quick pics

Ooch a busy work week this one! But thought I'd quickly pop onto the blog and post some piccies:


Tissue box holder made by Pete's lovely mum. She took some progress shots whilst making it so I'll upload them somewhere soon if anyone's interested in a tute?


You know, I really have no idea why tissue boxes are always so ugly. I mean really, it's like they put no thought/effort at all into the design. Does anyone really like white roses, seashells or dolphins? There was once this really lovely design with silhouetted japanese branches all around the sides. Now that was nice. But then it disappeared!! Anyway this is a great solution - thanks Heather!


And of course... the crafty book spine shot. That's what you do when you buy a bunch of crafty/sewing books right? ;) Anyway they're both lovely. Amys' book covers a lot of great basics, but Lotta's takes the cake when it comes to styling and fabric selection. I'm a sucker for that muted Japanesey-craft-book style photography.

development, thoughts and a newbee

Well, the perfect linen has been found! (thanks to Kristen). It's actually a cotton/linen blend, and a little more expensive than the others I looked at, but well worth it I reckon. Most of the other linen blends I looked at had a very manufactured feel about them. It felt like the colour was achieved by bleaching and dying, rather than letting the natural colour of linen and all it's subtle variations show through. So I'm happy with my final choice and I reckon my customers will be too. And after calculating it all out, my increase in cost is fairly minimal, so I won't have to bump the price up by much - phew!

Wholesale orders sorted, fabric order placed, colours chosen, now we just play the waiting game. If you want some hand printed lovelyness in the meantime, look no further than Hollabee's etsy shop, who has just released her own new fabric! We're multiplying, it seems :)

I must confess something. I had a revelation the other night, whilst at a dinner party flicking thru a friend's new copy of Lotta's Simple Sewing (my copy is in the mail - yay). I was looking at all the lovely photography of her textile designs in context, and was really struck by how much that was what I wanted to be producing. That feel, those sorts of designs, that level of simplicity, that texture. And it really struck me how much what I have done so far isn't really in that direction at all. Not that what I've done is bad or anything, just not really where I want to be. It resonates with one answer I received to my questionnaire that's been stuck in my head: "some of us are minimalists, you know".

So yeah, I really want to start taking things in that direction. I think my ginkgo design is leading that way, and I'm very happy about that. I'm not going to push it too hard but it'll be interesting to see where things lead. I hope you still like it!

Meanwhile great news - the landlord said yes about the cat! I can't believe it. Neither could my agent it seems. Now on to finding the perfect kitty.

Tagged, a gazillion times

I hate to think how many times I've been tagged recently and haven't gone through with it. I've always meant to, but it's taken a long time to think of 8 things that are vaguely interesting. Plus, I already feel weird/guilty about the fact that this blog is all about me rambling about myself and my work, day in day out... and then writing 8 random things about myself makes me feel like I'm being even more egocentric. But anyway here goes:

- I really really want a cat. I've been researching breeds and have my fingers crossed the landlord will say yes. At the moment I think I want to get a Burmilla (this changes often).

- I used to be really freaked out by the idea of "collaborating" with other creatives. I'm not sure why. Probably insecurity. Although even now I much prefer the idea of collaborating with people in the craft world than the design world.

- I was recently involved in what I deem the-quickest-and-easiest-swap-ever, and I've been meaning to blog about it for ages. I got an email from Jess from papertreasure who wanted one of my lamps (and i was just thinking that day that it needed to go to a new home) and in return I got this:


The 'lara' necklace (coincidentally named), some cute earrings and a handmade book



- When I got back from Japan I realised how much service can really suck over here. It feels like more than half the people who serve you in shops and cafe's (and esp those on the phone!) wear their shitty moods on their sleeves and can be incredibly rude.

- I hate baguettes. Or any sort of bread based lunch item that has tough, chewy bread that cuts your mouth. How is anyone supposed to bite into something like that?

- I realised last week that making an artful picture arrangement on your walls is nowhere near as easy as it looks. But here's the result of my efforts:




Note: It's not that I love myself so much that the birch forest print is in there, it just happened to be the right colour and size. I plan to swap it with something else eventually :)

- Mum and Dad brought these back from the States for me:


Lara bars! Very funny. They're actually quite good. And healthy, I think.

The day after I got back from my trip I felt all inspired, so I set about painting my ikea drawers:



Done and done. I'm not going to tag anyone else in case they find this as hard as I do!

whoosh...

