sunday, sunny sunday

It's the first day of winter today, yet the sun is out and there is a lovely warmth in the air. Not in our house though. Brrrrr, it's a bloody icebox. Oh well, can't be whingeing on such a lovely day.

We're realxing a bit at home today. Some true winter activites have been taking place. Like gumboot wearing (well this isn't really season bound) however they MUST always be worn on the wrong feet. I want these boots for me!



Some pumpkin scone cooking. Pretty good although they could have had more volume. I can never get the height out of my scones that the country ladies from my hometown were always able too. What's the secret??? Later on today I hope to get the potatoes cooking to make this fabulous boston bun. Yummmy winter foods



And the budidng artist has been slapping some paint around. I love his work! But not his artistic temperament..... Gee this lad can chuck a tanti! He's so much more demanding than his sis ever was. Is this a boy thing?



And lastly a bit of prep for the listing of sweet Sunni for the shop some time today.

on my desk.... wednesday

Someone has been at my desk, not me. These aren't my books. Whilst there are lots of pretty native orchids in them, I wouldn't have a clue about systematics and evolution. The crazy science dude has been busy at my desk most evenings of late. Papers, graphs and charts full of letters arranged in strange patterns have littered MY desk. Don't you hate deadlines. At least he has time to play with the hotrods.

I have been doing a little crafting and sketching. Some more softies are in the finishing stages and then I MUST get onto some trades I still have outstanding. I generally paint a few tee's at the one time, as I hate to waste paint, so keep an eye out in the shop as some painted tee's will still be making random appearances.

Check out some more desk's over at Kootoyoo

awesome Saturday finds

Today was a day of lucky finds for me. I love days like this when unexpected little bits of happiness come your way.

Firstly we headed off to the trusty old Lions Bargain centre which holds an absolute plethora of thrifty finds. I came away with a cute little shopping basket, tin, battered old suitcase and these unreal insulated beakers. The beakers kill me. They are made by the Newlyne Division of JGLaser & Co pty ltd Melbourne (so the bottom of the beakers tell me) and have such wonderfully quirky images on them. They also bear a type stating light motors down the side which makes me think they must be some sort of promotional beaker. They're quirky and cool and in great nick





Then it was off to the city where I was keen to check out a $2 + second clothing sale at one of my fav shops Irving Baby. Lach dropped me off and headed to the zoo with the kids (what a good dad) First I dropped into Eckersley's, as I was going past, in the hope they may have some risso pens. I was thinking there was a slim chance but I was nearly knocked over when I came across a gocco for sale. I was pretty pleased they had twice as much on it as what I had paid for mine from Japan but super stoked as they have mounts, screen for cloth, bulbs and have ordered me in all the other stuff I need. The very helpful dude behind the counter also uses gocco for his t-shirt business! Super stoked and can't wait to go in and chew his ear off about all things gocco!

Anyway, off to Irving Baby I go but sadly came away with zilch. Dropped in to the newsagents to pick up a copy of Frankie and find an article on the very shop I had just been in. Crazy!

I love Saturdays!

Friday archives

Today's archived sketch is of my little sister, Lana. I think this is from 1994/95 but I'm not really 100%. I made an oil painting from this sketch whih Tikki now owns. For some reason I put a cat in the bottom left hand corner which never really looked right. Whenever I see the painting I wonder what i was thinking! I don't think Lana owned a cat or we even had a cat in the house.

I used to make Lana and Tikki pose for me quite a bit. Lana looks a tad grumpy in this sketch. I think I must have been taking too long.

Tikki posed nude for me in Year 12, which was very brave of her considering the whole school saw her naked, although she had left school by then. I also used to sketch my niece, Brooke, alot when she was a small child and have quite a few drawings and paintings of many of my other nephews and nieces. Sadly, I haven't drawn many pictures of my own children. I think I have only done one of Tully when she was 8 months old. Very remiss of me and I feel a bit guilty about that. Better get the sketch book out!

