Ally Capellino is the purveryor of leather goods to dream about. They design simple bags and leather accessories that are functional in the most beautiful sense of the term. 

If you also like their work, why not have a go at illustrating an Ally Capellino tote bag? That's the brief for their current illustraton competition. The tote bags are being made to celebrate London 2012, and need an illustration to decorate them. 

Photo: An Ally Capellino tote, celebrating thirty years of the company.

The winning design will be printed on over 1000 of the bags, and its creator receives £200 worth of vouchers to spend in store. The competition closes on the 16th September and anyone can enter. More details are on the Ally Capellino website. 

Juliet Thornback and Delia Peel are a British design team who make screen-printed textiles and homewares under their label Thornback and Peel. You'll know their work by its cheery renderings of old-fashioned jellies, erratic pigeons, and tins of sardines which they print on all manner of things from deckchairs to handkerchiefs. We asked them about life in their Cockpit Arts studio and what their prefect brew is.

Thornback and Peel designs are all hand screen-printed. There’s something very authentic and lovely when a bag, t-shirt, napkin or even a deckchair has lovingly been put through a process by hand, instead of being churned out at mass by a machine. When did you first discover screen-printing?

Delia Peel: I think the seed of this love affair with printing began when I learnt to write properly with a foundation pen. I spent a lot of time playing with blotting paper and trying to make shapes with the blotted ink. Later, I learnt screen printing at art school and was instantly smitten. It's a sweet combination of instant gratification and old-fashioned skill.

Juliet Thornback: I learnt to screen print in Arizona. I was living there for six months and wanted a way of recording my time in the desert.

Photo: Tubs of Thornback and Peel creations in their studio.

What is the atmosphere like in your studio?

Peel: It's quite calm and ordered thanks to our lovely studio manager who keeps everything running smoothly but there are bursts of noisy banter and unruliness. Screen-printing is very rhythmic, repetitive and precise, a bit like swimming, so it's a good time to think.

What music do you listen to in the studio while you work?

A huge mixture of radio stations from the sublime to the ridiculous. We've recently got into Spotify, and a current favourite song is Janelle Monae's Tightrope.

Photo: Juliet Thornback in the studio.

There’s a mix of traditional and contemporary style in your designs. Where do you get your inspiration?

Both: It's a pretty broad sweep of Victoriana, Mrs Beeton’s household management, 17th Century microscope imagery of the natural world, English culture, British humour, our children's books. We're also inspired by the big skies of Norfolk, where Peel was brought up, and Devon, where Thornback is now on maternity leave.

I read that your designs originally explored the grotesque in conjunction with surrealist motifs. Although there are still surrealist elements to your work, the grotesque elements have been tamed. Do you still explore this kind of work privately, or has the theme of British culture and the natural world become more appealing?

Peel: Both of us are fascinated by printing potentially revolting things on fabrics, but the grotesque has taken a bit of a back seat. I love the idea of a sofa which looks like it is covered with a floral print but is in fact the structure of the lung or some other internal organ. We found these ideas didn’t sell so well. In fact, we've had buyers throw cushions printed with beetles across the room in horror. Although, I do think the market for grotesque might be opening up again. This morning I printed some cushions for Anthropologie with furry red and grey flocked beetles running all over them.

Here at oh comely we love our tea. Is there a strong tea ethic at Thornback and Peel, and what's your brew of choice?

Both: First thing in the morning it is builder's tea, so strong it almost tastes nutty with lots of milk. Later on, we'll have an Earl Grey.

Peel: Thornback used to be a floral designer and each Monday, after she'd made her order at the flower market in Vauxhall, we'd plan our next collection over a sausage sandwich and tea so strong it blew our head off. It it made for good meetings though.

What is your favourite piece from the Thornback and Peel collection?

Thornback: I am frothing with excitement about the new stuff, but it hasn't gone through the sampling process yet so I can't be more specific.

Peel: The bird and egg fabric, and the goldfish in a bowl print. Both make beautiful blinds. They'll be available from our online shop this October 2011 and you can currently see them as cushions or deckchairs on our website at www.thornbackandpeel.co.uk.

Am I the only person in the world that hasn't heard about the phenomenal invention that is dry shampoo? I've fallen in love with it but not a friend ever mentioned it me. So here I am telling you about it, just in case you also missed the boat. 

Here's the thing: in the morning when I press the snooze button one too many times, there's only time for one thing - either shampooing or dog walking. Dog walking is really the only option. This is where the dry shampoo comes in useful. 

Of course, it would help if my dog would wake up with the alarm clock, but instead I need to drag him out of his bed in the morning! Here's a photo of him, so you have an idea of what he's like.

Now, there are quite a few dry shampoos around. Boots does their own, but I wasn't impressed. Tony and Guy's doesn't last too long, and doesn't do a great job over all. Rene Furterer's gives you great results, but all three smell far too strongly for me. Bumble and Bumble have five different colours of dry shampoo to match your hair. It's great, but it is expensive.

My absolute favourite, having only tested the ones which I'm mentioning here, is Klorane's with nettle extract. It smells lovely, is very fresh and leaves your hair feeling soft and healthy. It not only saves you time, but also saves your hair from drying out too much with everyday washes.

I think it's best to buy it online if you don't live in continental Europe. Otherwise your local pharmacy will stock it.

We're used to Tatty Devine's lovely jewelry, but if you pass by their Brick Lane store, you'll see they've also got a neat little exhibition happening. It's called Girls + Zines, and presents a wide-range of home-made publications by women.

