Just When Stories

Entitled Just When Stories, the book is being published by Beautiful Books this August, in support of the campaign by WildAid and the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation against the illegal wildlife trade. The stories are focused around the questions "when will the irrational and cruel destruction of wildlife stop?", and "when we will take action to make it stop?".


This is a mock-up of the cover of The Just When Stories which we have had the honour of working on.
Anthologised by Tamara Gray these stories highlight the plight of just a few of the world's endangered species'.


This sad Chimpanzee is the illustration for one of the stories which is by William Boyd. I won't tell you what happens but needless to say its a brilliant story

This thirsty tiger features in a wonderfully strange and futuristic story by Lauren St John

A dream of Cranes by Nirmal Ghosh is a touching story of a child's wise concern for these magical birds that are endangered by human progress.

All these stories and more are in Just When Stories. It comes out in August and is available to pre-order from Amazon

Cockpit Arts Open Studio

Last weekend we had our Summer open Studio at Cockpit Arts in Deptford.
Who are these two good lookin' dames in the prime of their lives?
Why, thats us!
Brings to mind that wonderful song;
"Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony..."



Here are our chums Isaac and Hartwig enjoying a delicious sparkling beverage, which they richly deserve for having two As and a wig.

CAKES, Don't you just love them?

Calling all cake-lovers everywhere!
Greenwich Market is a Mecca for cake-lovers.
The lady above is Maria. Her cakes are quite, quite delicious.

Sonia might put down her chopsticks and sell you a delicious apple tart if you ask her.
She's famous for her dimples.


Here is Ms Cupcake with her yankee-doodle-dandy cake stylings. You can easily find her on Greenwich Market on Thursdays and Fridays when the warblings of Rosemary Clooney and the Andrews Sisters belt forth from the cunningly secreted sound-system on her stall.

Here is a Lush Designs cake. Its not real of course and therefore has negligible calorie content

Delectable collectables

On Thursdays and Fridays in Greenwich we are lucky enough to have the antiques and collectables market right outside the door of the Lush Designs shopHere's the very collectable Tony doing Sudoku, all casual-like
Here's Tony's tools. Aren't they so fabulously retro-manly?

TWEET TWEET

We at Lush Designs are not only busy and important - we also create many products which are popular and successful.
We have to make lots of these birds - here's a pile of them without their wings.
In the olden days we screen-printed them ourselves, cut them out individually and sanded them by hand. We got fed up with being covered in ink, having sawdusty nostrils and vibration white-finger, so we now get Ken and Les to print and sand them and a robot cuts them out.
Its not all glamour though. Look what lurks in the back of the shop. A load of colours on a shelf which are saying:
"Come on! Those birds aren't going to paint themselves. Stop grinning at customers and asking them if they're visiting Greenwich for the day. They're not interested in your opinion of the weather. Get in the back and start painting birds".
Yes, it is still we that gets our hands mighty inky and makes those wooden birds into the colours that our customers can match to their decor/eyes/favourite cardigan.
Then of course we have to put them in bags and all; a pleasant job that can be done whilst listening to The Archers or one's ipod.


A bowl of birds ready for sale in gay profusion at the Lush Designs shop

Here's one we made earlier
These little birds have been a best-seller for us for a few years now

Today in Greenwich

We're lucky enough to have a ringside view of Greenwich Market from our shop...
twisty and twusty
Wibbly wobbly
allez-up!
Blimey! Who's this noodle flinging fellow?He's Greenwich Market's very special noodle man Zhong Yi Liu, and he does this wonderfully mad thing which actually results in noodles which will be dinner for you in a matter of theatrical moments.

COMING SOON, yet another fabulous Lush Designs creation.

Going to a festival?
On a cruise?
To a ghastly playscheme where you have to learn to juggle and the playworkers all have body odour and emotional issues?

You might need one of these...



Available from Lush Designs from August.

You'll be hands-free so you can:

a. Rave expressively using all all four limbs whilst keeping your sanitising gel safely about your person.
b. Carry sunscreen and polo mints whilst gesticulating at ancient monuments/porpoises.
c. Fail miserably at juggling with your phone/young person's oyster card handy for a quick getaway.


Run, rabbit run.

The Great Shade of London

NEW! NEW! NEW!

You can now purchase one of these huge lampshades at the Lush Designs shop. They come in a variety of delightful colours and lovers of the macabre can choose the design which includes the drowned lady, whilst those of a squeamish disposition may go for the corpseless option.



This particular dead woman appeared in an earlier post when we first started working on this designs. Let that be a warning to those of you who are tempted to stray near the Thames in a state of inebriation.



For the enormously housed among us its the ideal statement piece. Imagine if this was displayed in one's baronial hall; the neighbours would be GREEEN with envy.