Calling all curious creatives, crafty dabblers and make-aholics! Join The Craft Club for the chance to win a free subscription to oh comely. 

We’ve created the Oh Comely Craft Club for a chance to showcase your talent. It’s a club for creating, sharing and downright showing off to one another. 

Here’s how it works: 

1. We feature a craft in each issue of oh comely, and the current issue's craft will be the starting point for inventing something fabulous of your own. 
2. Once you’ve had chance to get your hands on the issue, we’ll post a call-out like this one, including a brief, and extra details and competition criteria, a.k.a. the small print, on our blog. 
3. Then, it’s over to you to get crafty! Our instructions will give you the basics but as club members we implore you to throw buckets of imagination at the brief to make it your own.
4. Post your finished creations and interpretations to Twitter using #OCcraftclub or the oh comely Facebook page. Alternatively, you can e-mail us at [email protected], including your name and blog/website. We’ll gather all your posts and pop them in an album online for all and sundry to marvel at.
5. If you’re the competitve type or just plain enjoy receiving prizes, you’ll be pleased to know that the submission that impresses us most will win an oh comely year subscription.
6. We’ll also post a selection of our favourites alongside their creators on our blog.

Craft Club Brief No 1: Origami Flower Arrangement

We thought that the origami tulip featured in our latest issue, would make for a beautiful beginning. We talked to origami teacher Sam Tsang, who certainly knows a thing or two about the Japanese craft, and currently runs monthly origami workshops at the Queen of Hoxton in London.

We couldn’t agree more with his sentiment: ‘Real flowers anyone can buy, but to fold one is personal’ – which is why, having felt a huge sense of achievement creating our own mini garden of tulips (currently assembled on our desk), we’d really like to see some of yours too.

Your mission should you choose to accept: Make a paper flower bouquet that’ll last a lifetime. That is if you don’t accidentally sit on it. Email your finished entry to [email protected] by Monday 20th May or tweet it with #OCcraftclub. 

Brief: a bouquet of origami blooms
Inspiration: Sam's tulip pattern
Closing date: Monday 20th May

Find Sam’s instructional video below, and visit his site here for other flower templates.

How To: Making Paper Flowers

This week, Bloom Theory’s fanciful range of camera straps caught our eye. Sure, they might sit closer in cost to your camera itself than your usual accessories, but don’t they just invoke the ridiculous desire to skip across meadows or meander through city streets, merrily snapping away? 

Our favourites include the ‘Dream Catcher’ ($110) made from crocheted lace with a dash of brown suede, and ‘All About the Beaus’ ($130), a unisex strap available with and without the bow tie.

Choose yours at Bloom Theory.

This week's reader photo is taken by Suzanne, who sent us a picture of issue 11 at V Festival 2012. Can you spot the rainy British weather?

"I was about to head out for a crazy day of music and fun," writes Suzanne, "and took a picture of my essential festival items lain out on the camping table—Oh Comely the most essential of the lot." 

Have you treated your Oh Comely issues to any trips or holidays? We'd love to see them and you can send pictures to [email protected].

Oh happy days! Spring has arrived finally arrived, and with it comes this week’s Five Questions and a Song, the column where we pester musicians with a quintette of questions and ask them to share one of their tracks for your listening pleasure.

Today we’re talking to Hoylake musician Bill Ryder-Jones, who earlier this month released A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart, his first album as a singer-songwriter. Once the lead guitarist for The Coral, he left the band in 2008 to pursue a solo career, in which he focused on composing more orchestral and instrumental-led pieces. This new record marks a development in his solo career in that now vocals join the arrangements; stories of the past delivered in hushed tones amidst the warm melodies. And here’s a fun fact: the album was recorded in Bill’s old bedroom, upstairs in his mother’s house in Liverpool. Have a listen below to the first single from the new album, ‘He Took You In His Arms.’

Photo: Bill Ryder-Jones by Matt Thomas 

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I’m Bill. I write music and I like dogs, books and football. I'm not very good at chitchat. I was born in Warrington and moved to the Wirral from Manchester when I was seven. I don't like loud people and I don't eat meat.