Uh okay, wow. Whilst I spend 3 hours out of the house at a dinner party and doing this...


(my friend is a vet and was looking after this huuuge bunny)

...you guys are snaffling up all of my fabric packs! Sorry to those that missed out - I had no idea they'd be so popular! Lesson learnt - i'll be sure to reserve more of my fabric in future for little mix packs!

I actually do have a few more pieces that I can put together into kits, so i'll do that in the next day or so. I've also reserved a bunch more fabric for notebook kits - basically a similar amount of fabric which comes with instructions for making a reversible notebook cover. They'll be going up into the shop this week also :)

Bed time for me, but thanks sooo much for your keen-ness! It was a lovely thing to come home to.

New arrivals

Hey actually, I'm not going to leave you any time for guessing, because they're done already...


Fabric mix packs! And they're up in the shop right now OMG!!!1!1!



I've been planning to do this for aages and finally got around to it. Apart from a few odd sized scraps, almost all of my stash has gone into making these packs. And you know what that means - they're super-duper-limited-edition-once-only-never-to-be-seen-again! Hehehe. Well actually that's pretty much true - I don't plan to reprint some of these designs ever again, at least not in those colours, so this might be someone's last chance to pick up something they've wanted but missed.



There's only 9 of them and they're all different. So head on over to le shop if you're interested :)

In the making

Here's Saturday's work in progress. Yes I must admit, I have been hoarding fabric all this time. Just a little bit saved from each roll.

I bet you can guess what these will become...

How to cover a lampshade frame

Finally! I've gotten around to writing up this tutorial on how to cover a lampshade frame! Hope it all makes sense :)

Equipment
- Lampshade frame (these can be tricky to find - I buy mine from Handworks in Prahran, VIC)
- Fabric (anything that can hold it's own when the light is on - you want to be able to still see the pattern!)
- Some sort of base stock to support the fabric - this can be card or flexible polypropylene.
- Spray Adhesive (this will be your best friend throughout the process - don't even bother trying without it)



Process

1) Firstly, cut the base stock to be the same height as your lampshade frame (H), so the top just meets the top horizontal bar and the bottom just meets the bottom horizontal bar. (if your shade is conical you'll have to do that fancy thing where you lie the frame down onto the stock and roll it along, tracing the top and bottom as you go - you'll get a kind of arc shape).

The width of the stock should be enough so that there's about 2.5cm overlap after you've wrapped it around your shade.

2) Lay the base stock down on your fabric. Cut the fabric so that it's about 7mm taller than your base stock at the top and bottom, and a little bit wider (you'll trim this extra width off afterwards).

3) Put your base stock and fabric face down on some newspaper, and spray both completely with spray adhesive (depending on your spray adhesive you might only need to do one or the other, but mine recommends both surfaces). Wait a couple of minutes till the glue gets "tacky" then place the sticky side of your base cloth down centred on the sticky side of your fabric. Note: if you're not confident you can do this accurately, I'd recommend doing step 2 after step 3 :)

4) Trim off the extra fabric width neatly so that the fabric is flush with the base stock. Leave the extra height - you'll need this later!

5) Wrap your fabric & base stock around the frame. Glue the overlap down and wait for this to dry (or just secure it enough so that it doesn't move around).

6) Now for the fun bit - rolling the extra fabric around the top and bottom of the frame. Firstly you need to make this fabric tacky. I use spray adhesive again for this because it's nice and strong yet still "forgiving" in the early stages - ie you can move and restick things if you don't get it perfect the first time. I roll up a piece of scrap paper and place it inside the frame (to protect the inside from glue spray) and then spray around the inside of the fabric where it's sticking out - just the top for now. Wait a couple of minutes till this gets tacky.

7) Working your way around the circumference, carefully roll the fabric around the top horizontal bar and tuck it underneath. (if you've got a particularly thin or thick lampshade frame, you might need more or less than the 7mm extra fabric suggested). Also, depending on how your frame is constructed, you might have to cut slits in the fabric to make space for the vertical supporting rods.

8) repeat steps 6 & 7 for the bottom horizontal bar.

And that's it - you're done!

More Japanese Goodness

Oooh I'm so glad so many people responded well to the linen and the two colour design! I'm very excited about these new developments - it just feels "right", to me. I think i'm kind of obsessed with the natural texture of linen after Japan.

Now I just need to find the perfect linen! Something of a good medium weight, and a nice light natural colour, and available around 150cm wide! If anyone knows of a shop in Aus that's good for linen, I'd love to hear it.

