Merry Christmas

 Thank you to all our customers for your support throughout the year. Wherever the wind and tide have taken you for Christmas and New Year, we hope that have have a truely wonderful time.

 After a hectic few weeks getting boards finished in time for holidays and presents,  we are looking forward to taking a few well earned days off, at least that's the plan - Jason hotcoats boards this Christmas morning at his own peril!

Merry Christmas everyone.

Board Art - Brotherly love.

Just came home from a pretty disasterous day at work to find a parcel on the sideboard...............all Christmas presents recieved and accounted for so I am truely puzzeled! ........Wondering if maybe I had forgotten something in a wine induced ebay haze. Purchase panic sets in.

To my suprise when I opened it, I discover that it's a suprise Christmas present from my brother in Oz. Relief and warm heartedness come over me all at once.

It's a fabulous book, filled with all sorts of great surf, snow and skate art. In fact just about anything that you can do on a board as well as bios of the artists. I am truely touched - even more so as I have been such a shit, nagging about him never writing or sending postcards and the like. I am stunned and amazed at his thoughtfullness and feel even more crap for having only sent him a poxy card for Christmas. Guess this means I owe him that new fish his been gunning for even more. Little brother done good!

Amazing book. Fantastic images. Get yourself a copy to adorn your coffee table.

I now feel totally re-inspired, full of love and it's turned my day right around. Christmas drinks here we come!

This Christmas..............

Don't get stressed........

Take a deep breath........

Who wouldn't be happy to wake up and find this next to the tree?

Go for Launch! - Harbour 2 Harbour Book Update

UPDATE - HARBOUR 2 HARBOUR

Well done David and Jan on the almighty effort of managing to arrange and organise shoots for 150+ souls for the second edition of Harbour 2 Harbour - You very clearly love to set yourselves a challange!

It's official, after much anticipation a launch date has been announced!

SATURDAY MARCH 31st 2012 at 10am

CUSTOMS HOUSE GALLERY

PORTHLEVEN

Fantastic effort. I don't know where you both find the energy but I sense a well earned break on the horizon.

Well done again to you both. It's a wonderful legacy for the community to have in it's archive.

Lest we forget

Ho, Ho, Ho,

 

What a stunner!

We made this beauty for our Royal Navy service friends for their Mess Christmas Prize Draw.

We've be fortunate enough to do a couple of boards for them over the years, but this baby is by far the best one yet. 

Hopefully the lucky winner will think the same.

HARBOUR 2 HARBOUR

HARBOUR 2 HARBOUR

Following on from the success and reception of their pictorial book Harbour to Harbour in 2010, David and Jan have been working their socks off on organizing Harbour 2 Harbour - Part Deux!

It's quite a massive undertaking (well done for taking it on again) and as always fundraising is key.

Local support has been generous and so far raised around £7000 in sponsorships but another £5,000 is still needed to enable the reprint the first ( HARBOUR TO HARBOUR ) which were snapped up and enough of the new one ( HARBOUR 2 HARBOUR ). The more books that are produced will mean more money generated from their sale to go to charity.

Anyone interested in making a donation to the project or has any fundraising ideas should email / contact David or Jan  on david@davidpenprase.co.uk or phone 01326 562838.

Profits from the sale of these publications will go to Cornwall Hospice Care at Hayle and Edgcumbe and some to CHSW.



For the latest up to date information on the project please visit there website harbourtoharbour.co.uk

Chris Janes Art Exhibition

Popped along this afternoon to see Chris's exhibition of his art work (you may recall from my previous entry).


He has been quite the dark horse!


It was a lovely display of work that he has done in oil, charcoal and paint on driftwood - inspired of course by the lovely surroundings of the Gwithian Towans, where he and his family live.


I picked myself up a terrific little framed charcoal sketch of the towan chalets.




(image to follow)



I already have a space in mind for it in my little office nook, where it will be like a little window that I can gaze out of when I am busy tapping away the hours.


A big congrats again guys on it being such a success. I look forward to the next one.

Surf Fayre

Summer has made a return just in time for the holiday season.

What could be better than spending the day down at the beach and taking in some good food and music? Add to that the opportunity to get together with some of the finest surfboard shapers in the south west and see their latest designs and models and you know it's going to be a great day.

Unfortunately we won't be available on the day to showcase any of our own boards, but our good friend & fellow shaper Rich 'Butch' Hawkins will be there with a display of his work so pop by & have a yarn.

