and who is supposed to be sitting under it but I'm sure we'll work it out!

Visit our contact page to make an appointment for a studio visit if you'd like to have a chat about some customised letters or to collect something you've ordered.
You can even get Milo to email directions to you!

This is where I am!

I entered this piece in the 2011 RDS National Crafts Competition and I'm absolutely thrilled that it has been selected for exhibition! The exhibition is in the RDS Concert Hall and is open (free of charge) on Thursday 28th and Friday 29th of July from 10am-5pm, and as part of the RDS Dublin Horse Show from August 3rd to 7th (entry fee applies).

When you're trying to find your way, the natural point you are hoping to find on a map is the marker that says "you are here". It isn't always easy to find and quite often it isn't there at all. Sometimes you need to stop looking at where you have been or where you want to go in order to make sense of things. Just be where you are.
 

I'm quite excited because this is an important piece of work for me. It represents a personal journey for me as a designer and craftsperson. I spent many years training to be an architect and in 2009 I found myself at a point where I was unemployed and my job prospects were pretty bleak. It gave me the space think about what I really like doing, to create new designs and to find my own direction. I think it’s an experience that I share with a lot of people in Ireland at the moment, because over the past year I've met lots of them through in the past year through Etsy Ireland, a start your own business course, and just yesterday at the "Craft Means Business" conference at Farmleigh.

Each letter in YOU ARE HERE is 100mm tall and made from a different Irish map. The map is applied to a flat piece of A4 recycled card, which is then cut, folded and glued to create a 3d letter.    

The Exhibition will be at the RDS Discover Ireland Dublin Horse Show from August 3rd to 7th. It will be open to the public (free of charge) on Thursday, July 28th and Friday, July 29th from 10am to 5pm

Blooming Marvelous Garden Letters

**UPDATE** Click here to see our photos from Bloom 2011 on our Facebook Page**

I had an idea, quite a while ago, about a different way of using my 3D letter templates, and then I got some emails recently that prompted me to do something about it.


The first email was from the Crafts Council of Ireland and was about some garden designers who were looking for handmade items for the Bloom Garden Festival. One particular designer needed letters made from stone, wood or metal for their garden.  It got me thinking... and then I got a message from another Etsy Ireland team member, Mollie of Spleodar, saying that she got the same CCOI email and that she thought of my letters when she saw it.... so I decided it was time to conduct a 3D letter experiment!


I found some very cooperative helpers, my nieces Anne and Grace (proprietors of Muddy Little Paws on Etsy) who were on their Easter holidays, and we did some research into making a type of artificial rock called hypertufa. The mixture we used was one part portland cement, 1.5 parts perlite (to make it lightweight) and 1.5 parts peat moss (this washes away when it dries out giving the piece a rough texture). I made two moulds, the letters A and G, by modifying my 3D letter templates slightly. Portland cement has lime in it so we mixed up the ingredients very carefully (with gloves on!), added water, filled up the moulds and left them to cure.


The curing/drying process took just over a week in total, but after a few days I was able to take them out of the moulds. They were solid but still quite wet and very peaty looking. After a few more days they were much lighter and made a hollow sound when I tapped them which meant they were fully cured.
So the experiment was a success! I rang the garden designer, Mark O'Loughlin of Sanctuary Synthetics, to see if my hypertufa letters would be suitable for his design, and the answer was yes!  I'm making them this week so that they'll be ready for Bloom at the Phoenix Park, Thursday 2nd June to Monday 6th June 2011. "Ireland's biggest garden festival" don't ya know!


The garden has an Alice in Wonderland theme and you can find out more on the Bloom Wonderland Garden Blog where Mark will be sharing his experience and counting down to the festival.  

Keep an eye on Milo's facebook page too for updates about our garden letters!!

Words of Encouragement

I had a moment of inspiration yesterday, at the toll plaza on the Portlaoise by-pass to be exact! It happened like this....

I'm not really a morning person and, in general, if I have the opportunity to have a lie-in I just can't resist. Strangely enough, though, if I'm told to get up at 6.15 on a Sunday morning to drive to Limerick to help with some photography I have no problem hopping out of bed as soon as the alarm rings. However, I do tend to feel it's expected of me to grumble a little bit about being up at that unearthly hour so naturally I oblige!

Anyway, my husband, Gareth, and I were driving to Limerick and on the Portlaoise by-pass road we went through the e-toll lane of the toll plaza (the one that scans the tag on your windscreen as you drive through instead of having to stop and pay at the tollbooth) and I realised that there's something about driving through e-tolls that just makes me happy! I think its to do with breezing through while all the lights turn green, and how the barriers spring open to clear the way through.  I said to Gareth that they should have lines of people at the side of the road cheering you on and clapping as you drive through. He laughed but he also agreed with me when said that if I was at home asleep in bed (as any sane person would be at 7.45am on a Sunday) I would never have had this curious idea.

It started me thinking about encouragement and how a few words or a pat on the back can sometimes help you to do great things. By great things I don't necessarily mean big things. Sometimes a little bit of encouragement to do something you've always wanted to do, to contact someone you've lost touch with  or simply to keep on going has a life enhancing effect. I don't mean platitudes like "you'll be fine" when you know you won't. I mean genuine encouragement from someone who believes in you telling you that you really can do something, you really should follow your heart, you really will make a difference.