The show is curated by Barbara Ryan of BFR Magazine fame and features everything from exquisite illustrations and collages, to heartfelt musings and humorous revelations. We enjoyed reading Sheeta Li’s quirky concertina zine which documented bizarre facts and fan-mail of Jonathan Creek, a character from the British TV show of the same name. She's sewn each of the charming illustrated pages together, and peppers her drawings with odd facts about Creek's life, all gleaned from the television show.

Another woman zine-maker created the daring and hilarious Bumzine. She photocopyed her behind on different days and compiled the results for all to see. We're not too surprised that she's chosen to remain anonymous!

Opposite to the photocopied pages and more text-based zines, were the beautifully illustrated pages of Sally Jane Thompson’s Candy Bag. It tells the tale of a little girl who planted her last sweet in a teacup from the kitchen.

All of the publications exhibited are being archived at the British Library, but if you can get down to Brick Lane before they move home, we highly recommend you take a look. You’ll be sure to find a zine you love.

Issue seven has been the naughty child of oh comely: still running round the office long after it should have gone to bed. We're very happy to say that it's finally on its way, though. We're sorry to have made you wait, but we hope this one will be worth it.

In issue seven, we've been mixing up our own moisturisers, drawing our favourite movie scenes and doing all the things our parents told us not to. We went on the hunt for a rare, charismatic beetle. We played the pub games that everyone forgot, made ice lollies and invented our very own board game where cats and mice battle it out to make cups of tea. Here we're testing an early, rather disastrous prototype.

We talked to host of interesting and talented folk, including the queen of sixties tea towel design, Pat Albeck, and the Texan post-rock quartet Explosions In The Sky. We had a lovely chat with comedian Isy Suttie on stand-up and why a relaxed approach to life is the best way forward (although perhaps we followed her advice a little too closely).

The new issue will reach subscribers around Thursday 1st, and will be in shops later that week, so get your kettle brewing and your plate of biscuits at the ready.

We're a fan of Lomography cameras here at oh comely. These plastic and retro-looking gadgets became popular in Vienna as a new, artistic approach to photography in the 1990s. Today there's a worldwide community of amateur Lomo photographers who pursue spontaneous, creative and experimental ways of taking photos.

Photo: Lomo's well-loved Diana F camera.

There's a Lomography pop-up shop open this August in Selfridges, so pass by for a visit if you're curious about the world of Lomo. Shaped like a big yellow ship, the pop-up store allows you to browse the quirky, colourful film cameras and even borrow one for just £1. That's hardly a fee to complain about, and we left Selfridges with two cameras in hand, saying good-bye to the digital era as we took to Oxford Street with 36 photos on the film.

My initial photos were tentative attempts to catch a good shot. But as the hour wore on and with only 10 photos down, I became more careless, taking pictures of anything that caught my eye. As the golden rules of Lomography state: don't think, be fast and don't worry about breaking conventions of photography. And that's what we did by playing with the flash, inserting coloured strips to warp the image into shades of blues and reds, and snapping traffic cones or people's feet.

Photo: One of Lomo's kooky fish-eye cameras.

When I got the photos developed, some were blurred and quite non-descript but these dreamy, lo-fi images also captured a feeling of nostalgia that picture-perfect digital just doesn't seem to do.

Find out more on Lomo on their website.

Festivals are the place where memories are made. Over three days, your world is condensed into a tiny but beautiful area of land. Here’s the place where you’ll live, make friends, listen to lots of music and stew in the lukewarm heat of a British summer.

And of all the festivals you might go to, visit Kendal Calling for its beautiful setting and spirited atmosphere. Based in balmy Cumbria, the festival nestles in a 728 year old deer park. Huge ash trees stand out between the festival tents like lumbering giants of the past, and in quieter parts of the gathering you'll find deer aplenty.

The festival is in its fifth year, and has since made a name for itself as a magnetically fun and excellent gathering. That's a well justified reputation, as oh comely discovered on our wee trip to the festival a weekend or so ago.

This year saw headliners The Cribs, Blondie and Chase and Status take centre stage. Blondie was fabulous but we also enjoyed Alice Gold, Beardyman and Frank Truner. The epic, modern day brass-band Riot Jazz gave everyone a good time, and so did the cosy treats of The Libraries - a hotch-potch of tents featuring folk music. Other highlights included Mr. Scruff with his endearing, soul-shaking set and Craig Charles with his funk and soul to play the festival out.

Music aside, we were kept busy with slack rope walking, watching a mammouth sized Kendal Mint Cake being made and outrageous fancy dress on Saturday. More peculiar still than huge cakes and rabbit costumes, were the Aussies over at the suggestively named Pootopia. They'd created a kind of eco-toilet heaven and wooed revelers with their well-chosen DJ set and anecdotes about environmentally clean loos. No, we didn't make that up. It was very fun grooving by the 21st century water closets.

Here’s to Kendal Calling and its peculiar, party charm. For more photographs of the weekend, head to our Flickr page.

It's not too often that one comes across a store so fantastically curated, you wish you had the money to buy it all. And I mean, absolutely all of it. So when I came across Mjölk, I knew I had to share it with you.

Mjölk’s Scandinavian-inspired collection is curated by owners John Baker and Juli Daoust. Most products are either made from natural leather or wood, and I admire them for this consistency.

Doesn't browsing though their beautiful lifestyle store make you feel calm and soothed? It works wonders for me, especially on a difficult day.

There are some beautiful things to gaze at, like this handmade laptop case:

The leather used is soaked in tanning liquor derived from oak bark for six weeks, and then dried out for several days. And is there anyone who could resist this handcrafted Japanese mug?

Browse the store for other lovely wooden products: various plates, butter cases and egg cups. I think their concrete shaving kit deserves a lot of attention too, so don't miss it!