New cards on Etsy

It's been a bit quiet recently on the blogging front......I've had quite a lot of freelance work, plus I've been feeling a little under the weather and have now developed an ear infection :-( Hence I haven't been up to much other than moping around and feeling sorry for myself.

However, I have finally managed to list my new cards onto Etsy!


I had the cards printed for the markets I was doing in the lead-up to Christmas and have been meaning to put them in my Etsy shop for a while. I sold two straight away to a lady in Philadelphia which was pretty exciting, she wants to frame them and put them on her desk at work . This made me feel a bit better :-)

There are six different designs, all of them are taken from original watercolor illustrations by me!

I'm keen to do more of them - or maybe even to put them onto additional products - so I'd love to know what you think of them and any favourite designs?.....

Delilah Devine

I thought I'd profile a friend of mine who is a very talented illustrator, designer and most recently creator of her own product range under the title 'Delilah Devine'

I met Linda a few years ago when we worked together, before she ran away to Italy with a rather nice Italian man (ahhh - isn't this everyone's dream!) She is now back in Australia, married (to the Italian man) and has set up her own business hand-making gorgeous brooches and framed children's pictures. On top of this she is also a new mum - phew!

She crafts these delightful wares using found vintage wallpapers, so each one is a little bit different to the other - and exceptionally cute!

I bought the Kookaburra brooch - I loved him because he was green :-)

Delilah Devine has a website, etsy store and a blog

Linda you are an inspiration - love your work x

Super-cute packaging!

I love good packaging, and I think it speaks volumes about the product, brand and company if they have made an effort and put thought into the packaging of their products.

So I was delighted when my sister came to visit from England and bought out some biscuit packaging for me (not a traditional gift I know - but one she knew I'd love!!)

How super-cute is the packaging for these organic vanilla biscuits from Artisan Biscuits! These 'The Owl & The Pussycat' biscuits are aimed at children, with the biscuits cut into charming animal characters. Each box tells a classic children's poem or story, alongside gorgeous wood-block style illustrations. Click here to see more examples from the lovely childrens range.

Unfortunately the box came to me empty - so I didn't get to experience the biscuits :-(

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat, they took some honey, and plenty of money, wrapped in a five pound note.
Taken from 'The Owl and the Pussycat' by Edward Lear.

Me Old China at Moose!

I'm delighted to be a new stockist for the wonderful Australian on-line retailer Moose: Art for Living and was very excited to see they have featured my Me Old China designs on the front of their website :-)

Moose stocks some fantastic Australian designers and the on-line store covers a wide range of jewellery as well as textiles, paper and interior products. It's lovely to be in the good company of fab creatives such as Betty Jo Designs, Angus & Celeste, Sophie Milne and Flatland OK.

Thanks Moose for inviting me along to be part of such a lovely creative on-line store :-)

Bangalow treasures

We had a rainy day or two whilst visiting Byron Bay, so we decided to hire a car and head out to the surrounding towns for some exploring. I'm so glad we did because one of my favourite places we visited was a small town called Bangalow.

It's a small historic town with lovely coffee shops, restaurants and gift shops. The main street retains a village feel with wide verandahs and it has a sophisticated feel rather than being too touristy.

However, the main appeal for me was the Retro Shop and Heath's Old Wares and Collectables barn!

These are some pictures from The Retro Shop (no website unfortunatly) It's a great little shop with some proper retro goodies all in great condition. It was a good job we were flying back home and had weight restrictions with our luggage - the kithcen units were fabulous!

Heath's Old Wares and Collectables was more of a mixture of anything old and found - books, ceramics, old tins, lamps, glassware etc and a great place for a good rummage on a rainly day! They have a blog here:

I bought this old Ladies Journal dated July 1949 which was originally one shilling!

I thought I'd share some of the illustrations from the magazine as they are typical of the imagery from this particular era. I love the fact most of the imagery is hand-drawn; there are no photographic images and certainly no CAD artwork, with even the advertisments featuring hand-drawn illustrations and type.

Most of the illustrations are in black and white - with only a very few, such as this Birds Custard advert, being in full colour! It's great to look through to see how much has changed with advertising, design layout and of course with the input these days of computers and digital photography.

Back home, holiday over....

Well I'm back home after a fabulous time away....why do holidays always go so quickly?!.....

First stop was Sydney and no matter how many times I visit she always stuns me with her beautiful harbour. There is always so much life and activity with boats and ferries constantly on the move, and even at night there is much to gaze at with the ferries and city lights reflecting in the waters.

