learn to sew - zip purse

It took me a while to work out how to even attach the zip foot, and I'm not 100% sure I'm doing it right still :-) And then my first seam sewed the material onto the wrong side of the zip and had to be unpicked.
At last though, success. I'm quite pleased with this first attempt and I love the way the linen looks. I have already posted links to the tutorials I used here.

Made in Sydney

I made a treasury the other day of Sydney Etsy Sellers and it made the front page! Here it is.

Awards :-)

Wow, another artist I really like, and admire, Jesse from Jezzeblog, has generously passed on to me three awards which came her way. Actually I think one is a meme, but I don't know what that means, LOL, its a tag I think.
So from her I have the 'I love your blog' and 'Brillante' awards and instructions to share some of my indeterminate quirks, six in all. I have found other people's lists really interesting reading so I have been racking my brain to come up with some worthy ones. Here goes:

1. I am a plant nerd and recently finished three years studying horticulture part time, for fun! And yes I now speak botanical latin with the best of them.

2. I am currently addicted to tic tacs - not sure how this happened but I eat too many and I don't suck, I chew!

3. I am very unorganisedly organised. I get there eventually but I'm easily distracted by more interesting projects!

4. I have identical twin sons. Turns out this isn't passed on genetically like fraternal twins. I found out in a routine ultrasound and nearly fell off the table.

5. I'm superstitious, I have to touch wood or a button if I hear a siren.

6. I don't like watermelon, anyone else? I think I'm alone in this.

I've decided since I recently passed on another award that I won't do it again so soon. Besides, all my favourite blogs seem weighed down with awards at the moment.
What I am going to do is update my blogroll soon, so if you want to know what I read and love do have a look. So many clever people out there that I am constantly adding new blogs to my must read list!

attic before

I mentioned before that we are in the process of putting in an attic ladder and making a tiny space up in our roof, and that it is going to be my storage space and hopefully have room for a worktable. This means I can store all my art materials and Flower Press items safely out of the way. I can also start a project and leave it out and come back to as I want. At the moment if I need a large space for printing or packaging I usually end up on the dining table and half way through something have to clear it all away. Frustrating.
I am always so jealous of some of the wonderful spaces I see online, but I also realise I'm not alone in making do.
So far we have had the roof vacuumed out and insulated. The low point in this was when one of the guys put his foot through my vintage plaster ceiling :-(
Luckily the plasterer was able to order the exact panel and it is now as good as new. Here's what it looked like. And yes, I did nearly cry. This is our bedroom ceiling. Isn't it gorgeous.

camouflage

Look who I found while admiring my Mutabilis rose this morning. I love the way the blooms deepen in colour as they age, they start a delicate orangey pale pink and end up deep rose. But I was particularly tickled to find this guy who had colour coded his leggings to match the maroon hued new growth - which he was eating!

pork chops

Got these photos in an email which says:

"In a zoo in California , a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth.

The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health, although physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate another mother's cubs, perhaps she would improve.
After checking with many other zoos across the country, the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother. The veterinarians decided to try something that had never been tried in a zoo environment. Sometimes a mother of one species will take on the care of a different species. The only 'orphans' that could be found quickly, were a litter of weanling pigs. The zoo keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed the babies around the mother tiger. Would they become cubs or pork chops?"
How cute is that!

button buys

I've admitted before that I'm not much of a sew-er. So I don't really have any good excuse for buying vintage buttons. Hasn't stopped me :-) and I wanted to show you some new ones I just bought on Etsy as well as some favourites from my button jar, just because.

Noticed

Just had to mention quickly that I've had some lovely press recently.
Thanks to Ez from Creature Comforts for posting my peony swatch in her Decor8 guest blogging. I really admire the way she pulls items together and this post gives a hint on her process.
I've also used favourite images to extract colour profiles and get some sense of what looks good but she takes it further and develops a palette to choose design elements which will blend well together.

Thanks also to Carina who posted a great mosaic of tea towel love including my Filigree tea towel. Made me think about using green next time round...


Oh and congratulations to all the talented Australian designers being featured on Design Sponge. It makes me really proud to see so many of our wonderful and inspirational designers being featured in this clever series. I've discovered some amazing new faces in the Melbourne series.

tree of happiness

I was really touched the other day when the delightful Danielle from OfPaperandThread passed on a Tree of Happiness award. Danielle is a wonderful Australian textile and paper artist over in WA (see her blog for the recent Domino mag feature). Danielle helped me out when I was first starting out on Etsy.