What was the song that started it all?

It’s hard to say really, there have been so many important songs and pieces of music for me. The two that spring to mind are Dvorak’s New World Symphony, I can remember my brother learning it on the violin as a child and it still moves me in the same way when I hear it now. The other is ‘Comfortably Numb’ by Pink Floyd. My dad used to play The Wall and Dark Side on the long drives to Scotland for holidays.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, what is the guitar mightier than?

I can't really make sense of that. I think you maybe want me to say how powerful music is, and it is a very powerful thing but I certainly wouldn't be thinking about pens or guitars if someone was swinging a sword at me.

What makes the world go round? [asked by last week’s interviewee Sasha Siem]

You mean for people? I think connection, love, distraction and acceptance are the things that I notice help things run more smoothly for me.

What can you tell us about this song? 

It’s a song about loss really. Hopefully the actual story I'm singing about isn't too obvious. I just wanted to talk about that period of shock immediately after a loss of any kind. The things people think and do when faced with something terrible.

Bill Ryder-Jones on Facebook

It’s palpably disheartening when the protagonist of a film is introduced to cocaine. This disappointment is not borne from concern for the character, but instead surfaces because you now know every step of the well-trodden path to come. The introduction of drug use pinpoints the exact moment when someone has risen almost as far as they’re going to, leaving only their long, unavoidable descent to come. It’s an event that comes midway through The Look of Love, and in structuring its narrative in this manner, the film joins a distinct sub-genre that encompasses pictures like Goodfellas and Boogie Nights, where damaged people become successful through disreputable means, and cocaine acts as a hubris-symbolising, tragedy-inducing catalyst for their inevitable downfall.

The fourth project in the fruitful collaboration between Steve Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom, The Look of Love is a deliberate twin of their earlier work 24 Hour Party People. Like that film, The Look of Love is a portrait of an unconventional Northern mogul courting controversy and success to the detriment of those around him. Dissimilarly, however, the film leaves a less pleasant taste in the mouth afterwards. While The Look of Love possesses 24 Hour Party People’s capacity to be funny and insightful, the story is by necessity less warm, and told without the same affection. 

Documenting the life of entrepreneur Paul Raymond, The Look of Love follows Raymond’s rise from a post-war mind-reading act to becoming Britain’s richest man in the early 90s, controlling an adult publishing empire and owning most of Soho. Echoing loosening attitudes to sexuality, Raymond slides from revue impresario to pornographer, his venues morphing from theatres producing gratuitous plays to strip clubs. Raymond is complicit in the coarsening of his trade, barely minding as long as his titles keep selling and he owns more and more property. 

Winterbottom captures Soho in its many stages of evolution, grounding the film in specific details like its little side alleys and low-ceiling offices. The production design, hair, make up and cinematography all excel at depicting the march of years (the way Received Pronunciation fades from usage is a particularly neat touch), but the true markers of change come from Matt Greenhalgh’s script: it's easy to place the year by how people react when Raymond mentions his association with the Beatles, or to gauge his reputation and desperation to be hip by the way he brings it up.

Greenhalgh intelligently observes how Raymond disguises the emotional distance he keeps from everyone in his life, but this makes the character difficult to empathise with. Never terribly interested in artistry, he has a lack of passion for anything beyond pleasing himself. Greenhalgh suggests that perhaps Raymond is empty save for his distorted, corrupting love for his daughter Debbie. Although Greenhalgh occasionally can't help turning Raymond into Alan Partridge for the sake of a good line, he is adept at succinctly defining his characters: early in the film Raymond offers to buy a round of champagne and quickly clarifies "house champagne", a laugh at his expense but also one that demonstrates the prudence that allowed him to become so successful.

