Blue Tits Mug by Julian Williams
SKU: NTB32
This is the first of series of bird watcher gifts. The series will include cards and mugs featuring birds that visit the bird table.
The Tall mug shape is exclusive to Two Bad Mice and was first commissioned for sale from Jan 2016.
These mugs make ideal gifts for bird lovers
Fine Bone China
Ideal size for tea or coffee
The exclusive shape is very modern
The come with pretty gift boxes
Many have cards to match the mug
Vol 300ml Height 11cm Width 6.7 cm
Nuthatch card by Julian Williams
SKU: B35
Eurasian Nuthatch (Sitta europaea)
Greeting card with coloured envelope featuring common visitors to the bird table
The cards and mugs in this series are ideal gifts and cards for bird lovers
TEXT written on the back of the card
The Eurasian nuthatch (Sitta europaea)
There are 24 species of Nuthatch. The Eurasian nuthatch has the widest range which extends from the Portugal, Scandinavia and the British Isles in the west to Korea and Japan in the East.
Nuthatches have sturdy dagger like bills which they use as a tool for wedging nuts and insects into crevices in trees before hacking them to pieces. This gave the birds the name Nuthacks which was the precursor of the modern Nuthatch. They have powerful claws that are well adapted for scurrying along the trunks of trees and these birds are unique in the avian world for being able to walk headfirst down a tree, earning them the nickname Devil Downheads.
The birds commonly venture out of their natural woodland habitat into our gardens to collect nuts from bird tables which they then hide and store for the winter. In spring they feed their young on caterpillars and beetles.
They build their nests in old woodpecker holes but if the entrance hole to their nest is too big they will plaster the entrance with mud to reduce the size. From this activity they have gained other names like Mud Dabbler, Mud Stopper.
More about Nuthatches
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/nuthatch/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_nuthatch
https://community.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/f/all-creatures/8980/21-facts-about-nuthatches
Great Tit card by Julian Williams
SKU: B34
Greeting card with coloured envelope featuring common visitors to the bird table
The cards and mugs in this series are ideal gifts and cards for bird lovers
TEXT written on the back of the card
The Great Tit Parus major
The Great Tit is the largest and most widely distributed species of tit. Its range spreads from North Africa to Scandinavia in the west to Japan and Indonesia in the East. There are over 30 different identified races with a wide diversity of plumage and patterning.
Great Tits are one of the earliest birds to announce Spring. You will see them high up in the bare branches of trees making their distinctive call “Teacher Teacher”. In folklore this loud song has been likened to the sound of a squeaky wheelbarrow and led to common names like See Saw (Norfolk), Sawfinch or Saw Sharpener. They also used to be known as Black Caps
In recent years food put out on bird tables and provision of bird boxes have contributed to great tits becoming more common.
A great tit lays between 5 and 11 eggs, with the female doing all the brooding. They feed their chicks with protein-rich caterpillars.
Goldcrest card by Julian Williams
SKU: B33
Greeting card with coloured envelope
TEXT written on the back of the card
Goldcrest (Regulus regulus)
If you have pine trees in your garden you probably have goldcrests too. These tiny birds with their sharp beaks and fiery crowns used to be called Gold Crested Wrens. They feed on insects and will come to suet balls.
In European Folklore goldcrests and wrens were known as “The King of Birds”. This mythology is reflected in the goldcrest’s Latin name R. regulus which means king. This has its origins in a very ancient story retold by Aesop and Aristotle about a contest amongst the birds to find out who should be their king. The title was to be given to the one that could fly highest. Initially all the birds expected the eagle would win, but as he began to tire a small bird that had hidden under the eagle’s tail feathers emerged and flew even higher proclaiming “Behold I am your king”
There are many other legends of goldcrest’s hitching lifts in the feathers of owls and other larger birds. An old English name for the goldcrest is the “Woodcock Pilot”, since migrating goldcrest would arrive a couple of days before the woodcocks. Suffolk fishermen called goldcrests “Herring Spink” or “tot o’er seas” because migrating birds often landed on the rigging of herring boats.
