Do you think I'm spooky?

A few weeks ago we launched a new collection of spooky products. The collection is inspired by one of our all time favourite TV shows the X Files*. The collection consists of some large and mini temporary tattoos and three new embroidered brooches. Both the ghost and alien head have, excitingly, been embroidered using glow in the dark thread to add that extra spooky element to your outfit on these dark winter nights.

You can view the whole collection in our Etsy shop here. What creeps you out and stops you from sleeping at night? For me, it's the weirdo black cat who lives next door.

*we're also making an X Files zine, which is taking a long time to finish, but it will be ready soon!

Bird in Borrowed Feathers

Hi everyone, are you alright? I am off sick from work so I'm taking this opportunity, between coughing, sneezing and wiping my nose, to write a little blog post. Sorry it's been so long since the last one! A lot has happened since February 9th. The new issue of Young Explorer came back from the printers for a start (BUY A COPY NOW).

That's all very exciting and everything, but I want to talk to you about Nottingham today. Do you live in Nottingham? Do you live near Nottingham? Are you going to be popping to Nottingham for a day out any time soon? If so, we'd totally recommend visiting Bird in Borrowed Feathers. They've been stocking some of our stuff for a few months now and it looks like a lovely little shop. We wanted to get to know Hannah and Georgie from the shop a little bit better, so we asked if they could send us a little biography of themselves and the shop for us to put on the blog. And here's what they sent back!

Born from a shared love of vintage, handmade and craft, Bird In Borrowed Feathers was started in the summer of 2013 by Hannah and Georgie, two sisters from Wiltshire who now live and work in Nottingham.Bird In Borrowed Feathers is a brand new shop in the centre of Nottingham, showcasing a fantastic collection of local and national designers. We sell a beautiful selection of handmade products including cards, jewellery, prints and home accessories.We are proud to be able to support and promote a fantastic range of established and up and coming designers, both local and national.

Georgie recently graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a degree in Italian, French and Linguistics, she's since been putting her language skills to use translating our Bird In Borrowed Feathers Etsy shop! Georgie has always been passionate about buying handmade and vintage, this can be seen in the dedication she has for our new venture.

Hannah also graduated from Nottingham Trent University, in 2011 with a degree in Decorative Arts. She has since set up her own business, working from home, designing and illustrating a range of tote bags, greetings cards and jewellery. Her dream in life was to open a shop selling beautifully designed, handmade products, lucky for her this has now come true!

So pop in to Bird in Borrowed Feathers and let us know what you think! Or if you want to sell our stuff at your lovely craft shop in London/Newcastle/Sheffield/Paris/New York or wherever, get in touch. You can see our whole "range" on our Etsy page.

See ya!

December Update!

Hi everyone! Apologies for our absence from the "blogosphere" of  late, we have been a little bit busy working on a number of things that have been pleasant but time consuming. We'll be back to normal soon but thought we'd check in and update you on some exciting* news.

The Swapsies

The best pop folk band Liverpool has to offer have just released their new EP which is accompanied by a neat little zine that us two made especially. The EP is called 'Sparrows' and the zine we did is called 'Feathered Migrants. It's based on the lyrics of the Swapsies song of the same name. Andy from the Swapsies has written all about our little collaboration on his blog, so you should read that. The EP is great so you should definitely buy it. You can also buy it from us here. There's going to be a launch party in Liverpool on December 12th and you can find out all about that buy clicking here.

Young Explorer Etsy shop

We've been busy updating our Etsy shop recently and now you can buy even more great stuff for yourself or for people you like (Note! If you are buying Christmas pressies, make sure you place your order in good time so we're able to get the stuff to you before the big day). You might have noticed that the photos on our Etsy page are quite nice now, and that's thanks to the wonderful Elle Brotherhood who did them for us.

In other news, we'll also be selling things at Liverpool Winter Arts Market on Saturday December 7th too! You should come, it'll be great. 

Anyway, that will do for now. We'll be posting more from now on, I promise! 