While it would be satisfying to see Raymond challenged by inner turmoil, this detachment is intentional, and in no way due to Coogan's excellent performance: his absolute self belief and ability to charmingly weather criticism is what allows him to become so successful. However, as the corrosive, static centre around which the film revolves, Raymond is less compelling than the characters surrounding him. Raymond never really changes, as patterns repeat themselves again and again and he always escaping comeuppance, essentially because he owns everyone and everywhere around him. Instead, it is Imogen Poots’ portrayal of Debbie Raymond that lingers. Cursed by her inability to match her extraordinary father, she forms a co-dependent, symbiotic relationship with him, based on mutual neediness – his to be adored and hers to feel accomplished. Poots is wonderful in a role that in lesser hands might have been a film-sinking annoyance.

Towards the end of the film the endless scenes of sex and drug taking becoming extremely wearing, even boring, but the effect is intentional. Equipped with almost limitless money and the opportunity to indulge every whim, Raymond and his peers become unable to break free from a lifestyle they’ve long stopped enjoying, trudging on because there’s little else to do. At its best, The Look of Love is a skillfully-observed portrait of an area buffeted by the continual upheavals of the twentieth century, depicting sexual liberation compromised by canny, ruthless commodification.

Like nothing better than unearthing a hidden gem from the depths of the online world? Then welcome to the Oh Comely wish list! Every week we’ll present delightful things from the World Wide Web, saving you the surfing and scouring.

This week we discovered Astrid R’s collection of embroidered jewellery sold on her Etsy store, AnAstridEndeavour. She sells 'unique adornments, made with a lot of love,' which include a colourful collection of necklaces, broaches and earrings. Our favourite piece is this statement bib necklace (£44) that was hand embroidered alongside Astrid’s other creations in her home studio in San Francisco.

We think bright spring colours + geometric design + beautiful stitching = something worth investing in. Team with a casual frock, and let the compliments roll in!

Find it, and the rest of the collection on Etsy.

Claire-Lisa has photographed the copies of Oh Comely she keeps on her desk alongside the butterfly bookmark her boyfriend gave her.

It's a treasured possession, the bookmark, and she keeps it strictly for Oh Comely use!

Do you have any special Oh Comely rituals that you want us to see? Send pictures to [email protected].

Emily Smith met a wonderful sailmaker when she was studying at university in Falmouth. Called Patrick Selman, he's driven by a love of the sailmaking craft but has an unusual distaste for the big blue itself. Here's his story:

Since he was a child living in Padstow, Cornwall, Patrick Selman has loved sailing boats. Back then, his parents used to trade old boats and the first boat he built was from instructions in a library book. After establishing a successful window cleaning company, he decided to return to his childhood passion. His sail company, Gaff Sails, has been running since 1992.

We met in the Falmouth garage-turned-workshop that Patrick has occupied since 2000. It's an organised chaos of tools, sails, various crates and ladders. Sails of all shapes and sizes are dotted around so I'm intrigued to discover just how long one takes to make. "An average size sail probably takes about four hours from start to finish," he explains. "When they are really big, we have to roll them up and do a bit at a time. The type of sail-making I do is different to the bigger companies; they do modern sails all the time. With mine, I sew rope along the edges so it takes longer."

Sailmaking provides his livelihood and boat building his hobby. So I'm shocked to learn that Patrick doesn’t actually like sailing. "I’ve never really enjoyed being at sea and I think sailing is a waste of time. You’re rocked around, knocked from pillar to post, cold and wet," he chuckles. "It's racing I love. I have to do something involving thought and bashing other people, metaphorically speaking of course."

Patrick is currently the 'world champion' boat racer. "It’s a local thing mind you. It's not really the world championships but we just jokingly call it that. The race is about four miles and it's very competitive, you nearly run into each other every time. It's great to knock the younger people around; they think people my age are up the creek."

It's just as well that Patrick considers himself "as fit as a fiddle", although he confesses that this year might be his last for sailmaking. "I'm 67 now and although I'm still enjoying it, I don't get any time out. I have worked for three months now and only had two days off."

Thankfully, Patrick's son has set up his own sailmaking business at the end of his father's workshop, meaning that the craft will continue to live on through the family. As for Patrick, "I may go to America," he tells me. "My girlfriend is from there. But if I can’t race a sail, I’m going to be bored."