Where the heart is....

Our latest creation from the studio is our Bespoke Map Papercut. This personalised treasure map can show the location and coordinates of a special place anywhere in the world. It's the perfect gift to celebrate an engagement, wedding, anniversary or the arrival of a new baby.

Each unique piece is made with an original map from our collection of old maps and atlases. The raised heart shows a town, city or area, and the cut-out coordinates give an exact location within the heart. It could be the place where someone was born, where a couple met or married, or where they live.

You can either give us the exact latitude and longitude or tell us an address and let us find the coordinates for you. We can also add name(s) and date below the map if you wish.

The Bespoke Map Papercut is available in the Little White Dog shop unframed €50.00 (plus postage) or framed €75.00 (plus postage).

Click here to contact us about creating one for you.

We'll need to know:
-Location for the heart (e.g. town, city or place anywhere in the world)
-Coordinates for a specific location within the heart or an address/landmark
-(optional) Date and/or name(s) to be handwritten below the map (e.g. "Tom & Mary" and "24th July 1972"

Crafting Type 8-12th March 2012

Suzie's work is featured in an exhibition entitled Crafting Type at The Factory, Barrow Street, Dublin from March 8th-12th. The exhibition, curated by Orlaith Ross, "will cross the craft and design divide by exploring the craftsmanship of some of Ireland’s finest visual creatives".  Not to be missed if you are a fan of typography and beautifully crafted design!

Momentous Mementos

What do you do with all those used tickets, maps and flyers you pick up on your holidays? They might look just like scraps of paper, but each one is a little reminder of a perfect sunny day, a delicious meal, a private joke or getting utterly lost and accidentally finding a hidden gem. Rather than packing them away in a box, or even throwing them away, you could display them in your home as a reminder of carefree days and sunnier climes.This is the story of a paper sculpture made from mementos of a year-long globe-trotting adventure...

Occasionally I receive emails from customers asking if I would make letters out of their own maps. I've created quite a few sculptures this way and they've always turned out really well, so when I received a message from Shanna asking if I could make letters from "maps and other scraps of paper" I had no hesitation in saying yes.

In September 2007, Shanna and her husband Derek set out on a trip that would last 366 days, visiting 40 countries in Asia, South America, Africa and Europe. Shanna's idea was to make HOME with each letter representing one of the four continents they visited. I asked her to send me her maps and mementos, at least enough to cover one A3 size page per letter, with removable sticky notes indicating the important places and information on each one.

Within a couple of weeks a very exciting package arrive at the Little White Dog studio! When I opened it up I found four neat stacks of maps and tickets with all the relevant bits marked, ranked in order of importance and clipped together. Taking each stack in turn, I spread them out in order and photographed them as a reference in case things got mixed up on my desk.

In addition to maps there were entrance passes for world heritage sites, pages from theatre programs, transport tickets, business cards and printed napkins. Some of them even had little highlights and notes that Shanna and Derek had made while they were there. With so many pieces to assemble there was a lot of overlapping so the sticky notes showing the important bits of each memento were vital. They helped me to make sure that I didn't inadvertently cut out something significant, and since Shanna had ranked them in order of importance I knew which pieces to prioritise.

It became clear that the medium size (10cm high) letters mightn't be large enough to do justice to all the great mementos, so I consulted Shanna and she was happy to go for large (14.5cm) letters instead. The difference between the two sizes doesn't sound like a lot but the large letters are also wider and deeper, giving me a lot more surface area to use.

The result was a truly personal, one-of-a-kind, three dimensional story! I've seen how excited and emotional people get when they receive map letters showing their home place, so I can only imagine how Derek reacted when he opened this Christmas gift from Shanna, full of memories of their amazing journey.

You can read about Shanna & Derek's travels and see some of their 12,912 photos on their blog 'One Year on Earth' here. It's one of the most comprehensive travel blogs I've seen and is well worth a look if you're planning a big trip (or even if you're just in search of some escapism in the form of a virtual holiday for a little while!).

If you would like a paper sculpture made from your very own travel mementos why not send me a message here? Large (14.5cm high) letters similar to the ones shown cost €55 per letter and postage costs vary depending on the size of the project and destination. I can make any letter of the alphabet A-Z, and numbers are possible too. Every paper sculpture is different so if you have an idea you'd like to discuss let me know!

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)