Packing, organising & sorting....

Piles of magazines to sort through!

              My beloved reference folders - full of magazine tears and inspiration

Magazine tears sorted into floral reference..... 

 traditional and damask reference.....

children's reference...... 

and house inspiration & ideas.  

         The Jolly cat wants to make sure she'll be packed up and taken to the new house!

Life has been pretty hectic here for the past few weeks, with packing up the house and sorting our belongings ready for the big house move (soooo many china teacups, coffee pots and plates to pack!).  I've also had some last minute freelance design work, so I've been busily creating some bedlinen designs amongst the house chaos and between frequent cups of tea.

I'm trying to be quite organised and sort out my piles of magazines before we move.  I love collecting magazines for ideas and inspiration and I have piles of them in my studio - some of which date back to 2004!  With the up-coming house move it's been a really good excuse to sit down at night and go through the older ones, tearing out pages for my reference folders.

My reference folders are my designer bibles, they are full of inspiration material which I turn to for almost all of my design projects and freelance work.  I have about 14 folders divided into categories such as traditional floral, contemporary floral, stripes and geometrics, tableware, children's and miscellaneous reference - and I'm constantly adding new material to them.  I can't flick through a mag without going on a tearing frenzy - pulling out anything that catches my eye and that I think will be useful reference material, so it's been great having a stash of old mags to rip into! 

I'm quite partial to a particular folder for my reference collection, with these ones being from Muji.  The folders are full of clear plastic sleeves, perfect for slipping in torn out magazine images.  Ahhh, it makes me happy just thinking about them. 

My poor little studio is now being taken over by empty boxes ready to be filled with our precious belongings.  I came in the other night to find the Jolly cat snuggled in the bottom of one of the precariously stacked pile of boxes - I guess she doesn't want to be forgotten! 

Vintage Fabric from the States

Flower patterns

Polka dots

Stripes

 Childrens

60's style

Mexican

Another fabulous reference book from the Japanese publishers at Pie Books!

Lots of cute images and reference material covering American vintage fabrics, from polka dots, to flower patterns, stripes and childrens designs. 

Although its a new book for me (bought from The Hill of Content bookshop) it looks like it was published in 2005 and I can't seem to find it on the Pie Books website.  It might have been superseded by the book Vintage Dress Fabrics from the States that I blogged about a few months ago, although the books are different and there are no repeated designs.

As a designer I love having access to lots of resource material at my fingertips for design inspiration and ideas, these Pie Books are great little reference books with heaps of imagery and I love the fact they cover vintage designs.

Moving on....

Our little house......sold!

Looking back on all the renovations we did - this is what confronted us after a

'simple' re-stumping process!!

Plaster was removed, with architraves and skirting boards removed to insulate internal & external walls. 

The front garden before......

......and after

We lived in the house throughout all the renovation crazyness.... here Mr B combines studying for a Masters whilst also working full time and house renovating in evenings and weekends!

                                                           Mr B installs the new kitchen.......

......with help from Jolly cat!

The living room & kitchen before.....

.....And after

Some favourite house details

Last week our house sold!  It feels quite exciting, but also quite sad at the same time.  Its the first house myself and Mr B have owned and is full of lots of happy memories.....and also full of some horrible renovation nightmares. 

We lived in the house for a year before organising a 'simple' re-stumping to level the house.  Unfortunately this is where it all went wrong.  We came home to find the house was level, but in the process floor boards had been ripped up and crudely cut, the original plaster was popping off the walls - and the house just looked like it was falling apart! 

Over a two year period we put nearly all our belongings into storage and embarked on a steep learning curve of how-to-renovate-your-house-on-a-budget-on-weekends-and-evenings!!  We lived in the house throughout the experience, whilst both working full time and Mr B studying for a Masters degree.  Although it was dirty, exhausting and pretty horrendous, it also gave us the opportunity to transform the house and garden and make some serious improvements to our little 1940's weatherboard. 