Meanwhile, I found some more sources of Japanese goodness that I just have to share:

Lin-net - Just looking at their website makes me happy, it's just like a Japanese Craft Mag. I wish I'd been able to visit the shop. (thanks Kristen and Pei Pei)
Retromummy Shop - Japanese Craft books, fabric and trim, and based in Aus! :)
Spiralling Shop - Oh man, so much cute stuff here. Including Shinzi Katoh cafe mugs which I've totally fallen in love with. I managed to find one in Kyoto and it makes my morning tea time even more exciting than it already is. Is that weird? To find morning tea so exciting? I think it's my fav part of the day, esp if I have some good choc/bikkie/muffin to go with it.


mmmmmmmmmmm.

all gones

Deary me. That all got snapped up pretty quickly. I'm flattered as always, and very grateful that I get to do this fabric thing alongside the rest of my work. I do get a bit stressed and worrysome when a new design comes out though. Especially if one design in the pair sells much better than the other. You see (not sure if it's obvious or not) but I print two designs off the same screen at once. So they're always printed together, in the same colours, in the same quantity, and on the same bolt of fabric (which is later cut in two). I've deliberated endlessly as to whether or not this is a good idea. On one hand, it really helps to reduce my production costs, allows me to change colourways more often, and produce a wider range of designs. On the other hand it's less flexible, and makes wholesale orders tricky.

That all said, I think I've come up with a new way to solve that problem - two colour prints! Through a bit of fancy-ness I can use a similar approach to print inverse versions of a two colour design. Like this:





Also note the linen basecloth! It's time for a change around here and linen is the way to go. And it was confirmed by your answers to my little questionnaire - thanks for that! For a minimal price difference I'll now be able to print on linen or a cotton/linen blend, and give the whole print a lot more character. I'm really excited about this!

Okay enough rambling from me. bedtime!

Question time

The fabric is up in the shop this morn and selling well - yay! In fact, the gold birch has sold out already! There might be some more coming though - I have some wholesale orders to confirm and I played it safe with quantities, so there might be a couple more metres of that one to come. Meanwhile, these three are still available and are looking forward to being chopped up and put into loving homes:


Riverside Adventures in Dark Chocolate


Riverside Adventures in Gold


Birch Forest in Dark Chocolate

Anyway, I have a little favour to ask. I've written up a little questionnaire about how I could improve my fabric, and I'd love to hear your thoughts (it's only 9 questions long). You see it's a bit tricky, the whole blog/online shop world. You're simultaneously close yet a million miles away from your customers. Plenty of nice things have been said about my fabric (which I appreciate no end) but I'm interested in the un-said, the unreached potential.

So yeah, if you have a spare couple of minutes please check it out. Looking forward to seeing what comes of it!

bobbins

A random tribute to modern Japanese crafty goodness, which I miss heaps now that I'm home. But there's plenty to be found online it seems:

Print & Pattern blog - is having a Japanese cute themed week.

The remakeables shop - I only just discovered this one but full of cute Japanesey type goodies (including a book I bought over there which I highly recommend: Handmade Journal Covers)

The goodness etsy shop - I think everyone knows about this one already :)

I'm missing someone else... I forget!

4 new fabrics - finally!

Whee! My new fabric designs got back from the printer on Friday and they turned out great! I'm really happy with how the colour turned out particularly the gold. I was quite fussy about how the gold should look (I'm sure Kristen can relate). The pantone-based samples I originally got from the printer were either too greeny, or too orangey, so I got them to hand mix a colour that was in between. And they did a lovely job!



I plan to put these up in my Etsy shop on Monday morning, about 9:00am Melbourne time.

Oh also, I owe a belated but big thank you to Victoria E for doing a little interview/writeup about me on her blog (all about green, crafty, and DIY living). She wrote some really lovely stuff and obviously did her research :) Thanks Victoria!

New website - yay!

Thank you everyone for the really lovely comments about the letterpress cards and the Japan trip! I wish that I could reply to everyone's comments so that people know that they're appreciated but time just slips away so quickly. I hate to think how many hours of the day I spend writing emails!

I wanted to write a blog post about the Japan trip but I really don't know what to say! It really was a fantastic experience, and very inspiring. I found I was more inspired by modern Japanese design (like what you'd find in craft books etc) than the traditional designs of washi paper and kimomos. The traditional designs have heavily influence my work in the past but maybe I'm moving on from that now. But anyway, the modern/cute/crafty stuff has inspired me so much that I've gone ahead and completely redesigned my website!


