options, options

Would anybody be so kind as to tell me which of the patterns below they'd most like to see screen printed onto fabric?

I've chosen the ones that I feel would work best as a 1 colour print. I'm going to print two patterns for my first print run, and am off to Charles Parsons (thanks Kristen!) this arvy to buy some fabric. Ooh the ball is finally rolling!

Design*Sponge

Eeee, I woke up yesterday morning to find a bunch of etsy sales in my inbox and this great comment from Stereotte: "dude, did you know your prints are being featured over at Design*Sponge????" Haha! Wow I never thought that would happen!

Finally finished

I have never felt so much relief putting a website live than I did last night. I've been working on a monstrous Flash project for most of the past year and. its. finally. over. whoo!



For anyone who's interested in what I do for my real day job, you can check it out here. I'm not 100% proud of this project mind you. It might be visually impressive (albeit clunky) but I don't think it does what it's supposed to do as well as it could - which is provide 'young people' with information on some very serious topics.

I don't think such a heavy focus on 'cool' was appropriate here ... but I lost that debate with the art director ;) Who knows, I could be wrong. We'll wait and see how successful it is.

Anyway, the best thing about finishing that project is that it leaves me free to do some things that I've been talking about doing for ages. Today I finally went and visited 'Print Ink' - a screen printing studio who print fabric yardages (who also happen to be around the corner. How I love N.Melb). I was very impressed. They were exactly what I'm looking for and were such lovely people too! The prices were reasonable however require me to be fairly confident and commited about printing my designs and trying to sell them. Ahh well, whatever happens it should be a heap of fun!

Small & Round and happy

Yay for impulse purchases off the internets. I just bought these two prints off one of my fav artists - Jeremiah Ketner of Small & Round:


They're available in his shop for $30 US each. Limited edition of 30 screen prints. Sooo cute.

I feel like I'm totally cheating here by posting more pics of my prints that i've already talked about, but I haven't got anything else to post about this week and I think they look cute all framed up. I put together these two pairs of prints for a friend. One set is for her, and another for her best friend who she met up in a treehouse.



Also, here is one of the first 'real' drawings you get to do in the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book. You get to cheat a bit by first placing a sheet of perspex on your hand, tracing the shape of your hand directly onto the perspex, and then copying that onto paper. You then add the finer details and some shading.



I was really happy with the result, and I love the way the book's exercises seem so easy and yet leave you feeling pleasantly surprised by your achievements. That's a little retro button i'm holding :)

riverstones

Back to pattern design for a bit. I'm tending to favour designs that can work with a limited colour palette - a single colour even, so that when I finally get around to printing them I can do a 1 colour screen print.



A splash of colour variation:


Bit sleepy so the words aren't coming tonight. I've been working my way through The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain recently though. Has anyone else tried it? It's fantastic so far and although I can already more or less draw, there's heaps of insight into the drawing mindset and how to 'see' like an artist does.

Sleep time, g'night :)

A quick thankyou

A very quick thankyou to Irene from bloesom blog for not one, but TWO posts about my work!! If you haven't already, head over there and check out her blog - she posts about some amazing design stuff (so naturally i'm flattered to be included). Some of her posts are in Dutch but most are in English too :)

Almost There

This little girl wasn't originally going to make it all the way to the digital inking stage. She just sat in my notebook, because I wasn't completely happy with the way her dress fell and the balance of branches on the tree.

However a close friend of mine happened to be over when I was getting the other treehouse print done and told me that she met one of her closest, bestest friends up a treehouse! So she wants to give the two prints to her friend as a birthday present - very sweet, and very flattering.



Okay back to work! I'm working on this epic, epic flash website job that's due to be launched in two weeks. And then i'll be free! freeee!!

Poor Failed Craft Project

Sitting on the couch yesterday watching the movie Russian Dolls (with all those gorgeous cosy parisian homes) I felt inspired to make something for our apartment. We have those kind of ugly light fittings that sit on the ceiling covered by an oyster shell thingy (oh how i'd love to have hanging lightbulbs that I could put funky lampshades on) so I decided to make a sort of lampshade thing that sits flush on the roof and covers/pretties it up a bit.

I spent about 7 hours working on this project up till 1am, always thinking "once it all comes together it'll hold it's shape better... it'll be okay". Well, the only way you learn these things is to try and fail.

Lesson learnt: If you want to make a lampshade you need a solid frame that can hold it's own weight. A frame made out of polyprop doesn't cut it. Behold:





Okay it might look _okay_ in these photos but in real life, hanging from my ceiling with the light on it looks like a saggy, unrefined mess. Maybe it's rescuable if I line the inside with some stiff wire? What bugs me most is wasting that kimono fabric - I might have to cut this fella up and rescue the pieces.

printing fun

Inspired by the positive response to my prints over the last week I got another small collection printed today and popped them in the shop. It's been heaps of fun - very uplifting.


My latest drawing 'treehouse' was thrown into the mix and I'm happy very with how it turned out :)

Thanks so much for the support everybody, and have a fantastic weekend.

treehouse!

This girl, her happy places always seem to be around trees :)



Maybe she'll get printed tomorrow...