Tomorrow, hopefully

Ahh, such wonderful comments from people about the Pattern Tester! I'm glad people had fun using it! I'd like to create a more advanced version which would also allow people to upload their own designs to play with. Also I'd love to make it so you can see the pattern & colourway in context. I just need to find/take some photographs of a blank cushion, lampshade, armchair, etc.

Sigh, I was really hoping to see my fabric arrive last week, if not the week before. Looks like the Easter break threw things out a fair bit. But my printer told me that it really should be ready by Monday. I really hope that's true, this time. And then I'll get it up into my shop asap!

Meanwhile, I've been preparing to release two new designs. I'm really looking forward to printing the Geese pattern from the other week - I have a good feeling about it. But I really want the other design I print alongside it to be something I feel equally happy with. And I reckon I've finally found it:





This pattern was inspired by some trees I saw in one of those little Japanese pattern/ornament books that you can get from the Brunswick Street Bookstore. Those little books are great - we've got quite a collection of them now. So am I on the right track thinking that this one will go well with the geese??

Thanks for reading :)

New Toy

I must admit, I didn't stay completely away from the computer over Easter. I spent a little bit of time building a new toy: The Kirin & Co Pattern Tester!

It's a little Flash based interface that allows people to play around with the base fabric and ink colours for a range of my patterns. I figure it will come in handy for anybody who wants to place a custom fabric order (see my etsy shop for details).



The fabric colour options are based on the cotton drill available through my fabric supplier, so they're basically fixed unless I venture out into new fabrics. The ink colour can be anything one likes, however the way the ink appears on the base fabric isn't quite accurate here. The fabric is printed using a water based ink, so the base colour will always show through a bit. So light coloured inks on a dark background don't work so well.

Anyway, please have a fiddle and let me know what you think! And if you come up with any ace colour combinations you'd like to share, just send me the details from the caption :)

back to it

Hope everyone had a great Easter break! First day back after holidays is haaard. I've got so many little things to do and organise and I don't know where to start. It was so good to just take time away from the computer and the house and do some socialising - something I don't do enough of lately. It's been good to meet some lovely new people, too.

For anybody hoping to get their hands on some of the next batch of fabric, well it should be arriving in my shop any day now - it's just off being heat set as we speak - yay! I'll try to do the shop update at a more Australian-friendly time this time - before 10:00 at night ;)

I've been meaning to get back into my drawing a bit so that I don't get too pattern obsessed. I'd like to get better at drawing people at a larger scale, with more detail. Lately I've been a little obsessed with eyes, paying attention to how eyes look from different angles and particularly what "smiley eyes" look like. I like smiley eyes the best, like Jen Corace's girls. Anyway here's one of my first attempts at a larger scale drawing:


She looks a little odd in places, but oh well, it's a start :)

Talented Ladies

It's been awhile between posts and whilst I've been a busy bee there's nothing quite ready to show yet. So I'm just going to spread some linky love and profile two lovely ladies who are doing great things:

Nicole Lecht - Freshly Blended
Nicole's been a busy busy girl setting up her new website and shop for her handmade books - she's almost there and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the fruits of her labour. Here are some of the jotters she's been making. I have a couple at home and they're super handy for notes and sketches and (ashamedly) the occasional shopping list :)


What cute packaging!! I should tie up my fabric like that :)

Heather Moore - Skinny LaMinx
Heather is a whizz with the cutting knife - always making such gorgeous things such as the magnet below. I don't know how she does it without getting a sore wrist! She also makes gorgeous screen printed teatowels and whatnots - check out her etsy shop :)

Happy with this one

Since I got that last batch of fabric printed I've been putting pressure on myself to come up with some really good designs for the next patterns. So many ideas have come and gone thru my head, some have made it onto paper and some have made it to the final stages of development only for me to decide that they're just not working.

It's also quite a challenge to limit oneself to just a single colour for screen printing. I could go two colours but that'd make the print cost quite expensive, and not quite worth it at this early stage. Patterns that a lot of people like such as crafty bits wouldn't really work in only one colour, and I reckon i'd have to confidently sell 100 metres of it to justify the setup cost.

Meanwhile, I think this one is really working. I can just see it being made into a lampshade or panel in a bag. I wanted to do a design that was a bit looser and more random than my usual stuff, which typically has a very even coverage. Looks best enlarged:

birthdee

It was Petey's birthday on the weekend - happy birthday sweetie pea! Here's some play money I made him so I can take him on a shopping trip to get him something nice (along with the very practical lettuce spinner he requested). It was fun to design fake money, putting those wavy lines in the background and using some of my existing drawings to make it look kinda money like.

Front:


And back:


And an envelope to put it in :)

In which she learns that taking photos of lighting is rather difficult

Wow it's been quite awhile since my last blog post. Most of my spare energy has been directed towards organising my next print run of fabric, which will hopefully be finished by the end of next week or the week after - my printer is really busy at the moment, which is a shame.

I've also been trying to come up with some new pattern designs but haven't been happy with the result. Maybe I've subconciously moved the bar up too high due to recent successes. I want my next pair of printed fabric designs to be just perfect. The right mix of unique + fun + nature-ee + modern + retro-ee :)

A few people have asked me recently if it's okay for them to use my fabric to make things which they then on-sell. My answer is simple - definately! In my mind that's the ideal use for it. I'd love to see my fabric made into real things that can then be sold on to happy customers. I'd make things with it myself if I had a more reliable sewing machine. That said, the first thing I did when I received my fabric was make it into some lampshades. The yellow works particuarly well as a lampshade because the colour isn't too strong and provides just the right amount of contrast when the lamp is on:





Take care and thanks again for all the support and very lovely comments!

