Moo in London!

Oops, quite a long time between posts! I've been spending most of my free time in the evenings/mornings organising our last week trip, which is FINALLY sorted! 6 nights in Barcelona, 2 nights in Paris! The flights were expensive, but a couple of friends are going to be travelling with us which helps ease the cost of eveything else (and will make it much more fun). Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, they were great :)

Meanwhile, I've been keeping myself busy with lots of sight seeing, window shopping, walking, tube catching, bus catching and best of all, catching up with Moo for lunch!



It was so good to meet some of the Moo team in person and they were as lovely as I expected! They took me out for a yummy lunch, and showed me around their office and production area:


Bunches of mini cards all stacked and sorted


Colourful mini card boxes ready to be sent to loving homes

Other highlights have been catching up with Paola for afternoon tea and shopping, sampling some of the yummiest cheese ever at the Borough Market (and doing a complete 180 to go back and buy some), and looking at antiques/bric-a-brac at the markets.


Best cheese ever, by the Borough Cheese Company


A WHOLE STALL (at the Portobello market) dedicated to typecases, wooden type and wooden type artwork! Fantastic!


A little vintage fold out wooden ruler I bought when I stumbled across the gorgeous Camden Passage (quite by accident). I've always wanted one of these.

London shops

Today I spent the afternoon wandering around Covent Garden and Soho. I visited a whole bunch of the shops that you guys kindly recommended: Muji, Topshop, Liberty, Orla Keily, The Cloth House to name a few :)


Check out the crazy Tudor facade of the Liberty shop!


I love the front of the Cloth House shop - very linen-ey and Japanese-craft-book-esque :)

I would have loved to take photos of/in all of the places, but I felt too guilty. I managed to sneak in one photo of a wall of beautiful rolls of felt in The Cloth House before noticing the security camera!


Mmm, so much beautiful wool felt.

The Orla Keily shop was gorgeous, but I felt uncomfortable just walking through it, let alone taking a photo! The shop assistant followed me around the store with a hawk eye ;)

Something is stressing me out quite a bit at the moment - where to go for our last week here before we're scheduled to fly home. We realised too late that it's the Easter weekend when our acommodation expires, and as a result flights and everything are crazy expensive. Any suggestions of where we could go/stay in Europe/UK that's not going to cost the earth?

hello London

Well, one 24 hour flight and one 11 hour time difference later and we're here in London! I think we've more or less conquered our jet lag, settled into our little apartment, and Pete started work yesterday (getting absolutely saturated on the way there due to horrible, squally weather).

It's weird, it hasn't really sunk in yet that we're on the other side of the world. At the moment it just feels like an older, larger version of Melbourne, coupled with all the iconic London stuff you see on postcards. I feel like I'm still looking for something that really grabs me and shakes me and yells out "you're in LONDON!!". I blame Tokyo for the complete lack of culture shock ;)

Okay, time for some pics:


At the gates of Buckingham Palace...


... but I much preferred the gardens and lake nearby, with all the daffodils in full bloom...


... and the crazy 'wildfowl' that look similar to what we have at home but slightly different. Oh and there were squirrels!! I'd never seen a squirrel in person before, so cute!


While Pete worked his first day I took myself to some museums to escape the rain. Above is the Natural History Museum, which I went to see purely for the building....


I also went to the V&A, but curiously wasn't as blown away by it as I expected! I guess I'm not much of a museums girl, but I did love the whole room full of skeleton keys and elaborate locks (thanks to lupinbunny for the heads up!). How beautiful are the pieces above? Just two of like, 100+ pieces. I think I feel a pattern coming.



And last but not least, our little apartment! Light and bright, plenty of room, and completely free care of Pete's work. We are too lucky.

Afternoon Tea

Now, if anyone wants to join me for afternoon tea this Friday you're completely welcome! We're meeting at Costa Coffee in the big Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road at 3:00pm on Friday (14th). Hope to see you there :)

some last minute feedback

The other week I imported this really lovely, environmentally friendly hemp/cotton blend fabric. It's cream in colour with lots of texture and slub. Yumm.

Anyway I got some colour samples back from the printer today and am totally stumped as to which colours to print. The samples I got back were not what I expected, but still really nice:



I'm going to print two colours. I think I'm totally sold on the top one - a sort of dusty pink colour, but am unsure about the bottom two. They're a lot more vibrant in real life than they appear here. I'm not usually one for bright colours but maybe it's time for something like that. What do you think?

Friday Afternoon Tea

I would really love to be going to the craft drinks tonight but I have so much to organise before we leave I feel like I'm going to pop!

If anyone's interested in doing a Friday afternoon tea in London with me and Paola (another crafty type), please leave me a comment - we're thinking of meeting at Costa Coffee in the big Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road. Sounds like a good place to me! We might even do some sort of crafty swap (if I'm organise enough to get some fabric together).

