oh so ground breaking stuff

The cool thing about having a little fabric mafia is that we can ride on each other's successes. After Shannon did something oh-so-groundbreaking and printed light ink on dark cloth (our printer had concerns about quality, but it turned out to be fine), Bianca and I followed suit :)


Ginkgo in Snow

I've been dying to print white ink on natural fabric for ages now, and I love the results! Given that the ink is opaque, it's tactile and sits more on the surface of the fabric. To me this helps emphasize the screen printed nature of the fabric and helps set it apart from digitally printed stuff. Especially because with digital you can't print light on dark cloth. Yay!


Ginkgo in Red Orange


More mix packs ahoy

Anyway, I reckon this lot will go up in the shop on Monday morning, along with some other goodies (including some more mix packs and some Birch Forest).

Let's say Monday 26th, 10:00am Melbourne time?

new fabric print - yay!!

I have been waiting for this for what feels like SO long. Finally my new 4 colour print has come back from the printers, and I am so happy with how it turned out. Here's a little preview!



One of my favourite things about this print is that all 4 colours are printed off the one screen. Tricky and complicated yet fun to set up! It helps keep the production cost down and makes multiple colour prints actually affordable.



There's only one problem though. I have NO idea what to call the print, and what to call the colourway! I've already done a print called "raindrops" so I can't use that. I was thinking something like 'rain', 'water', or just 'drops'. Or 'winter rain' which describes the colour at the same time... but maybe thats too depressing.

Anyway, I'm totally open to suggestions at this point. If you manage to suggest a name or colourway that I end up using for this print - I'll send you a free piece of the fabric :)

Hopefully something will be decided before Monday 28th, 9am Melbourne time, which is when I'm putting this up in the shop :)

Ginkgo

Thank you to everyone who commented on my pricing post the other day. I really appreciate your honesty when it comes to such matters - especially tough ones like that.

Meanwhile, the shop has been cleared of fabric yet again and I worked hard this weekend to get all the orders packaged and posted off before I get swept away with other commitments. Really glad to have got that all done.

So, onto something new. Since I started producing textiles, there are three things that I have always aspired to achieve. 1- to print on a really lovely, natural feeling base cloth. 2- to print a 2 colour design, and 3, to produce a design that I feel wholeheartedly confident about and proud of.

And finally, at the risk of sounding conceited, I think I've finally managed to pull off all of those three things:





I'm reeeeally happy with how this one turned out. I was fretting about it for ages until I finally got it back from the printers and saw how the colour & scale turned out. I really hope you like it too.

I need a bit of a break before doing another shop update, so these two colourways will be up in the shop maybe Thursday or Friday this week, along with some mix packs. I'll confirm the time later on :)

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 ;)

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.

all gones

Deary me. That all got snapped up pretty quickly. I'm flattered as always, and very grateful that I get to do this fabric thing alongside the rest of my work. I do get a bit stressed and worrysome when a new design comes out though. Especially if one design in the pair sells much better than the other. You see (not sure if it's obvious or not) but I print two designs off the same screen at once. So they're always printed together, in the same colours, in the same quantity, and on the same bolt of fabric (which is later cut in two). I've deliberated endlessly as to whether or not this is a good idea. On one hand, it really helps to reduce my production costs, allows me to change colourways more often, and produce a wider range of designs. On the other hand it's less flexible, and makes wholesale orders tricky.

That all said, I think I've come up with a new way to solve that problem - two colour prints! Through a bit of fancy-ness I can use a similar approach to print inverse versions of a two colour design. Like this:





Also note the linen basecloth! It's time for a change around here and linen is the way to go. And it was confirmed by your answers to my little questionnaire - thanks for that! For a minimal price difference I'll now be able to print on linen or a cotton/linen blend, and give the whole print a lot more character. I'm really excited about this!

Okay enough rambling from me. bedtime!

8 new little ones

Well my final print run for a little while just arrived back from the printers. It's been fun to try out new colours! I've decided to start calling my prints "limited edition", because I can fairly confidently say that I wont be printing the same colourway more than once or twice. Keeping things fresh seems to be the way to go.

I'm really happy with how these turned out, except for the black. The black is a bit patchy in places, so anybody who orders it will receive an extra large quantity to compensate! I think it's because it's so high contrast (can't get any higher contrast than black and white!) so any variation in the ink is more obvious than in the lighter colours. That said, sometimes it's nice for things to be a bit rough around the edges otherwise it's easy to forget that this stuff is printed by hand, not by machines :)





Hope you like them! These ones go up in the shop on Sunday morning Melbourne time :)

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....

Happy with this one

Since I got that last batch of fabric printed I've been putting pressure on myself to come up with some really good designs for the next patterns. So many ideas have come and gone thru my head, some have made it onto paper and some have made it to the final stages of development only for me to decide that they're just not working.

