up and down, warm and cold

In the last week I have:

- Spent a beautiful warm public holiday walking around in singlet top and jeans

- Spent the rest of the week rugged up in my winter gear. Call this Autumn?? It's like winter already and the trees have hardly dropped any leaves!

- Spent far too much time flicking through images on ffffound. Feeling simultaneously inspired and petrified (eg: "oh my god, so many amazing ideas out there... I could NEVER think of anything as cool as that"). It's been a very up and down week.

- Found a suitably battered parcel in my letterbox, and was very excited to open it. Gorgeous teatowels from Skinny laMinx!! And so nicely packaged up too:






Eep and Borrowed Spoons teatowels from Skinny laMinx

Thanks so much Heather :)

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 :)

[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 :)

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.

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 :)

Birch Forest

It's funny how sometimes the craft/design blog world can be simultaneously inspiring and petrifying.

Sometimes I look around and it feels like there's so many great ideas flying around out there and it's all too much. Not that long ago it seemed like there was a clear path and it was really obvious what would make a great design. Now it feels like a lot of those things have been "done", and there's a feeling (for me at least) of "where to next?".

Against my own advice I've also been putting more pressure on myself to come up with "the best design ever". I have all these ideas on the edge of my brain that I just can't seem to make come out right. I'm also trying to think of designs that can challenge the mediums and processes I have on hand. For example, I'd love to come up with a 2 colour screen print design where both colours can be printed off the same screen. I'd also love to be able to do an "inverse" print - where the design is made up of solid inked areas with gaps that form the design, rather than the other way around. This can be technically difficult though - because the printer prints the design in panels, you can get a double inked area where the panels overlap slightly.

Anyway that all said, below is a design that came to me this morning. It can work as as inverse print if the edges of the repeat go through the middle of a tree. I can just imagine a cushion made out of this :)



Only problem though is that it reminds me a lot of some other designs I've seen out there recently. Like Bird in the Hand's tree screen print or (scarily close to home) Auntie Cookie's home sweet home fabric. Am I being crazy? Tell me, honestly....

Freshly Blended Patterns

I just completed my first ever commissioned pattern design job! It was heaps of fun. Nicole from freshly blended needed some patterns to compliment her new brand, site and packaging, and in return she's making me one of her beautiful hand bound books. I'm very excited.





What is it about collaborating with someone from the craft world that feels so much more satisfying and enjoyable than collaborating with someone from the graphic design world? The reason struck me when I was writing an email to Nicole about this very topic, and I wonder why I never conciously registered it before. The graphic design world is male dominated. The craft world is female dominated. I'm making some massive generalisations here I know, but to me the graphic design world often has a hard edge and can be quite competitive. The fact that there is so much ephasis amongst 'top' design studios on winning design awards is a testament to this. On the flip side the craft world is soft and nurturing and encouraging, and has helped me to flourish creatively.

Thinking back on the contract jobs I've done in studios around Melbourne (admittedly not that many), only one place had another female creative. Crazy.

Anyway ... /rant. Hope everyone has a great weekend and doesn't become a puddle in the heat or an icecube in the snow.

P.S. - thanks to Jem from Imagescience for mentioning my blog and website in his newsletter!!

soap box dreaming

I've seen some really lovely vintage feel skin care packaging around lately, like the Melbourne based MOR. Designing something like that would be an awesome job. Pity the client Pete has (who is actually releasing a skin care range) doesn't appreciate vintage feel design and says this sort of thing looks "like a doily":



I just went to pick up some proofs from the printer and whilst
walking home I saw this at the end of our street:

Have you ever had one of those days where you wonder why you call yourself a designer? Where you're stuck with some sort of design problem and you can't find the solution, and then someone else comes along and can see the solution straight away? And it's not just that you're too close to it/have looked at it for too long & they have fresh eyes... it's that they can come up with solutions that you could never, ever have thought of because your brain just doesn't work that way. Doesn't think outside the square so easily. Gets stuck in little mental boxes. Bleh, that was my day today.

On a good note the hanging mobile i ordered arrive in the post today so I'm looking forward to putting it together and hanging it up tonight - yay!

I've been inspired to try making some more patterns. It's interesting to see how the ideas I've had in my head can turn out in real life. We have this great book on our shelves called "Pattern Design", originally printed in 1903! It's written in great ye-olde english and says things like:

"To readers of a book upon the subject, no apologies for pattern is necessary. Modest as may be its pretensions to artistic consideration, it covers ground enough to command attention. It is here and there and everwhere around us."

Hehehe. It's written like that the whole way through - quite funny, but also quite insightful in parts. It talks about the role of pattern design in a world where things need to conform to the conditions of manufacture, and how pattern design can be extremely challenging and restrictive but also quite satisfying. It's got a lot of techical info on different forms of repetition, so i'll see if I can advance beyond a simple square tile ;)

Anyway I had a go at doing a more random hand drawn pattern which was fun - took a bit of thinking to design it so the waves line up...

Some real life mockups

I finally decided to take some of my packaging design ideas further, and make real life mockups out of them. Firstly, some retro soap packaging: