Spring...

Spring time for me so far has been about...

- Contemplating turning 30 at the end of this month and all the typical, difficult thoughts that go with that
- Enjoying the sun on my face & time with good friends
- Feeling pretty much on top of things at work for the first time in a long time
- Feeling super proud of building a new gallery section of our website (upholstery! curtains!)
- Planning & preparing a new kitchen garden

The last item excites me a lot because I've never had a garden of my own before, having only lived in apartments since moving out of home. Plus I love the idea of being just a little more self sufficient. One day I will have chooks. One day.

Tumbleweed worm cafe and some inspiring reading

I am also now responsible for 1000 little wormy friends who reside in the laundry and eat our kitchen scraps. The laundry locale will protect them from the extremes of Melbourne weather and my laziness in the evenings. No mass wormicide will be happening here, folks.

Living Fundraisers Organic Veggie Growing Kits

I love, love, love this fundraising idea by Living Fundraisers. Dana brought these in to work courtesy of her little ones' kinder/playgroup (I forget which). I grabbed the lettuce and tomatoes. Yay! Sooooo much better than chocolate fundraisers!

Hope your springtime is off to a good start :)

xx

Chalkboard

I know it's a little bit lame and all been done before, but every kitchen needs a good chalk board. Especially a renter-friendly one. It's amazing what you can achieve with a chisel and some angle brackets if you want to attach something without doing any damage to precious surfaces.

Making the chalkboard - chiseling, attaching brackets, priming, blackboard painting

The chalkboard hangs nice and flush with the wall, and to secure it at the bottom we just used a couple of 3M strips to hold it in place. Easy stuff.

Chalkboard calendar - renter friendly :)

I'd love to paint an entire wall in blackboard paint, but this will have to do :)

xx

NZ part 2 - Wellington shopping (& a bit of south island gorgeousness)

Hello! I'm back to prattle on more about NZ. First stop, Wellington!

Wellington is a gorgeous city, and is indeed just like a smaller version of Melbourne in many ways. I definitely felt at home there, which is saying a lot because I find it hard to feel at home anywhere other than my beloved Melbourne! Although coming from Melbourne where everything is generally quite flat, I was also enamored by the landscape and all the gorgeous houses dotting the surrounding hillsides.

Whilst in Wellington I was fortunate enough to have three things on my side. 1) A very patient man-friend who didn't mind being dragged all over town, 2) a very lovely local client (Celestina of Vida Textiles) who showed us around some fantastic local design stores, and 3) the Design*Sponge Wellington City Guide at hand (I used screen-shots on my phone when lacking internets).

One of the stores that Celestina took me to was Madder and Rouge, a customer who had recently placed an order for some custom printed colourways of our Large Scale Birch. It was so exciting to see what they had done with the fabric and how their vision for it tied so well with the rest of the store:

Madder & Rouge, Wellington

Madder & Rouge, Wellington - Birch in Black & white!

The next day, following the advice of the D*S city guide we ventured to a bunch of cute little designy/homewares/cute objects stores scattered around the city:

Vessel and Swonderful, Wellington

Here's a list of some of the fantastic little design/craft/indie stores we visited whilst in Wellington:

- Vessel
- Swonderful
- Made it (owned by the very talented Melina Martin)
- Pixel Ink
- Madder & Rouge
- ES Design (amazing mid-century furniture awesomeness here too)
- Small Acorns

On our last day (thanks to Janette from Verdant Design) we discovered the Frank Kitts Market full of indie crafty/design goodness. I had to giggle though, not only was this design market in an undercover carpark (sound familiar?), I also found three stalls featuring our fabrics, including the very first stall I encountered when I came through the entrance! That was trippy, I tell you what.

Frank Kitts Market (including the very lovely Craft Me Up stall)

Verdant Design at the Frank Kitts Market (Acacia lamp!)

After Wellington we headed down to the South Island via ferry to Blenheim, where Jon grew up. We stayed with his folks for most of the time but also borrowed a car and drove down to Hanmer Springs for a night (hot springs and mineral pools half way up a snow-capped mountain!)

