Vendor Profile: VAMP productions

VAMP Productions is the brainchild of Lucy Rendle. Specialising in pen & ink, watercolour and collage, Lucy uses the combination of these different media and their effects to create unique and fascinating artworks. Inspired by the imagery and style of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and the Victorian Gothic, Lucy’s pieces often include images reminiscent of the fairy tale, albeit in its darker aspect.

This creates an otherworldly or surreal effect within work which draws on modern day symbolism to reflect on the female form, women’s role in society, and the relationships between mother and daughter. By combining such subject matter with a mixture of style and media, Lucy is able to create beautiful pieces that resonate on a number of levels, offering something new and different for every perspective.

More information can be found on her website.

Vendor Profile: Artist’s Palette Yarns

Juliet trained in Fine Art, focusing on printmaking and sculpture. Although she was always interested in textiles, inspired by the fine craftsmanship of historical textiles and fascinated by colour, she gave up knitting jumpers in the 80s when she couldn’t get them to fit properly. That changed about 7 years ago, when she took up the needles again, only to find that the colours that she wanted to work with, the handpainted skeins that she saw at festivals, were surprisingly difficult to get hold of. She went on a dyeing workshop, fell in love with the technique, and Artist’s Palette Yarns was born.

Artist’s Palette now produce a fabulous range of luxury fibre and yarns, all individually handpainted by Juliet.

Ideal for a whole range of knitting, felting, spinning and crochet projects, their vibrant and subtle colours are just astounding, and as Juliet’s skills and interests have developed, so the range has grown.

She’s been working backwards – from knitting, to dyeing, to spinning, and now includes a collection of fibres for spinning in her stock. She’s currently learning more about different sheep breeds and their different fibre characteristics, and realising that the more you learn, the more there is to know. I’m very excited to see what happens next – and how the Artist’s Palette Yarns collection will grow and change as a result of this understanding!

More information can be found at the website.

Vendor profile: Mrs McIndoe

Mrs McIndoe creates her papercuts and papercrafts from her home in Worcester, where she can see the racecourse, the river and rowers, trees, trains and tarmac, sky, swans and shoppers, cyclists, children and cars, woodland, wildlife and windows. In such a setting, inspiration is easy to find.

Her work essentially begins with paper, scalpel and cutting mat. Using no pre-drawn lines and rarely determined to follow a set idea, Mrs McIndoe cuts all her work free-hand, and is therefore free to follow her scalpel where it leads! Although some work is thought about considerably before hand, the work she enjoys most is creating something from nothing, just by following a train of thought as she cuts.

Her first (and possibly formative) experiences of cutting paper was as a child, bored at the craft table, fiddling with the scissors instead of the pens – nothing much came of it. She was later exposed to scalpels at university whilst studying Land Administration and later Construction Management (with technical drawing and model making). These adventures continued when studying Interior & Spatial Design at Chelsea College of Art & Design.

Since then, Mrs McIndoe has been busy working for the man and having babies, and making birthday cards for family and friends with much inspiration from her great friend Simon Fry (who is far too modest to exhibit his work!) and then last year she created a great piece of work for her husband for Valentines day, which got her thinking.

Add a further dash of inspiration, in the form of a visit to the V&A with a good friend, Annabel, to mark her birthday, and Annabel’s encouragement, and Mrs McIndoe’s papercrafts were born. She can be found on facebook here; and more information about her and her artwork, is available from her website and her blog

Vendor Profile: Rosie Smith Illustration

Rosie Smith graduated from Westminster University in 2010 in Illustration. Currently working in design, Rosie’s continuing love for illustration and art form the basis of her work. Drawing on detailed features of the world around her, Rosie’ artwork often includes elements of reportage style and observational sketches.

These may present a wry comment on the world or people around her, or be inspired by comments overheard on her travels around Malvern, and always intrigue and entertain! She use a wide variety of media in her work, which tends to use animals in place of human subjects, and specializes in line drawing. Her series of illustrations of buildings and architectural features is beautiful, and the London landmarks are soon to be joined by a series of more local designs.

As well as producing these illustrations Rosie has a massive obsession with buttons and this is the focus of the items she has created for the Bizart craft fair. Cards, bags, coasters and many more items will feature hand made buttons and will be sold from her stand.

For more information and other examples of Rosie’s work, see her blog: www.rosiesmithillustration.blogspot.com