I've been obsessively working on it solidly for the last few days and am SO glad it's finally up. The redesign was much overdue!

Oh by the way - for Japan, I highly recommend Retro Mummy's guide to crafty shopping in Tokyo. I unfortunately forgot to print off her list before I left and subsequently didn't get to all the places on there - but it's a must have for anyone who plans to go!

Oh and if anyone wants to see our happy snaps of the trip, you can see them here. I uploaded them to Pete's flickr account because I wanted to keep mine just "crafty". Anyway they're not awesome photos, more just happy snaps, but good to have anyway :)

Satsuma Press + Kirin & Co - letterpress cards!

No time for rest around here! This morning I ran up to the post office to collect a nice big fat parcel - limited edition letterpress cards by Lynn from Satsuma Press, the result of our collaboration! I'm really happy with how they turned out - such nice deep impressions :) There's three designs to choose from:


Treehouses, japanese tree, birch available in sets of 5.


Or you can buy a 3 pack with one of each. [UPDATE: all the "one of each" packs have sold out from my shop, but you can still get them from lynn's shop here :) ]

Lynn has sent me a bunch of (35 sets to be precise) to sell in my etsy shop, and she'll be selling the rest of them in her etsy shop. If you're based in the States or Canada I recommend buying from Lynn's shop to save on postage, and if you're based in Australia then you can buy from mine :)

Yay! Okay back to sorting out the rest of my life, and travel photos...

back!

Wow. what an amazing, exhausting experience. 2 weeks in a crazy, diverse country with sooo much to see, and not enough time to see it all. Throw some 30 degree+ humid weather and you end up with a very exhausted and somewhat overwhelmed Lara.

I'll need some more time to digest the whole experience but in a nutshell it was great - everything I hoped. I'll write some more thoughts later.

But of course, I'll leave you with some photos of what we all really want to see - the craft loot!


initial crafty puchases - fabric, trim, stamps, paper, purse handles and kit, minature pegs + spools, 'handmade zakka' book


further crafty puchases - cutesy japanese fabric, crafty books, cram cream tape, Shinzi Katoh cafe mug, cute little 'vault' storage stack

koko ga daisuki des

[quick preview]

ooooooh, lynn just sent me these teaster pics of our collaboration. I'm very excited :)


the stamp on the back of each card


how cool is this plate! I've never seen a polymer plate before - or any sort of letterpress plate for that matter :)

lampy

Some great comments on the 'craftiquette' post - thanks for that! seems like everyone is fairly unanimous on the subject, which was to be expected.

Having a busy busy week tying off loose ends before we jet set off at the end of the week (!), but have squeezed in a bit of lampshade making. i know i promised to make a photo tutorial about how to make these, but I didn't have time to stop and take photos this time. Plus, we're getting a new camera in Japan which should hopefully take MUCH better shots! So next time, I promise :)


A custom lamp order of matching poppies and raindrops fabric :)


an Auntie Cookie fabric lamp for Shannon to take to the market! Her fabric works really well in this context!! And the black on white print provides great contrast when the lamp is on :)

craftiquette?

A little bit of interestingness is going on in blogland at the moment, centred around the issue of copying. You can read a little more about the situation over at the Meet Me at Mikes blog.

I thought I'd flag this here on my blog also, given that it's an issue that's quite close to home for me at the moment. Shannon, Kristen and I have talked about it at some length recently - about blog etiquette in general and the sharing of ideas.

I like to think that I'm a fairly open person. I like to share information about my ideas and processes - how things came to be, sometimes even step by step tutorials. If someone emails me for specific information, I am usually quite willing to divulge.

I'm also quite sensitive about potentially copying someone else's ideas. If something I'm doing seems to close to someone else's, I like to flag it, like the birch forest design. And funnily enough, the other day when I was worrying about my notebook kit being too similar to another kit I saw at the trade show, it was the very same crafter (as in the issue above) who's "sew your own" kits I was referring to. Her packaging and the way she'd folded her fabric was just how I had done my prototype, and I was really worried that mine was accidentally too similar (until Shannon told me I was being silly).

Anyway, my point is, when you act/think a certain way, you sort of have the good faith that others will act/think similarly. When someone uses a large information that I give them on my blog or in an email (eg a tutorial), I implicitly expect that they'll give me credit somewhere along the line, because that's what I'd do. I don't expect this in all instances, but definitely ones where I've divulged specific information that you might not be able to get elsewhere.