Rich, is the talent behind Hawkins Surfboards down in Sennen and has generously donated his time and shaped up an awesome little board which will be raffled off on the day to one lucky winner.

It's going to be a great day so go along and show your support to Russ and the guys for all the hard work they have put in to planning and organizing and making the stars align.

Proceeds in aid of charity Surf Action. More information about the good work that they do supporting combat veterans check out the website Surf Action

The UFO's have landed!

This sight tickled me when I came around the corner so I thought I would post it.

We're  busy working on more tables for designer John Miller and the team at Mark Products. This time around Jas is finishing coffee tables, which I have to say are really cool.

I believe these ones are going off to America when we're done but if you dig them too,  contact John at Mark Products for further information http://www.markproduct.com/contact/

(Image courtesy of Mark Products)

Local Art Exhibition

Local Towan's artist and surfer Chris Janes is having an exhibition of his work next month which will be well worth a viewing.

Chris, who previously has a small studio in Porthleven is a talented artist and when he is not found on a surfboard, he can sometimes be found applying his artistic skills to one.



Exciting new project

It's been a bit of a mad week. Lot's on as always.

For the past week Jas has been over at Homeblown, helping Tris with an exciting new project that he is involved in for furniture designer, John Miller.

John has designed a fantastic dining table called the 'shapers table', which made from polyurethene foam, laminated, glossed and polished, similar to the way you would do a surfboard with a few exceptions.

Scale wise, it was quite a bit bigger than anything Jason has laminated before and is the first piece of furniture he has been asked to do.  It's nice to do a variety of things and it's been really exciting to be involved in this type of design.

The final finished product is very impressive as you can see.

(Image courtesy of Mark Products)

You can check out John's profile and work at
http://www.markproduct.com/

Surf Art

Roaming the net, as you do and came across the work of Newquay artist Melanie McDonald, who's work I have been admiring and now added to my aspiration list.

Although she now lives in Brittany, it is clear in her work that she is still very much inspired by life along the Cornish Coast.

Check out her work at www.melaniemcdonald.co.uk/

HARBOUR to HARBOUR BOOK

HARBOUR TO HARBOUR

A fabulous publication which offered a snapshot into the history of many of the faces that live and work in the village of Porthleven.

The beautiful black and white portrait images were taken by award winning Cornish photographer David Penprase and collated by his wife, and partner in crime Jan over the course of a year and a half.

Published in February 2011, the Hard Back version of 100 sold out in four days and 1000 of the soft backs in under four weeks. 

The project was a huge success and sales from the book raised over £20.000 for the Childrens Hospice South West at St Austell (CHSW).


Releases -
Ports characters caught on film
Custom House Gallery
helstonpeople.co.uk

New Surfboard Logos

We have new logos!

Jas been wanting to change the logos for a while and after much fiddling we have at last come up with the following designs.

The most exciting prospect for Jason is that because we have control of the artwork he can now make adjustments to the colour and design to suit individual orders. We are now also able to size and shape them to suit the variety of boards we are producing, which was something we were unable to do previously.

The flexibility means that we now have a wide variety of logo designs to choose from.

Something to suit everyone I hope.

Follow us on Facebook

I know, I know, I seem to have a lot of unfinished things on the go - Not much pressure then!

I keep finding new and better ways to do things with the website the more I look, as you do. To that end, I have now set up a facebook profile and page for Jas and the biz. There is not much to contribute at the moment but I am working on changing that, albeit at a snails pace.

You can also now follow us as we go on

Whoops? 

Repairs, Repairs, as far as the eye can see......

It's been one of those funny couple of weeks. Lot's of work to get through and yet you never seem to much of a dent and the repairs just keeps on coming. Pipes bursting, tools blowing up, cars needing MOTing. Stress!

Jason has morphed into the great white sanding dynamo and is starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. A small sliver, but light none the less.

With any luck the swell will stay in a lull for the rest of the week before the phone starts to ring off the hook again or something else goes pop.

Website Update

Thank you everyone for your patience while I set about fine tuning our website.

A bg thank you to everyone who has contributed with feedback and images so far. I look forward to unveiling it, hopefully in the not too distant future and will keep you posted as soon as we are "live".

In the meantime, you can visit the homepage at www.levensurfboards.co.uk for a preview.