The house was featured on The Design Files a few years back (before all the renovations were completed) as well as being included in Sanctuary magazine and the Herald Sun Home magazine.  We managed to renovate on a budget (although this did mean doing a lot of the work ourselves) and utilise a lot of second-hand and salvaged furniture, building materials - and generally being quite inventive with resources. 

So we'll be moving away from a very special house, some very good friends and an area we're very familar with - but we're looking forward to a new adventure and experiencing life in the country!  Wish us luck with the house packing and moving - eek!!

Painting plates

         Light washes of colour are applied over the plate sketch to form the outline, shape,
                                                 texture and shadows of the plate

Once the lighter washes and key shapes have been applied, the detailed areas of the plate can

                                                      start to be painted 

       The layers of colour and detail are gradually built up until the illustration is complete

It's a chilly day here in Melbourne and I've just finished some home-made parsnip and ginger soup to warm me up a little, put my comfy ugg boots on and turned the heating up a notch.  Ahhh, much better! 

I thought I'd share how I created some of my recent plate illustrations for Real Living magazine and the process I went through with the painting.  For these illustrations I worked on Arches Medium textured 300gsm watercolour paper.   

The first stage I went through was stretching the watercolour paper, the process of stretching paper prior to painting means the paper will always remain perfectly flat, and won't buckle when the wet paint is applied.  I don't always stretch my paper before painting - especially when using the 300gsm weight paper, but as the illustrations where to be photographed I wanted to ensure the artworks remained perfectly flat.

Using a B pencil I sketched the outline of the plates, including any pattern and detailed areas.  I try to do this quite lightly, so I can rub out any pencil marks once the artwork is finished.  Sometimes I work 'blind' and paint directly onto the paper without any pencil sketches first, but for these illustrations I chose to sketch the plates first to ensure I could capture the plates as accurately as possible.

Once the outlines were sketched, I started to apply light washes of watercolour paint to create the plate outline, as well as shadows to give a sense of 3 dimension.  Once the basic shape of the plate was finished, I added more layers of colour to acheive some of the basic detail and pattern of the plate.

The layers continued to be built up, finishing with the darkest areas and fine detail.  With watercolour you always paint light to dark - so lightest areas first and building up to the darker sections last.  Any white areas are created by letting the white paper show through, rather than using a white paint colour. 

It depends how detailed you want the artwork as to how many layers of paint are added or how much detail to include.  I like my illustrations to have a sense of realism and detail to them - but without being too perfect or 'finished'.

J&G Meakin retro 'Aztec' coffee pot

 'Aztec' coffee pot by J&G Meakin

I'm very chuffed that little Jasper at just 9 months old, already seems to have a keen eye for vintage ceramics - as I got this rather fabulous retro coffee pot for mothers day! 

The coffee pot design is called 'Aztec' and is applied to the 'Studio' shape, which was introduced by British manufacturer J&G Meakin in about 1964.  J&G Meakin started manufacturing ceramic ranges way back in 1851, and their Studio range was particularly popular both in the UK and overseas.

This is the third design by J&G Meakin I have in the Studio shape, the other two being Topic (left) and Elite (right).  I love the elegance of the studio coffee pots with their tall, slender and statuesque shape - and I also love the colour palettes of the three designs with their turquise, aqua, and olive green shades.  Gorgeous!!

The Topic design in particular has become a favourite of mine, and has featured in many of my illustrations and sketches in recent times. 

Various sketches and illustrations featuring the Topic coffee pot.
 

Mother's Day plate illo's in Real Living magazine

My watercolour plate illustrations for Real Living magazine  

 

 

 

This months edition of Real Living magazine features some yummy cake recipes for Mothers Day - and the cakes are photographed on my watercolour plate illustrations!

Rather than have the cakes on actual plates, I was asked to paint the plates so the cakes could be photographed on the illustrated versions.  A very cute idea!  It was great to paint the pretty plates knowing they were going to be used as styling props, as its something very different to what I normally do. 

The delicious recipes for the cakes are: flower jam drops, blueberry cheesecakes with white chocolate base, chocolate coconut hedgehog slice, fig and frangipane tart and triple chocolate cherry cakes.

Yum!