waiting waiting

Wow it's been a great week for publicity this week! Thanks to both Ahn-minh and Janel from Apartment Therapy for featuring my lamps this week - that's awesome. I love how everyone likes a bit of tutorial action :)

I'm feeling super frustrated at the mo though whilst I wait to get some new basecloth to print on. I just found one that's really lovely but they're out of stock! And my other supplier isn't getting their shipment in till the end of March. That feels like FOREVER away. Sigh. So anyway, no new fabric will be appearing in the shop for a little while - sorry about that.

Just for a bit of colour with this post - my inspiration wall, which is looking very bird themed at the mo:


(the bird prints are from the yumi yumi etsy shop!)

Thanks Bloesem

Just wanted to say a quick but huge thank you to Irene from Bloesem for posting about my Lamps and Gocco print today!



Thanks Irene!! You're too sweet :)

Gocco love

Ahhh, so many lovely comments on my previous post about the lamps - thanks so much!! I need to show appreciation for all my readers with another giveaway! More on that soon :)

Meanwhile, I've finally pulled out the Gocco again for the first time in months and tried my hand at my very first multiple screen print! I think it took me awhile to get over the preciousness of my Gocco supplies and be willing to use up a few screens in one hit.



I'm quite happy with how the print turned out. I only did 10 proper ones (numbered and all) and a whole bunch of 'Artist's Proofs' on any surface I could get my hand on. As you do, when you have a ready inked screen:



The prints on wood and stretched canvas didn't turn out so good, but I really liked them on the cream and recycled paper:



One thing I have to say is that the registration plate on my PG-11 was indispensable for this project. I don't know how I would have gotten the colours to line up without it (see an example here).

Anyway I popped a few up in my shop to see how they go. I've never sold a Gocco print before and wasn't sure about pricing either. But we'll see.

xo

lamps and more lamps

So yeah, as I touched on yesterday, I went a little crazy over the weekend making lamps:



They are a bunch of birthday, housewarming and wedding presents that I've been putting off making for ages, for fear (and loathing) of the drive to Handworks in Prahran. It's totally irrational I know. I just dislike the drive along King Street and Kings Way, the parking difficulties and the general vibe of the area. But it's the ONLY place I've found that sell lampshade frames!



Apart from an excuse to showcase my fabric in a self indulgent manner... they're also an opportunity to practice taking nice photos.



I still have a long way to go, but it's a fun way to kill an hour or so.



Of course, if you want to try your hand making your own lampshades (either with a ready made frame or by recovering an old frame) there's this tute that I wrote up awhile ago :)

crazy crafting lady

There hasn't been much blogging, but there has been a crazy amount of crafting going on around here. It's too dark to do the finished products justice, so here's a few in-progress shots:


Slicing through a sea of Ginkgo


Lampshade WIP - gluing fabric to polyprop


Lampshade WIP - rolling the fabric around the frame


An ink blocked and inked Gocco screen. Part of a new 4 colour print, ooh exciting :)

And I'm not the only one being a crafting machine of late. Check out these two gems from the 'hood:

- Insanely complicated yet beautiful papercut by Skinny laMinx and
- Fantastic new fabric prints by Hollabee

Nice work girls!

the case of the completely absent banner

I can't believe this - I just realised that the banner image on my shop was COMPLETELY MISSING when viewed in Internet Explorer! And nobody mentioned it! Maybe they thought I was trying to be all minimalist and cool with that big white empty space at the top of my site. No, not quite. Instead there's supposed to be a pretty slideshow banner there. Sigh.

Well, that teaches me to indulge in my little Firefox world and not test things more thoroughly.

In brighter news, check out these gorgeous one-of-a-kind hand stitched softies by Cat Rabbit!


These ones are sitting on the counter at Cocoon, looking so adorable I had to take one home.


And here he is keeping me company on the couch where I spent the day unwell. He's a cat dressed up as a rabbit and you can take his hood off and everything. Too cute.

there and back again

Getting there was half the fun. A plastic streamer attached itself to the front of our car on the freeway, we missed the turn off to the airport, parked in a 10min loading zone, managed to check in just before closing and ran outside to (successfully) wheedle our way out of a parking fine.

