little- Alison Erika Forde

My good pal Alison is having her first exhibition of 2011. Her third solo exhibition, 'little' at Manchester's Greenroom.

The exhibition opens on Wednesday 19th January (that's this week folks) and runs until Saturday 12th February, with a preview evening on Wednesday 6pm-9pm.

It's a chance to see some of the work in Alison's 'Smotherland' exhibition and a few you haven't seen, including a couple of new ones!!

At this rate I will be able to give up work and become her PA!

Role Models

I am currently reading John Waters - Role Models. I picked my copy up at The Southbank centre when I was at A John Waters talk!!!

Yes back in December Kandy and I went for a trip to the big smoke. It seemed everyone we knew was in London that weekend, mostly to attend the John Waters talk. We got there and saw some ace London folk and then ace Manchester folk. Once I got over the fact I was served peppermint tea instead of earl grey (milk in mint tea, WRONG!) and we eventually made our way to the correct building (missing first few minutes of the talk) I was all set.

It was ace to hear Johns voice and just a few metres in front of me. Hearing him talk about his role models and what inspires him. I particularly enjoyed when he spoke about a film he's trying to get made a children's Christmas film about a family that steal meat and sell it on. Everyone did that 'oh imagine that' laugh. My working class self didn't quite give the same laugh, it just sounds like the equivalent of your dad's mate down the pub that sells anything from meat to videos they nabbed from Asda.

A lot of what john said rang true and made me smile, but wound me up when I kept hearing that laugh from the audience. Do they love the king of trash because they like to laugh at poor people? Anyway I got over myself (shame the same couldn't be said for those asking questions, it's always the same at Q&A's, folk just trying to sound clever!) and I left smiling, purchasing the book.

We were going to get them signed but decided to stand around chatting instead, there was always the bookshop signing the next day. spoke to a whole load of awesome folk. My pal Patrick said it was weird how almost everyone he knew was there and what a huge dent in (good) society it would be if someone blew up the auditorium that nigh. Yes he is a bit of a goff!!

We said hellos and goodbyes and went to dance the night away. Had BIG fun dancing to all the best R&B and emo hits, dancing on tables and singing the live version of MCR with Holly, without discussing it first.

We made it back to our hotel safe despite the rain. But we were so tired, we didn't get to finish of the tea we made. I was even still so tired in the morning that i couldn't take advantage of the free breakfast and chomped on cereal never actually swallowing.

We got ourselves dressed and headed to Waterstones to get our books signed by JOHN himself. We got nervous as we reached the front of the queue. I tend to say stupid things when I meet the people I admire.

It turns out i didn't need to worry, I didn't say anything stupid, but John couldn't understand me anyway. I spent what felt like an hour spelling my name to him, he not understanding my northerness, me not wanting to correct him. This is what i got:

Well at least the picture turned out well: Had a great weekend in the company of all those who inspire me, and not just those who are film makers!

CRAFTMAS part one!

Hello Sugar Paper fans. It's 2011 now. Where have we been I hear you cry?

Busy that's where!

I had every intention of making a big deal about Christmas here, well because we love Christmas and if you don't craft anything all year then Christmas is the time to do it. I had this plan to upload Christmas crafts for you to do. But before you know it it was Christmas dinner and I was making Christmas dinner!!! I'm going to blame working in retail and using any spare time to craft gifts for all my favourite folk.

It seems my friends had the same idea. So part one of craftmas is a look at the amazing homemade and personalised gifts I received:

That's a MCR all the best pictures sticker book, a Party Poison mask (you might see this feature in part 2!), a Lego Patrick Bateman, engraved I AM SEW COOL scissors and a Sex Bob-Omb scarf. THANKS GUYS!!

KILLJOYS MAKE SOME NOISE (and other things!)

I'm not sure if I've expressed my love for My Chemical Romance on here. I bang on about a lot of other things, like Twilight for example, but i like MCR MORE THAN THAT!

And what I also like is things that have been hand crafted that relate to stuff I love, like this:

Yes that IS a cross stitched Party Poison (Gerard Way to the unknown). sadly this isn't mine, but My friend Holly received it from her friend Eva. It is the best thing ever and I wish it was mine.
What is mine though is this picture, made by my pal Nickie, it's us road tripping yeah!:

Expect a lot of MCR talk between now and February!!
Right I'm off to Christmas craft some more!

ALL NEW SUGAR PAPER SHOPPE!!!!!

Check out the all new Sugar Paper shoppe with all our zines, kits, stickers, tote bags and more!
Go here!

There's been a lot of this lately.....

(That's snow by the way, a lot of snow!!)
So keep warm by purchasing Sugar Paper #6 and making these rad things:

I Got Haterz Everywhere I Go!

The other week I went to see Paramore and B.O.B. It was at the MEN arena which i hate and we were sat waaaaaaaay up, but I learnt a few things that night.
The first thing I learnt was whilst watching B.O.B.

I enjoyed B.O.B a lot. I wasn't sure if Paramore fans would (their demographic being (probably) middle class young teen girls) but they did. He saved all his hits for the end, which I thought a little odd, but mid way through the set he played a song that due to it's beat can only be decsribed as a reggae song, I looked down to the sea of white teenage boys and girls dancing away. I realised he had gotten an arena of kids dancing to a reggae song!
Haley came on for airplanes (sadly no surprise appearance from good 'ol Rivers) and this was the start of my next realisation, I'M GETTING OLD!!!
I'm not a big fan of children, but from where we were sitting we could see a couple of ten year old girls who were so into Paramore, at one point I almost cried.

The big black curtain dropped and Paramore belted out Ignorance, Haley leaning back, face upside down to the crowd, swinging bare bulbs above, PARAMORE flashing on the screen behind and throughout Haley and the boys didn't disappoint. With her pink hair and dance moves, she was the embodiment of Gwen Stefani circa '99. But i had to keep looking at these young girls, they knew every word, the screamed when Haley came near, they held hands and thrashed their hair around and I thought how cool would it have been to be that young and seeing a gig like this, I bloody loved it. See I am getting old!

The last thing I learnt was on the way home. After the gig we went to see Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows (I learnt I quite enjoyed it despite only seeing three other of the films and not reading any books). But it was Nickie driving us home at 3am with the windscreen wipers on (when it wasn't raining) and getting pulled over by the police that I learnt not turning your wipers off is apparently a sure fire sign you are drink driving!!! Took a bit of convincing on Nickie's part, but she told the officer Kandy and i fancied Ron Weasley, this classed as proof she wasn't drunk driving!!! What is the world coming to!

And for the record, we don't fancy Ron!