Wow, I got a huge amount of comments on the moo cards, thanks so much! Sounds like heaps of people are going to get some made too, which is awesome! Please send me a link if you do!

I had a productive and somewhat uncharacteristically 'girly' weekend - bought a yellow summer dress, took Pete's mum and aunt out to the city (managed to get a table upstairs at the decadent Koko Black - yum!) and then somehow found myself at the Shisuiedo counter of David Jones being one of 'those' women - seated in front of a mirror having a professional well spoken lady apply stripes of foundation to my face to find the perfect colour match.

If you know me at all you'll know that this is a very un-Lara thing to do. Firstly I hate the cosmetics section of DJ's, with all it's glitz and glam and painful fluoro lights. And secondly I haven't bought foundation or any 'real' make-up in hmmm, about 8 years. But ... I admit it was nice to be pampered like that, even though I walked away with much lighter pockets :\

Anyway, onto more superficial-but-in-a-different-way things. Time this weekend not spent emptying my pockets was spent on the couch making stuffs. I'm starting to feel a bit weird posting pictures here - I have to remind myself that I'm not a show-off-ee person, but that this is just a record for myself to keep which people happen to visit - does anyone else have to do that?


Earrings made by binding glass beads onto thicker wire, using thin brass wire. I thought they looked a bit empty in the middle so drew this peacock onto polyprop and suspended it in the middle. It looks okay in the photo but was a bit too full on, plus the 'permanent' marker wasn't so permanent.


So this was the alternative, a bit more subtle.


Sunday's doodling on the couch produced these little drops, and I immediately though - ooh potential pattern! Anyway my first attempt at making them into a pattern wasn't quite right - I basically filled up the whole space with drops. But then realised that opening it up a bit and leaving random gaps looks much nicer and more organic.

♥ to pete for coming up with the colourway above :)


The end. What a rant!

Moo!

Oh my god, have you guys discovered Moo cards yet?? Mine just arrived today and I'm very, very happy with them. The good ol' Andrew over at bundle made me aware of them and I ordered my cards in a flurry without a second thought.



This is how it works:
1) Choose up to 100 different photos from your flickr photostream
2) Choose the crop area for each image (moo cards are a panoramic shape)
3) Come up with some text for the back (I chose business card text but you could put anything, or nothing)
4) Pay $25 US dollars to have 100 little cards delivered to your door, anywhere in the world.



I always wanted business cards with patterns on the back, and was going to Gocco print them... but damn this was so much easier!

Facts for the day:

If you're in Melbourne and looking for a filing cabinet, go past those outrageously priced office furniture stores and straight to Dallas Trading on Macaulay Rd, North Melb. We got an awesome solid metal ex-office one for only $80,and she aint half bad looking either. And she has wheels!

They have some other antiquey furniture numbers too, like these cute little nested tables we scored for $80 also!



Craft: magazine is awesome - arrived in the mail yesterday! I'm not sure if i'll actually make anything from this issue (although they do have a good screenprinting tute) ... but somehow just having it makes me feel more connected to this otherwise intangible online world.

Bad skin? Flaxseed oil! Well it's certainly working for me. I started taking it a few weeks ago and I can definately see differences. A smoother complexion and no little breakouts. I went through roaccutane crap-ness back in my teenage years so this. is. sooo. nice.

Meanwhile, keeping sane under work pressure with a bit more drawing practice. Nothing too speccy but it's fun to play around:

Undies

Well I think I'm over my little slump. I blame the weather. I know, a bit of rain is supposed to be a good thing, but I'm a warm weather creature.

Thanks for the nice comments on the little pics - glad nobody else thought they were as unoriginal as I did. But then again who's going to post a comment saying "yeah you're right, these suck". I quite enjoyed drawing the maple leaves though - it's fun when you learn to draw a new thing, so I had the idea for the painting below. It didn't turn out quite right - it's a little obscure I'm thinking and missing the details that make it immediately obvious that she's lying on the ground covered with leaves.



I had a bit of a breakthrough with my drawing this weekend (at least I think so). I've always found drawing people a little difficult - mine are always lack character and the proportions are all wrong. But this time I tried something a little different - drawing them in their underwear first :) This made things so much easier. I could focus on the body shapes and positions first, and then add clothes later ... or not at all. Who needs clothes when it's a warm spring day and you have apple print undies?

oh oh, in the midst of being a sad-sack i forgot to mention something - some recent talented people I have a-stumbled upon who you should check out:

Julie Knoblock - very talented illustrator and all round crafty person, based in Melbourne too - yay! And she's apparently just bought an acre of dirt. I'm jealous! (seriously).

Dawn Irvine - new talented pattern designer on the blogk (sorry, lame play on words there). She seems to always be churning out very cool designs. Looking forward to seeing them applied to stuff.

Magic Jelly / Karena - South Australian based illustrator printmaking chicky with way too many gooco inks for her own good.

There are many many more but I'm just going to limit myself to three for now :)

Rainy days & unoriginal artworks

hey. it seems that i've taken a bit of an unexpected blogging break. just haven't been in the space for it, which is sad. last week i started feeling down, and thought it'd go away, but haven't been able to shake it, and still can't figure out what the problem is. I think it might be routine. Routine is awesome and is often my bestest friend, but it seems to have turned on me now that it involves scripting these two flash websites ever day for a couple of months. Where's the creativity in that? I think it's killing me.