But we did finally get to Launceston. And Cocoon was amazing. It was like stepping into another world, full of the work of many artists I admire at the moment, and alongside it the work of myself and my friends. Very very cool. Here are some pics:


Ginkgo and Birch Mattt bags


A whole stand of pieces by Cloth (who I am slightly obsessed with)


Bags made with Kristen Doran & Auntie Cookie Fabrics, and Auntie Cookie cards


More bags made with mine and Kristen's fabrics


Little cards made from Kristen's Mollybirds fabric and some of my mix packs


Me, Suz (the lovely owner) and Shannon

All in all it was a great, quick little trip. But unfortunately I caught a cold just before we left so I was all sniffles and sore throat whilst there. And probably wont be able to go to the Mix Tape launch tonight at Sticky :( I was really looking forward to that...

Teeny Tiny Art Show II

Oh, one other cool thing I should mention before I go... some of my little drawings are appearing in the Teeny Tiny Art Show at the Three Graces Gallery! It's in Portsmouth, NH (somewhere in the States) and runs from February 6th (today, or tomorrow really if you're over there) till March 10th.

If anyone is in the area I'd love to know what it's like :) Becky Oh will be there taking some pictures for me. Thanks Becky!!

Cutting Edge Patterns

I have to laugh - Spin Spin just alerted me to this post I hadn't seen yet on Print and Pattern. About a book I didn't even know was finished. Which happens to have some of my patterns in it! Whoo!!

I submitted them awhile ago, so it doesn't feature my more recent, favouriter patterns, but it's awesome none the less. I've never been 'published' before!





There are soooo many awesome patterns in that book (I hope/assume I'll get a copy in the mail). Go check out all the pics on the P&P blog in the meantime tho!

I'm off to go visit some of my favourite shops. A quick stop by Meet Me at Mikes in Fitzroy, and then on to Cocoon in Launceston! As you do. Shannon and I got cheap cheap flights. I'll take lots of pics and will be back tomorrow!

making days

Oooooh, I just found out I am the recipient of no less than 3 "you make my day" awards. How crazy is that! Thanks to sia, sooz, and sandrine
(update: AND spin spin!! what's with all the names starting with S???)

Here's the rules:

1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs (or 10 according to some) that make your day.
2. Acknowledge the post of the award giver.
3. Tell the award winners that they've won by commenting on their blogs.

Geez, this is tough. Too many to choose from. So I'm just going to do this quickly, and try not to just pick my friends :)

Catherine - My Folk Lover
Wendy - Dozi
Sia (of course) - Siagraphica
Leslie - Goodness
Arounna - Bookhou
Danielle - of Paper & Thread

That'll do!

just leave it be

More random drawing. Don't know why - I think I need to give the textile designer in me a rest and experiment with some other things. A break from all the pressure and confusion in my head about where to take my textiles business next...

This illo came about in a weird way. First came her face with the downcast, worried eyes. Worried about what? What could she be looking down at? Ahhh, nasty mushroom thing. Don't touch that, just leave it be. Fill in the gaps with pretty forest scene and cute cottage. Done.

first batch o' 2008

I've been eagerly awaiting this latest print run - some reprints of my favourite & most popular prints and colourways. And the best bit is that the colours all go well together - I like it when that happens:



There's plenty of Ginkgo again this time. I've made a slight adjustment and made the robins egg blue colour slightly greener. It goes better with the olive green. Plus, this time the printers managed to get a wonderful 'overprint' effect on both the colourways , so you can see the dots through the leaves like I originally imagined. Yay :)

I'll be putting these ones up in the shop first thing Monday morning - 9:00am Melbourne time. Hope to see you there :) :)

xx

hummingbirds

A friend/colleague of mine recently launched Stick Meon - a range of very cute removable vinyl decals. I'm not supposed to post about it till she updates her website with funky new product photography (some of which is courtesy of Auntie Cookie's pretty house) but I couldn't resist after putting up a little freebie she gave me:


Hummingbirds decals by Stick Meon



It's times like these I really wish I had a 'proper' camera. These shots could look sooooo much better.

front door

Another house themed drawing. This is how I picture the front door of my dream home looking:



I'm not such a big fan of this drawing because the colouring in is a little cartooney... but ahh well - give me that front door, those window boxes and that grey kitty any time :)

little village

Mmmm, I love long weekends. Especially when I have time to do some drawings. I haven't drawn in ages, and at the moment all I seem to be able to do is draw houses and bits of houses. I am a bit obsessed.


Sia's Little Village

I named this one for a lovely someone who likes anything with houses on it :)

It's not intended to be fabric, I just love that texture in the background of basically anything :)

bits & pieces

not much to blog about this week... my hunt for the perfect base cloth has been a series of ups and downs, but I got a phone call yesterday with much potential... so I'm excited. More on that soon.

Meanwhile some cool stuff to look at:

- Imelda has found an awesome Japanese fabric/homewares/zakka shop called Cocca. Check it out.

- Bianca has just released some cute notepads and stationery sets that you can buy here.

- And last but not least, Danielle from Of Paper & Thread has joined our 'yardage mafia' and has just released her first batch of hand screen printed yardage - yay :)

A token photo:

My more-colourful-than-usual desk. With Salsa the cutie keeping guard.

P.S. - Lots of Bulokku fabric is still available in the shop!

Couldn't resist...

I know it's borderline narcissistic of me, but I couldn't resist purchasing this gorgeous Peg Bear Salsa from Jhoanna of One Red Robin. It is just tooooo cute!! He will sit in my office and keep me company. I hope she makes some more of these cuties!!


Peg Bear by One Red Robin

Hey come to think of it, he makes a great form of advertising for my next shop update! I have a couple of rolls of bulokku in robins egg and burnt orange that I've been meaning to put up for ages now. I just wanted to get the new shop 'broken in' first. So the next update will be this Thursday at 9:00am Melbourne time!

Thanks to everyone who bought some of the fabric mix packs and also gave me some critical feedback on the new shop. I've now included a 'sold items' section like on etsy so people can see what they've missed. Any other suggestions - keep them coming!

xo

Good mail day

Often I find myself compulsively checking the mailbox 2 or 3 times a day. Even when I know it's too early for the postie to have come, or impossible for him to have come between then and the last time I checked.

But today when I got back home (after putting in my first ever pair of contact lenses - OMG so good!) I was finally rewarded with some much anticipated exciting mail:


These gorgeous prints from the yumi yumi etsy shop. Much much better in person - I need a better camera!!


Some much awaited swatches from www.pickhemp.com. Piles and piles of beautiful hemp/linen/organic cotton based fabric swatches. And decent prices too! Only problem is that the shipping costs might really blow the price out. Just waiting to hear back on that now. Fingers crossed!!

new homes

Firstly I just want to say a quick thank you to everyone for their lovely comments about house hunting. I feel heaps better about it today and we're back on the prowl. Meanwhile I'm having a great time focussing on my new internet patch o dirt: the new shop! Which I can now reveal the ever so secret location of:

www.laracameron.com/shop

I bet that wasn't too hard to figure out. I fact one clever chicken already did, and has signed herself up for a customer account already. So get in quick before she buys up the whole lot! hehe.

New shop & fabric mix packs ahoy!

Tomorrow morning is the launch of my new shop! I've done a bunch of testing, tried to break it in every which way, and so far so good! The main thing I was concerned about was two people trying to order the same thing simultaneously, like what used to happen on Etsy. And sure enough, the shop software would actually let two people check out the same single item at the same time! Gawd that was a recipe for disaster, so I've changed the code to fix that.



