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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!
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:
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 :)
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 :)
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.
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 -_-
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
Today I caught the tram into the city and found myself sitting opposite a sweet looking japanese girl who appeared to be in Melbourne on holidays. She was clutching a map of the CBD in her hands and she was teary. The poor girl - I couldn't pull my attention away. The guy beside me must have been giving her directions because he showed her where we were on the map one last time before he got off. For a little while I wondered what to do - all I could think about was why she might be crying and wishing I could reach out and ask her if she was ok.
In the end I just asked her where she was heading and helped her get to Bourke Street. I asked her where she was from - Tokyo. I said I'd love to visit Japan and that it's very beautiful, and she replied in limited English - yes ... but Japanese people are so ... busy, and Australian people (she paused and searched for words) "...their hearts are very peaceful".
What a beautiful Japanese way to say it.
And in keeping with my fondness for all things from that country, a pattern inspired by a Japanese pine forest illustration:
Still trying to figure out the right colours for it though.
Hola! A couple of interesting things I've come across recently.
Firstly, if you're interested in taking action re climate change, sign this petition at GetUp.org.au. They're after 250,000 signatures 'to show our elected representatives we're serious'. By signing it you're simply saying "I want my government to take sweeping action to dramatically cut greenhouse pollution, shift to clean energy and solve the climate crisis now." It looks good. Do it. It takes two seconds.
Secondly, I've been doing a bit of rummaging around the Forums and Guidelines of Flickr, and there's some interesting rules that you might not be aware of:
1) "...Flickr is for photos. With some exceptions, it's OK to post other images, but if the majority of your photostream contains content other than photographs (like illustrations, screenshots, diagrams, etc.) it's very likely that your account will be marked Not in Public Site Areas (NIPSA). NIPSA means your photos won't show up in photo searches, but they will still be visible in your pages, your groups and contacts."
I did a bit more research into this, and found that even taking photographs of your art/craft isn't deemed proper use either, and could also cause your site to be marked NIPSA.
2) "Flickr is for personal use only. If you sell products, services or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account."
This seemed like a bit of a vague umbrella statement, so I did some more research into this also. Turns out it's okay to link to your shop in your profile, but it's not ok to have links to your shop within the CAPTION of your photos. I couldn't get an 100% straight answer on this one, but I'd recommend not even mentioning your shop in the caption. Saying "available in my shop" is going to look very much like you're using Flickr as a sort of catalogue, especially if lots of your photos say this.
Interested to hear if anybody else has a different take on these, or know of some more subtle "no-no's".
Yaaaay, I sold my first thing on etsy today!! One of the blue dot necklaces to the lovely Marnie of Felt Up Design. Thanks again Marnie:)
I've been dilly dallying over whether or not to submit some patterns to Rag & Bone Bindery's call for submissions. I read what they're after and it seems they want patterns that have 'no obvious repeats' when covering a book. Which, looking back over all of my patterns, is a requirement that very few of mine suit.
However, I think I'm gunna give it a go. I might be able to scale some of them up, and i'll add this newbie into the mix:
The moment has finally arrived - I've put some items up in my etsy shop!! I was motivated in part by Jessica Lim of Modamuse, who has offered to have some of my items up in the upcoming Modamuse shop. How exciting!!
So I had to take that final, scary step and decide on some prices. It's hard! Very reminiscent of trying to decide on my hourly rate for web design back when I was a newbie. I really don't want to charge too much, but don't want to undersell myself either. Each of the pieces takes at least an hour to put together including the printed packaging, so I tried to base it on that. I asked around and got a few suggestions, and sort of averaged them out. But at the end of the day I'm still charging more than a lot of people of etsy, which is a worry.
Anyway any feedback or suggestions would be much appreciated. Note that all prices on Etsy are in US dollars but they don't actually stipulate that (which is a concern amongst lots of non US sellers).
the shop is here! --> kirinco.etsy.com
stuff for sale so far :)
hmmm, I've got that post-holidays back-at-work blues. It's times like these that I'm markedly aware of the sort-of 'wrongness' of working from home alone, all day every day. I know i'll get back into the swing of things and before long it'll just feel like normal again... but is that really a good thing? to get used to something that's not-quite-right? Anyway not to worry, after my big client jobs are finished I'm going to start actively contacting studios for some part time/contract work.
In good news, my Ashley G prints arrived and they look great. I just need to find some of those simple borderless clippy frames to frame them. Does anyone know where I could find them??
No crafty photos today, so here's some shots of a cute, lichen covered birdbath at Pete's parents' place in Ballarat :)
I know I've posted a demonstration of this before, but since my shiny new Gocco 'Stamp' came in the mail, I've found a much nicer, cleaner way to print properly aligned pattern repeats onto fabric + paper. And it's good to show the Stamp in action too. Contrary to my previous posts, it is actually a very handy tool to have.
Here's mister Stamp.
The stamp has a spongey base that's slightly sticky, so your screen sticks to it. The design on the screen is a pattern tile that interlocks with itself, to form an endlessly repeating pattern.
Here's my piece of paper with a couple of prints already on it. Sitting on top is my polyprop 'registration plate' with the design printed on it also. The registration plate is cut to be the same size/shape as my B6 screen, (plus a little bit extra at the top and bottom - i'll explain that later). The print onto the registration plate was done with the plate+screen perfectly aligned.
Okay so here's the stamp sitting on the paper, or should I say above the paper. The curved clippy things on the side make it so the screen 'floats' there until you push it down. Directly underneath the stamp is my registration plate. The top and bottom of the plate line up with the clippy things because of that extra little bit of height I added.
Once the registration plate is slid out from underneath, Stamp! My hand looks weird and huuuge in this shot!
The final print. The alignment is much better than my previous method - yay :)
For anyone wanting to print free of the Gocco machine I highly recommend the Stamp. You can get with or without the 'Stamp Kit for Cloth', nice and cheaply from Welsh Products for $36.50 USD. They're not sold anywhere in Australia unfortunately.
Hope this comes in handy for someone out there :)
Thanks for the lovely birthday wishes :) Pete and I are spending the first week of our holidays just grounding ourselves before we head down to the beach. This means hanging out in the city, enjoying the art & craft supplies that Melbourne has to offer, and Pete getting ahead on a little bit of freelance. It might sound a little bit too 'worky' for a holiday, but sitting on the floor doing crafty stuff is what we love doing when we actually have spare time.
This holiday's project is bookbinding. Pete's found some awesome online tutorials on various bookbinding methods, and some vintagey book covers at a secondhand book shop to rebind with blank paper.
We weren't sure where to go for bookbinding supplies (none of the stores actively advertised it), but we found some great stuff at Melbourne Etching Supplies (go figure) and Melbourne Artist's Supplies (Little LaTrobe St). Here's what we got:
From left to right: headbanding (the decorative stripy stuff you see when you look down at the binding from above), a bone folder, binding needles, binding thread, a nice new stanley knife, binding ribbon, an awl (for making clean holes through which the binding thread goes), flexible binding glue.
If we get good at it I might post a simple tute if anyone's interested. A lot of the things above are nice-to-haves rather than must-haves.