*depends on how easily excited you are

Blog and Buy Sale Summer Wish List

Apparently it is supposed to be summer, although looking out of the window of our flat you wouldn't know it. While we may not actually get any prolonged periods of nice weather this year, the super excellent Blog and Buy Sale website have featured two of our things (Our owl tattoos and our mountain cushion) in their Summer Wish List. We're very excited about this! Here is some pictorial evidence, just in case you think we're making stuff up:

We are extremely excited about this because we are featured with loads of dead talented designer/makers. Here are our top five things on there that haven't been made by us:

What Ever the Weather brooch set
Chunky Knit Hair Band
Book Stack Illustrations
Dog and Fox Ceramic Mug
'Diane' Twin Peaks Brooch

There's plenty more ace things on there too. Go and have a look!

x

What a Hoot!

We have a couple of zine/print fairs coming up at the end of the month. The first is at Manchester Art Gallery on the 31st of this month. It's free entry and there's all kind of other things going on, so it'll be worth popping along for an hour or so! What else are you going to do on a cold Thursday evening?

Then we're going to be at the second ever Inprint fair at the Shipping Forecast in Liverpool. That's on February 3rd and we're going to be sharing a table with the super duper Today Zine. The last one was really good (One of our favourite illustrators Caroline Dowsett was selling stuff, so we hope she's going to be there again this time!).

We've been dead busy recently so we haven't quite had the time to do another issue of Young Explorer. As a compromise, we've put together a mini owl-based zine called 'What a Hoot!'. You can have a look at it if you like. 

It's got some nice owl illustrations inside and some words that you can read and it's been hands stitched and that. I think we're going to be selling them for £1.50 or you'll be able to buy them with a set of four owl badges for £3. Bargain!

See yer!

S

Landbaby!

Exciting news, everyone! Over the Christmas period we received an order from the amazing Landbaby shop in Liverpool. I spent the entire Christmas holidays working away to get the order ready to take over for them and last week we delivered the first load of stuff. Here's the entire order!

Landbaby has been selling wonderful handcrafted stuff at the Bluecoat since about 2008. It is definitely worth a visit. I have been going in there for years, so when Claire got in touch to place an order for my things it was like a dream come true!

Landbaby tweeted this photo of the shop earlier and you can see our mountain cushions on the top right shelf and our little mountain brooches hanging just below.

So the message to take away with you from this post is a) GO TO LANDBABY and b) SPEND SOME DOSH!

Bye!

L x

Today by Stef Bradley

Last weekend we took our stuff to sell at the Leeds Zine Fair. It was alright! We sold quite a bit of stuff and spoke to some nice people and generally had a pretty good time. While we were having a look round the other stalls, we came across the amazing Today zine, which is written by Stef Bradley, and we liked it so much that we thought we'd devote an entire post to it. Here is that post.

Today is a comic of sorts, full of dead funny drawings that document what its creator thinks about on a day-to-day basis. From silverfish infestations and poems about winter being absolutely bobbins to the awkward situations that ensue when you take over a recently deceased person's job. It's all there. If I was writing for a high brow publication, I might describe it as a 'celebration of the minutiae of everyday life'. That's right! The minutiae!

Here's a bit of Today volume one for you to have a look at. Stef was selling the first two volumes of the zine in a pencil case type thing for FIVE POUNDS (Keep reading for sample photo of that). Bargain! We bought one and read and re-read both volumes on the way home. Liz can't even read on public transport without feeling sick but she flipping well had a go, such was her desperation to have another look.

By the time we had arrived back home, our zine super fandom had reached fever pitch. The first thing we did  was try and look for the zine on the internet. 'Surely there must be some kind of web presence for such a talent?' said neither of us. Sadly this turned out not to be the case, so we were unable to do any kind of research (Hence the poor quality of this post). So then we just had to send an overenthusiastic email to Stef, just to let her know how great her zines are. Not only did she reply, she actually sent us a free copy of the third instalment of Today! Amazing. Here's a photo with all three volumes of the zine (In order!) and the pencil case thing that comes with the first two.

As mentioned above, there's no website/blog/anything for Today at the moment. You can, however, buy stuff from Stef by emailing her if you like! Just send orders and compliments to stef bradley at live dot co dot uk and I'm sure you'll be able to come to some kind of agreement. Alternatively, you'll be able to buy the zine at the Inprint Liverpool Print Fair, which is going to be at the Shipping Forecast pub on December 9th. And in even more exciting news, she's going to be sharing a stall with us! You'll only need to visit one stall to buy all your zine related Christmas presents.