Let me just say, the drive down to Hanmer was A-MAZ-ING. Such spectacular scenery. Imagine rolling hills, winding roads, deciduous trees with new spring growth, cherry blossoms in bloom, cute little spring lambs everywhere with their crazy tails, single lane bridges over little creeks, black pebble beaches, seals sunning themselves on rocks... and all the while these huge dramatic snow capped Mountains in the distance.

The drive to Hanmer and Cheltenham House

We picked a winner again with the accommodation too - a beautiful sprawling, refurbished 1930's house turned into a B&B - still with it's original billiard room and full sized pool table. We stayed in one of the rooms off the garden and awoke to this view - more snow-capped mountains in the background of course!

It was a bit of a whirlwind trip and now that I'm back into the swing of things at work it feels a world away. But I still love my Melbourne ;)

xx

NZ part 1 - Wellington!

The classic Wellington shot

If you happened to catch Teegs lamenting my absence all over Facebook last week, you might already know that the man-friend and I recently skipped town and went to NZ!

Let me just say, every time I go to that country it puts on quite the show. Last week was no exception - gorgeous sunny weather, spectacular scenery, amazing designer goodness, great food... and as I sit here trying to process all my photos I quickly realized that I need at least two blog posts to cover it all!

I also realized that I definitely need to dedicate an entire post to the amazing accommodation that we treated ourselves to for a couple of nights in Wellington. I'm talking about the Ohtel. Recommended in Design*Sponge's Wellington city guide, and definitely, definitely living up to the hype, Ohtel is a boutique, 10 room hotel on the waterfront which is entirely fitted out in gorgeous Mid-century furniture and collectables.

Ohtel boutique hotel - Wellington. Mid-century designer furniture heaven

I mean just look at it! The photos speak volumes. I'm not usually excited at all about hotels when traveling but it was so nice to come back to this room in the evenings and be surrounded by so much gorgeousness. Not to mention the spectacular view over the bay, a great music selection, free wifi and a gorgeous, deep, non-guilt inducing bath. (NZ is definitely not a country in drought!)

Ohtel boutique hotel - Wellington.

Ohtel boutique hotel - Wellington. That bath!

Of course Ohtel isn't cheap, but definitely worth the splurge. We justified the expense by staying our first night at a dodgy backpackers in town and then staying with Jon's folks down south for most of the rest of our trip (quite the contrast, I assure you).

More Wellington awesomeness to follow soon!

xx Lara.

Daylesford

Last weekend the girls and I skipped town and went to stay at Dana's mum's house in Daylesford. It was peaceful, relaxing, cosy... full of craft and treasure hunting and yummy food and chatter and a spa & massage at Hepburn to top it all off. A cliche Daylesford experience you might say.

Here's some pics from the weekend...

Sass makes Dandelion tea, bunches of Daphne all around the house

The house. Very D'ford. Amazing garden out the back. Crazy colour scheme inside though!

My bargain from the Daylesford Trash & Treasure. It pays to get there at 7am. I got these T.H. Brown (?) chairs for an absolute steal. The seller said "yeah this stick furniture is all the rage right now"

Flowers from a roadside stall, and Dana's bargain retro desk chair from the Trash & Treasure

I got inspired by some pics I saw over at the Harvest blog and spent time making this little vessel from fabric scraps (I had no instructions or idea what I was doing but got there in the end after a few false starts)

So many more treasures and crafty goodness to show you but as usual I forgot to take photos ;)

xx

Open Studio this Saturday!

Photo by Luka Kauzlaric

More details over at the Ink & Spindle blog. Hope to see you there!

xx

Wellington!

I'm so excited to be visiting Wellington again in a couple of weeks! And this amazing hand-stitched stop motion animation ad makes me even more excited:


Wellington Tourism stop-motion ad by Yukfoo

The last time I was in Wellington was about 8 years ago and I still remember it as one of the few cities where I could imagine myself living. Which is a big call considering how much I love Melbourne. That said I happened to be there during a decidedly non-windy weekend. Ha! Let's see what late August brings ;)

xx

Mac.Robertson

Just finished reading this - Macrobertsonland by Arcade Publications

If you live in Melbourne and you don't know who Macpherson Robertson is you really should.

