Finders Keepers

Yay, the Finders Keepers market is on again this coming weekend!! I love a market that spans multiple days, gives us a chance to really make the stall look beautiful and spread out the whole set-up, pack-down rigmarole.



My good buddy & fellow textile designer Kristen Doran will be staying with me for the duration of the show. Kristen's in Sydney and it feels like we only ever see each other when there's a market on. What am I saying? We DO only ever see each other when there's a market on!

But that's one of the things I love about markets, catching up with all our fellow creative buddies since we're otherwise too busy to socialise :)

Hope to see you there too - please come and say hi!

xx

The Design Files... Me? Really?

My little Flemington flat on The Design Files today

I think it's somewhat ironic that less than 12 hours after writing my last blog post the feature about my flat appears on The Design Files.

Just... wow. Don't get me wrong, I am so SUPER EXCITED about my little abode being featured on my favourite design blog of all time. It's been a secret ambition of mine for aaaages but when Lucy saw some pics of my flat and asked to do a tour my first internal reaction was "oh no but it's not good enough!". I insisted she wait a couple of months till I'd made some changes I'd been thinking about.


My little Flemington flat on The Design Files today

That might sound crazy but it's so true that we are always our own harshest critic. I also feel like in the creative world one's own work inherently lacks the magic that everyone else's work appears to embody.

Because when I design something I'm intimately familiar with every step of the process. The first seed of inspiration. All the reference material I gathered together. The sketches that didn't work and the ones that did. The general struggle to turn an idea in my mind into something real. Then there's a brief period of appreciation once it's finished, but that soon wears off when you're looking at it every day.

When it comes to other people's work I tend to think that their ideas came about by a magic lightning bolt of inspiration. Through some "highly creative" process rather than mine which somehow seems so much more calculated.

But I guess that's something we all feel.

xx

Lara.

P.S. - thank you everyone for you awesome comments on my last post. I'm so glad to hear that so many people feel the same way and that being open and honest about our struggles is equally important and inspiring. I'd like to write more on the subject soon...

Reflections, perceptions and pressures

Contrast - what you see versus real life

It's been a bit of a quiet month at work and as we all know quiet times are ripe for reflection.

I've been thinking a lot about the pressures we (or at least I) place on ourselves when running a creative business. There's the pressures of making a living and being innovative, which are hard enough, but I think the biggest pressure is fulfilling one's own expectations.

How do you define personal success? I find it's a definition which can get muddied by the pressure to be everything that other people assume you to be, and to be everything you assume your idols to be.

Sometimes I really feel like our blogging community is one big double edged sword. As many of us are strive to establish ourselves as creative individuals we filter and only present our best images (I'm definitely guilty of that). But at the same time we're reading each other's blogs and feeling so much pressure to measure up to unrealistic ideals that we ourselves are perpetuating.

Contrast - what you see versus real life

Perfect example - the home photo shoot. Select the prettiest rooms/nooks in our houses, tidy them up, play happy families. How much of that is real? I know of many couples who have had to pose for a photo shoot pretending all is fine when the reality is far from it. My flat is another great example. Even in this post I daren't show you my 2nd bedroom.

Even though conciously we're often hiding our dirty bathrooms and relationship issues and financial struggles, at the same time we're blindsighted to the struggles that others might be facing. So we fill in the gaps in our knowledge with the most rose tinted images that are very likely unrealistic.

I guess what I'm starting to realise is that perceptions aren't reality and sometimes we need to change our ideals. I want to feel grateful for what I do have, what we have achieved, and not place all this pressure on myself to be something that's probably not realistically achievable.

From a business perspective this means accepting that it is very, very hard to make a decent living doing something you love! All those creative businesses who I (and you) idealise - more often than not they face the same problems we do, just on a bigger scale with more stress. I'm still striving to prove that it is possible to make a decent living from a creative & ethical business, but the reality is that we're not there yet.

If you've read this far, then thank you. I know this post is a bit disjointed but I hope it makes some sense.

xx

Home

It's been a very long time coming, but my little Flemington flat appeared in the Herald Sun home magazine last Saturday. Three pages. THREE!


My flat in the Herald Sun Home magazine - yay!

I wasn't sure how the article was going to turn out but I'm really happy with it! The text is great (I don't sound too ineloquent) and the photos are really lovely. Although my flat doesn't look anywhere near as big as this in real life. Thanks wide angle lens!


My flat in the Herald Sun Home magazine - yay!

Now I know it's a bit crazy but this post is totally unrelated to my other recent post because my flat is going to be popping up in a couple of other places soon too... when it rains it pours.

xx