I've been keeping myself vaguely sane by painting mini artworks on the back of little Laminate swatches that I pilfered from Bunnings. I saw an artist on Flickr (I forget who, sorry!) doing something similar and thought it was a great idea. And being so tiny they're not intimidating to paint on at all.



They're a bit unoriginal and illustrator-ish in my opinion, but practice and inspiration should fix that :)

Ye Olde North Melb

Well, I didn't stick to posting every day, but that's ok - quality over quantity I always say. Ooh that rhymes.

This morning I climbed out of bed and saw the coolest thing trotting past my window - yes trotting. It was one of the old fashioned horse drawn carts that clip clop around the city, which I suspect are stabled nearby. I always feel sorry for the horses' hooves, but they DO make the coolest noise and make me think of ye olde North Melbourne.

Speaking of, my dad recently found this picture amongst the archives of an old Ballarat newspaper. I love the typesetting and the old fashioned wording! Any guesses from the locals which building it is? (It's grandiousity is a wee bit exaggerated - look how small the tram is!)



Also, a bit of pattern design WIP:

I was reading Loobylu the other day and she mentioned that November is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) - where for the whole of this month you post something every day. I woke up this morning and realised that I have inadvertently done just that. Problem is, I don't think I can keep it up. The fact of the matter is that I'm just not a good writer, and am painfully self concious of this fact at times. I'm also quite crap at coming up with names for things like blog posts, pattern designs and my jewellery. I read other blogs full of smooth, witty lines that make their day to day activites much more engaging, but when I write about mine, they just sound mundane. That said, not be self defeatist I'm going to make an effort.

I spent most of yesterday making birthday presents for one of my closest friends. When looking for wrapping paper I found one of my patterns printed on a sheet of A3 that I got Pete to sneakily run off at work.


I'm starting to learn the lesson that a mockup speaks a thousand pictures :) The pattern looks so much better in context rather than as a flat graphic.

visitor :)

We had a visitor today - one of these fellas:


It was such a nice surprise. One of the few things I've missed from moving to the inner city is a bit of wildlife - especially of such a colourful variety. Anyway he didn't stick around long. I dashed up to grab him something to eat but he flew to a neighbouring tree. I thought I could tempt him back with some vita wheats (do birds even eat vita wheats? i don't know but it's all we had) but he and his little mate soon flew away. I hope he comes back.

Tempted to buy a hanging seed thingy to see what it brings.

Hope everyone's having a lovely (long?) weekend. I love the way that Melbourne + horse racing = public holiday :)

Unable to focus on my work (Friday) and taking advantage of beautiful morning sun in our living room (mmm, November), I've finally photographed and put a few more items in my Etsy shop!

Speaking of, I got an email from Etsy the other day saying V2 is about to be launched. Ooh how exciting. I hope they finally do the simple, intelligent thing of stipulating US dollars next to prices rather than assuming everyone knows. Or better yet let us choose currency! Then again, beggars can't be choosers.

Oh, and last night I had a go making my blue dot necklace with white wire instead of red. It worked well. I thought the white wouldn't show up enough on skin, but I tried it on and it looked fine - yay! Looks a bit more refined/mature than the bright red.


I take all my photos on the 30x40cm top of one of Pete's speakers, because they have nice wood. It's such a small space but you can't tell ;)

Aaanyway hope everyone has a great weekend!! I wonder what Melbourne weather has in store for us this time -_-

Evelyn Tarunadjaja

We did the artsy thing last night and went to the opening night of Pete's friend Eveline's exhibition. It was really quite good. A small space, and hot inside because of all the people, but her little artworks looked great scattered on the wall over the top of my favourite thing - trees!


originally uploaded by love pad

If you're handy to the city, get down there and check it out - Level 1, 12 Waratah Place (hers are upstairs at the back). Her illustrations are really beatiful, emotive, fine detailed pieces of work. They're selling for up to $200 each which I figure is pretty good for an original. I just bought a postcard set though to keep me happy :)


originally uploaded by love pad

to do:

I have to-do's coming out of my ears at the moment:

- Go to the dentist (first time in 6 years)
- Take the car to get tuned
- Go see an allergist (I'm sneezing and have a runny nose every day)
- Make more jewellery for Etsy and Modamuse
- Send jewellery and bio off to Modamuse
- Find a financial advisor
- Do my BAS
- Go see accountant and do tax return
- Get some patterns screen printed
- Make a "how to do pattern repeat" tutorial

All whist juggling two huge web jobs due at the start of December! I did however manage to knock one big thing off my list, which was the pattern design submission to Rag & Bone. I ended up going all out and spent Sunday 'making mockups' - by which i mean photoshopping the patterns onto photos of my notebooks. They turned out pretty alright I think!



That said, the fairly brief reply I got this morn makes me think a) they're overwhelmed with submissions and/or b) it didn't really knock their socks off at all. They said they're meeting to decide next Wednesday, so fingers crossed for Shannon (who also submitted some lovely stuff) and I.