Screen printing fun

My first screen printing exercise outside of a classroom was a great experience. I designed and printed tea towels as Christmas presents. It was hard work but well worth the effort! The initial attempt at home was a bit of a disaster - not much room and plenty of mess! Lucky for me Lara let me play in her studio some great results:

First colour run in plum


Cleaning was relatively easy in a purpose built trough

All heat set, folded and ready to go in plum and olive!

I hope the intended recipients appreciate the effort!

Sew busy

I have been putting my new Janome sewing machine into overdrive by making these:

Cushion covers for a Christmas present and a bolster cover (bottom left) for my husband who was jealous I wasn't making anything for him!

and these:

Placemats ready for screen printing (by the way, the tea towel calendar is still work in progress while I have been running around looking for supplies for that project).

AND this:

A cute summer dress I have decided instead to wear as a long top over jeans accompanied with a nice cardy, jewellery and thongs. Perfect for those can't-decide-whether-it's-hot-or-cold Melbourne summer days.

Work In Progress

I mentioned yesterday I'm working on a little project to give as Christmas presents. Well, I couldn't wait to reveal stage 1 of it...it's a 2009 calendar I plan to screen print onto teatowels. I was inspired by Cicada Studio and the calendar she created a few months ago which I found from the elle deco SA blog.

I actually have no idea who reads my blog but I'm pretty sure the 'lucky' recipients of this tea towel have no idea what I'm up to for presents this year. So, the secret is actually quite safe on this blog which is a bit of an oxymoron really.

The pic is a little blurry as it is still a work in progress and I'm a bit embarrassed to show a high res version because you'll see all my mistakes and jagged lines I'm yet to smooth over. ;) It's based on the sketch of some gumnuts I did a little while ago.

Loot

I love finding great bargains but I've never been a keen "rummager" but this has changed since I went to the Lady Garage Sale a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't even intending to go but tagged along with Lara.

I picked up a scarf, belt, necklace and a wrap skirt made from saree material. The best part? I paid less than $10 for the lot! $9 to be exact. Bargain!

On a different note - I have been pretty quiet on the blogging front for the past few weeks because I've been on holidays with Nath to Europe. Had a great time, thanks! My mind is now full of "crafty" ideas and illustrations. I have one particular idea in the making which I hope will be complete before Christmas as I would like to offload them as gifts to my friends and say "I made that!"

At least I have you

"Clear Hearts Grey Flowers" - Mark Ryden

For 18 months I was the custodian of a beautiful Mark Ryden painting while Maz was travelling the world. The painting last we checked fetched close to $7000AUD. Now she's back and she was stoked to have her girls back. *Sigh*...

But at least I have you...

"Anima Mundi" book - Mark Ryden

Inside the book

Native home

We are very fortunate to live right near the Maribrynong River and in the short walk between the gym and my home, through Footscray park there is a great range of natives blooming at this time of year. I had never seen a yellow Grevillea before! Such a chaotic little flower.

I did a very unsustainable thing and plucked some for further analysis and well, for inspiration for my drawing really:

Inspiration - a moment with Frederico Cascinalli

I was lucky enough to stumble across this article yesterday. It is a brief interview with character animator Federico Cascinalli. Above, is an example of his still life work.

The amazing thing about this guy is that he gave up a brilliant career for a career in the arts. BRILLIANT - he was a top surgeon in Italy before throwing in the towel and severing many relationships in the process.

A career in what he loved and not what was expected of him?? What a novel idea!

I love his anology the ups and downs in life are like waves - being depressed is like being underwater for a little while, you just need to hold your breath and wait 'til you come up again.

Shove it under the bed

I think the area under your bed is awesome. It's the best place to store stuff you need/don't need or just want to hoard until the time comes when you need it.

I found this awesome idea in a storage book to build a storage unit for the bed. It didn't have any instructions but I decided to give it a go anyway. All I needed was some caster wheels, two wooden boards, screws, handles, lacquer and wall paper and there you go! Under bed storage unit thingies:

The west side, on the fringe, and some shades...

I initially set out to just upload a pic on our new blinds but I realised when downloading the pic to my comp, I hadn't transferred a whole heap of other pics I took over the past few months so I thought it worthwhile expanding this entry into mentioning my trip to Perth and my new bangs.

Being from the East coast of Oz, I don't really have much of a chance to explore Western Australia because Perth is at least 3 hours away by flight. That's as far as Melbourne to New Zealand! So it never really crossed my mind to visit the other end of Australia until recently when the husband was invited over there to speak at a conference. I decided to tag along and boy was it worth my while. Perth has amazing surf beaches that stretch for thousands of kilometres and the whole city is just rich with culture. Our visit coincided with a sculpture exhibition right on the famous Cottesloe beach which was quite inspiring and unexpected.

We also chanced upon a great cafe/art gallery which had awesome quirky items dotted around their courtyard like this random sculpture of a car and a not so shiny bicycle behind it...

Our new house is coming along quite nicely and it has been really fun doing it up with our own cosmetic touches - we installed Roman blinds recently after ordering them custom made from the internet. It cost us 60% of the commercial store prices and it was quite simple to install too (well the husband did most of it but I still helped!) Hmmm I actually do have more colour plans for the house other than beige...

... and, I got myself a heavy fringe right after the wedding as promised (to myself):