Autumn Swap!

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A few weeks ago I took part in a Autumn Swap organised by the lovely Ingrid of Mythologising Me. In previous years Ingrid has organised a Yuletide Swap, which has always been fun! But this year she decided to do it as a Autumn Swap, so we would all have some nice surprise post to come home to on these cold dark nights.

In the swap I got a package from the total cutie Sarah and she got me loads of goodies. I loved it all but especially the Halloween nail stickers and the homemade acorn brooches!

Look how pretty the package was decorated!

I was making my package for Caitlin. Although I have never met Caitlin I was given a list of her interests and some of the things she had mentioned liking were cross stitch, cats and stationery so I decided to make her some cat yarn holders and some envelopes.  

It was so much fun putting this package together and knowing that it was going to brighten up someone's day. I enjoyed it so much that I have now signed up to Oh Comely's Perfect Stranger Project. I have received the information for the person I am putting a box together for this week so I'm excited to get started. 

Do you like receiving surprise post or do you know of any other exciting post swaps?

E

X

Cat Donuts

A few weeks ago I spotted a tutorial on how to decorate donuts to look like cats and, being a big fan of both, I instantly wanted to have a go. I found the tutorial on My Paper Crane which is actually one of my favourite websites. Everything Heidi Kenney makes is amazing!

As you can see from her tutorial she has used Peanut Butter Melts to cover her donuts. That sounds like a complete dream, but sadly at the time of making these donuts I didn't know where to buy Peanut Butter Melts. I have now learnt that Hobbycraft stock a whole range of different colours and flavoured Melts, so I will know for next time. As I didn't have Melts I just decided to use melted chocolate instead and I think it worked pretty well.

I would highly recommend making these, it's so easy and they look so cute. If you have any ideas for making your food look cute please let me know!

E
x

Kawaii Subscription Box

I signed up for a 3 month subscription to this Kawaii Box and every month I have absolutely loved my surprise package from them. Sadly this box is the last of my subscription, but I feel like it has been the best one yet!

It contained:

• Kabaya Fish Gummies
• Food Stickers
• Moonin Mini Pouch
• Fragrance Beans 
• Animal Greetings Card 
• Toast Squishy Charm
• DIY Bracelet Kit 
• Alpaca Pouch 
• Egg Mini Plush 
• Caplico Mini Ice Candy

I loved everything in this box but I think my favourite thing has to be these foam food stickers. They are such good quality, I can't wait to use them! I'm also a big fan of the addition of more sweets in this month's box compared to my other two boxes. I love all novelty sweets and can't wait to try the fish gummies. I hope they're not actually fish flavoured! The same company also does just a sweet subscription box too, which I have been tempted to try.

The boxes work out about £12 each, which I think is excellent value for the amount of stuff they include and the postage is completely free. Even though this is the last box I will receive for a while I plan on renewing my subscription in the new year. I just can't resist all the Kawaii cuteness!

E

X 

Halloween Baking

Hello!

I'm a huge of Halloween! Mainly because I absolutely love witches, so it is right up my street. I just can't resist buying all the exciting spooky themed sweets and novelty stuff in the shops.

Over the last few weeks I have been trying to add a bit of the Halloween spirit into my baking. The first thing I made was a butternut squash pie with a pumpkin face. You can make any pie you like and cut what ever pumpkin face you want into the pastry. It's super easy! I cooked the pastry for the top of the pie separately and then just added it as a lid once the rest of it was cooked.

Next I made witches' hat pasties. As with the pie, the filling for these can be whatever you like. I filled mine with feta, spinach and peas. I got the ideas for making these from here but decided to make them look bit more like witches hats by adding a little buckle at the bottom.

Lastly, I made these Bakewell tarts with spiders' web icing. I used this basic Jamie Oliver recipe. Although I just used the leftover pastry from my witches' hats to make the cases instead of using pre-made ones. I need to practice doing the spiders' web effect but I think you can at least get the idea. Here are the instructions from someone who has actually mastered it if you want to give it a go!

I would say I am a little bit obsessed with Halloween themed baking at the moment. I have even made a Pinterest board to pin all the good ideas I have seen on the internet. I'm definitely going to do some more before Saturday.

Have you been baking or have you got any ideas for Halloween themed food?

E
x

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!

Long time no blog posts

Hello!
It has been exactly a year and one day since we last wrote a blog post on here, oops! While we haven't been great at keeping this up to date, we have been super busy doing loads of other things. Here is a quick update of what we have been up to:

- Moved house
- Co-organised the first Northwest Zinefest
- Got HLF funding for Salford Zine Library
- Been on a dream holiday to Florida
- Been on holiday to Copenhagen
- and most recently we have launched a completely new spooky collection!

Hopefully we will get a chance to do some recap posts about a few of these things that we didn't get around to writing about at the time.