Anyway it'll be just a small launch tomorrow with a bunch of fabric mix packs. The shop will open at 9:00am and I will do a post here to tell you the URL :)

emotional rollercoaster

I'm feeling really bummed. I just found out we missed out on the place we liked. Only one party put in an offer higher than ours. I didn't realise how much I'd pinned my hopes on it till now that I'm feeling really really crappy. It didn't feel like this the last time we missed out on a place because we knew it really wasn't right - that time we felt relief.

I should look on the bright side - that we're actually in a position to be looking. But I just want that home, a place I can do things to, paint, change light fittings, nail things to walls. And floorboards. How much I desperately want a space with floorboards.

Okay, time to go gather some perspective. This zeitgeist movie/documentary is good for that. You definitely must watch it (trust me, once you get past the intro it gets very good - in fact you really need to watch the whole thing to get their point).

movin' shop

I've been a bit quiet on the blog front this week. First week post holidays has found me right back into the swing of things, and feeling guilty about a lot of unreplied emails. Sorry to anyone who is waiting for me to get back to you - I will do so soon!!

During work hours I've been doing some contract work for another studio (which I rarely do these days), but outside of work hours I've been doin' some other exciting things, one of which is building myself a new online shop!

Yes, Etsy - you have been a good friend to me ... I wouldn't have been able to do any of it without you ... but frankly I'm sending you way too much money each month, and your friend PayPal too, who charges me whatever they like to convert from USD to AUD. No more! I'm, going to love having full control over the design of my shop, not having to pay any fees, and best of all be able to list in AUD.

The other exciting thing that's been going on is more house hunting! We found another place we like and put in our offer (it was a silent auction type thing) on Saturday. We find out on Monday. I just have a feeling we might get it, because when i said to the agent "we'd be happy to let it go if it went for more than that" she replied (possibly off guard) "oh the vendor would be ecstatic if it went for more than that!" Okay time to stop thinking about it and exercise detachment...

On a non money related topic, here's a token photo to go with this post:


Some embroidery hoop fabric swatches I put up on my wall a few months ago. Yay for 3M hooks!

purse v 2.0

Despite the fiddliness of attaching the frame last time, I really enjoyed making the Japanese kit purse so decided to make another with some of my own fabric:



Thanks to the lovely commenter Michaela who directed me to this tute, I discovered that you can also attach purse frames with fabric glue. Which sounds messy and disastrous, but really turned out to be quite easy. Especially with aid of UHU all purpose adhesive, which is jelly like and quite forgiving in the early stages (eg you can shift the fabric around and wipe the glue off easily before it sets).



If I can get my hands on some good purse frames here (I bought the one above in Nagoya and it's much slimmer than any I've found online), maybe I'll put together some kits. With fabric, interlining, purse frame, pattern and instructions... what do you think?

little book & linen

Check out this gorgeous little book that Pete's mum made for me for Christmas. It reminds me of something straight out of a Japanese craft book - that sort of sweet, neutral & natural aesthetic that they've got going on lately:



The little thumbnails don't do it justice, so click to see a larger version and all the little handmade pieces inside (including "pilot Pete" as a little bub, hehe).

Kind of reminds me of this gorgeous Japanese linen site.

Speaking of, it looks like I'm back on the hunt to find another good supplier of linen/cotton linen. I love the linen I've been printing on recently, but my supplier has run out of the lighter, cream coloured one (used for Bulokku). It's really hard to find decent, natural looking linen. I want something with a nice slub in it and natural colouring... rather than all even, mass-produced looking and bleached/dyed. Hmm....

Hello 2008

Hello 2008. I'm looking forward to seeing what you have in store for me this year. I've been doing a lot of thinking and I reckon I'm definitely going to keep growing the textile production side of my business. Get into production of homewares etc and see how it goes. I've found someone who can possibly do sewing for me, and that is very, very exciting :)

It feels like forever though that I've had time to sit down and actually create some new designs. The last few days have been quiet, so I've had a chance to play around with some of the ideas that have been stuck in my head. I'm not 100% on all of them yet, but it was fun to sit down and play again:








UPDATE: just replaced this last pattern with the above - much better :)