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Grand Illusions Christmas meal - George, Hendrik & Tim. Festive Greetings to everyone! 

This was the Grand Illusions studio on 20th October 2021, when we made our live stream to Australia. Lots of laptops and 2 cameras!  The one hour long show was created for over 300 young students, living in rural and remote parts of Australia. It has taken us a while, but we have just posted the video on the channel, so it can now be viewed by everyone. 

We are pleased that you are liking the new opening titles! They drew a lot of inspiration from Tim's amazing flying machines! 

Our motion graphics designer David Chaudoir is busy coordinating the new Grand Illusions titles for 2023. Every year he involves some of the students from the illustration course at the University of the West of England in Bristol UK. This year they have taken Tim's Flying Machines (see  https://www.grand-illusions.com/flying-machines-c102x4235962 ) as their inspiration. Apparently it is a mixture of 2D and 3D work, although I have not seen it yet. Launch date is January 1st 2023! 

So... anyone got any ideas how we stop a Tik Tok channel pretending to be us and copying all our videos? 

See  https://www.tiktok.com/@grand.illusions?_t=8X3an2Pp8Gp&_r=1   

I have reported it to Tik Tok, and have had an automated acknowledgement, but they have not done anything about it yet. The channel is pretending they have a toy collection, and using our logo as well. Kind of shameless really... 

Tim is 80 this week, so when he and George popped across to the studio today so we could make a couple more videos for the channel, we also celebrated his birthday! 

Tim was at a toy fair here in the UK recently, and bumped into one of his many acquaintances, the director of a toy wholesale company that we sometimes buy items from. The man mentioned that they had a few pallets of quirky flying machines which they had had made in the Philippines some years ago. They didn't really fit with the current profile of the company, and did Grand Illusions want to acquire them. Tim thought they were rather charming, and we have now added them to the Grand Illusions Toy Shop - see  https://www.grand-illusions.com/flying-machines-c102x4235962  - they were made by skilled artisans, mostly from metal, although the figures are ceramic. They are all painted by hand, and there is no plastic used at all. Chocks away, Tim ! 

Steve Mould recently posted a great video about the Assassin's Teapot -  https://youtu.be/jJL0XoNBaac  - he wasn't expecting it to be watched over 25 million times though! We had a bit of a run on the Assassin's Teapots in our online shop, well actually they sold out and we also had a long waiting list. They come from China so it takes a while to get more, but finally they are back in stock. See  https://www.grand-illusions.com/assas ... 

We have had a bit of a teapot thing going recently, with Tim demonstrating the self pouring teapot, a whimsical Victorian invention that saves you the trouble to lifting the teapot - see  https://youtu.be/P7JcSkx4upg 

It might seem a bit pointless, but the bigger sizes could be 8 or even 10 pints, and that would be a pretty heavy teapot - they had large families, those Victorians - so a self pouring mechanism on a 10 pint teapot might actually be quite handy! 

We recently got a few of Peter Hajek's 'End Of Year Puzzle Party' booklets, which are available on our web site - see  https://www.grand-illusions.com/end-of-year-puzzle-party-epp-2019-c2x36774903 . 

We only have a few of these, and so I was wondering what the interest would be if we could get some electronic versions of these? Maybe even some earlier years as well? Probably be GBP5 for a digital download, as opposed to GBP10 for the printed version. 

This morning, our motion graphics designer David Chaudoir delivered the new video titles for 2022. Very exciting. All will be revealed on January 1st 2022!