L x

Wirral Tour

Ever since forever ago I've wanted to visit Port Sunlight, the model village built by the Lever Brothers in the Wirral. This weekend I finally made it there and it was every bit as amazing as I was hoping it would be. You can read more about the history of Port Sunlight here. If it wasn't dead inconveniently located for work and things, I'd move to Port Sunlight for sure. Every single house in the village is beautiful in its own way. Phwoar! Go and have a look if you get the chance.

While we were in the area, Liz's mum and dad took us on a tour of the Wirral, which was much more exciting than it sounds. I made a little video* of some of the things we saw as we were making our way along the coast. First we're in Port Sunlight, then Parkgate, West Kirby, and then a bit of Hoylake before we went back through the Birkenhead Tunnel and back to Liverpool and then eventually back home to Manchester. Here's the video! Tell us what your favourite bit of the Wirral is, please. We very much enjoyed our day out on the peninsula.



*video features the track 'Secret Forever' by Haiku Salut from their lovely EP 'How We Got Along After The Yarn Bomb'. Buy it!!!

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!

Custom Made

Have you ever had a really good idea for something you would like to have made but then realised you probably couldn’t make it yourself? Then why not ask Young Explorer! Over the last year we have been making lots of custom made items, but for some reason we never got around to blogging about them. Here are some of our favourite examples of custom things we have made:

The first custom order we ever made was two embroidered brooches - one, a rasher of bacon and the other, a floret of broccoli. These brooches were made to give as wedding presents as the bride was a vegetarian and the groom a dedicated meat eater.

Another custom order/request we have made was for a brooch and an iron-on patch, based on the Khaki Scouts patch from the amazing Wes Anderson film Moonrise Kingdom, for a regular customer from America.

Then, lastly, we made this Oyster card holder with an embroidery of our favourite Positive Possum on.

So anyway, if you do have a nice idea and would like us to make it for you please get in touch and we will see what we can do. You can send us a Tweet, or an email or send us a message through our Etsy page.

L

Happy New Winderm-year!

Hello! Happy new year and all that. It's been a while since we posted anything, but one of our new years resolutions for 2014 is to post on here more often. So here we are posting about what a lovely time we had when we went to Windermere at the weekend.

We thought we'd take advantage of the fact that the Lake District would be relatively quiet at this time of the year and hopped on a train to Windermere. We stayed at a hotel called the Wild Boar, which has its own smoke house. We both enjoy eating anything that's been smoked so it seemed like the place for us. Anyway, smoked food aside, we did loads of nice things like: walk, talk, eat, look at Beatrix Potter stuff, walk, get on a chain ferry (The best kind of ferry) and stuff like that.

Here's a video that I recorded with my Digital Harinezumi camera that I got off Liz for Christmas. It records silent video footage with a kind of vaguely super 8 style aesthetic. Or something like that. The song playing while you watch thrilling footage of us doing things in the Lake District is Young Explorer by the Middle Ones. It's the song we named our zine/blog/corporate brand after! The Middle Ones have a split release with Best Friends Forever coming out soon and you should buy it. Okay, play the film!

And in case the moving images weren't enough, here's a collage of still photos from our little trip that I put together on Photoshop with my new found Photoshop skills.

To summarise, Windermere is very nice. It was mainly cold and dry and then cold and wet, but that's okay. What's your favourite place to visit for a weekend? Let us know!

S + L

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

Going on a Field Trip

Skyliner has been one of our favourite blogs for ages and ages. It appeals to our curious nature, is dead nice to look at, is wonderfully written and the articles usually include some pretty nice photos too. What more could you want? Hayley has recently written about the abandoned theme park in Berlin that we mentioned a few months ago, only her's is in more detail and has much better photos!

Hayley also does amazing guided tours of architecture in Manchester, and now you can buy your building obsessed loved one a gift voucher so they can choose which one to go on themselves. We want to go on the 'alternative countryside' one quite a lot. Anyway, our Liz was asked to provide an illustration for the gift voucher and there it is, poking out from behind the badges above. Nice innit?

It's a drawing of a building on Portland Street that Hayley has kindly written about for the next issue of Young Explorer, which is going to be about 'the past' and will be ready very soon we hope. Now stop reading this blog and go and spend the next few hours reading Skyliner instead.

See yer!

S

The Young Explorer Guide to Manchester

Now that we have been nominated for a snazzy blog award, in the 'Best City or Neighbourhood blog' category no less (Vote for us please!), we reckoned it was time we started being better at talking about where we live and how great it is. If only to try and secure a few more of those crucial votes (Vote for us please!).

Here's a map we put together of places that we think are nice and in Manchester. I think you might be able to add things yourselves? I dunno. Have a go. We have probably missed loads of cool stuff, too, and our choices are probably very predictable, so your input would be gratefully received! Feel free to leave comments, tweet, facebook or email (young explorer zine at gmail dot com, innit) us with places that you think people should know about.