But, unfortunately not everyone thinks this way, which is a little upsetting. Which raises the question - what is the correct blogging/crafting etiquette? How similar is too similar? When is credit due? What are your experiences and what do you expect from your blog readers and peers?

Thinkin' thinkin'

Shannon and I went to the Life In Style trade show last night. I'd never been to a trade show before. It was very inspiring and thought provoking - seeing people in a similar field to myself who have taken things to the next step.

It poses a interesting question though - how far do I want to take this fabric venture? It seems like there are two main options. Stick with producing things on a small scale, for sale in my own shop and just a few other places. Or, start getting things professionally produced from the fabric, on a larger scale, selling in shops and doing the whole trade show thing.

I don't know - the latter sounds so very 'huge', but I guess it doesn't have to be. Some people probably just start inching in that direction and before they know it they have a 'range'. Anyway, food for thought.

Meanwhile, I'm looking into making products from my fabric that are a little less labour intensive. I put this little prototype kit together last week (and was quite taken aback to see something very similar at the trade show already - eep!). But anyway, little DIY notebook cover kits with fabric and instructions:





Leave the hard (sorry, fun) work up to someone else!

mo' moo

After all that blog slacking and now two posts in one day!

Anyway apologies I must sound like a walking advertisement for these guys, but the folks over at Moo have done it again - cute little sticker books! I just got a free sample in the mail today - yay! (smart move, given I'm bound to rant about it on my blog).



They're very cool. I have no idea what I'll use them for though. Perhaps I'll include them as freebies with my shop orders.



Wanna know what really cracked me up though? This is the sort of thing I find immensely funny... when I folded the cover right back, past the spine, I found this little guy:



Te hehehe.

Bird Girls Can Fly

(well, maybe not this one, such tiny wings).

Aha, finally something crafty to post about! I've been inspired by all the lovely softies and birds people have been making so I thought I'd give it a go myself!


I prototyped her out of paper and sticky-tape first which sort of worked. After I sewed her together I had to go back and make some little changes - shorten her body, narrow her neck, give her head some darts. It's still not how I pictured her but I'm happy enough.


(the tail is still a work in progress)

I stuffed her using some cotton wadding that I've had in my stash for ages - it's the stuff they use in making futons and Japanese floor cushions, and basically looks like raw cotton right off the bush. It even has the occasional twig in it. It's awesome to work with tho - much more pliable than synthetic stuff and you can make it dense in some spots and light and fluffy in others. You can get it from friendly futon manufacturers. I'm not sure what other people use to stuff their toys but I really like the cotton wadding...

Linky love

Oh man, I feel like such a slack blogger lately. Here I am reading post after post by everyone else and I just have nothing. In fact I feel incredibly slack in all facets of my work lately. The weeks just seems to be rolling by, and at the end of the day its like: "what did I actually get done today?"

There's certainly stuff in the works though. Like a mysterious little collaboration I've got going with Lynn from Satsuma Press. It's VERY exciting, and quite imminent too. More to come soon!

Meanwhile, given I have nothing to show of my own today, it's time for some linky love!

Satsuma Press blog
As previously mentioned, this is Lynn's very new blog! Keep an eye on this one, I reckon there's going to be some good reads and very inspiring letterpress related stuff (if her first few posts are anything to go by!)


Milk & Cookies
A good uni buddy of mine, Tali. She's just started a post-grad animation course, and posts really cool illustrations in lots of different styles.



Kwoozy
The lovely Pei (Pei Pei?) who I got to meet in person at the Etsy meetup the other week! I really like her cute crafty stuff and felted toys :)



Hollabee
A Melbourne based 'Dutchy' who only recently started her craft blog but is already off to a flying start. Some lovely stuff coming out of this one :)



Blossom Creations
The lovely Erin, who kindly put together a little Japan travel guide for me (she lived there for 2.5 years). Anyway her blog is full of some very awesome stuff, and she recently released a range of patterned gift wrap and notebooks. Very cool!


And last but not least - another Etsy purchase! Man I love the impulse buying power of PayPal.


This is a crotcheted coral piece by Jess from jpolka.etsy.com. You can either buy the pattern or she can make them to order for a very reasonable price! I plan to put it in a shadow box frame like she has on her site.

Okay time to go attempt to be productive...