Gardening with quirky 'pots'

I thought I'd share some more pictures from my garden and my love for turning all sorts of found and recycled items into containers for plants.

My love for kitchenalia and ceramic dinnerware doesn't just end in the kitchen - it also extends into the garden! Found coloured saucepans, old second-hand tin kettles and empty food tins all make wonderful colourful and unusual containers for plants! I've even used an old magazine rack as a plant holder (see picture above). Teacups and saucers also feature housing small succulents and small spider-plants.

Gardens are great for anyone with a creative passion - you can be very experimental in the garden and I love that gardens are constantly changing. Container planting is perfect for moving plants around and playing with different compositions. For anyone else with a quirky eye for their garden I can highly recommend the book 'Planted Junk' by Adam Caplin - you can buy it here.

Garden maintenance

As the weather was so lovely over the weekend we decided to do some garden maintenance in preparation for the hot, dry summer. In our front garden we planted little mixed beds of herbs, succulents and some drought tolerant native plants - we learnt pretty quickly that not much else survives those 40C days in summer!!

On the exposed soil areas around the garden beds we used a cheap, recycled and very effective form of mulch - old newspapers! Not only does the newspaper break down to form a protective layer of mulch but it also helps to vastly reduce those pesky weeds (gotta love that!)

Working in small sections first we soaked wads of newspaper in water (collected from the rinse cycle from the washing) before laying directly on the soil, we then covered this with a weed mat before topping with decorative stones. This will hopefully help to retain moisture, keep the soil temperature more consistent (insulating against cold and heat) and protect the soil from baking in the heat of the sun. I can also recomend following this with a nice cool refreshing beer :-)

Christmas illustrations

I was flicking through the Sunday Age 'Christmas Essentials' magazine on the weekend - and came accross one of my Christmas designs featured! (see inset on top picture) The illustrations and designs were comissioned for a range of Christmas ceramic tableware items for Kmart.

I thought I'd share the original illustrations for the designs; they were all painted in watercolour before being scanned into the computer and arranging the placements for each ceramic item, along with creating coordinating borders.

It's always a nice surprise (and sometimes a little strange) coming across your own designs unexpectedly!

Busy....busy....

Things have been pretty busy for the last week or so..... I have been working on some freelance design projects, as well as preparing for my second market stall which I had on Sunday. I made some more wall plates with cut-out kettle, cups and tea-pot shapes for the market stall which I hope to be listing on Etsy soon as these have proved to be quite popular.

The second market stall went a little better than two weeks ago (phew!) and I did sell a couple of my new teapot brooches and necklaces. It's lovely that people like them - and it's really funny to hear people talk about recognising plates they used to have at home!

I did learn a valuable lesson at the market...... that my hand-made tags aren't waterproof! We had several big bursts of rain and unfortunately the ink ran on my tags and got ruined. Fingers crossed for sunshine in two weeks time!

Peppermint magazine!

Well today I was very excited to receive the forth issue of Peppermint magazine - which features one of my Me Old China ceramic plate necklaces in their eco christmas wish list!

Peppermint magazine describes itself as being Australia's only eco fashion magazine and prides itself on featuring and promoting environmentally friendly, sustainable and ethical fashion design. It is a fairly new magazine (issue 4 has just hit the stores) but has already won several awards including best sustainability in publishing.

I was very flattered to be included in the eco christmas wish list amongst many other talented and environmentally aware products - and to be featured in the magazine in general. It is a great concept to be supporting ethical fashion and is well worth checking out. You can find Peppermint magazine here.

Cute tiles

I bought these tiles a while back from Retro Active in Northcote - I had great ideas of actually putting them onto my wall as decoration, but as with most projects I haven't got round to it yet!

I particularly love the emerald green and olive green hens - soooo cute and as green is my favourite colour I just couldn't resist snapping them up.

They are all English tiles and have a very retro look to them - although I don't know if they are new tiles with a retro look - or if they are original? Most of the tiles have at one stage been on a wall and have clearly been used.....however new or old I love them and will one day get around to doing something with them!

market lessons learnt

Still feel like I’ve got first-market-hangover, but slowly getting over it. I’ve learnt lots from this first market..... the main one being how hard it is to sell your own work!

It’s actually quite horrible - and I’d much rather hide behind an on-line shop than face people. I’m just no good at selling my own work – and say all the wrong things! It’s really hard to try and make small-talk and inform people about the process without it sounding like a sales pitch – so very often I said nothing.

When I sold one of my new wall-plates I panicked and then didn’t wrap it properly, had the wrong size bag and after the customer left I felt awful that I made such a mess of it! One of the good things of selling on-line is you can be ‘hidden’ from the selling process and almost separate yourself from it. You can take the time to make sure everything is packaged correctly and looks nice - which is really important to me, but at the market I felt under pressure and realised I had no space to easily wrap and package the goods apart from the floor!

The pricing of my products has a big impact on sales and I think even though it is a market selling all hand-made / designed products there is still an expectation that these will be at fairly cheap prices. When you sell through a retailer (as I am) you need to make sure your prices are consistent with their selling price (you can’t undercut them) and so it does make the pricing very difficult to tailor to a market.

Ho-hum. It was a good learning process for me anyway – and I hope that things can only get better for next time!

Post market blues

I am suffering today from ‘post-market blues’ – I wonder if this is a common syndrome craft-market sellers suffer from?....

