Slight Of Hand

After I scanned this image I noticed that the ink had dried on her face and it looks like some weird welt/bruise. It really stands out on the computer screen. It also reminds me of a bad fake tan.

Not much is happening in the world of Anna and I don't have a busy weekend planned either. On Sunday I want to have a look at the Mt Dandenong Village Market and have a look at Green Olive's stall and her beautiful handmade scarves. Other than that it will be a case of marking, making and baking. I hadn't actually planned on baking, but it seemed to look right next to marking and making. I was going to bake bagels tonight for breakfast tomorrow, but it is 9pm and I'm feeling both tired and lazy!

Dual Fabric Tote on Madeit.com.au

I made this bag last night from a print I did on the weekend. I made another bag which is very similar on Sunday, but I got better photographs of this one this afternoon. I have decided I prefer canvas to drill, although I find I can never get decent colours in canvas, although I might not have been looking hard enough because this red is exactly the right colour. The bag is available on madeit.com.au and I'm noticing more and more people selling there, so have a look at all the lovely items available!

Edee!

I have meaning to do a post about Edee for a while now, but seeing she got my badge on the Etsy front page I thougth I should do something about it! Edee has a fantastic Etsy shop which sells softies, beautiful fabric magnets and bunting. I love this little kitty and the fabric in the magnets below. She also has a blog as well, so go check it out!

I have put a new artwork up on Etsy. It is similar to the style I have been working in the last few weeks. This one has a fancy hairclip made from Japanese paper which I am very fond of, now to just get one that is life size.

Monday Monday

This is a new artwork I created yesterday and listed on Etsy. I'm enjoying creating the sewing machine collages and the paper I have at the moment is working well at inspiring me and helping create something I am happy with, as I have a lot of artworks that are either scrapped or unfinished. I find these make great additions to artworks, and this on has a monoprint I did but didn't like as a whole.

Something lovely that I wasn't expecting was another Australians front page, this time with a focus on Melbourne (which was timely after our meet up on Saturday).

Black And Red

We had our second Etsy Melbourne meetup at Big Mouth in St. Kilda yesterday and although only a few people came it was nice to sit and chat and have a a lovely lunch. Attending the meeting was Shara from sharalambethdesigns, Alex from byzandiffusion, Leonie from CrumpArt, Cherie from Interrobang and Angela from Jellibat. Shara and Cherie also gave us all some pretty tote bags with Melbourne Etsy printed on them which was a lovely surprise. We are hoping the next meet might be on a day warm enough to have a picnic in a park, the date marked in is the last Saturday in September which is the 29th. For more information check the Etsy forum about it.

It has finally been sunny enough for me to take some decent pictures. The weather in Melbourne over the last few days has been blue skies and warm and I even had to resort to putting the aircon on in the car yesterday. I was able to get some bag pictures this morning and this is one I listed on Etsy. I also took some new badges into Little Salon so if you're in Fitzroy or Little Collins Street in the city go in and have a look!

Super Denim

I found some denim a week ago that was perfect. I might get some more to make a skirt because it was just the right colour and weight. I got the ball rolling by making a dual fabric pouch with some beautiful printed fabric.

I have a busy weekend lined up with the Melbourne Etsy Meet tomorrow and then I'm meeting up with Green Olive on Sunday. We discovered through blogland we live very close! I also got my Moo cards in the mail and they are lovely. I even got Gareth hooked and he ordered a pack for his new business (with my designs on them - nice)

Marta and Lucille on Romance

I have a new artwork in my Etsy shop. It is another red ink, black fineliner and stitched on paper. This time I used red thread which always looks great on white paper. The artwork is very red and the lacy paper adds a touch of glamour.

This is Lucille and she is one of my favourites. The yellow swirl is even stevens which always makes me proud. I was looking at some of my first lady badges from around a year ago and I was rather shocked at the improvement I have made. Lucille is also available on Etsy in my Tuesday update.

Crane And Brain

I'm two disks into 90210 and I am rather embarrassed that I said I liked Brian Austin Green as he is very dorky. However I think I liked him when he was a few seasons in, dating Donna and running the school radio. I forgot all about Steve Sanders. Poor Steve, nobody liked him with his two minute noodle hair.

I've been busy making badges this weekend and I have some little pouches in design mode, with one finished. I found some lovely heavy denim on Friday night and it looks fantastic with a red, cream and blue print.

I also listed a bag and more badges on Etsy. The bag is on orange cotton and is made from multiple shades of orange so looks like silk. I got it from Job Warehouse way back when and added an origami applique crane. I think I might have to pop in again on Saturday when we have our next Melbourne Etsy Meet. Although I am not sure if they are open Saturdays.

The badge is Petra and she has a crush on Red Hunt. I like her swirl as it is nice and well balanced. Whenever I make badges and the stitching comes out perfect I am always happy as it isn't always easy to do.

The Breakfast Club

This is Heather and she has a super high beehive with a black on red colour combination, the first time I have ever tried it. I often forget about black because I use it for the eyes and wee Heather has seductive eyes.

I'm just watching Age Of Love. I'm a sucker for reality dating shows, and this one is one of the worst, however I have not seen any of this one and just caught the end of it then. Where do they find these people?

I have more tele viewing this weekend with the first three disks of 90210 delivered in the mail. So I might end up with some badge ladies called Kelli, Gabrielle and Brenda with sweet early 90's hairdo's as I stitch away remembering back to when I was 13 and loved Brian Austin Green.

Like the time I got my head stuck in a rock

This is in response to Meringue's post about "fun times". This is Gareth and I on our anniversary. Either 2 or 3 years, I can't remember. We went to Lygon street, ate some food, drunk some wine and chased possums around Carlton Gardens and swung on the swings. As I said, fun times.