It's also quite a challenge to limit oneself to just a single colour for screen printing. I could go two colours but that'd make the print cost quite expensive, and not quite worth it at this early stage. Patterns that a lot of people like such as crafty bits wouldn't really work in only one colour, and I reckon i'd have to confidently sell 100 metres of it to justify the setup cost.

Meanwhile, I think this one is really working. I can just see it being made into a lampshade or panel in a bag. I wanted to do a design that was a bit looser and more random than my usual stuff, which typically has a very even coverage. Looks best enlarged:

But wait, there's more

Golly gee. I put my fabric up for sale last night and woke up this morning to find it all gone! That's one of the fun things about living in Australia - things happen overnight and you find out bleary eyed in the morning.

To those who bought some - thankyou ,thankyou, thankyou. It's all rather overwheming at the moment but also such a relief that things have turned out so well - I could have been left here with bolts of fabric lying around the living room. Thankfully not so.

AND, to those who missed out, there's more to come!! I'm about to get another batch printed which should be done mid next week. I think a third colourway is in order - willing to take suggestions!

I'd better run. So much to do. Thank you all so much again for all the support, and for all the lovely comments.

Finally!!!!

My fabric is finally here! I ran to the printers last night to collect it just as they were closing. I couldn't sleep properly for thoughts of fabric, fabric, fabric. Seriously. Anyway, here are the 4 designs, and they're up in my Etsy shop. Whew!


'Flowing Dots' in lemonlime


'Flowing Dots' in hazy blue


'Riverstones' in lemonlime


'Riverstones' in hazy blue

And so the nervous waiting begins. Please, if you have any feedback or advice please get in touch, I won't take offense :)

The Final Four

I haven't mentioned anything for a couple of weeks but the fabric printing is going ahead as we speak! It's due to be finished early next week and I am _so_ excited. And nervous. But mainly excited. Below are the four pattern and colourway options that will be available. The bottom design was a big favourite in the poll a few weeks ago, however the top one got hardly any votes at all (i reckon you have to see it printed to get the full effect). But it was the lovely Jenny from Amitie Textiles that helped pursuade me on that one, saying it was her favourite and offering to buy 10m of it for her shop. Yay!


(each square represents about 22cm squared)

Also i'd like to send a BIG thankyou to Krisen Doran who's been such a great help along the way, giving me heaps of advice on the process and being a great sounding board :)

options, options

Would anybody be so kind as to tell me which of the patterns below they'd most like to see screen printed onto fabric?

I've chosen the ones that I feel would work best as a 1 colour print. I'm going to print two patterns for my first print run, and am off to Charles Parsons (thanks Kristen!) this arvy to buy some fabric. Ooh the ball is finally rolling!

Finally finished

I have never felt so much relief putting a website live than I did last night. I've been working on a monstrous Flash project for most of the past year and. its. finally. over. whoo!



For anyone who's interested in what I do for my real day job, you can check it out here. I'm not 100% proud of this project mind you. It might be visually impressive (albeit clunky) but I don't think it does what it's supposed to do as well as it could - which is provide 'young people' with information on some very serious topics.

I don't think such a heavy focus on 'cool' was appropriate here ... but I lost that debate with the art director ;) Who knows, I could be wrong. We'll wait and see how successful it is.

Anyway, the best thing about finishing that project is that it leaves me free to do some things that I've been talking about doing for ages. Today I finally went and visited 'Print Ink' - a screen printing studio who print fabric yardages (who also happen to be around the corner. How I love N.Melb). I was very impressed. They were exactly what I'm looking for and were such lovely people too! The prices were reasonable however require me to be fairly confident and commited about printing my designs and trying to sell them. Ahh well, whatever happens it should be a heap of fun!

riverstones

Back to pattern design for a bit. I'm tending to favour designs that can work with a limited colour palette - a single colour even, so that when I finally get around to printing them I can do a 1 colour screen print.



A splash of colour variation:


Bit sleepy so the words aren't coming tonight. I've been working my way through The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain recently though. Has anyone else tried it? It's fantastic so far and although I can already more or less draw, there's heaps of insight into the drawing mindset and how to 'see' like an artist does.

Sleep time, g'night :)

canvas printses

I don't consider myself to be a 'proper' artist by any means (what does that mean these days, anyway?) but I thought it'd be nice to get some of my recent drawins printed onto canvas at good old imagescience and see how they go in my etsy shop. I just love the way things look printed onto that canvas:









Hmm, I don't know what i'll do with them if they don't sell - it'd feel wrong to have them up on my own wall, and weird to give them to friends unless someone asked for one specifically. Anyway, just rambling now - we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!!

