Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

Hope everyone has a great Xmas - and a lovely New Year too! I found these retro catalog images here. xxxx

Back from a long blogging break!

Almost a month off line - that's a record. Moving house, renovations, phone line problems etc etc. Here's a couple of pics for an upcoming exhibition about collective animal nouns. I chose ' a kaleidescope of butterflies' and my friend Anna did 'a tower of giraffes'. You can see a larger view of the butterflies here.
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Moving house

We're moving all our stuff into our tiny new house on Monday, so may be offline for a while. We're gonna have to dump everything into the front room in boxes and spend the next couple of weeks unpacking. I'd love to be able to say that things will be as organised and neat as the picture above, but I kind of don't think it will be. I scanned the image from a 1960's Swedish magazine appropriately called 'Form'. xxxx

Kitchen cupboard handles

I found these cute 1950's cupboard handles at the restoration yard and got a combination of No. 22 and No. 32 for our kitchen. xxxx

Type Tuesday Studio 't Brant Weer

The above examples are done by Studio 't Brant Weer from the Netherlands. I found out about their work in the book Area 2. xxxx

Also the black and white image on the top is from the Studio 't Brant Weer website.

PS. Blogger has stopped resizing my images, so I'm having to upload them at a smaller size. Has anyone else had this problem?

Old Tiles

The house we just moved into has two fireplaces with the most gorgeous tiles around them. I've decided as a long term project I'm going to collect lots of old miss-matching tiles to put in the bathroom or kitchen when we get around to renovating. Here's a couple I saw on eBay the other night. xxxx

New Wacom tablet

This week I had my third attempt at using a Wacom tablet. The first two times I used a large and medium size tablet, but found them too awkward and only persisted for a couple of days. This time I had to give it a better shot because I'm starting to get really bad RSI. So I tried the smallest Wacom tablet I could find. Now I'm addicted. So much better than using a mouse. I did the above doodles testing the different pressures of the pen. xxxx

PLAY Comme des Garçons

I'm usually not one to buy a product based on it's logo, but I did make an exception the other day when I found one of these on sale. The above t-shirt has the logo for PLAY, Comme des Garçons on it. I found out via Sakato that Filippa Gowski, who did the artwork, has also done some textile prints for Comme des Garçons, as well as lots of other logo and print work. You can find the above t-shirts here. xxxx

Tauba Auerbach

Comme de Garsons ran the above advertisment in Vanity Fair last month, done by the artist Tauba Auerbach. I had a look at her website and there's lots of images where she uses text and it's meaning as the basis of her studio work. All the examples below are done by her. I got the images are from the website, and the above advertisment is scanned from Vanity Fair. Click to see details. xxxx

Pretty plates

Found these pretty Austrian hand-painted plates at the auctions last week. xxxx

More album sleves

Here's a couple more 7 inch record sleeves from the 70's found here. xxxx

Cool record sleves

Via Hi & Low I found about this incredible on-line library of record envelopes. I got so excited I did an image search for 'geometric record covers' which brought up the Vivaldi cover (below) which was posted at Grain Edit, a groovy blog that specialises in graphics from the 50's - 70's, and contemporary design that's influenced by that era. It's now on my list of daily reads. xxxx

On My Desk

A couple more rough pages for the zine I'm making. It's supposed to be in the mail by now - Monday at the latest!! Also the other thing that's taking up most of my waking hours is that we bought a tiny little unrenovated house, so lot's to organise and a frightening amount of work to do once we get the keys!! More On My Desk players to be found at Kootoyoo.

Type Tuesday 30th Sept

Tsang Kin-Wah is a Chinese born Hong Kong artist who was awarded the Tokoyo Type Directors Club award in 2007. I first saw his work over at I love typography. Click to see detail, or see more of his work at his website. xxxx

More Triangles

These fantastic dresses were shown at Paris Fashion Week by Korean designer Lie Sang Bong. I found the images on the SMH website and the invitation via Lie Sang Bong's official site. xxxx

Triangles

Shoes by Cesare Paciotti and packaging design by Niels Fryst who I came across via Balladora Typographica. I found the shoes in a fashion mag. xxxx

On My Desk

I got some really cool stuff in the post the other day from Sakato as part of her love letter project. And I'm working on a zine about vintage clothes care for zine-swap generated by Nikki. xxxx

OMD - Another modified pattern, and a love letter

Here's a different colourway of an old pattern I made. (more patterns two posts down). I'm in experimentation mode before I get some more digital fabric printed. Also I just joined Sakato's love letter project. More about that soon. xxxx

this is ...my favourite band of all time

Thanks to Curlypops for this weeks theme - this is... 'my favourite band of all time'. I've got really scary memories of serving orderves at my parents parties while they all danced to Boney M. In my adult life I gained a very daggy, but new found respect for them. Their lyrics are educational - teaching us about historical and literary figures such as Rasputin and Steppenwolf. Also in 1978 they ignored political tensions and toured the Soviet Union, acting as ambassadors for the west during the Cold War.....But on a more serious note - if I could only choose one performer to listen to for the rest of my life, it would have to be Nina Simone. I got the groovy record cover from Milkcratebreaks. Thanks to Three Buttons for hosting the game. xxxx