Chaffinch Card by Julian Williams
SKU: B36
Common Chaffinch
Greeting card with coloured envelope
TEXT written on the back of the card
The Common Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs)
Male chaffinches are amongst the most colourful birds to visit to our bird tables. The plumage of the hens is more subtle, being made up of warm hues of brown and green which make her easy to confuse for a sparrow. They have a pretty song which in the past made chaffinches a favourite songbird to keep as pets
Finches specialise in eating seeds but during the breeding season, before the plants have had time to seed, they feed their young on a diet of insects.
The bird acquired its common name “chaffinch” because large flocks of the birds were a common sight amongst the stubble in harvested corn fields. Afterwards they would visit the farm yards to feed at the heaps of discarded chaff left after threshing the corn.
The chaffinch’s Latin name ‘coelebs’ means ‘bachelor’ and was given because in northern Europe only the males stayed over the winter to maintain their territories, whilst their wives moved south. Other folk names include shell apple from old English sheld-appel (lit. multi-coloured finch) and spink, flackie and boldie.
by Julian Williams (founder director of Two Bad Mice)
I am currently working on a range of cards and gifts for bird lovers. It is a project that will be spread across a number of years. Creating something new is always a journey along a road that is never straight. The unexpected problems become detours that take us to new destinations we never envisaged when we set out .
My range of cards and ceramics will be centred on the birds many of us are familiar with in Northern Europe. I am choosing birds we see visiting our bird tables and on our walks in the parks of our towns and cities. Amongst Britain’s commonest birds is the Great Tit Parus parus. These lively nosey bossy birds have a huge range from North Africa in the South to Norway in the North, Ireland in the West to Korea and Japan in the East, and will be familiar to many of our customers.
The images start as a page of pencil drawings. I make the sketches using videos and from photographs. Once I have made a few drawings and got a feeling for the bird I can invent additional poses. I then scan the pencil drawings so that I can be amalgamated on a single sheet and worked with digitally.
I have no confidence as a painter, but in recent years I have begun to learn how to use painting software platforms like Photoshop and Corel Painter. Instead of using paint brushes I use a digipen which is like using a pencil on a big flat screen. Digipens are programmed to mimic the behaviour and properties of real brushes in very sophisticated ways.
There are hundreds of different digital brushes to choose from. Each brush has its own characteristics which can be adjusted and changed, for instance the digital paint can be made to behave as if it is thick or watery. I can ask the brushes to react as if it is painting over wet paint that mixes and smears with new colours. Alternatively I can apply the colour with a brush that behaves with the soft and floppy properties of a fine sable watercolour brush. The watercolour brushes add translucent colours that run and dribble over the wrinkles and dips of textured papers. A big advantage of working with digital brushes is that the screen can zoom out so that the artist can apply broad strokes of colour across the whole canvas and then be asked to zoom in to blow up a small area where detailed work is required.
I use a watercolour brush carrying translucent yellows and bluey-greeny-greys on top of pencil drawing . The basic colours are applied to all the images in a matter of minutes and I now have a small library of birds in different poses to choose from.
The next stage of the process is to paint some branches for the birds.
The outlines of the alder branches are painted directly on the flat screen. I am working on making an abstract pattern that distributes the vertical drops of the catkins, against the rambling branches and the birds which are dropped in front of the of the branches. In this case I have a layer for the birds, a layer for the branches The flying bird can be dragged and resized to a position where it will show on the front side of the mug, his partner will be on the back.
You might notice that I have added more layers of smeary paint to the birds so they no longer look like water colours. More paint is applied to add colour and fill out the branches.
Lastly I add watery blue background which sits on a layer behind the birds and branches.
This design is now ready to be printed out on a desktop printer and wrapped around mug so that I will see how the item will look after it has been manufactured.