For more of Friday archives visit Loobylu

I heart this dress

My mum made it for me when I was a little girl and now it's Tully's. I have quite a few of my dresses, but this one is my fav. I love the frilly sleeves, the yellow ric rac but especially the fabric and my Mum's beautiful sewing.

It's a bit of a fuzzy shot. It's grey here today and damned if the miss is any good at playing statues.

on my other desk...wednesday

Today's "on my desk" comes from my other desk, the one in the lounge where it is nice and warm.
The weather has turned quite chilly of late and so I have found myself spending more time of an evening curled up in front of the tv beside this desk embroidering and stuffing little pixies. I have quite a few little lasses on the go at the moment and hope to pop them up all together next week sometime.

This desk is also the home to fluffy our Wollemi pine. He's looking pretty good although some of his bits got a bit sunburnt during the hot weeks we had here at the start of the year. A cute little easel a lovely woodman made for me when I worked for an Art Gallery and ordered a bulk amount of easels in a much larger form, also sits on the desk with a drawing I made many moons ago. At the moment it's the perfect place for pixie's in progress.



For more desk action go visit kootoyoo

ozebaby updates

A couple more tee's will be making an appearance over in the ozebaby store today. The pixie will be an auction but the little geisha will have a buy now on her.

I particularly love the gorgeous eric carle "The very hungry caterpillar" fabric. The book is a favourite here. When I asked Tully what book the fabric was from she said "in the light of the moon". I was perplexed for a bit until I realised it was the first line in the book. Cute. I got the fabric from here but sadly I think I got the last cut in store



Back later today for what's on my desk. Gotta feed the troops now.

on my desk....wednesday

Today's "on my desk" is a bit of a follow on from yesterday's post, the final stage in finishing off a tee, the heat setting. I do pop a piece of baking paper over the painting but thought I'd show the finished matryoshka rather than a blank piece of paper.

You may also spy some gorgeous fabric from pippijoe I love it! It's hemp too which I didn't realise when I bought it.

And under the fabric is my brand spanking new sketch book that I got for Mother's Day. Love a new sketch book and can't wait to fill it with scribbles.

The little matryoshka's will be going up in the shop later today. We're off to the op-shop and playground as it's a gorgeous day out today, but is supposed to turn wet and wild over the next few days, so we best enjoy it while we can.

Off to enjoy the sunshine. Go and check out some more desks over at kootoyoo if you like, there's lots of inspiring stuff out there

matryoshka's on the go

Thought I'd share some pictures of a couple of little tops I'm finishing off today and how they progress from sketches to the final pic.

I originally sketched the matryoshka for Tully but since she only wears dresses it's no use painting tops for her as they just get covered up. We did have a few tears today as she really wanted one of the tops, even though I told her they would be too small, so it has been agreed I will paint one on a dress for her.

So first a couple of little applique tummies.



Followed by a sketch of the doll's outline.



And then the paint. I like to do about 3 layers of paint and then add the fine details last. I had hoped to be at the stage of final details completed by now but Asher decided he didn't want to sleep today and has only just gone down for a sleep at 5pm. Oh well.... there's always tomorrow. Which is when I will hopefully be listing these two little lasses.



Along with one of my favourite stencil designs. Asher has had quite a few tops with this design on them, I like it a lot.

The Friday Archives

As I was hunting for paper for my gocco prints last night I pulled out a lot of my old drawings. It had been a long time since I had seen a lot of them, and some I had totally forgotten about. So I thought I would join in on this meme by Loobylu.

Sadly I haven't looked after a lot of my artwork over the years. Too much moving about and not having adequate storage has resulted in some ripped edges and smudged pictures. This one is not too bad but certainly needs a bit of attention.

My artwork has always been centred on the environment and particularly, feminine symbolism associated with it. Lots of gaia forms, spirals, ferility symbols but also lot of melancholy. This one is a pastel and should be framed but every time I get a quote for framing a pastel it is ridiculously expensive! So is hides away in a folder.