Mac.Robertson was the founder of Australia's biggest chocolate factory in the late 1800's. He turned working class Fitzroy into the chocolate capital of Australia. He went from making sweets in the bathroom of a tiny Argyle St house to owning acres of factories in the back streets of Fitzroy which still stand today (as apartments of course).

He was much loved by his workers and was a huge philanthropist. I know of Mac.Robertson because he believed in education for women and funded my school.

Macrobertsonland by Arcade Publications

He also invented the Cherry Ripe, Freddo Frog and Old Gold chocolate!

I picked up Macrobertsonland last week from the Nicholas Building open studios and it's been such a great read. I loved reading about our city in it's early years, during a time when things were still made locally and globalisation was yet to change everything. Made me feel very nostalgic.

xx

Beth-Emily & Panelpop

You know when you get a great vibe about someone straight off the bat? Well in the short 15 minutes that I spent chatting to Beth-Emily and Tom in Adelaide at Bowerbird early this year, I knew they were lovely people.

So when they mentioned that they were coming up from Hobart for Design:Made:Trade I barely hesistated before offering them our spare room for a few nights and some delicious home cooked meals :)


Beth-Emily's gorgeous display at Design:Made:Trade

As a thank you for having them stay, Beth gave me one of her prints - one that I had been admiring on their stand. Apart from being spectacularly gorgeous, this was no ordinary print...


'Bird of Sun' Panelpop print by Beth-Emily

It was in fact a Panelpop print. An amazing, wonderful new thing that I had never heard of before.

The surface of a Panelpop is essentially a smooth stone-like substance. It is framed with reclaimed timber and backed with reclaimed polystyerene - materials that have essentially been rescued from landful. Photos or illustrations can be printed onto the surface, and the finished result is amazing.


Hi,
You have saved me from 2000 years of landfill.
As a token of thanks, I will stare diligently at your wall.
Yours sincerely, your Panelpop.

They're funny, too.


Beth's Panelpop print - reverse

I mean how awesome is that!? They even come with a little info booklet pinned on the back which tells you where your materials came from. The timber on my frame is "stringy bark rescued from John's old fence, Camberwell". The polystyrene backing is "saved from the Queen Vic Markets".

Panelpop are based in Fitzroy. Of course, Beth-Emily and Tom being the lovely people they are were more than happy to share how & where the prints had been made. Gotta love the mutual supportiveness of our creative community :)

xx

Design:Made:Trade

Design:Made:Trade. Best thing we ever did. Such a great event. Such great feedback. Everything came together almost perfectly. Interior designers and furniture makers asked for pricelists. This little girl's dream. Definitely a career milestone.

We finished up on the Sunday completely wrecked but on a high after a last minute flurry of sales.

Here's some pics I took of our stall:

The Ink & Spindle stall at Design:Made:Trade

D:M:T - Our little kids corner featuring the Allsorts Quilt Kit, reupholstered stool by Reissued, and Table Lamp by Wilkins & Kent

D:M:T: Our little lounge area featuring mid-century Fler Armchair reupholstered by Reissued

More photos of the show & our fellow stall holders over at the Ink & Spindle blog.

xx!

Reupholstering a little chair

I just blogged about this over at Ink & Spindle but had to share it here too because I'm just so happy with the result... but today Dana and I recovered a small child sized armchair that Sass bought for us from the Mill Markets!

Little armchair - before

Little armchair - after

Reupholstering the little armchair - in progress

It was somewhat disgusting work but sooooo worth it! Cuteness in armchair form! It's also nice to give my Little Forest print some love :)

This little piece will be coming along with us to Design:Made:Trade. Of course ;)

xx Lara.

Flora

I've found another market near my new home - the Boroondara Farmer's Market. And it's awesome.

Native flora from the Boroondara Farmer's Market

I would love to be able to buy all my produce from Farmer's markets or ethical/small scale producers. Just need to be a little more organised.

xx

Progress...

Two things we've done recently that make me very happy.

1) Printing some of our prints onto a canvas weight, so we can reupholster a lovely mid century armchair...


Flowering Gum in Red Orange & Stone on canvas


Flowering Gum in Red Orange & Stone on canvas

2) Sourcing some foot stools from the Camberwell Market, also to be reupholstered in some gorgeous fabrics for display at DMT...


