Caroline Walker - artist

Earlier this month at the Spring Fair I came across an artist called Caroline Walker who makes beautiful paintings of farm animals which she then prints onto home wear and gifts. 

The paintings themselves are quite big and are very detailed with colour and some metallic flecks throughout. After seeing these stunning paintings I went home and had a quick look online. She sells her products to the public through her own website which is http://www.caroline-walker.co.uk and she is based in Cornwall. All of her products are made of high quality materials including fine bone china and 100% cotton fabrics. 

I think that her work is amazing and if I had the money spare I would definitely want to buy one of her paintings with 3 cow heads that I saw at the show. It is clear from being able to look at her work up close that she spends a lot of time creating each piece. I did get to meet Caroline herself at the show and I have to say that she is one of the nicest people that I have ever met. She was very friendly and welcoming and it was clear that she loved her work. 

Spring fair 16

I visited the Spring Fair trade show on Wednesday so that I could find out what trade shows are actually like. There are thousands of companies selling everything from home wear, to gifts and fashion accessories.

There is also a fashion catwalk in order for some companies to showcase their accessories to potential buyers. 

The whole event was much bigger than I expected and unfortunately I didn't have time to look round everything as there is simply too much to see in just one day. But I did get to see some beautiful companies that I had never heard of before. 

One of my favourites was a company called Melli Mello which is a Dutch brand who sell gorgeous patterned bedding and home accessories. 

Another favourite of mine was a company called Fallen Fruit who sell these stunning pouffe's which would be a lovely statement piece for any room. 

After researching these when I got home I found that some of them are also available to the public to buy at notonthehighstreet.com. 

This chair was probably my favourite piece of the day as its so unique to anything that I've seen before.

All in all it was a lovely day out and I'd definitely visit another trade show again, especially if I got the chance in a business situation in the future. 

National Wedding Show - Birmingham

For the last 4 days Nicola, Amy and I have been working backstage at the National Wedding Show in Birmingham as dressers. Although the days have been long and the work has been stressful, I've had an amazing few days getting first hand experience of what it is like behind the scenes at fashion shows.

We had around 20 seconds between each scene in which to get the models into their next outfit and make sure they had all of their accessories for each scene. This was sometimes tricky as buttons etc would be difficult to do up in the short amount of time that we had, so we all had to help each other out between scenes that we knew had difficult changes.

The dresses on the catwalk were all gorgeous and designers such as Aflred Angelo, Nieve, and Twinkles jewellery had their products displayed on the runway. I'd recommend anyone thinking of entering this industry to definitely do some work experience like this as it was definitely not as I expected it to be and I had a great time. The models were so much more friendly than I expected and the backstage environment is much busier than I thought it would be. Overall a great experience that I look forward to doing again in the future!