Meanwhile, I managed to squeeze in a quick photo shoot yesterday with the infamous Marcel of hollabee (Bianca's boyfriend). He's working on a photography project about creative peeps and their workspaces, and I also needed some photos for a submission. So it worked out perfectly. Really nice shots too (considering the limitations of my space!):


Doorway to my little office/studio
© Marcel Lee - Bulb Studios


My fav prop - typecase & Jeremiah Ketner print :)
© Marcel Lee - Bulb Studios


Inside my little office/studio
© Marcel Lee - Bulb Studios


OMG it's a half decent picture of me!
© Marcel Lee - Bulb Studios

Okay better get back to it. Thanks again to everyone for the London tips - I will have to go thru them all on the plane :)

happenings

Thank you all so much for the London tips! I haven't had a chance to go through them all but there looks to be some fantastic material there (excuse the pun). I'm even more excited now.

This weekend after running around like crazy people buying some warm clothes for the trip, we went and visited our brand new niece Claire! (defacto niece for me, but whatever) . Born 8 weeks premature she was soooooooo tiny, and in a little capsule thing, but still very cute. It's actually good timing in one way - we live right near the hospital where she'll be staying for a little while so Pete's brother and wife will stay in our apartment whilst we're away. Handy!!

Anyway if you've bothered to read this far then good, because I've got some mix packs appearing in the shop tomorrow afternoon. Need to get them up and posted off before we go! So lets say 3:00pm tomorrow (Monday 3rd) Melbourne time?

Sorry, no pretty pics again today!

London, anyone?

Umm, pretty short notice but WE'RE OFF TO LONDON NEXT FRIDAY!!!!1!1!

Pete's work has been talking about sending him over to work on a project with a fancy design studio (oooh) for two weeks, and I thought I'd tag along and make the most of free accommodation. We've been waiting and waiting for them to set the date and all of a sudden it's next week!

So yeah, I'll have plenty of time to kill during the day whilst he's working, so I'd LOVE some suggestions of places to visit! Not your typical tourist destinations (of course we'll do those too) but more interesting, quirky, DESIGN and CRAFT and TEXTILES places to visit. Anything you think I might find inspiring.

All very scary yet exciting. We've got our eye on renting a flat for the two weeks so we can save money and make our own meals. Fingers crossed we get it :)

And then, we've decided to stay an extra week and go somewhere else in Europe whilst we're there. Still haven't decided where to go so I'd love suggestions on that too.

Eeep!

The Printing of Sia's Village

Okay I think you can look at this two ways - as either really cool or really lame. Or maybe both :)

But as I was printing the remaining editions of the 'Sia's Village' print (available again in my shop), I decided to film the process. Just the part where I do the registration, so you can see the rego plate that I've been yakking on about in action.

So here it is, my video debut*:



*my face not included :)

A dress a day

Oooh, a big thank you to Erin from A Dress a Day for posting an interview with me on her blog today! (or it's probably yesterday by now) :)

This post needs some photos, so here's what you can do with a Gocco screen + the Gocco Hand Stamper... which is unfortunately discontinued. It's a handy little tool for when you want to print on large areas without the hinge of the machine getting in the way.



It's basically just sticky block of foam attached to a handle, so you could probably make one yourself. You can also detach the print bed from the PG-11 and use that instead!



And voila - quick hand made wrapping paper for when you have none :)

And the winner is ...

Commenter #35! Who is (da da da daaa):

Nuya ~ !!

Congrats Nuya! And to everyone else, sorry ... but thank you SO MUCH for all your favourite colour submissions. It really will come in handy :)

happy mooing

Oooh it's a very good mail day when my moo cards arrive! Really happy with how this set turned out - fairly cohesive colour wise.

I also just happened to upload a bunch of new images to my moo designer page so you can get most of the above designs plus heaps more for your own cards :)

And talk about a good response to the giveaway. I'm really glad I asked that question because there have been some great answers. Will definitely influence my colour selection in future. Anyway I'll keep the giveaway open till tomorrow morning and then will draw the winner - good luck :)

Good things

- Finding a copy of Frankie in the mailbox, with no recollection at all of having subscribed (!)

- Going to the beach for the weekend and playing in the shallows where the water is warm

- Talking to complete strangers on the telephone with surprising ease (I have never been much of a telephone person)

- Discovering a new favourite cheese - yum!!!

- Giveaways!!!


Fabric of all shapes and sizes (some misprinted bits but generally good), A/P gocco print on plain paper, gift labels and a letterpress card.

So go on - come out of the shadows so I can see you, and tell me you favourite colour combination (of anything) to go into the running :)

UPDATE - Okay at 159 comments (!!) entries are closed! I'm doing the random number generation right now :)

xo

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