I'm a day early with this meme. With playgroup and other Friday shenaneegins I thought I may not get time to post. Check out Loobylu tomorrow for other archives.

gocco, a go go

Finally, finally, finally.... I pulled out the gocco today and printed my little heart out. I had this little image in my mind and really wanted to do it as a print. For some reason I just couldn't sit down and draw it. Today I finished off a trade that I'm pretty behind on and so I sat down and sketched the little cherub's who had been flitting around in my head and they turned out just as I had envisaged them. It's not very often that happens for me. I like to sketch with lead so I went over my image with the risso pen that came with the gocco set but probably shouldn't have as some of the lead that wasn't rubbed out totally came through in the final print and the image isn't quite as clean as I would like. I'm very happy with it for the first attempt though!



I did quite a bit of scrolling through different tutorials until I found one I was really comfortable with what I was doing. I found this tutorial the most helpful to follow. It's a great tutorial and inspired me to pull out some fabric and felt to see how they printed...and they work great. I'm going to hunt down some gocco fabric ink and have a go at printing on felt and fabric. I have great visions of little gocco pockets on tikki pants!

I really enjoyed printing with the gocco. It is so much easier and cleaner than alot of other forms of printing that I have tried. And that's most forms although I have never done a screenprint. Not sure how that has happened as I've done pretty much every other type of printing process. I love not having to think aobut reverse imagery, soaking paper, wiping down edges, etc.... You just wack the paper in, press down and voila.... Too easy!

Now as for the images I've printed. These are my favourite little pint sized creations ever, my 2 gorgeous babes, Tully and Asher. They are such great mates and often walk around hand in hand. Too cute. I need a logo/brand image for my business and I think this is it. Tully is holding a pixie softie and Asher a pint. Unfortunately, there were some pencil rubbings around the glass so it hasn't come up too clean. I actually didn't think the pencil would show up. Some area of the image didn't print brilliantly either andthe line isn't quite as sharp as I imagined it would be. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe next time I'll figure it out and get a better image.

The next dilemma is finding more supplies. I'm really hoping I'll be able to find them in an artstore rather than having to order on-line.

softie love

I was going to do this post to announce that Jora was up in the store. I popped her up then went to have a shower, came back and she was sold:O I have really quick showers too! I'm really pleased that these little pixies are flying off to such loving homes. I really love making them so it is so very rewarding. Thanks so much!

One of the most enjoyable things about making the softies is playing with fabric and colour combinations. I enjoy it soooooo much. I have some devine fabrics by some local aussie designers that I hope to use for some ultra spesh softies.

Naming the softies is fun too as I get to use all the names from my list of baby names I want to use but Lachie isn't into them, so at least some of my babies get to have them. Jora wasn't on the list but I came across it yesterday. It means autumn rains and since we have been having such wonderful autumn rains, with some particularly heavy downpours yesterday, Jora just seemed perfect. I really like it too:)

on my desk....wednesday

Today my desk has a few more goodies on it that the mailman delivered on Monday.

A gorgeous pattern from Oliver + S that a very lovely lady ordered from the US for me (thanks Lesley). I've seen this little tea dress made up on the sew mama sew blog and it is gorgeous. I just need to find the perfect material for it:) I'm thinking a nice wool blend for winter but am having a hard time finding the perfect one.

The new mixtape. Hoping to sit down with this in the arvo today. no chance yesterday, Tully had a bug in her tummy and is was a bit of a messy ole day. Apparently the "beetle" is out of her tummy now but she is very sleepy. Poor little moppit.

And lastly a lovley pile of gorgeous wool felt from winterwood toys I did notice in my brief flick through mixtape an article on wool felt and this store was recommended. I have to second that recommendation:) The ladies are lovely to deal with and the felt is most awesome. It is such a wonderful texture and as the hand dye it in store you can get some wonderful colours and effects. They are really accomodating too and will dye to your request. I have a plan of asking them to dye up a range of pastel tones on one piece for me to use as pixie wings.

So that's what's on my desk today, along with some paints and a couple of little tees and some more softies waiting to be stuffed. To check out some more desks go visit kootoyoo