So far I have made twelve mock ups included Chaffinches, Goldfinches, Swallows, Robins, Wrens, Mute Swans, Blue Tits, Long Tailed Tits, Coal tits, Bull Finches, Gold Crest. Here are a few samples of the designs
Here is a selection of how the mock ups look so far
A big advantage of digital painting is that we can re-use an image we have made for one prupose for another purpose. For instance the painting I made for a mug can be modified by changing changing the arrangements of the pieces, adding details, resizing and adding new layers. When I want to make a card I can reposition the elements image so that they work on a new portrait format. In this instance I also change the background too.
My image is finished, the last job is to research on the internet and find out interesting facts about the birds for the backs of the cards. This card was released in July 2019.
and here are some more images from the same series
Page of Greeting Cards and Gifts for Bird Lovers https://www.pinterest.co.uk/twobadmicecards/cards-and-gifts-for-bird-lovers/
Pinterest page : Gifts for Bird lovers
Jenny Wren https://drawingandillusion.blogspot.com/2017/05/jenny-wren-troglodytes-troglodytes.html
BullFinch http://drawingandillusion.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-bullfinch-pyrrhula-pyrrhula.html
Goldfinch http://drawingandillusion.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-goldfinch-carduelis-carduelis.html
Mute Swan: https://drawingandillusion.blogspot.com/2017/04/british-birds-mute-swan-cynus-olor-mute.html
Long Tailed Tits Card by Julian Williams
SKU: B31
Greeting card with coloured envelope
TEXT written on the back of the card
Long Tailed Tits
Aegithalos caudatus
Long tailed titmice are amongst our smallest birds. In winter they move from tree to tree in large family groups announcing their arrival with high-pitched, rolling “si-si-si-si-si “ calls and a distinctive trilled ‘tsirrup’. Once you’ve heard their call you’ll always know a flock of long-tailed tits is in the vicinity. They long tails are used as a counter-balance as they flit–tumble from branch to branch.
When Spring arrives they pair off to build nest balls of wool and moss bound and felted together with spiders webs. The nests are then lined with feathers and camouflaged with lichen flakes. Inside the balls a single female lays up to 15 eggs. If a broods fail, as often happens, the parents move on to help their brothers and sisters raise their extended families of nephews and nieces.
There was a time when every English village would have had its own name for these birds. Some names referred to their appearance: Long Toms, Long-tailed Muffins (Worcestershire), Hedge Mumruffins, Bush Tits, Kitty Long-tails, Fluffits, Juffits, Feather Pokes, Long-tailed Magsor and Millithrums (Miller’s Thumbs). Other names refer to their nests; Oven Birds, Oven Builders (Lothian) and Bush Ovens (Norfolk), Barrel or Bottle Tits (Berkshire) and Bum Barrels (Nottingham
Blue Tit Card by Julian Williams
SKU: B32
Greeting card with coloured envelope
TEXT written on the back of the card
The Blue Tit on Acer
Cyanistes caeruleus
Blue tits are well known for their love of collecting peanuts from the winter bird table. In the Spring they their breeding cycle to coincide with the feast of green caterpillars found on young Oak leaves in May. During the summer months the parents can be seen hanging upside down inspecting the underside of leaves for small grubs, spiders and aphids. Later in the year they support themselves on berries and seeds and return to the bird tables.
The most common English name Blue Titmice is of 7th century Norse origin: ttr = small and Mase = bird which together translates as “small blue birds”. Other common names include Blue Cap, Blue Bonnet, Blue Ox-eye, Blue Spick (N Devon), Nun, Tree Babbler (Cornwall), Pinchem (Bedfordshire), Tinnock, Yaup, Bee Bird (Hampshire), Willow Biter, Billy Biter (Midlands), Pickcheese (Norfolk), Tom Tit, Hickmall, Heckymal and Titmal (West Country).