Next it was onto the beautiful Blue Mountains. This was the first time I've visited the Blue Mountain region and it was well worth the visit! The scenery and walks are rather stunning, and there are some cute towns in the area (in particular Leura) with lots of yummy cakes - which is a must after all the walking :-)

Then it was time to chill out in Byron Bay. What can I say..... just a great laid back place with gorgous beaches, fantastic food and a totally relaxing place to finish the holiday. A highlight has to be kayaking with the local dolphins who were playing in the bay and skipping over the waves so close to us. Just amazing.

Off on holiday!

I'm off on holiday tomorrow - very exciting!! My sister and husband are out visiting us on their honeymoon, so tomorrow we are off to Sydney for a few days, followed by a couple if days in the Blue Mountains and then onto Byron Bay (see picture).

I can't wait to visit Byron Bay and lie on that beautiful beach! It looks tough I know - but I'm sure I'll manage to enjoy myself!

See you in a few weeks time :-)

My little house on The Design Files!

I was really excited today when my little house was featured on the ever brilliant The Design Files!
You can see the full post and more images at: The Design Files

A big 'thank you' to Lucy over at The Design files for making my house look lovely and for featuring my home and it's treaures on her wonderful blog (it really is the best blog!)

It's quite nerve-wracking knowing your home is going to be looked at by lots of people - especially as we're still in the process of renovating it. It's also nice though to share it with people, and I love having a peek at other peoples homes so I guess its only fair I share mine! Enjoy :-)

Me Old China photo-shoot

'Fancy a Cuppa?' pendants and brooches

'Polly put the kettle on' wall plates

Last week I arranged to have some of my new 'Fancy A Cuppa?' range of jewellery and 'Polly put the kettle on' wall plates professionally photograhed.

It was great to have a photographer with all the equipment (and I mean so much equipment!) to take the photographs - and it's always very exciting to hand things over to a professional.

A very big thank you to Cliff at Omega Advertising for spending so much time with me and helping out at such short notice!

Sweet smelling treats!

I was lucky enough to win the 'MOR' giveaway over on the fabulous Design Files last week! I never win anything so I was delighted to win the beautifully packaged range of MOR products - gorgeous packaging, not tested on animals and made in Australia - what more could you want.

A big 'thank you' to The Design Files and to MOR :-)

Fab purchases in Ballarat!

I thought I'd share some of my fabulous purchases from the op-shops and vintage stores in Ballarat.... I had a wonderful day shopping and it was fun finding some new places for second-hand plates and clothing.

A very big THANK YOU to the gorgeous Julie from Ballarat Vintage Style (check out her blog - I'm very jealous of the wonderful clothes she finds and would love to rifle through her wardrobe!) for meeting with some strange woman (me!) wanting to know the best vintage shops to visit!!

I found the fab retro plates above, with many of the designs manufactured by Broadhust and designed by Kathie Winkle. I just love her designs - classic retro patterns and colours :-)

It's funny how sometimes I buy in colour combinations - it's totally accidental, but when I got home I realised the plates grouped themselves perfectly into specific colour combinations!

Also quite funny were my other purchases....I'm not really a red person, but I was really drawn to the red costume ring from Dear Prudence (this shop is definitely worth a visit) and this fantastic vintage red bag from Ruby Rouge. I then found a red and white polka-dot dress - phew - that's quite enough red for one day!

Ballarat Art Gallery

I was delighted last week when The Art Gallery of Ballarat contacted me to stock my Me Old China range of jewellery! The gallery shop is having a bit of a revamp and I'm really excited that my work will be part of the new-look shop amongst many other fantastic Australian designer products.

It had been several years since I was last in Ballarat and so visiting the gallery was a great chance for a long overdue visit. I had forgotton what a lovely city it is with original colonial style buildings and wide tree-lined streets.

For any non-Australians Ballarat is an old mining town where Gold was discovered in 1851 (the second largest gold nugget ever found in a Australia was found in Ballarat in 1858!) At one point during the gold explosion there were up to 20,000 diggers in the shafts of the Ballarat Goldfields all searching for gold.

Thanks again to the Art Gallery of Ballarat for their support and enthusiasm for my work!

Fire mantle before & after

When we moved into our house a few years ago the lounge room had an original fire mantle in front of a boarded-up fireplace. As part of our on-going house renovations we decided to try and restore the fire mantle....
Fire mantle - before
First of all we stripped it all back to reveal the original timber, and gave it a really good sand and polish. Although it looked lovely after stripping it back sadly it no longer went with the rest of the room post reno's (especially since we opened up the original fireplace). Instead of getting rid of it we decided not to waste our hard work but to find other uses for it....

Fire mantle - after

Part of the mantle legs created a wide shelf in the exposed fireplace, we knocked out the centre panel and replaced the wood backing with mirror to create a mirror in our hallway, and finally we used the top of the mantle to create a shelf above the old stove in our kitchen!

It's lovely to be able to re-use something that was originally part of the house and recycle into 'new' furniture.