Some real life mockups

I finally decided to take some of my packaging design ideas further, and make real life mockups out of them. Firstly, some retro soap packaging:

sketchbook scans

Pete's been home sick the last two days and it's been nice to have company. He said to me - I don't know how you can work from home all day- it's so quiet here ... no wonder you're so chatty when I get home and want to go out at the end of the day! It's interesting to hear somebody else's perspective of my work life. You just "get used to" working alone, and it'd be really weird for somebody who spends ever workday surrounded by people and noise.

That said I'm looking forward to winding up my home business and finding work at a nice studio. Somewhere where the people are friendly and knowledgable, passionate about design but not obsessed with style and "cool". It's not important to me what fancy design magazines and competitions feature your work - what's important is that your design does what it's supposed to do and does it well.

These guys look really good - http://www.the-letterbox.com.au/ They did the Nicola Cerrini logo and the massive Arts House sign down the street at the North Melbourne town hall. They also have a cool "typo tour" of a few areas in melb including North Melbourne which is nice.

Recent Discoveries

Have found a few really cool places and sites recently:

http://www.imagescience.com.au - Inkjet printing onto canvas, silk and archival cotton papers.

Was looking for a place to get some artwork printed onto canvas and came across these guys. Coincidentally they're located across the street from our house! I popped over there and had a look at some samples of their printing and it's awesome. Printing is as inexpensive as $15 for an A4, and about $100 for approx 1m x 60cm (with heaps of other sizes to choose from). I'd love to get one of Pete's artworks and print it on to canvas, and then stretch it onto a frame.

http://www.thumbtackpress.com - A great place to buy small & inexpensive yet high quality prints of select artists' work (like Jeremiah Ketner - one of my favourites).

"Thumbtack Press uses a state-of-the-art 8 color archival ink jet process on a heavy bright white stock. The final print is trimmed to size and protected in an acid-free polyurethane cover before shipment in a board-backed, water resistant envelope." Sounds great to me!

paper cut mounted on polyprop sheeting

I'm taking advantage of the Monday public holiday to kick back on our new comfy brown couch and make earrings - I went to the bead shop on Smith St and bought a whole bunch of glass beads and different coloured tigertail wire to experiment with. The shop has some great stuff, but unfortunately most of their beads are stored in semi opaque containers stacked against the walls to the rafters, and it takes lots of hunting to find the cheap-but-interesting-and-good stuff. Anyway here's my efforts so far:

After posting on here almost every day for a few weeks, it feels like I haven't written for ages. Work has picked up quite a lot (still working full time from home though unfortunately) so there's been less time for my on-the-side creative stuff, and not much time to make things with my Gocco! Have bought some paper stock from Paperpoint to do by business cards though, so I'm looking forward to progressing with those :)

Meanwhile here's more of me playing with ye olde style lettering and treatment...