Yesterday was my first ever market stall selling the products I make for Me Old China and also my own range of greetings cards – it was a beautiful sunny day at Abbotsford Convent and I was sweltering under the shade of 2 garden umbrella’s! I had two great stall neighbours – The Cats Meow and Babushka Baby and they made me feel quite at home in the market environment. After several weeks of preparation and madly trying to get everything ready, I now feel slightly deflated and very tired after the event.

Thank you to all my lovely friends who came along to say “Hello” – it meant a lot to me and I was really grateful for everyone’s support, interest, feedback and encouragement. Thanks also to the lovely Miss M for helping me man the stall for a few hours. :)

Cut wall plates

I thought I'd share some images of these cut wall plates I have been working on as part of the Me Old China collection. They are plates designed to be hung on the wall as decoration (there is quite a revival of this I have noticed recently - funny how things come back into fashion all of a sudden) but these wall plates have retro kettles, teapots, cups and cuttlery cut out of them!

I think they are quite fun - and would look great in a kitchen don't you think? They work really well as a collection of plates and add a new twist with the negative shapes. It is still a work in progress and they need a few technical adjustments - but I'm hoping to make some more of these and add a few more different cut shapes.

Happy Friday everyone!

Cards

I'm still busy preparing for the market, and I have decided to get a range of cards made featuring my illustrations to also sell on my stall. I have six designs printed - two signature floral illustrations, some cup-cakes and of course some vintage tea-cups. All in watercolour and all created with my very own left hand!

Anyone fancy a cuppa?.....

I have been working on some new designs for the Me Old China range of jewellery especially to trial them at my up-coming market stall - and have made a small collection of brooches and pendants with a tea theme in mind.

I do love a nice cuppa, so I thought it would be fitting to create some teapots and cups fashioned from these second-hand 'Willow' ceramic plates. The collection consists of retro inspired teapots and kettles with some good old-fashioned cups!

You can just dangle them in front of someone as a cute hint that you might like a nice cuppa tea ;-)

I will be launching these at my up-coming market stall at The Abbotsford Convent this Sunday 15th November. I'd love to know what people think and if it's worth making some more on similar theme - so please let me know your thoughts!

Off to market!

Well, I have finally decided to be brave and do my first craft market to showcase (and hopefully sell!) some of my products. I am feeling a little apprehensive about it, but thought in the lead up to Christmas it could be a good time to get out there face the public!

I have begged and borrowed tables, tablecloths and am still trying to find some kind of 'wall' suitable for hanging things that will stand up on grass and any possible gusts of wind! Apparantly it is forecast to be 34C - phew - hot hot hot!

I have been working on some new designs for the market so I will have a few new designs that aren't in any shops. I thought the market would be a good way of getting some feedback , so even if I don't sell anything it would be a good way of getting face-to-face market research.

The details for the market are:

Venue: THE ABBOTSFORD CONVENT (SHIRT & SKIRT MARKET)
Address: 1 ST HELIERS STREET, ABBOTSFORD

Dates: 15th NOV, 29th NOV, 20th DEC
Time: 10AM – 4PM

Blue Willow

I went to a second-hand and collectables fair last weekend - and as usual I was on the hunt for plates to use in my artwork and jewellery range. I found two lovely Willow side plates made by Kelston Ceramics (an old New Zealand ceramics manufacturer) and I loved the over-scale pattern used and the lack of border detail which is usually synonymous with the Willow design.

But the find of the day has to be the cute set of Willow napkins and coasters! I have never come across anything like these before so I was super excited to find them! The coasters are even embossed - just adorable!! I don't think I'll ever bring myself to use them (I know...very sad) but they will definitely feature in some artwork at some point in the future I'm sure.

'Me Old China' - jewellery (and plate) pictures

I have been organising some promotional material for the 'Me Old China' range of jewellery, and I decided to get some pictures taken featuring the pendants and their original source. I really wanted to emphasize the fact that the pendants are all cut from second-hand plates - so I decided to style some of the jewellery items sitting with old plates and cuttlery!

Decorative lettering

I snapped these pictures of different types of decorative lettering on my recent London visit. I love decoration in any form - and clever use of fonts and typefaces can be extremly eye-catching and decorative in their own right.

The first two pictures were from posters in the East-End advertising Ice Cream - they caught my eye instantly and I loved the simple but strong graphic elements. The 'Toy Theatres' was from a street sign at Covent Garden (very shakspearean!) and the 'No Exit' and 'Way Out' are from original tiles in the tube station at Covent Garden.
And I couldn't have a feature of decorative lettering from London without the famous Underground logo! It's proper name is 'The Roundel' and its distinctive style and font was designed by Edward Johnston in 1913 - and remains in use to this day.

Click here to scroll through some great old photo's featuring the London underground and it's iconic logo.

Ruby Patootie

I wanted to profile 'Ruby Patootie' which is another boutique stocking the Me Old China range! Ruby Patootie is based in the very cute Sparta Place in Brunswick (just off Sydney Rd, next to Mariana Hardwick).

Ruby Patootie 'draws inspiration from the myth of the ruby slipper and the belief that all girls can find their power in a new pair of shoes or indeed a new outfit' (absolutely right!). They stock hand-picked garments and one-off designs often with a slight vintage or retro feel to the ranges, and include accessories and jewellery from local artists (like me!)

There is a great selection of colourful prints and fabrics in the store, along with some gorgeous comfy shoes (I bought a pair) and is well worth popping along if you are looking for something a little different and individual to wear. You can find details of the shop here: