Stickers?

I got really inspired recently looking at the Print & Pattern blog - particularly the "Box of Labels" sets that she showcased a few weeks ago - such gorgeous stuff. So I decided to have a go making my own sticker labels:



Only problem is that looking back on my inspiration, they're probably a bit too similar to the Sukie ones. What do you think? I just really love that grungey effect they used on theirs - makes it look a bit less clean and stark and vector-ey. Same reason I like to put linen texture behind my other stuff :)

Moo Xmas

Oooh Kwoozy just made me aware that my Xmas card designs (previously mentioned here) are now available on the Moo site! And they have some cool new products that you can put them on too - standard greeting cards (in portrait or landscape) and postcards too. Just go here to view all the designs and drag and drop the ones you like (there are three pages of options). Yay!

I've ordered a set for myself so I'll show some pics when they arrive.

Meanwhile, I've taken a 4 day weekend - Tuesday is a public holiday for a horse race (I love this city) - so I attempted another softie for Mirabel.



Note to self, if you want to make something "simpler", don't choose a creature with 8 legs.



... and also don't try to come up with the pattern yourself - too stressful! I'm sure there would have been an easier way to put him together.

softie

My sewing machine must really hate me now. For months it has been making this weird clacking noise whilst sewing. Then, the other day it started making this horrible high pitched screeching noise, and then refused to go all together.

I had a look inside, nothing, seeemed to be wrong, caught, or out of place. But then I had the genius idea of giving it some lube. Et voila. No screeching, not even clacking, running as smooth as silk. For how long had my machine been crying out for attention and I'd been neglecting it?? Very, very bad.



Anyway I finally finished making my birdy softie, which needed a tail, and am going to contribute it to Softies for Mirabel. I probably should have made something more colorful for the kiddies. Maybe i'll try my hand at making another, simpler toy.

Let's go picnic!

The fruits of my recent Shinzi Katoh obsession:



The little lunchboxey thing at the front was a belated birthday present from the famous Aunty Cookie- thanks Shannon! That's definitely all I'm going to buy for now - a much too expensive obsession.

I discovered the hard way that the design on the bottle can be scratched if I'm not careful. So I made this:


... using perfectly apt "i am drinking" linen tape from a recent swap with Leslie from Good-ness. Hee!

On that note, here's the rest of the swap - Shinzi, Lotta, linen tape, craft mag... wasn't she fantastic! Very generous :)



P.S. - So funny, when I was taking those pics on my balcony a guy on the street below looked up and said "ebay? i know ... i've done it a million times".

Hehehe, not quite, but he was close enough :)

blogger

If my blog looks weird for a little bit, it's because I'm upgrading to the new blogger template/widgetty system. Kind of scary - I'm going to lose allll my changes and have to re do them! But it'll be worth it...

*UPDATE - whew that was much easier than expected. Go blogger!*

potholder v 2.0

I decided to have another go making a pot holder since the first one turned out so wonky. Instead of the stitch-right-sides-together-and-turn-out method, I tried just quilting the pieces together right way out and making some binding to go around the edges - much better!



Plus you can use the bias to make a hanging loop. Although I did like the Japanese linen tape used in the last one!

craftin' with mah birches

I've been fixated lately with the idea of making a bunch of stuff with my fabric and taking some fancy product shots. Lotta style. I plan to enlist a friend's fancy DSLR and rustic dining table and have a lotta (haw haw) fun with it.

These aren't an example of such 'fancy shots', just my feeble attempts to tide me over in the meantime:







I love the way these photos totally conceal the wonkyness of the potholder. Obviously I have a lot to learn about sewing with batting and quilting :)

Stitching Night!

I went to my first stitching night at Mikes last night and it was a heap of fun - definitely lived up to all the hype. And I got to meet some lovely people in person, including Bianca from Hollabee. Here's a couple o pics from the night:


Bianca doing her stitching - very cute.


Requisite cupcake shot and lovely freebies from Pip in the foreground (hedgie pincushion, scissors, pins and embroidery hoop).


Towards the end of the night. What a very cool shop - 'twas the first time I'd seen the Bridge road store.


The fruits o' my labour - bobbin girl still needs a stitchy speech bubble with something witty in it.

p.s. - I gave this blog a facelift the other day - for all those non-visiting subscriber folk out there who can't see it :)

cotton/linen mix packs

I really had a giggly old time making these. I felt like for the first time I could put mix packs together where the colours and designs really complimented each other and made a nice little product.



I'm pretty sure by the time I finish writing this post they will mostly be gone from my shop already, as I only had enough fabric left to make a few of them. Next time I'm definitely putting more fabric aside for this!

oooooOOOOoooh

Just saw this at the end of spicks & specs. Soooo cool!





Watch esp if you like animals :)

restless

I've had so many fabric-esque thoughts going through my head of late. Dreams of Shinzi Katoh designs and cute shops in Japan, more dreams about Marimekko and Scandinavian design and Lotta Jansdotter and shapes and colours and ideas running through my head. A new design popped out - exciting. Will show you later ;)

I am soooooo eagre to get my next batch of fabric designs/colourways printed!! I've been waiting weeks for my fabric supplier to get more linen in, and finally it's on it's way to the printer. Now I just have to wait for them not to be busy. Damn it's so frustratingly slow this process. I need to learn to have a few batches in the works at once rather than consecutively.

Anyway, I got all giddy with excitement the other day when I fiiiinally got to make some fabric mix packs out of the cotton/linen fabrics! All orders and swaps out of the way, I could cut up the rest. And they'll be up in the shop tomorrow morning at 9:00am.


I love a plant you can propagate as easily as chopping off a branch and plonking it in a new pot of soil. Note said mix packs in background :)

Drawing, reading, painting

Its been my first relatively 'free' weekend in awhile, and I've been enjoying having the space to do some non-work creative stuff. Buying a watercolour painting kit and having a play (mmm I really like this medium) , starting to read The Artists's Way, and doing some drawing with a nice new technical pencil.

It's been aaaages since I've done any drawing - inspiration is few and far between for these. But I like how this one turned out, inspired by my obsession with lofty warehouse spaces. mmmm.

Mmm Shinzi Katoh

I'm going through a real phase at the moment of being obsessed with the Japanese designer Shinzi Katoh. I love his cute illustrations but more than that I totally respect and admire his use of colour.


1. SK - bento sun, 2. Can you find squirrel, 3. Mug mosaic, 4. Mary Mary, 5. Postcard - Orange Elephant, 6. Postcard - Bear, 7. Postcard - Biggest Animal, 8. Postcard - Almost All, 9. SK - slices of sweetness.


Mmm, a new Shinzi Katoh mug and homemade banana bread with morning tea - how can you go wrong?

Fabric Notebook Cosy kits

Well, the fabric mix packs have all been snapped up already, but the fabric notebook 'cosy' kits are still available in my shop as of right now. *UPDATE* - oops sorry! They've all gone again already! I'll get onto making some more :)





I had fun putting these together and choosing the fabric combinations, and printing out the instructions in colour and guilt free with my new printer jigger!

Quick ramble

Man I have been such a slack blogger of late. I get a little stressed out about the fact that I don't have time to respond to all the lovely comments people leave. I hope I don't offend anyone when I don't. Gosh thats such a silly thing to worry about. I'm sure this lady would tell me off for such thoughts :P

Anywhoo, it feels weird to write a post without any pics so here's some shots of a new toy I have in my office, which some of you might find quite useful/interesting:





It's this cool little add-on to my printer called a CIS. Ink gets fed in to the printer from 6 large ink bottles, which makes printing SOOOOOOO much cheaper than those hideously expensive cartridges. Perfect for small business people like me who chew through lots of ink printing labels and proofs and things. More info here.

In shop news, some fabric mix packs and notebook kits are going up in the shop tomorrow morning :)

Oh and thanks for the great response to the Xmas designs - quite overwhelming! I'm not sure when they'll be up and available on the Moo site, but I'll let you know when they are!

A Very Moo Xmas

If all goes according to plan, a bunch of holiday season/xmas theme designs I just made for Moo will be available on their site - yay! You'll be able to turn them into gift cards, mini cards, stickers, and whatever else they have up their sleeves over there.

Gee I must say it's tough trying to make xmas stuff not look tacky and boringly cliché. Took me ages to come up with anything but once I got on a roll it was okay and I started to really enjoy it. Plus, put linen as a backdrop and anything looks 10x better, hehehe.

Here's a sneek peek:

Some pictures to fill the gaps

Finally made some more profesh looking bolts for my wholesale orders:



Textile designer Kristen Doran from Sydney just released these notepads and sent me one along with some of her lovely fabric. The notepads were only released as a limited run of 20 but hopefully she makes some more - lots more!


Kristen Doran's 'Peacock Garden' Notepads

[sidetrack] logo competition

Hee how cool is this - my brother is holding a logo design competition for his software (webmin) and there are soooo many entries! a lot of them are quite good too, and submitted by some fairly well known design firms. It's nice to see one of my brothers involved in something designery.

I'm gunna have fun recommending a winner :)

[coming up for air]

Man, i don't usually have super busy, stressful weeks, but this definitely was one. trying to get my fabric up in the shop within 48 hrs of receiving it probably wasn't the cleverest idea at such a time. but the response, again, was fantastic. i'm still really quite stunned at how quickly this stuff sells. it's always a surprise because I'm in it, not outside looking in - I can't really see things for how they are or how appealing they might be.

Check out this awesome post from Pip over at Meet Me at Mikes. All this 'real world' publicity for all the peeps in our little community - I'm so proud of yas all!

Tis funny, a few years ago it felt like all the artisans and crafters you saw at markets and in the paper were (somewhat intimidating), unknown people... and now it feels like we know them all and are all a part of our little community. Or maybe there's still heaps of people out there who I don't know, but because the community has expanded into this online world it doesn't feel so intimidating anymore. Hmm I'm probably not making much sense...

Meanwhile, here's a little contra job I did for my buddy Jeremy over at ImageScience. He needed a 1 year wedding anniversary present for his wife and the themes are clocks and paper. So he commissioned a birch forest clock!



It was fun to put together and it was nice to do something a bit different. Not too hard to make either. You can buy the clock parts from here, and I just got the design printed onto A3 paper and wrapped it (canvas style) around a few pieces of chipboard stuck together (A4 cut down to 21cm x 21cm ). The hole in the middle can be cut out with a cutting knife, or a drill I suppose, if you're careful.



Okay I'm off. Enjoy the rest of your weekend :)

New Fabric!

Just a quick note to say there'll be some new fabric in the shop as of tomorrow morning! Sorry for the late notice and lack of pics - running a bit behind schedule but I should be able to post some proper pictures tonight. If you'd like to be notified earlier you can join my mailing list. Shop update is scheduled for 9:00am Melbourne time.



Oh and thanks for all the lovely birthday wishes :)

Lara += 1

Things I am grateful for today:

- That my birthday didn't fall on Grand Final day this year

- That my boyfriend doesn't need any 'training up' in order to choose wonderful birthday presents:


You can find them here

- That each day I sit down to a wonderful job that I enjoy, and am surrounded by so many lovely people who are infinitely supportive thru this little blog. Thanks so much :)

- That I got to spend the weekend surrounded by my closest friends, spoiling ourselves rotten on a Hen's weekend for my friend Karin. Winery tours, fancy lunch, pampering and then high tea (totally reminiscent of the mad hatter's tea party) at the Windsor Hotel grand ballroom:


Best viewed large (like our stomachs afterwards)

This was all insanely indulgent of us, and cost way too much money. But hey, it was a once off opportunity and I don't pamper myself often :)

out with the old, in with the new

Wow, such lovely responses already to my last post! I'm so glad people liked it! I feel this sort of design is more in the direction that I'd like to be heading.

But on that note, if I'm going to be printing even more new designs, I have to start relinquishing some of my old screens. I've got quite a collection gathering at the printers, and they've asked for some back. Bonsai Forest & Wild Geese, Poppies & Raindrops are the two screens I'm thinking of giving up.

So... the question is, should I do one last run of those old designs before discarding the screens? I thought the linen might help revitalize some of them, such as below:



Honestly now. I can accept when it's time to move on ;)

experiment

mmmm, everything looks nice when mocked up on linen....

A trip to the fabric printer

Today I went for a walk to the fabric printer to check out some colour samples they'd prepared for me. And I did something I've been meaning to do for ages - I took my camera with me!

I think it's true that if you're buying something handmade, it becomes so much more valuable when you feel connected to the process. It's the background if the product that's interesting - how it came to be. I reckon that's why almost all of my customers have found me through my blog. Because you're not just buying something by a nameless, faceless company, you're buying from someone you know, who you've listened to rambling about stuff day in day out.


The printer's building, formerly "The Mighty Apollo Gym" ! They're on the top floor. If the building looks familiar at all it's because it was used in the filming of the TV series "Last Man Standing". The main character supposedly had his funky warehouse apartment in this building, hehehe.


When I arrived, Nadia still had the mixing dishes out, containing the 4 colour samples I requested. This is for a dusty "robins egg" colourway. (The design in the background isn't mine).


Here's one of my screens, standing up against one of their printing tables (note big long tables in background). This screen has the birch forest and riverside adventures designs on it.


Choosing colours for the "teal" colourway. The ones on the fabric are a little too blue, so we're trying for something a bit greener.


The final samples for the robins egg colourway. I totally love that one in the foreground. However it's actually supposed to be the birch/riverside designs in this colour, and on a slightly lighter basecloth. Still, yummy. I might print this combination next time :)


Not a great photo, but when I got there they'd already printed the riverstones + flowing dots designs in the raspberry, on the cream coloured linen (it needs to be heat set first, before I can take it home). Looks really nice in person, not so much in the photo :)

And that's it! I'd love to take some photos of them actually printing but we'll see about that. They didn't seem too keen on the idea, not sure why.

Woe is clumsy me :(

Baaaawh!!! My most favouritest piece of crockery ever! Morning tea will never be the same again :( :(

Luckily I know this lady who is about to send me this mug.... but it's just not the same, ya know? I remember the gorgeous shop I bought it from - cutest shop ever, full of 'shrooms and all sorts of japanesey goodness, with a tiny little cafe on the mezzanine level... sigh.

On the upside, printer just called and has some print sample swatches for me to look at! So I'll go distract myself by looking at those :) Hope the linen looks good!!