Today Is The Day

The sun is shining. My exhibition opens today. I am nervous.

In The Blink Of An Eye

And then it was done. Below are pics of the show and a portrait I did of my little Kian.

It Is What It Is

I know that good things happen to those who hustle, but what if you are a crap hustler? Anyway, the show she is up and it is what it is. Hold thumbs please.

Sometimes

"We Are All Connected" Exhibition 2

For the next few days, while I am hanging my show, I will be posting a few sneak peeks of the work on my first Australian exhibition that is to open on Saturday 31st August at The Bird's Gallery in Kew, Melbourne, at 02.00pm. Please come along if you are in town.

Missing Home

Some days are better than others (or is that worse?) Marie biccies make me miss home and friends (who I am rotten at keeping in touch with.)

New little hair clips I have been making.

"We Are All Connected" Exhibition 1

For the next few days, while I am hanging my show, I will be posting a few sneak peeks of the work on my first Australian exhibition that is to open on Saturday 31st August at The Bird's Gallery in Kew, Melbourne, at 02.00pm. Please come along if you are in town.

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey is one of my favourite illustrators, so I was thrilled to find these vintage book covers on the Brainpickings site today.

AAARGH

Shorter Than Snow White's Friends

This is how short the time grows till all of my paintings must be finished. I have a busy few days ahead of me. Normally I am such a swat everything would be finished by now, but alas not so this time. Anyway, wish me luck and have a good weekend.

Denim Love

I am so into denim at the moment. I want to make ALL THE THINGS in denim. I have a board on pinterest entitled Denim, Delft and Indigo Dying which is where I am putting all my ideas for when my show is over.
I am so crazy about denim blue I have made re-made almost every object I sell, in "denim". Here is my denim cloud and some of the projects I want to try my hand at.

How cool are those jeans and OMG that quilt? 

I definitely want to try my hand at both of these projects. 

and all of these projects

For links to the original sites that posted these ideas please see my pinterest board.

My Beautiful Boys

I hardly ever get good photos of the boys. Last night I got Darren to do some portrait shots of Kian as he is the subject of the last painting for my show. Leith stood in as a lighting subject and so I got nice ones of both the boys. Are they not just too beautiful for words?

Put A Bird On It!

I have the Southside Market on again this Saturday at the St Kilda RSL Hall. Here are three of my new items.

Brooches

Magnet

Vintage Barrettes

As a prize for almost completing my first Australian exhibition, I did a little ebay shopping for vintage barrettes. This is one of the lovelies that arrived in the post the other day.

New Brooches

I collect trinkets. Obsessively. Most of my little handmade goodies are made from combining found objects from all over the place - vintage fairs, thrift shop jewels, broken jewellery of my own, old belt buckles, etc. Please do not think I sculpt each object, they are just cast from combinations of found objects. I have made a new batch of brooches and here are two of them. I am a little obsessed with denim and delft of late and want to create a whole range of things with this theme, including some paintings.

I Made This

I try to include a handmade gift on the boys birthdays and at Christmas time, as I want them to learn to appreciate time and effort more than money. This year I made Leith a little skully for his bedroom wall. Being 9 he loves all things skull and cross bones and so I thought he would enjoy this little Dia De Los Muertos guy. I even managed to incorporate some of the little Milagro charms I found a while back. Each charm symbolizes a person lost in his life. The top three are for members of Darren's clan and the bottom two are for members of mine. I tried to give him a denim look to fit in with Leith's room.

OUR BIG BOY

It has been a horrid week that has included impossible deadlines, illness and doctors waiting rooms, dentists and rain, but on Sunday it is Leith's 9th birthday so at least the week will end well. I cant believe how time flies. We make more of a fuss about birthdays than Xmas in our house. Leith has had a bumper year for pressies this year. We have a little tradition that the brother whose birthday it is, has to buy the other brother a pressie, so that he wont feel left out. I love wrapping presents and this bunch was helped along by these great Edward Gorey stickers. Here are some pics of the treats to come.

 

Heart FELT

I have come up with a new way of displaying my brooches. Previously they were just pinned onto card, but on the weekend I started playing around with felt shapes - sewing them together to created little boarders for the brooches, like tiny frames. I think they are much better. This way people can get a sense of what they would look like against a fabric. They also do not get bent and dogeared during transportation to and from markets. What do you think?