More than I bargained for

After a long, busy day of cutting and packaging yesterday I was pleased to discover an extra metre of each fabric still on the roll! So for anyone who missed out last time there's another 2 quantities of each fabric in my etsy shop :)

But wait, there's more

Golly gee. I put my fabric up for sale last night and woke up this morning to find it all gone! That's one of the fun things about living in Australia - things happen overnight and you find out bleary eyed in the morning.

To those who bought some - thankyou ,thankyou, thankyou. It's all rather overwheming at the moment but also such a relief that things have turned out so well - I could have been left here with bolts of fabric lying around the living room. Thankfully not so.

AND, to those who missed out, there's more to come!! I'm about to get another batch printed which should be done mid next week. I think a third colourway is in order - willing to take suggestions!

I'd better run. So much to do. Thank you all so much again for all the support, and for all the lovely comments.

Finally!!!!

My fabric is finally here! I ran to the printers last night to collect it just as they were closing. I couldn't sleep properly for thoughts of fabric, fabric, fabric. Seriously. Anyway, here are the 4 designs, and they're up in my Etsy shop. Whew!


'Flowing Dots' in lemonlime


'Flowing Dots' in hazy blue


'Riverstones' in lemonlime


'Riverstones' in hazy blue

And so the nervous waiting begins. Please, if you have any feedback or advice please get in touch, I won't take offense :)

New Moo

My new set of Moo cards arrived this week! I still think Moo cards are the best thing since sliced bread. 100 cards with up to 100 different designs on the back all for only $25 USD sent anywhere in the world. You can't go wrong.



My justification for getting a new batch printed was that my old ones said "interactive and graphic designer" which is too limiting these days so these ones just say "designer". Ooh how fancy.

I got an email from Nicole today suggesting that Craftree would make a good print. I hadn't even thought about it, but I think it's a nice idea. My local giclee printer can run off A3 canvas prints basically on demand, so I decided to put a few A3 options up on Etsy. here's just a couple:



I put some of my girls up A3 size also, just to see how they go.


Ooh and have you seen Etsy Mini? It's an Etsy widget that creates little thumbnails of your shop items that you can put on your blog. I've got one on the right hand side of my blog. Very handy.

The Final Four

I haven't mentioned anything for a couple of weeks but the fabric printing is going ahead as we speak! It's due to be finished early next week and I am _so_ excited. And nervous. But mainly excited. Below are the four pattern and colourway options that will be available. The bottom design was a big favourite in the poll a few weeks ago, however the top one got hardly any votes at all (i reckon you have to see it printed to get the full effect). But it was the lovely Jenny from Amitie Textiles that helped pursuade me on that one, saying it was her favourite and offering to buy 10m of it for her shop. Yay!


(each square represents about 22cm squared)

Also i'd like to send a BIG thankyou to Krisen Doran who's been such a great help along the way, giving me heaps of advice on the process and being a great sounding board :)

Autumn

The weather is slowly starting to turn cold over here. I'm trying to fend off memories of cold hands and cold feet and tense shivering with thoughts of electric blankets and scarves and gloves and finding the perfect coat and possibly splashing out on some Camper boots. God by the way I'm talking you'd think the weather actually got "cold" over here but really it never drops below zero. I'm just a cold frog.

A new pattern in theme with Autumn:


And some more of that high contrast 'stylish' stuff. I can't really think of a practical purpose for this one however. Maybe wrapping paper?


"Craftree" hehe.

Wilkins & Kent

Here is where I indulge in some gratuitous showing-off of a new piece of 'designer' furniture in our apartment. In fact it's our first & only piece of designer furniture, and our first proper joint purchase:





We made the mistake of walking into Wilkins & Kent whilst looking for a coffee table and both fell for it instantly. The Wilkins & Kent boys make such beautiful furniture and their whole store on Brunswick Street is full of wonderful things.

This morning I was joking around making the pattern below, titled "I Can Be A Stylist Too". It's supposed to be in mock of current design trends (I'm not really a 'stylist' kind of designer), but I showed it to Pete who said "hey, that actually looks cool". So it stays :)

Thankyouse

Firstly, I just want to thank everyone for the overwhelming amount of feedback on the pattern decision. And it was definately overwhelming! I spent so long struggling and stressing over which patterns to print and it kept me awake with racing thoughts for a couple of nights. But I've finally made my decision and am just waiting (somewhat frustratedly) on the fabric. I am SO itching to get moving on this!!

Meanwhile I got the coolest package in the mail today. This is Nicole upholding her part of the patterns-for-handmade-book bargain, and my god did she uphold it. I had a giggly old time unwrapping each part of the package she put together for me. Soooo gorgeous, every bit of it. And check out that wrapping paper!


In the forgeound is the beautiful handmade book she made me. It features different patterned papers front and back, fabric lining, a velcro buttoned pocket at the front containing a Certificate of Authenticity (with a familiar pattern on it, hehe), and pages and pages of different found papers waiting to be drawn all over.


Thanks again, Nicole :)

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...