Footstools from Camberwell Market, soon to be much more pretty

It's funny how long I've been wanting to do these things and yet we haven't had the time or finances to do so.Trade shows are good for that ;)

xx

Design:Made:Trade - yay!

Guess what? We're doing our very first trade show! Surely our business is legitimate and successful now that we're doing a trade show.

It's funny how much emphasis I'm putting on Design:Made:Trade as an indicator of Ink & Spindle's legitimacy. One would assume that I'd know that already, but... a trade show! It's the one thing we're yet to tackle, and what better place to do so than the spectacular Royal Exhibition Building.


State of Design Festival Opening Night 2010, photos by Tobias Titz (via The Design Files)

As you can imagine it's been crazy times in the studio again preparing ourselves for this, lots of newness, but that's what keeps us having fun I guess :)

xx

New beginnings

Proteas from Camberwell Market

So... I've completed my transition to the "wrong side of the river". Packed my stuff into boxes, handed in the keys to my flat, and moved into a very cute little single-fronter inhabited by a man-friend who most graciously made room for all my furniture and helped me hang pictures on the walls.

It was probably the smoothest, most stress free move I could have imagined and now that I'm settled in I'm just loving it. My commuting time may have increased to about 1.5hrs a day, but it's so worth it.

Of course another thing that's helped with my transition to the east is having Camberwell Market just down the road. Last Sunday I crawled out of bed at 6:30am, put on a gazillion layers and met up with Sass from Ask Alice just after sunrise. Sass is a Camby Market regular who knows all the stallholders' dogs. We ate hot jam donuts and I bought two vintage footstools for reupholstering and the cutest set of vintage beakers. Now home to 6 succulents!

Vintage beakers from Camby Market + Succulents from Rose St Market!

All in all a good start I reckon.

xx

Getting back on track

NEW Saffron, Robin's Egg & Charcoal Allsorts Quilt Kit!

I think you never really understand how difficult such a thing as "cash-flow" can be until you run your own small business. Cash-flow is something that's always running around in the back of my mind. It's one of those things that - unless you want to dedicate hours of your precious time to projections and bookkeeping - you just need to trust your gut and intuition in order to manage it.

Needless to say, given our great basecloth drought the last few months have been a bit tricky cash-flow wise and we are so, SO relieved to be getting back on track again. We're not quite there yet though - now we just need to sell the 200m worth of fabric that we've been busy printing the last week or so!!

Which is why I'm popping in to tell you that a whole bunch of our fabrics and the much beloved quilt kits are back up in our shop! Including the new Saffron, Robin's Egg & Charcoal colourway, pictured below :)

New quilt kit goodness

In other news, my house move went well and I'm still in denial that I'm living on the wrong side of the river. Camberwell Market is just down the road though so that is helping to ease my mind. Plus my new house (and gorgeous 'housemate') are pretty darn awesome. More on that soon!

xx

The end of an era

So, the last couple of weeks have been a little bit turmultuous.

The first thing that happened is that I lost my poor, faithful old car in an accident on Citylink. A truck merged across two lanes into mine, causing me to swerve, fishtail, spin out, hit the concrete barrier and bounce back into the centre lane facing the wrong way. All very fast and scary but could have been a lot worse! I was totally fine except for a bit of whiplash and general teariness.


Goodbye faithful old Skyline

Dodgy as it was, that car has been in our family for 11 years, ever since my brother bought it from one of our childhood friends who I've known since birth (he played Tao whenever we'd reneact the Mysterious Cities of Gold in the backyard).

The second thing that happened is that my real estate agent called and informed me that my landlord wants to move back into my flat. My flat! My beloved little haven, a space all of my own to call home and decorate as I please.


Farewell little Flemington flat (photos by Lucy from TDF)

My flat! Featured in Peppermint and The Herald Sun and The Design Files! But it's funny, after my little abode had it's time in the spotlight I remember feeling like I was ready to let it go. That it had helped me through some tough times and I'd had my fun decorating it up, but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have to move.

And it really isn't. The whole car and flat thing kind of came at a good time, more or less. A little bit of a kick up the bum with regards to certain aspects of my life... I can definitely see lots of good times ahead :)

xx

Monochrome (and being hipsters)

Hello much neglected blog.