I have to say that when it comes to encouragement I'm pretty lucky. I have a husband who goes with the flow when I make rather loopy pronouncements about toll booths and the like, because sometimes those weird ideas lead somewhere more coherent....eventually! When I had a really tough time in university my friends spent not hours but days helping me with drawings and models, and more than anything else,with their encouragement I got through it in the end. I can think of so many of examples of every member of my family encouraging my creative endeavours over the years from my Dad's "Great stuff, Sue!" to my brothers actually arguing over which of them would buy my clay model of a duck's backside!

There is one phrase that my Mum used regularly to encourage all of us, particularly in situations such as acting in a play, public speaking or doing an interview. She'd say "Go out there and tell yourself 'My mammy thinks I'm lovely'", and somehow it works! When I say it to myself it makes me sit up straight, take a deep breath, put my shoulders back and as an added bonus it makes me smile at the fact that it works!

So why am I telling you all this on a Monday in April? To be honest, if you've read this far without giving up you deserve a prize. No really, you do!

I'd like to hear your stories about words of encouragement, phrases that help you to keep going or that thing that your mother said as she sent you out to face the world. If I post your story on my blog I will create a very special message in a bottle for you, with your very own words of encouragement typed on a satin ribbon, and send it to you (anywhere in the world!).  All going well I'd like to make this a fortnightly blog feature on Mondays because, well, everyone needs a bit of a lift at the beginning of the week!

You can email your story to suzie@littlewhitedog.ie with 'Words of Encouragement' as the title.

ps Feel free to borrow "My mammy thinks I'm lovely" and substitute "mammy" with the loved one of your choice.... "my husband thinks I'm loopy, I mean, lovely" "my doggie thinks I'm lovely" etc etc

pps Don't substitute my actual Mammy... that's not allowed!

ppps Some words of discouragement (just in case): Please don't go hanging around at toll booths applauding the cars driving through. That would be silly, distracting and very dangerous! (Not that I think you would)

Look! It's Milo's happy face on a t-shirt!

Each year the Irish Professional Photographers Association, in association with Canon, harnesses the goodwill and photographic skills of its members for the benefit of Irish charities with their Happy Faces event. Last year we visited Paddy & Emma Clarke for our Happy Faces portraits and Milo's caused quite a stir! It was among the finalists for the Canon Portrait Award and it appears on the t-shirts for this year's Happy Faces 2011. 

You can have your picture taken at your local qualified IPPA photographer's studio or event location for just a €25 donation. This year the IPPA have selected The Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland as their charity for 2011. Visit the Happy Faces website to locate a participating IPPA photographer in your area. 

 

 

Look what just popped up!

We are very, VERY excited to announce that Little White Dog has been selected to exhibit in the Pop-Up Shop at the Royal Hibernian Academy here in Dublin between June 18th and 24th. Follow this link to the RHA website for more details http://bit.ly/fIvSAO

 

**June Update** Click here to visit our facebook page to see photos of the shop 

Tell me a story, Grandad

I love the story of these letters so I thought you might like to hear it too! A customer ordered them as a christening gift for his granddaughter. The maps are of parts of Limerick, Galway and Dublin that show the place where Sarah lives and the exact places where her parents are from (which are also the places where her grandparents live). The cute paper on the 'A's adds a little bit of a baby girly feel and I like to think it represents the countryside in between the cities. If you ever went on long journeys as a child to visit relatives and spent a lot of time looking out the car window at lambs in the fields, birdies in the trees you'll know what I mean! The letters were framed after this photo was taken. I'm sure that Sarah will cherish this gift from her Grandad, that tells her a little bit about her own story, for many years to come.

Little bottles of love

 

A few years ago I met a lovely man and as a Valentine's Day gift I made him a ribbon message in a bottle. After a while he asked me to marry him and I said yes*. I'm pretty sure that it was the message in a bottle that caused him to overlook the fact that he likes tidiness and I have an ability to spontaneously create untidiness at the drop of a hat! Well, at the drop of a hat and some shoes and a handbag and probably some books and bits of ribbon and....

So that was the beginning of the ribbon in a bottle idea. I can't remember why I wasn't satisfied with making a little scroll of paper, but drawing a ribbon out of a bottle to reveal a secret message just seemed right.

After trying to write on ribbon with lots of different types of pen I really wasn't happy - it smudges and runs and generally just looks messy. Eventually I got a notion that typing the message might work so I asked around to see if anyone knew where I might get a typewriter. Somehow I ended up with five of them! I tested them all out and I liked a little vintage Hermes Baby the best  - it also looks cutest and packs neatly away in a matching case.

I've created quite a few customised ribbon messages for people in recent months for birthdays, weddings, christenings and even one for someone joining a silent monastic order! They're somewhere between giving a card and giving a gift, yet a combination of both. I love making them and I hope that I'll have some enquiries for customised messages - I think a marriage proposal in a bottle would just be fantastic!

*Some facts and even whole aeons of time may have been omitted from this part of the story :-)