London ! ! !

The research trip to London went really well, I managed to get all that I needed minus some letter stamps, and found a lovely parchment paper to print some of the pages of the publication on, I'm not sure I've bought enough but now I know what I want and will order it off there website. It's just a shame that I have been unable to buy the paper in bulk, or had a greater variety of papers to choose from, as there seems to be a massive gap in the market for retailers of recycled craft papers in their unbleached form.

I also visited Muji, a shop I love for its simple design and layout, both of the store and the products they sell. I wanted to get some cheap notebooks for the stationary project I am hoping to start next weekend. I managed to get three different sized notebooks in the end. If they are successful I may make some more to help raise some money for GFW.

My trip to Covent Garden and Columbia Road was a resounding success, I love wandering down all of the back alleys that litter London. Columbia Road in Hoxton, was a new find, the entire high street was made up of independent boutiques and stores, including Ryan town. Not as big as I first imagined, the shop was Rob Ryan in shop form, I was really inspired by some of his laser cut pieces, so hopefully next week, after I've processed all of my designs on Illustrator, I'm going get them cut out.






















Covent Garden was crazy, so I couldn't really look around as much as I'd wanted, but made a point of visiting the Paul Smith store, and Ted Baker opposite, there window displays were really eye catching and fun. I also found the Mulberry store, which had beautiful window displays, using illustrated cut out cardboard mannequins with the products.






















My first stop of the day was at the Imperial War Museum, a bit of a job to find but got there eventually. However I was slightly disappointed at the lack of information on Make Do and Mend and The Land Girls, although there was a bit of information on CC41 which was good. There was a lot on rationing and the Grow Your Own initiative that was launched during the war. There were some really good posters that I managed to get some images of, I also got a ration book, I.D card and Cloths ration book, something that could be transferred into the layout and design on Dandy-Lion.




























I also found a really good book in the gift shop, devoted to cooking during WW2 on rations, which I'm going to get, as it will be really useful for the 'Grow Your Own' feature.