In other news, you can buy the new issue of Young Explorer on our Etsy now. It's got Phil Elverum, Haiku Salut, buses, illustrations, a competition (!) and a thing I wrote about my grandad's record collection that, if you squint, could almost be described as 'poignant'. Get on it, or something like that.

See yer!

S

Manchester Print Fair and New Etsy Things!

I am writing this post very quickly as we need to leave to go to the Manchester Print Fair in about ten minutes. I just thought I'd quickly update all of you on the new stuff we have in our shop! We're debuting the second issue of the zine today, which includes all kinds of exciting things like: Phil Elverum, Haiku Salut and the Manchester Transport Museum. 

We've also got some sexy owl greetings cards available, and, some owl badges too. The owl badges will be available to buy irl today, but you'll have to wait until next week to buy them online. Here's a picture of all the owl related things we have:

So either come down to 2022NQ today, or head over to our Etsy to get spending your hard earned.

See yer!

S

Lancaster Creative Market

Last weekend, in an attempt to get really rich, we went over to Lancaster to sell things at the Lancaster Creative Market. And to see our friend Rebecca, who has been mentioned already in countless blog posts, who lives there. Neither of us had been to Lancaster for a while so, as well as being excited about selling things at the market, we were looking forward to having a look around town too.

Our (extremely full) table

There were lots of super nice stalls there. Reloved At Home was selling loads of amazing recycled things, like dolls and decorations. There was a woman offering massages! And a nice old man who was selling pottery that he'd made himself at home. 

The extremely good The Make District were behind our favourite stall. The Make District is a collaborative effort between three different Lancaster makers, Coo and Co, Little Lost Soul and Strange Bird Designs. 

As you can see, they had some very pretty things for sale. We'd advise you to pop over to their website and buy as much as you can afford. I'll definitely be having a look when I get paid next! As well as being dead talented and that, they're also lovely people. They were extremely supportive and enthusiastic about the things we were selling, which was very encouraging. They even agreed to pose for this photo, complete with the copies of Young Exlorer issue one that they'd bought.

It was a lovely day, all in all. We sold quite a few things (Our cards were especially popular) and we spoke to some very nice people. Definitely worth going. And then we had a dead nice time in Lancaster too. We stayed at Rebecca's house and then went for breakfast at the Whale Tail Cafe, which is a vegetarian cafe in the middle of Lancaster. And very tasty it was too.

Remember to go and have a look on our Etsy and buy some things! Also, I can't remember if this has been mentioned already, but we're making an appearance at the Manchester Print Fair at the end of October. Last week we were their featured seller, which was exciting. Go and have a look on their Facebook and mark yourself down as attending. We're going to have issue one and two for sale, as well as an A6 zine about boats, some greetings cards and other bits and bobs for sale. 

Alright then, see yer!

L + S

Embroidered Badges!

You can now buy these amazing hand embroidered badges on our Etsy! They're pretty reasonably priced and they'll definitely brighten up your day. If you don't want to faff around with Etsy, send us an email at youngexplorerzine@gmail.com. Or if you want to come and talk to us/pay with hard cash, you'll find us at the Lancaster Creative Market on Saturday September 22nd.

Cheers

S + E

New Shop Stuff!

Check out the new cards we've got for sale in our ETSY SHOP! Then buy them! If you don't particularly like Etsy, send us an email at youngexplorerzine@gmail.com and we can come to some other kind of arrangement if you like. You can still buy our badges and zines and things there too. And next week we're launching some embroidered badges for you to spend your cash on too. Here's a sneaky preview.

Left: Bear, fox, cloud, badger, mountain
Right: Small cloud, small bear, small mountain, small badger, small fox, acorn

S

Young Explorer Stuff

One day we're hoping to be able to retire and live off the money we make from selling zines and badges and things. Now you're able to help us achieve this goal! We now have an Etsy page where you can buy the zine and badges and things like that. Eventually we'll have other things for sale, so start saving up some cash.

If you have a look over on the right hand side of this here page, you'll be able to see some little thumbnail type pictures of the stuff you can buy. Or you can just CLICK ON THIS LINK.

(y)