2 Years

Gareth and I found a new house and signed the lease today. Very exciting as we were both starting to worry we would not get a place. The house is much closer into the city and also nearish to the beach. We get the keys next Saturday so we have the not so enjoyable task of packing up our house. We have been living in the hills for the last 2 years so although it is sad to leave it will be nice to get closer into the city again. I was looking through my folders for each rental house we have had and found a photo of my "studio" in 2005 when I lived in Brunswick. It was my first year of teaching, so I'm not going to be too hard on myself for my lack of any work in the studio and I think this photo was taken when I had moved into the larger room. I did end up using it a bit, but not like I am using my studio now. It is nice to look back on old photos of houses we have lived in and when I saw the totally bare studio I was quite proud of my current studio, despite it being a total mess.

Tiny or Big

This is a tiny coin purse I made last week from an off cut from one of my screen prints. The main part of the screen print was turned into this orange bird pouch and I forgot about the off cut and put it in my spare fabric box. I sorted through it last year when I took it to school for the students to use and realise I had quite a few screen prints which could be used for smaller items. I've been making quite a few coin purses, some of them really small and the offcuts of prints are perfect for them and I'm glad I'm using up smaller pieces of fabric.

This is my large red tote bag I made a few days ago. I often have a lot of trouble photographing bags, as this is the only spot to do it in but it is often really dark. I decided to keep the whole view in this photo as it looks really good with the plant and artwork as well as the door. The artwork is from my final year of Art School in 2001. It has little mono printed drawings on old book paper, cut out and places in little muslin pockets and stitched onto the wall. In my third year we had two big exhibitions, one in Melbourne and one back in Ballarat. My plan was to exhibit this work and keep my favourite artworks for the final display back at Uni. I was working on a series of ten artworks and I thought they had to all be together, rather than just display a few of them. When I explained this to my art teacher he told me I HAD to exhibit the other works. I'm glad I listened to him, although I am still quite fond of this work.

Mailing List Draw

This month if you sign up for my mailing list you go into a draw to win a little felt lady badge. It will be the one pictured above with the little blue buns in her hair. At the moment she is nameless so if you win you can name her yourself. If you don't want to do that, then I can give her a name for you instead. For more information, click the image above. The competition is running until January 31st.

An Eternally Present Past

These are the two artworks I did on Sunday when I was monoprinting. Although with a monoprint you only get the one print, I like using the same image to create a print and then working on them in different ways. They both have a different look to them but you can tell they are from the same image. Both are available in my Etsy shop and I'm thinking I might do some more but start with the ink and then add the monoprint on top, so the registration will be off.

I just sent off some badges to a new stockist in Western Australia. The shop is called Lick Clothing and they are in Fremantle and Cottesloe. I'm quite excited to have a new stockist on the other side of the country as although I have never been it is nice to know my little ladies are heading over on my behalf.

Violent Resentment

This is the second artwork I have put up on Etsy from the series of four mono prints of the same image I did yesterday. This one has red lines in the background and was created using the traditional mono printing technique. Something I really like about mono prints is the texture and the extra ink you get on the page. Although it is nice to get a perfect crisp black line with no extra bits of ink, sometimes I like those extra areas of darkness over the page. Another thing is it is lovely to colour in with ink because the printing ink works as a little barrier, so painting inside the lines is much easier.

Today I decided to make a new bag design and I created a trial bag before I started on the good ones. The trial was in white and I might take some photographs of it because it looks really lovely with such a large amount of white fabric. I designed a little floral pattern for the bottom of the bag and I have three more in red and denim cut out and ready to be sewn up. The bag is huge, there is enough room in there for a small army. It is actually quite handy and I might make one for myself as I often use my green country road bag circa 1993 for carrying lots of books. I used it last year when I was teaching all the time as I could shove everything into it and off I went. Although the thing I loved about that bag was the opening was so huge that the shove was a quick easy task.

Dismissal Kings

I created a small series of artworks today using my monoprinting equipment. I have not used it in a few months and I planned on making some small drawings to send out with orders. I ended up printing onto old book pages using the same image. This was one of the reverse prints so it really only had a slight impression of the drawing I did in the previous print. I worked over it with black fineliner quite a bit and then added a small amount of primary coloured detail with blue ink as the background and red and yellow fineliner detail in the collars.

I think this was my favourite out of the four because I like the way the mans head turned out with the line work as it reminds me a little of Egon Schiele. The artwork is available in my Etsy shop and the rest of the series will be up in the next few days.

I've been leaving my Madeit store a little lonely lately, but that is all going to change. If you have not been to Madeit yet, I suggest you do. Australians know how to make fantastic things and it is all in one place. I'm always finding new people on there every time I visit and the range of product is growing by the day!

Smoking Pets

Gareth and I had a fun morning going on house inspections. Saturday mornings are hard as often the inspections are on at the same time. We got to one 5 minutes late (we had to get from Caulfield South to Ashburton in 6 minutes) and they were gone.

A few places we drove to and then just realised it was totally wrong and didn't even both going inside. One place was so stinky from cigarette smoke that Gareth thought they must have not only had the parents smoking inside, but the children as well. Later, when we were waiting for another inspection he decided the pets must have also smoked as the place was so revolting.

One place we went to was very retro/grandma's house which I don't mind, but Gareth doesn't like too much. As we were leaving I saw a medium sized huntsman behind the curtain in the lounge room and decided it was a bad omen.

All in all, house hunting is hard work. I have my ideal house in my head, but it is probably a few hundred dollars over what we want to spend. Hopefully this time next month I'm posting from my new house which I am happy with.

This is a little pouch I made last week, available on Etsy. I'm happy with the print as it is a simple design and the red, white and dark denim colour combo is one of my favourites.

BridBird

I can't remember how I found Bridbird on Etsy, but I remember putting her in a Treasury last week and thinking, another talented Australian seller on Etsy and felt rather proud. Bridget creates stunning etchings of Australian Birds and I'm really in love with the magpie etchings in particular. You can click on each of the artworks to go to the individual listings and there are more artworks in her Etsy shop so I suggest having a look. Bridget is from Belfast originally and is also very friendly as well, so if you want to know more about her work I am sure she will be more than happy to answer any questions.

Helter Swelter

Tomorrow I am going to have another stall at the Rooftop Market in Melbourne and it is going to be 35 degrees. I'm worried it is going to be super hot up on the roof despite having large umbrellas to cover up under. I notice that during market stalls, despite drinking a lot of water, I still seem to feel really dehydrated by the end. I'm hoping this doesn't happen tomorrow and plan on drinking a lot of water to compensate.

The bag above was made last week when I went through my yellow ink craze. It was over a year ago I purchased five 1 litre tubs of screenprinting ink and while my black and white is almost gone, I had not touched the yellow at all. This was a surprise because I love yellow and I have made quite a few yellow things. I'm hoping all this will change with the hot hot heat as it might inspire me to use it in my screenprints.

2008

Now that Christmas and 2007 has come and gone I can post about some of the things I got as gifts for people. I got these lovely fridge magnets from Meet Me At Mikes on the shopping night in December from Just Add Salt. They were for my sister in law who lives in London, so I thought they were well suited in terms of the design. I love all of Bec's designs and her packaging is fantastic. If you're in the market for little fridge magnets then I suggest having a look at her Etsy shop!