Work in process patterns

Here's a couple of work in progress patterns. The top one's made in 3D, and the bottom one was made by pulling apart bits of typography and making them into shapes in illustrator. Also here's a link to a fantastic blog I found today called BibliOdyssey. It's got lots of old world calligraphy, maps and scientific diagrams. I'll post some images from there later. xxxx

Nice stuff from other blogs and bloggers

Last night I found this amazing photo over at Maize. It was posted there via Speedtrails photostream on Flickr. Also the lovely Pod gave me the link to these felt dogs by Stephanie Metz. xxxx

This is......my favourtie fabric and craft supply shop

This week we've been asked to list our favourite fabric and craft supply shops. So here's mine: For all sorts of stuff I love going to Reverse Garbage. They sell industrial offcuts, fabric samples, craft supplies, and lots, lots more. My favouite fabric shop is Tessuti, they sell amazing fabric and have a blog too. And for art supplies you can't go past Parkers in Sydney. It's like the Armani of art supply shops, selling Belgium linen, exotic pigments and beautiful paints and brushes. It's been a family business since 1918, so it's got a really nice old world feel to it.

Thanks to Handmaiden for this weeks theme, and Three Buttons for hosting the game. Images are from the Tessuti and Parkers websites. xxxx

On My Desk

Lately I've been thinking about the Giant Pink Sea-Snail from Dr Dolittle, and strangely enough I couldn't find an image of if anywhere on the internet. I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but in the meantime I made my own pink snail, and did lots of different texture mapping on the shell - then turned it into a wallpaper.

If anyone can find a pic of Dr Dolittle's snail can you let me know? Thanks to Kootoyoo for hosting On My Desk. xxxx

Nozomi Ishiguro

Another cool Japanese designer: Nozomi Ishiguro, found via Breathe-Design. xxxx

This is...my favourite childrens book

This is a childhood book I've managed to keep in my travels and still look at all the time because of the great illustrations. I also laugh every time I read the bad joke I wrote on the inner page when I was a kid:

If we painted every car in Australia pink would would we be?
A Pink Carnation.

Thanks to Potty Mouth Mamma, for this weeks theme and Three Buttons for hosting the game. xxxx

Amanda Upton's webiste

My lovely friend Amanda Upton just launched her website. She did the gorgeous illustrations above. xxxx

Nice pics from old books

This afternoon a friend of mine emailed me a picture (the one with the black background) from Goethe’s Theory of Colours with the email header 'Nice pic from old book'. I liked it, so did a bit of a google search and found a scholarly website called colorsystem.com that explains the history and science of colour order. Rather than read all the scientific stuff I decided to look at the illustrations, of which there's many. So many in fact that I forgot to list where all the pictures came from. If you want to find out you could go through the site yourself. I found them while I was looking through the historical articles listed on the left hand menu. Here's the link. xxxx

Typographic Masonry

While I was reading Niko magazine, (above images) I found out about the designer's Richard Niessen and Esther De Vries. They do really detailed and colourful graphics, including the typographic work below (click to enlarge). You can see more of their work at niessendevries.com. Amazing stuff. xxxx

On My Desk

Here are some fabric swatches I got back from Sublitech. Some turned out well, some didn't. The octopus print on the top left bleed too much so you can hardly see his legs. Have to print it larger next time.

And below are some Dodo birds I did a while back. I accidentally clicked on an old email today and was reminded of them. I'm gonna make some more 3D birds soon, so I'll be able to re-use his head and turn it into a different shape.

Thanks to Kootoyoo for hosting On My Desk. xxxx

Design Stuff

Above are some examples of typography work by Si Scott. The website is worth going through, there's some beautiful work there. And below are some images from us design studio UK. This particular project is a collaboration between YNC, Nike and Nick Night. xxxx

This is...a work in progress

This weeks theme for this is... , is 'a work in progress'. Through the week I made a little purse for a friends birthday out of fabric offcuts.
I made a mobile phone holder as well, but it's so badly constructed that I think it's going to stay a work in progress.... Thanks to Debbie from Kept in a Jar for deciding on the theme this week, and Three Buttons for hosting the meme. xxxx

Op Shopping and a blue and white bunny

A couple of weeks ago I got this cute beret (top pic) at the markets, and that night I was looking through my Olle Eksell book and found an illustration he'd done of the exact same hat.

It was also lovely to pop over to Debbie Hill's blog and see that she had made a bunnie from the pattern I posted a while back. I like hers better! (image below)

I scanned the Olle Eksell image from his book, and got the bunny pic off Debbie Hill's blog, which is otherwise known as Kept in a Jar. xxxx