Dia De Los Muertos

I have been working on these little sugar skull wall plaques for a while now. I love the Day Of The Dead celebration. We have had a lot of people die in our family and we found that this celebration is a great way to talk about the concept of death with the kids. It is basically a Mexican festival in which families remember and celebrate the lives of those lost. Instead of doing Halloween (which I personally find a bit ghoulish), when we were in South Africa, my friends and I had an annual Day Of The Dead party with dress-up and delicious food and decorations. So these little dudes are going to help us celebrate our first Australian Day Of The Dead. I will also make one or two for sale at The Southside Market in August, September and October.

Three Years Old

Tomorrow is my little niece's birthday. It was three years and nine months ago that our wee family first set foot on Australian soil. We came with only one intention - to help make the poppet who is now so big, but we loved it here so much, that not only did a little egg start to grow, but also the thought of living here. It is funny, things come along that will change your life, but often in a form you least expect. Well happy weekend everyone and Happy Birthday Eloise.

Some pressies and some post

Adorn

Here are some little gems that I have found around the webs and have posted on my Pinterest Jewellery Design board. If you follow the links on the pins you will get to the original site selling these items. Aren't they marvelous?

Classics

I have been re-reading many of my favourite classic books lately - there is definitely a reason why they are called classics. One of my most cherished authors at the moment is Graham Greene. While many of his books are not of the subject matter I would normally choose to read, there is something about all of his main characters that resonates so beautifully for me. They are wonderfully nihilistic in the most comfortably resigned way. If you have never read Graham Greene before "The End Of The Affair" is an absolute must. It really is one of the most beautiful and honest books on love ever written.

“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.” 
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

According to Wikipedia Greene suffered from bipolar disorder which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life. In a letter to his wife Vivien, he told her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life", and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material". 

I am currently listening to the audio book of "The Human Factor" which is essentially a spy novel of the mid to late 20th century, that has some of its plot line based in Apartheid South Africa. 

I love some of the mid-century cover designs of his early publications, and these stunning new release versions are great too. 

Nice portrait of Graham Greene - sorry I don't know who the artist is.

Food

Darren and I are rushed off our feet most days and were trying to figure out what takes up so much of our time. Food was one of the areas we identified to be really time consuming: shopping, cooking, washing up etc. Now I know that theoretically food should be this lovely togetherness thing in a family where (dressed in white linen) we all sip wine and laugh and cook and eat together, but that is not my life. On bad days I think of all the meals that still have to be cooked and it makes me want to go back to bed. I am resisting Darren's idea of a two week menu thing, so we always know what to buy when one of us goes to the supermarket, but, even to me, that sounds dreadful.

Anyway what I did do this weekend was sort out our grocery cupboard. Because Darren grew up in a family with older brothers who would beat him up when he finished the biscuits / cereal, he now is in the habit of leaving one of everything, so our grocery cupboard looked full but in fact was just housing packets of things with only one item left, and because you cant see through the packaging you are lulled into a false sense of snack security. So I decided everything must be decanted into see through containers, so that at a glance we know what is running low and the food stays fresh for longer. I have tried this before and it didn't work because you have to choose your containers v carefully so that they fit exactly one full packet of rice, cereal etc, otherwise you land up with tiny irritating bits in the bottom of the packet.

Luckily "Spotlight" was having this 50% off special on Tupperware containers and so I went mad and bought like 60 of the things in different sizes and shapes. Once I had decided which container would adequately fit which product I labeled the containers with waterproof stickers so that when empty or being washed we would know what was missing.

Our neighbours came over for dinner last night and Stew mocked my pantry cupboards mercilessly but I love them.

Introverts

And then there is this. Happy Friday beautiful introverts.

Happy Friday

Happy Friday! No real news this morning save for the little Miffy window decal that arrived in the post yesterday. I forgot that I bought her and then there she was. She now adorns our kitchen window sill together with the little half pint vase I try to keep flowered.

INK

I don't have any tattoos - not because I don't like them, more because I am indecisive. Yesterday morning I woke up with ink on my wrist - what a blast from the past. I cant remember the last time I had a stamp on my wrist, but yesterday, all day, I did! And It felt good. We went to see Laura Marling on Tuesday night and she rocked the biggest socks.