Thought Bubble and Leeds Print Fair

Yesterday I had a busy day having a nosey around Thought Bubble and print fair at the Corn Exchange, both were great for inspiration and meeting new people! 

Thought Bubble

After my shift on the LCA table I was able to have a wander around for free (yay for job perks). It was lovely to see some familiar faces including Kristyna Baczinski, Olivia and Naomi from our class, some of last years level 6 and also people that I met last year. It was so nice because Mike Medaglia recognised me from ELCAF in June, as well as Naomi a bit later; he said to her, 'Hey! I've just seen your small friend'(meaning me)haha!

Purchases

Unfortunately I could't buy as many things as I was hoping to because I'm so bloody poor at the minute, but I picked up some great zines and postcards. From the photo it is probably really obvious that I'm not a true comic-book nerd, although I do appreciate comic arts and think it's such an interesting culture, I was more drawn to more of the contemporary sort of genres. For example I love drawing plants, knitted things and animals, so I was able to get some inspiration from those kinds of stalls.

I was so happy that I got to meet Lize Meddings,creator of The Sad Ghost Club who is one of my biggest illustrative inspirations!!! So naturally I super fan-girled and told her how much I loved her work and how much I admire her strive to raise awareness of mental health and spread positivity. YAY! I also bought her zine, Two weeks in May which is absolutely stunning.

A new discovery that I made was illustrator, Peony Gent who makes beautiful hand crafted pieces from zines to ceramics. Peony also wins the award for best business card (in my opinion). The paper she has used was the one that feels like velvet, getting a 'ooh' reaction whenever anyone picked it up. Great marketing! The design was stunning too, love the line work!

Some more great discoveries include Mister Hope, Raid 71 and Emma Evans. I also met Maria Stoian, who's work I discovered at the Comix Creatrix exhibition back in March. Her book 'take it as a compliment' was one of the illustrative pieces that sparked my interest for creating awareness of social issues. Having spotted her work and instantly recognising it I became like an excited little puppy and probably scared her a bit...but she was really nice!

This is probably identical to my Thought Bubble post from last year, but it would be so great to potentially have a stall in the future, especially to maintain and make new contacts when I leave college. So although it didn't happen this year, there is always next year! And all of the years after that, too.

Leeds Print Fair

I also checked out the print fair at the Corn Exchange; it was a bit more of my thing than TB. There were some absolutely stunning prints for sale, but I had spent my budget earlier sadly so I just took a load of business cards for inspiration. There were so many beautiful lino-cut prints on display which made me wish that I was good at lino printing (I am terrible at it) so I might be brave and have another shot at it this year? 

Again, I met some great artists, as well as seeing some friends from Surface Pattern at their stalls. I just always seem to miss the memo for these kinds of things which is so disappointing. I even asked a few people at their stalls how they get to know about print fairs, and most of them said that once you do one you're sort of in the loop, so I'm guessing its a word of mouth thing? Anyway, I had a great time looking around and I'm glad that I went along. This is definitely something that I want to do possibly next year or in the future. Eyes are peeled!