There are new badges on Etsy, this is one of them, purple hair, gold stitching and blue eyes. This one is Chelsea and she hates finding out her "internet boyfriends" are really 15 year olds. Just like we all do!

Delia and Kittens

This is a new artwork I made over the weekend and it is an ink/fineliner drawing and collage. Whenever I have made collages involving people I often try and use the collage to creating clothing and it never works. I cut the paper too quickly hoping it will look like clothing and it always looks silly. This time I decided to just use the shapes to create something that I thought looked good and not think about it as clothing. I had some beautiful paper, including some lace paper from Chapel Street and some Japanese print paper. I also used a page from an old altas and a Russian novel. I think using this combination of paper also helped with the results, although that being said I have ruined my fair share of "good" things in the past.



This little puffy was made a few months ago but I have not listed it yet. It is one of the cutest things I have ever made and is tiny but puffy. It is available on Mintd.com.

Moon Map

This is a scan of a new artwork I created this weekend. I had kind of forgotten about my artworks and had not created any for a while, but I recently sold a few and had some fantastic feedback on them.

So this weekend I am going to try and get a few made up. Yesterday I took a drive around the eastern suburbs looking for possible stockists. It was rather tiring but I found a fantastic shop selling beautiful papers so I have some things to inspire me. I might also get some more Dyson dyes because they work wonderfully on paper. My "normal" inks often bleed into the paper but these ones don't do that, and they work out to be a lot cheaper. I'm just worried they might go mouldy.

The ink in this artwork is called Mexican Red and I think I mentioned it before. I've also been using a quill pen with the ink and that is working out well, although it leaks onto my fingers and I look like I am bleeding.

A Rose By Any Other Name

This is another of my new badges I made with more detail and it is part of a special range I have created. This was one of my favourites and I love how the rose in the hair ended up, particularly with the two tones of pink. I will be giving out more details about when and where the badges will be available soon!

After a super busy week at work I am looking forward to the weekend and getting some things done. I still seem to have a list of things I needed to do in the holidays and didn't get started so hopefully I can have a productive weekend. It is starting with football so I don't know if that is a good or bad sign.

Hannah

I drove home tonight in the dark with a crazy driver behind me. It went from tailgating to tailgating with the high beams on. Then to flashing the lights to honking the horn over and over. The road I drive along is steep with lots of winds in a rural area, so it was all a little horror filmish.

I wasn't able to concentrate on my talking book (which is garbage anyway) so I missed about 10 minutes. However when I arrived home I was able to collect my Mix Tape Zine which was a great, particularly Green Olives article!

Lastly, this is a new little lady in the shop. Her name is Hannah and she has a little smirk on her face and lovely lashes!

Small Details

This is a close up of the new badge range I made recently. I incorporated tiny beads into the hair to add a touch of glamour the the ladies. This one had lots of beads and I liked the green/pink combination. I have noticed that doing fine stitch work creates havoc for my fingers. I know I should get a thimble, but I think I have about 4 fingers I need them for. My left index finger takes a lot of hits and my nail is all scratched up from the needle. On my right hand I sometimes have needles which need a lot of pushing to get through the felt and interfacing. This ends up putting a lot of pressure on my nail and sometimes I worry it will give way and I will have a nasty mishap. Then there is the accidental "stabs" which can sometimes hurt for a few days. However when you get a row of perfect stitches, all the right size and length it makes up for it.

Is there more below the neck?

This is a new badge design I created last week. I decided to add a little more to the head and give one a neck and shoulders. I was quite happy with the results after worrying that the neck would be too thin and not strong enough.

I spend most of the weekend sewing badges and doing monoprints. I did some small ones on atlas paper to put in the packages I send off when people purchase items from me. I also tried doing some collagraphs but the paper I used was too thick so it didn't work out how I wanted. I also get impatient waiting for the PVA to dry and didn't end up printing one.

It is great to sit down and do lots of little artworks and have a functioning studio. I went through a massive void of doing no artwork for a few years. At one stage (when I worked in a call centre) I was so scared by my lack of art making that I was scared to go into Galleries.

The year before I had worked in a call centre in outgoing sales and somehow managed to draw while on the phone and covered my "pod" with little artworks and origami creatures. A coworker, Bec, would make the origami animals and I would decorate them. She once brought me in a pack of markers to help get the job done. I also got tagged as the "arty" one, along with another guy who worked there, so got to spend a week of the phones painting a mural. It wasn't that great as the theme was "telemarketing" but a week off the phones to paint was a dream come true. Unfortunately the latter call centre was incoming calls in customer service and I had no time to do anything but tell people that I had no control over the phone getting cut off when the bill was 60 days overdue. Aaah memories.

How long have you been a red man?

I was making some new cards for my badges and I got ink over all of them. I decided to do some drawings on the card rather than waste it. I started this drawing by putting drops of ink on the paper then smudging it. The shape that came out what a man shape so I added to him so he had a few more features.

I have been making lots of new badges this weekend. I have a new range of badges coming out but I will post more about that when they become available. It is interesting looking at some of my older badges that are from early on and they are quite different now. It is nice to look at your own work and see the improvements.

Lady Map

I've been doing some more monoprints today with the aim to give one to a friend going overseas. Before I did the "good" one I like to do some tests to make sure the ink is at perfect levels. This is was one I did after the main event. It was a lady over a page of an old atlas. I likes how her eyes turned out with the softer shading for the eye lid. I coloured her top in with a variety of red inks left over from the main artwork I did.