See yer!

S

Haiku Salut and Sausage Gloves

Some people who read this blog mighn't even know that it's the online face of the Young Explorer zine (Buy here or here), which we aim to "publish" every 3-4 months or so. We've made three issues so far and we're currently in the final stages of preparing a fourth one, which is going to be about "the past".

The second issue, with the theme "collecting", is pretty much sold out now. I think we have one spare copy knocking about if you're quick. It had some good stuff in it! Phil Elverum talking about his book collection and swearing (once) and some nice illustrations and the world famous Haiku Salut talking about collecting gloves.

As we no longer have (m)any copies of the second issue to flog, we thought we'd post up the Haiku Salut bit so you can all see what you missed out on.Bits in []s are where we've changed the print article slightly so that it makes sense/reflects the fact that time has passed since the thing was written. Here it is! (Under the line!)

---

Haiku Salut are a Matlock based trio who make vaguely French sounding instrumental pop songs. Their wonderful debut EP 'How We Got Along After the Yarn Bomb' was released on 3" CD by Team Strikeforce last year and their first ever full length album 'Tricolore' [was released a few months ago and is a thing of beauty.]

They're well worth seeing live, too. The entire performance seems to be on the edge of catastrophe much of the time, which makes it even more exciting. I'm sure there's never any danger of anything actually going wrong, but there's so much instrument swapping and general excitement that their music seems almost unbelievable. Keep an eye on their website and go and see them if you can!

Anyway, as the theme of this issue of Young Explorer is about collecting, we asked them if they had any collections that they'd like to talk about. A couple of weeks later I received this in our email inbox.

A short tale of Haiku Salut and their journey of collecting things, or lack of, accordingly

We had initial reservations about writing a piece about a subject we felt little kinship with. Yeah, we have a collection of books - the Murakami books, the books that smell of old people and Sophie's selection of philosophical books about Mars, robots and time travel. We also have a small band collection of vinyl, The Beach Boys, Shirley Bassey, The Shins. There is also Louise's minor gaggle of bumbags and the extensive gallery of pictures of our dog in woolly jumpers[*please see below for picture of amazing dog], sunglasses and/or goggles. 

But... something wasn't quite right. It felt contrived. Worthless. These small collections wouldn't really tell a story about us. They would pale into insignificance beside other collections of it's kind. It was then that Gemma remembered the triumphant age of the sausage glove years and everything fell in to place. 

The story begins early spring, or late autumn of any year you'd care to choose. On the way home from the pub Sophie noticed a lone abandoned sausage glove (A workmans' glove with sausage sized fingers). This sparked a discussion regarding the absent owner's possible loves, fears and hopes. We passed the sausage glove by and wandered on home. 

It was then we started noticing sausage gloves everywhere, the clock was always 11:11. Soon the sausage gloves began to come home with us. Eventually the collection was getting slightly overwhelming and laws were passed to curb its growth. If two sausage gloves were found within ten feet of one another they would be considered a pair with the potential of being found by their previous owner and were not to be touched. We agreed that enough was enough when Louise brought a sausage glove back from Japan. The ultimate sausage glove.

Hot Property

Young Explorer have been all over the place recently. You probably haven't been able to go a single day without someone saying 'Have you heard about Young Explorer?!'. In case you have been living in a cave for the last three months and haven't caught 'Young Explorer Fever', here's a little summary of some things that we've been in.

Firstly, we did some talking for a bit about Victoria Baths Zine Fair in which I used a 'mild curse word'. Then we did some talking (And posed for some photos) for the Fred Aldous blog. Here's some of the ace photos that Elle took on the day:

And finally, our friend Stef Bradley (Who we must have mentioned about a hundred times on this blog now) included a little interview with us for a zine she was making for a zine workshop. As well as making the excellent Today Zine, Stef has recently started her own zine distro called 'Best Pressed', selling zines by other people she likes at gigs and other events. We're going to put a few of the 'How to make a zine' zines on the shelves at Salford Zine Library, so pop over and have a look if you get the chance. They're really good and have loads of really good tips on how to make your own zines. And some bonus exclusive Stef Bradley comic material too! Here's a glimpse of our interview that has been described as 'inspiring' and 'really great' by no-one.

If your famous blog/magazine/newspaper/television series wants to talk to us, get in touch! You can email us at youngexplorerzine at gmail dot com or tweet us @_YoungExplorer.

Bye!

S

Woodland Month Part Two: Etsy Treasury List

As part of Woodland Month on the Young Explorer blog, we've curated a list of our favourite woodland themed stuff on Etsy. Have a look!