(Guess How Much I Love You Gifts)
Anita was born in 1965 and brought up in Portsmouth. After leaving school she worked at a factory, shop and at a kennel. Her early ambition was to work with animals but she soon realised that without more academic qualifications it would be difficult to advance her career. In 1986 she married Andrew Jeram whom she had known from her school days and was then living in Manchester where he was studying palaeontology and the physiology of fossil scorpions.
Anita had always loved making drawing of animals. Her husband would come across these drawings around the house. One day, after finding a particularly lovely picture of a kitten in the kitchen, he urged her to take her talent more seriously. This conversation led her to apply to join an Art and Illustration course at Manchester Polytechnic. Her tutor on the course was David Hughes, an illustrator, who took the promising work of his pupil to Walker Books who shortly afterwards offered her a contract. Her first book, Bill’s Belly Button, was published in 1991 a year after she graduated.
Anita has written and illustrated her own books as well as worked with other children’s authors (see list below). Anita’s most famous illustrations are the ones she has done for the best selling classic Guess How Much I Love You written by Sam McBratney which has sold 28 million copies and been translated into 53 different languages.
The directors of Two Bad Mice discovered the illustrations for Guess How Much I Love You in a bookshop in Islington, a few months later Anita started working with Two Bad Mice (1996). At Two Bad Mice she established a reputation and big fan following for her witty cards (to date 20 million cards have been sold in many countries across the world). More recently Anita has designed ranges of ceramics and gift products.
Anita’s original works are sold through The Illustration Cupboard, Children’s Book Illustration and Francis Iles Gallery. The success of Guess never went to her head, she lives a quiet private life with her husband and three children and many animals near the coast. She does not accept private commissions because she is already very busy and wants more time to enjoy with her family.
Biography of Anita Jeram – Books
Bill’s Belly Button (1991)
It Was Jake (1991)
The Most Obedient Dog in the World (1993)
All Pigs are Beautiful (by Dick King-Smith 1993)
My Hen is Dancing (by Karen Wallace 1993)
I Love Guinea Pigs (by Dick King-Smith 1994)
Guess How Much I Love You (by Sam McBratney 1994)
Contrary Mary (1995)
Daisy Dare (1995)
Puppy Love (by Dick King-Smith 1997)
Animal Friends ( by Dick King-Smith 1997)
Birthday Happy Contrary Mary (1998)
Bunny, My Honey (1999)
All Together Now (1999)
In Every Tiny Grain of Sand (contributed illustrations 2000)
Kiss Goodnight, Sam (by Amy Hest 2001)
Don’t You Feel Well, Sam ( by Amy Hest 2001)
I Love My Little Storybook (2002)
You Can Do It, Sam (by Amy Hest 2003)
You’re All My Favourites (by Sam McBratney 2004)
The Little Nutbrown Hare stories (by Sam McBratney 2007)
Little Chick (2009 by Amy Hest)
Perhaps once in every generation an artist will stamp their personality on to a children’s book. In the 1990’s that book was “Guess How Much I Love you” by Sam McBratney which is as with much loved for its illustrations as its words.
Many of our greatest Children’s Classics have been born as a collaboration between writer and illustrator. When we think of Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll 1865) we always imagine John Tenniel’s illustrations of the little girl with flowing blond hair:
Original study for Alice 1864 from Houghton Library
When we think of Beatrix Potter’s books images of Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggywinkle and Jemima Puddle Duck come flowing into our minds
We cannot imagine Wind in the Willows (by Kenneth Grahame1908) without simultaneously remembering E H Shepard’s pictures of Toad
Toad of Toad Hall by E H Shepard 1908
If we think of Winnie the Pooh (by A A Milne 1926) we again think of E H Shepard’s illustrations
Pooh and Piglet by E H Shepard 1926
Peggy Fortnum has cemented her images of Paddington bear on to Michael Bond’s words
‘A Bear Called Paddington’ illustration Peggy Fortnum 1958
and when we think of Guess How Much I Love You by Sam MacBratney we immediately conjure up Anita Jeram’s pictures of The Little Nut Brown Hare with his dad. The book is already a classic that children who grew up in the 1990s are now sharing with their own children.