The Tree of Happiness asks you to list six things that make you happy, so here they are.
1. My garden, pottering around it, and the increasing numbers of bird and insect visitors.
2. My partner J who gives me so much encouragement and support and makes me laugh.
3. My little business Flower Press which in nine months has given me so many wonderful surprises, new friendships and great bursts of inspiration and creativity.
4. The internet community, buyers, sellers, bloggers, readers. Such nice people! It sounds corny but they make me happy with their generosity and support of my business and art.
5. Books, I love reading and it gives me great happiness.
6. Of course I couldn't leave out my three little people who I just adore and I love that they enjoy making things, just like me :-)

I'm happily passing this on to 5 creative bloggers because... see number 4 above!! (Please don't feel obliged to play!).
artandghosts, carina, shesewslye,
freshly found, tinyhappy.

zip purse

"Reverse Garbage is a not-for-profit co-operative that sells industrial discards, off-cuts and over-runs to the public for creative and practical uses, reducing the amount of waste going to landfill." at least that's what it says on their website. I've been meaning to go there for ever. Yesterday I did and what an interesting place it is.
I was really pleased to snag these zips, unused and in some great colours. I have been working towards attempting a linen zip purse using my tea towel fabric, maybe lined with some of my hand block printed fabrics. These zips were four for a dollar so I can afford to make mistakes, perfect!
Googling around the place I've found these wonderful tutorials:
http://paper-and-string.blogspot.com/2007/11/zipped-purse-tutorial.html
http://www.twelve22.org/2006/07/zipper_tutorial.html
http://vintagericrac.blogspot.com/2008/06/tutorial.html
I'm hoping writing this here helps get this started!

dishtowel love

I had a flurry of orders for my tea towels yesterday and luckily someone clued me into why, this post on the Home Style Guide written by Maggie Mason. Maggie writes a brilliant blog called Mighty Girl which I have somehow managed to miss.

busy fun!

What a lovely ten days I've had. First my sister, who lives in Vietnam, passed through Sydney on a flying visit. We had such a nice time together shopping and eating out. Actually in the last week and a half I've had lunch out five times and dinner thrice!
Highlight has to be our dinner at Red Lantern, a fantastic Vietnamese place in Surry Hills. The food was sublime.
After she left my sister-in-law and nephew have been staying. Yesterday my sil and I did Ikea which is always fun. I don't think I've been for a couple of years.
The fabric designs are inspirational. Sadly I though the cloth wasn't as good quality as before, not the yardage which was nice and thick, but some of the manchester. A pity because there is some beautiful bedding.
With all this excitement I keep forgetting to pick up the last of my printed tea towels but this afternoon I remembered. Don't you just love this colour. I think it might be my favourite of the lot :-)

Giveaway Winners!!!

First off, I wish I could give prizes to everyone. What lovely comments you all left :-) And I've had another browse today through some of your beautiful blogs, such a creative bunch too.

As suspected the red Filigree design on unbleached linen was the most popular... but only by one vote. Second with nine votes was the white on unbleached linen and a close third was the blue on white.

To make choosing the winners easier, and totally fair, I used the random number generator which came up with these two names.

The winner of a tea towel of their choice, Ruby Slippers and Teapot cards is... (drum roll)
bettyninja. Check out her cute Etsy shop with beautiful vintage wares.

Runner up and winner of a tea towel is:
maeve duval who has a most beautiful blog full of wonderful typography and photography.

Thanks again to all for joining in. I will do this again, its been fun and a good way to celebrate this milestone. If the winners could contact me with their addresses I'll send out the goodies asap.

Cheers
Susie

spell with flickr

Another of those great internet timewasters. This site Spell with Flickr spells out your text with letter pictures. I love signage so I love the look of this.

Modish!

Look what I stumbled upon today, my tea towel on Modish!! I was browsing through my bloglines today (and with the amount of wonderful blogs I've subscribed to this is becoming a full time job!) when I recognised my blue filigree tea towel smiling back at me.
Thanks so much to Renee from Wolfie and the Sneak (another great blog, I think her banner is one of the most beautiful I've seen). She's done this dreamy mood board inspired by Thom Filicia's house by the water. Renee obviously has fantastic taste too as she has one of my favourites - groundwork's mushroom print in there as well. This lichen print is another of her works, aren't they fabulous colours.
One more day for the giveaway, if you haven't signed up you have just Sunday and Monday to do it.

olympic mascots

Have you seen these mascots, aren't they wonderful! I love the Olympics and can't wait till they start