Local Favourites Part One: Potato Scones

Hey! Did you know that the third issue of Young Explorer (Which is, according to the Shrieking Violet, "Manchester's loveliest zine") is now available to buy for a mere two quid? Well it is. The theme, this time, is food and there are loads of dead good things to digest in there. Like Laura Kirsop from Internet Forever talking about what she eats when she's on tour, a comic by Stef Bradley of Today Zine super stardom and loads more besides. There's more info here if you're interested.

There's also a super nifty bit in the middle of the zine about regional food stuffs that you would probably enjoy. We talk about our favourite local foods and then there's an annotated map of Britain with arrows and things on it, so that you know where all these nice foods are originally from.

To accompany that bit of the zine, we're going to do a series of blog posts where we attempt to cook each one of the six things that we highlighted as being our favourite regional foods. Then we'll share the recipe, and post some pictures of how things looked as we were going along. This first post is POTATO SCONES.

Potato Scones

Potato scones are pretty easy to make. We've intentionally started with the easiest recipe of the bunch and will probably forget about the harder ones on the list. But potato scones are dead nice and are a perfect accompaniment to any fried breakfast (Particularly if you're vegetarian or Scottish). I had them for the first time in Edinburgh years and years ago, in a breakfast that also included chips and hash browns. So much potato! You don't have to go so spud mad though - we've restrained ourselves here and served our potato scones with some nice beans and fried mushrooms.

Ingredients
500g floury potatoes
115g self raising flour
A knob of butter
A splash of milk
Sprinkle of salt

Step one - mash some potatoes. About 500g will do. Lots of recipes that we found said 'floury potatoes' are best, but we just bought the one kind of potato that the Sainsburys in Piccadilly Station sells.

Step two - mix in about 115g of self raising flour. And also a wee bit of salt. Och, I have only just started writing about potato cakes and already I've turned Scotch!

Step three - turn your flour/mashed potato combo out on to a surface that you've dusted with some flour. Give it a bit of a kneading, but don't go too mad. Just push it all together roll it around a bit until it resembles a big ball of dough. Like this:

I wish we could take amazing photos of our food, like those on Fish, Chips and Gelato. But we can't, so these will have to do.

Step four - roll out your ball into a pancake type shape. 1cm thick, perhaps? Quite thick but not really thick. Thicker than a pancake. If you've had a potato scone before you'll know what you're aiming for, anyway. At this point you can cut your big potatoey pancake into quarters and fry them separately. Or you can just put the whole thing into the frying pan and cut it up when it's cooked. I have no idea which way is the most authentic. Possibly the former, so obviously we did the latter.

Step five - if you're going for the 'stick the whole thing in the pan' approach, fry it for about ten minutes and then awkwardly slide it out on to a plate. Using another plate, flip the scone over and then slide back into the pan (We were regretting not cooking them in quarters at this point) until both sides have gone kind of golden and crispy looking . Then turn the whole thing out on to a chopping board and then quarter it. Don't worry, yours will look better than ours.

Step five - serve with whatever fried foods you fancy eating. Or I guess you could eat them on their own, but you know, that wouldn't be as good.

So what's your favourite regional food? Tell us about it. Please. We never get any comments on here! Alternatively, why not tweet us, talk to us on Facebook or follow us on Instagram and Pinterest?

Enjoy the nice weather!

S

Bradford Baked Zines

Last weekend we had a stall at the Victoria Baths Zine Fair in Manchester. We were sharing a table with the super cool Stef Bradley again (Go and see the Today Zine exhibition at Landbaby, Liverpool now!) and had the dead good Sugar Paper as next door neighbours too. Here's Liz and I looking dead chuffed to be there:

Even though she wasn't selling at the fair, we also managed to nab ourselves a copy of the excellent 2nd Hand Zine by Isobel Harrop and a badge to go with it! I would definitely recommend getting a copy of the zine (for 50p!) as soon as she makes them available to buy online, which will be soon, apparently. It's all about good places to go to buy second hand stuff and is both educational and fun.

Anyway, the gist of this post was supposed to be about Bradford Baked Zines and I'll start talking about that now, okay? While we were at the zine fair we got talking to Jean from Loosely Bound about the Bradford Baked Zines popup shop that's opening in an empty shop in Bradford between May 13th and 19th. We've sent along a big bundle of our zines so if you're in the area, pop over and have a look at all the ace self published stuff available to spend your money on.

As well as selling loads of cool stuff, they're also hosting some zine related events too. Our pal Natalie Bradbury, who does the Shrieking Violet zine, is doing a talk and so are loads of other people. All the events are free and are sure to be really interesting. I wish there was something like this in Manchester! Well done Bradford for sorting this out.

In other shop/retail related news, we're now selling mountain cushions at the brand new Nottingham Craft Mafia shop in, uh, Nottingham. We haven't been yet but, according to local sources, it is full of dead nice stuff. You can also have a look at our equally brand new 'stockists' page to see which irl places you can go in order to purchase things that we have made.

See yer!

S

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