In many peoples’ mind Anita’s illustrations and Two Bad Mice cards are inseparable. We have sold about 25 million of Anita’s cards across the world since we started working with Anita in 1994. Most Greeting Cards have a shelf life of five years or less before they are discontinued and become the forgotten Ephemera of our pasts. Anita’s cards have broken that rule, for instance Cloud Watching which was released in 1997, is still a best seller in 2019.
Cloud Watching by Anita Jeram 1997
Anita has reworked her original ideas to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this card. In 2018 a whole range of Cloud Watching products; stationery, notebooks, paper pads, even umbrellas were released by Bekking and Blitz (Holland).
Anita’s work for Two Bad Mice has a different emphasis from the work she does for Walker Books her children’s book publishers. When Anita paints for Two Bad Mice she always has an adult audience at the forefront of her mind. Her jokes and images catch the attention of all age groups.
Twice a year we ask her for new ideas for cards. A few days later a package will arrive with perhaps ten sheets of closely packed illustrations with titles. These sheets are always a joy to receive and the number of ideas so prolific that we have trouble choosing which ones to use.
Sometimes, when we later come back to these pages, we find new jokes we did not notice first time round. Perhaps it is just our memory could not hold on to so many ideas all arriving at once.
Anita also makes illustrations for ceramics, like this one for a small mug called Fruit Tea.
Anita’s works are often well composed very pretty.
and when she wants it her work is elegant
But Anita’s primary interest does not seem to be centred on colour, composition, elegance or even humour. What makes her work different and interesting is the nuanced psychology that always embellishes her pictures with added meaning. In this picture the cat attention and thoughts are very clearly explained, what is extraordinary is the bird’s eye, which even though it is half hidden behind the wire of the cage seems to let us know what is going on inside the birds head too. This level of expression is very rare in illustrators.
We have only met Anita a few times, and we have always discovered her to be shy and quiet. At first she seems a different person from the one we see coming forward in her artwork, she is definitely humble. Suddenly she will make a quip that mirrors the humour and focus that is in her picture. Her pictures reflect her personality exactly, it is just that you cannot see her meekness in them.
Recently Anita has kindly embarked with us on a series of big projects expanding the range of products in new areas of interest. We have been working on bowls, linen, new mug shapes and tiles for Kitchen’s and Bathrooms.
Anita Jeram Cards : https://shop.twobadmice.com/product-category/cards-and-stationery/greetings-cards/anita-jeram/
Anita Jeram Ceramics: https://shop.twobadmice.com/product-category/bone-china/anita-jeram-mugs/
Cock Robin (Erithacus rubecula) Card by Julian Williams
SKU: H48
In medieval times animals were often given first names and personality traits. Amongst the common names for birds there are “Tom Tit“, “Jack Daw“, ‘Jenny Wren’, ‘Ralph Raven’, ‘Jack Snipe’ and ‘Phillip Sparrow’ (who was thought to be a common and lecherous bird).
The phrase ‘Cock Robin’ was probably well used in medieval times, although today we more usually call him ‘Robin Redbreast’. The red breast of the robin reminds us of blood as in the myth that it acquired its redbreast from the wounds of Christ on the cross. In Gloucestershire there is a 16th century stained glass window showing a robin wounded by an arrow The medieval lament “Who killed Cock Robin†tells the story of a gathering of birds for the funeral of a Robin that has been shot by a sparrow. The poem may have satirical origins because Robin is a shortened version of Robert.
There are other medieval laments for a dead birds, mostfamously the Book of Phillip Sparrow by John Skelton (1460– 1529) which is about a lady’s pet sparrow but is also a satirical lampoon of the liturgical office for the dead.