I can't tell you how full and exhausting the last few weeks have been. Or is it months? The weeks just blur together these days.

The good news is that this weekend will see the last of our workplace insanity (at least temporarily) and next week I have a WHOLE WEEK of quiet catch-up time whilst Teegs is away in Byron. That's a whole week of no printing. A whole week of catching up on admin, tidying the studio, taking nicer product shots, updating our website, streamlining things and gathering thoughts. I can't tell you how much that excites me.

In the meantime I'll share with you something a little bit different and funny we're doing over at Ink & Spindle:


Posing as über cool designer types to launch our new range - Monochrome

We're launching a range of Monochrome (with a dash of red) textiles whilst we weather some regular basecloth supply issues. The collection looks amazing and so much more in keeping with our personal aesthetics than the rest of our range (which is absurd when you think about it). We'll be launching "Monochrome" at MARKit tomorrow. Please come and say hi and tell us what you think!

Hopefully you'll hear more from me next week :)

xx

URGENT - Help Save our Building

The Younghusband Wool Store - Photo by Angus Booker

Most of you probably know that we are incredibly lucky to have our Ink & Spindle studio within the gorgeous Younghusband Wool Store building in Kensington.

But our building is under threat and we require your URGENT action! The owners of the Younghusband building are asking the City of Melbourne to rezone the site so that they can erect 12, 8 and 7-story residential towers.

This development will destroy the small business and cultural hub that has emerged over the last few years, leaving artists, designers and other creative small businesses without studio and office space.

Please submit your objection by tomorrow Thursday 19th of May at the LATEST.

Here is an objection letter template:

Dear Robyn Hellman,

I object to proposal C177 because…….. [whatever your objection is] and it would affect me as follows: ………. [however you think it will affect you], [indicate what changes you would like, as in height reduction or reduction of apartments].

Yours sincerely, [your name, address]

Email objections to: robyn.hellman@melbourne.vic.gov.au by Thursday 19th May.

Thanks so much everyone!!

xx

String of circles

Following on the same tack as my last post, sometimes when there's no space for spare thoughts, no room in my head to create... random ideas just pop into my head completely out of nowhere. Right as I woke up a week or so ago I suddenly had a picture in my head - a garland out of random sizes circles using only our saffron coloured fabric.


Cutting circles on the floor at home

So I grabbed some fabric from the studio, ironed stiff interfacing onto the back, took the pieces home and traced circles from assorted round objects.


My string of circles hanging in the studio

Then it was simply a matter of cutting out the circled with some pinking shears. I use the term simply lightly 'cause damn those shears can be hard work and the stiff interfacing didn't help. I ended up with some nice purple dents on the fingers of my right hand. I came back to tackle the rest the next day.


My string of circles hanging in the studio

Then it was just a matter of cutting some slits and threading the circles onto some herringbone tape. I like the fact that they can be moved around and repositioned. And no sewing machine was required!

xx

Lara.

Making.

Sometimes (actually often) I feel like work is just one constant to-do list. Constantly juggling a gazillion different little tasks that I try to write down but some just keep slipping through the cracks and then I remember them again and forget them again and remember them again with a start at 5am.... and repeat.

So on the weekends often my brain just feels numb. Inspiration to be creative is just not on the radar. Don't be fooled, 95% of the time I'm not a textile designer. I'm a small business owner.

Anyway, something clicked last week when I somehow, briefly felt on top of things, and - god forbid - I actually felt like making stuff.

And make I did.

For ages I'd been meaning to make a table runner so I raided the scraps box and whipped this up in a couple of hours after the work day finished.


Patchwork table runner

Sure a patchwork table runner isn't the most original of concepts (Cloth do them, I know) but it is just such a great way to use up odds and ends.


Patchwork table runner

The next evening I made a draft snake, also using fabrics from the scrap box. I'd noticed a whopping big gap under Jon's front door, which does not sit well with a cold frog like me. I told him he needed a draft snake, he had no idea what I was talking about.


patchwork draft snake

The next night I started my third project, but hey, I'm not going to waste the opportunity and am going to write about that in another post ;)

xx