Meanwhile, I went to mum and dad's last week and collected all my old screenprinting stuff out of the garage - most of it guiltily unopened and unused - screens, emulsion, ink, squeegees. Hoping to have a screenprinting day sometime soon (maybe with miss wendy if she's keen) and make some of that patterned fabric myself. Geez I've been talking about that for ages, I just need to go and do it!

I just drank a blackberry beer I found at the Vic Market. So yummy, and so good after a sweltering market shop tugging my rickety trolley full of vegies around. I feel like a real Aussie now. However it has rendered me unable to work (coding flash stuff, supposedly) so I'll write here instead :)

Last weekend was super productive. I found myself awake and up just after 7am on Saturday (!!) and made use of the time producing more jewellery pieces for the Modamuse shop. I mailed this lot off yesterday:


(best viewed full size)

I hope they sell as quickly as the last lot and I haven't missed whatever it was that caused all the others to sell like hotcakes! But there's some new designs of the blue dot necklace (which really needs a better name) and some matching earrings too, so fingers crossed :)

Also, I finally got to meet my screenprinter and have a chat about printing patterns. His prices were very reasonable and should be able to print the fabric in 50cm x 65cm pieces, which is definately big enough for people to work with. So that should be happening over the next week or so, hopefully :)

Also, thanks to those who gave feedback on the pattern size. I'm going to go with my gut feeling and scale the patterns up a bit, suitable for bags and pillows and lamps and dresses and all sorts of things. Very exciting :)

Hope you're all surviving the heat/bushfires/snow wherever you are in the world :)

Positive forward movement :)

Madness. The modamuse shop opened this week, and has already sold three of my blue dot necklaces. I can't believe it. It's so very flattering and confidence inspiring. Thankyou to those who bought them!! I will get on to making more this weekend, and might try a few different designs :)

Meanwhile I've been inspired to really get going with printing my patterns onto fabric. Some people have been giving me some really nice feedback and prompting me to do so, so I will dilly dally no longer :)

Buuuut, first I need some advice from all you crafty people out there. What scale should I print them at??? It's a tough decision: either print them with small, tight repeats, suitable for small patchwork and craft work, or scale them up a bit so that they're suitable for bags/dresses/lamps etc. I'm also not 100% sure which ones to print in the first place. I've chosen the fairly simple 1-2 colours ones for now, but I'm not sure if they're the most appealing. Any advice/suggestions would be much appreciated. The full selection is viewable here.

I did a few test prints onto A4 to try and figure out the scale. Here's what I came up with (Ignore the colours for now):



What do you think? Too small? Too large? I will have a large area to play with, around 50cm x 80cm per print which is pretty expansive, so ... I could turn them into funky large scale repeats instead. As you can tell, I'm at a loss! Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

It's friday night and i'm home being boring whilst Pete's out at a poker night with workmates. I feel kind of lame, like i _should_ be out, but it's cold and wet out and I don't much like poker. So it's soppy movies for me tonight.

On the fabric printing front, I exchanged a couple of emails with a screen printer who'd be interested in printing my patterns - yay! So I'll go down to his studio some time soon to discuss prices. I've been there once before, it's very cool. A massive messy/arty/painty warehouse space on Easey st in Collingwood which is shared by a range of different artists. Such a contrast to my little office.

Took the quite-night opportunity to finish off one of my pattern ideas. I'm glad it turned out alright. The colour choice was accidental but looks quite retro so I kept it like that.



Thanks for reading and have a great weekend :)

Work hard play harder

Ohhh, I've been working way too hard this week. All my clients seem to want everything at the same time. Some of them have the weird notion that I should be working on their project and their project alone. It doesn't really work like that. And it also doesn't work in that if they take months to get back to me with content/feedback and are suddenly ready to go - I wont have been sitting around waiting for them with a nice big window of free time. But ahh well, i'll try my best to keep them happy :)

{/rant}

Anyway onto more happy things. I've been inspired by the very talented Kristen Doran to start getting some of my pattern designs out there onto *stuff*. Fabric hopefully, and maybe also gift wrap. Although with gift wrap, you really need to print sheets that are about A2 in size, which means they need to be offset printed, which isn't cost effective unless you get a large run done. Sooo, maybe I just need to prove to myself first that my stuff is saleable before embarking on that journey :)

Fabric printing however might prove to be a little more acessible. I've found a couple of places online who offer digital fabric printing services, and you can order as little as 1m for sampling! I'm just waiting to hear back on prices. Fingers crossed it's not too spenny and looks good.


It's mum's birthday coming up, so I've made her some earrings - some from scratch, the others from some old jewellery of Oma's. At the ripe age of 61 my mother has only just gotten her ears pierced. My brother brought a pair back for her from overseas not realising that she doesn't have pierced ears. Boys! So I took her to Hairhouse Warehouse to get them done :)