2013

And there goes 2013, just like that!

Actually mentally I'm still in 2013, and will be for a while. I'm still on holidays and have some lovely family camping in my future, hooray. 2014 can cool its heels a moment while I recharge.

An annual tradition round here is this end of year post when I go through my Flickr pages and compile a mosaic or two of my creative life for the year. {and if you're interested here's 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008}

Its always a nice surprise to see how busy and productive I've been despite sometimes feeling like I'm getting nowhere and taking too long about it!!

This year is no exception. It was big! Some great important things happened this year and I learnt a lot.

My work was featured in The Sydney Morning Herald's Spectrum Design section.

I taught my first craft workshops at SewMakeCreate.

I did a ceramics course and learnt to throw pots. A new addiction this and I'm already signed up for more in 2014.

I learnt to Shibori, expose my own screens and make coiled brooches at workshops run by other people. It was fun! I tried embroidery. Here's to more learning this year too.

I cooked and ate a lot. A brief flirtation with the 5:2 diet and an increasing dislike for processed food saw me make my own pickles, jam, marmalade, yoghurt, ricotta, paneer, bread, soup, curries, pastries, pizza, dolmades, soap and lots of cake. I also grew more of my own produce, which made me very happy.

I printed lots of fabric. So much that I didn't get round to showing it all on the blog. That's something to remedy in 2014, and sewing more with my flowerpress fabrics is another.

I sewed some more clothes for me, and I thought and read a lot about learning to adapt patterns to my particular shape. That's another thing I want to pursue further this year.

I dithered in my bloggings and was quiet for some of the year. I can see from the comparative number of posts that I wasn't as present here. However, the absence made me realise blogging's importance in my life. I hope to embrace it anew. This year I hope to be a more focussed and committed blogger. Another thing I really enjoyed this year was getting out and meeting more bloggers in person, both friends I've met through the blog and via ABCD meetups and the Voices 2013 competition. Bloggers are such lovely people and its nice to have a chance to catch up on all that stuff that you never talk get a chance to talk about in emails.

Do you have plans for 2014, I need a few more ideas for the year, and I'd love it if you wanted to share yours here. And Happy New Year!!!  Here's to 2014, but not just yet ;-)

the blues

Thanks for all the wonderful feedback on my foam printing tutorial, I've actually been showered with Pinterest love this week after the wonderful Rashida Coleman-Hale (of I heart linen fame) pinned it to her Fabulous Tutorials board. I love thinking that lots of crafty people will have a try at this simple printing style.

I've also been lucky enough this month to have my Filigree tea towel featured in a Moody Blues spread in this month's Homespun magazine. I'm in great company in this beautiful issue, with lots of great crafters, projects and tutorials this month.

Also in the blue spectrum, I joined in with Poppytalk's Summer Colours Flickr Group this past week.  I've played before a couple of times, in Jan's Collecting Nature and Spring Colours Weeks and I love the beautiful images that come out of these community projects, they're always stunning. I was really excited that Jan used my swimming pool image as the title image for the blue day, along with some others of mine (the waves on the left and the mountains on the right).

In the same spirit I'm also joining in with Ally from Everyday Miracles posting a monthly garden moodboard. This is my first, July.

2010

Happy New Year everyone!

Here's my annual look back at the year that's past. There are a couple of things missing I think but time is a bit hard to find here in holidayland! There's lunch to be planned, swims to be swum and games to be played. Priorities.

I'm looking forward to what's ahead, getting the feel of 2011, but I like to think this quiet time is just as important, recharging the mind and soul, it feels like it. I can feel myself slowing down, stopping to look around. Hope you are all getting time to do the same :-)

fathers' day

Feeling very smug as we seem to have scooped the pool this year (see above) ;-)
On Sunday, Fathers Day here in Oz, Mr F got lovely handmade cards, pancakes in bed and a few little presents from the fathers day stall at school, including this mug which makes the perfect pair for my mothers day pressie.
In other news I am on ADSL 2+ today which is so much fun after struggling with a slow and unreliable provider for years. I can't wait to download something!!
And its suddenly September! Which means my Blog, Flickr and Etsy anniversaries are approaching fast. Look out for a giveaway and a sale, soon(ish).

time...

The theme for the stitched postcard swap I'm part of is TIME. I'm not sure why but I had a bit of trouble being inspired by this one. Contrarily I didn't want to do a clock! And so I ended up starting work on the ages of a rose which I thought would be a good way of illustrating the concept. The result, below, turned out a tad pretty for my taste and I thought I'd try another more graphic idea.

Thinking about time again, my favourite line from Peter Allen's song Tenterfield Saddler floated through my head. I've always loved the metaphor and I thought it worked really well for a message that was going in the post to travel to the other side of the world!

If you don't know it, please watch the video. Peter Allen has his cheesy moments but this is a very moving song. It always makes me cry.

This postcard is wonky on purpose, but seems to have photographed even wonkier! The stitching too. Both postcards went in the post. And funnily enough Chris liked the roses best. To see more postcards follow the link on the left.

You know, they are funny those swaps, kinda stressful, but I think I like them. The deadline speeds up and then you have to create, collect, send. I was similarly last minute posting my vintage sheets the other day but looking at Ange's blog with vintage sheet inspiration I can't wait to get my parcel in return!! I can feel another quilt coming on.

2009

Well I'm late with this mosaic - but what a year 2009 turned out to be!

This year I made my first quilt, expanded the designs and colours in my tea towel range, made a new gocco print, did lots of knitting and designed my first yardage print! In between there was more of the usual - cooking, embroidery, gardening and sewing.
The start of the year is such a great time to take stock and plan for the future, I'm mentally writing a wish list of projects for 2010 which includes sewing clothes, producing a letterpress print, papercutting... And I definitely want to produce some more yardage!
I'd also like to draw more and I think I'll start posting some of it on here, to keep me motivated.

cool iris

I found this Firefox add-on a while ago and thought it was nice, but didn't really see how much I'd use it till now. Recently while I've been on Flickr I've wanted to browse a large set, or pool and have a closer look at some of the pictures. This seemed a bit like hard work until i thought to use Cool Iris. If you like to browse Flickr, this is a 'cool' way to do it, you can sort of fly along the pictures and click on the ones that take your fancy, zooming in and out like a computer game! It takes a couple of seconds to fix the definition but you can usually tell whether you want to wait and see more. If you know what I mean :-)
Oh, and there are other sites you can look at, and I think it goes with other browsers.


p.s. Wow, I've just noticed I can do it with this blog too, if I hover the mouse over the first picture of the post it shows the double square of the Cool Iris logo and I just click the photo. A nice way to look back over the pictures I've posted over the blog's history.

photo fun

I've been meaning to post about two of these photo manipulation sites for ages. Then today I saw another great one on Jena Coray's site Bone and Branch blog. The website http://tiltshiftmaker.com/ takes photos and gives them the TiltShift treatment which makes them look like miniature models. Very cute. Check out the Flickr group for more. This photo is from my trip to Vietnam.


I love this Japanese site too and I just realised for the first time that there is a page with the instructions in English here. It takes your photos and makes them look old. Like reproductions from a fifties schoolbook.


This last one is especially cool, considering that polaroid might be gone forever. The Poladroid application which is free to download takes your ordinary shots and poladroids them. Cute name. Cute pics. Check out the Flickr for this one too.

special day

Hot on the heels of my blog birthday and my Etsyversary, today is my real birthday, can you guess what my present was? A new macro lens for my trusty Nikon D50! I have wanted one of these for a few years and i just love it. Amazing the little worlds that lie hidden close up.
Expect lots more pics!

Flickrversary

1. Attic Room, 2. Girl in the Attic, 3. St Anne's church with stars, 4. Capitals, 5. contrast, 6. ., 7. albero, 8. scroste, 9. foglia, 10. Untitled, 11. Untitled, 12. tiny little pot, 13. Untitled, 14. Almost blue, 15. Phonetography, 16. Three's a crowd, 17. another shadow on the teepee, 18. Untitled, 19. maya's flowers, 20. weeds- closer, 21. Flower VI, 22. Blueberries, 23. White Flowers with Fly, 24. Puddle of me, 25. Logwood iron 2, 26. prints galore, 27. new blocks / arranged 01, 28. Jade, 29. *pink twigs*, 30. little spider

It's a year ago today that I uploaded my first photos to Flickr. Since then I've upgraded to a pro site, just so I can have lots of sets! I love Flickr and collect favourites every time I go browsing. For me it is somewhere to show my photos and art and get feedback, its somewhere to be inspired, to share information (the Gocco group is wonderful for this) and to look up new things, explore other worlds.
Along with this I really enjoy the toys on the BigHugeLabs site, one of which I've used to make these mosaics - favourites above and my work below. It's here I can generate my DNA page which shows my most interesting pics, my favourites and groups and any pictures which make Explore (which I still don't understand!).
Anniversaries everywhere now, coming up to my first Gocco prints, my blog anniversary and my Etsy selling birthday. I'm thinking of ways to celebrate these milestones...

vintage roses

red and white rose skirt, originally uploaded by flowerpress.

I got around to photographing some of my fifties skirts, tops and dresses for the vintage fabric group on Flickr. There is something about the old designs from this era that I love. And of course this combines flowers and fabric, two of my favourite things. This pattern comes from an old pleated skirt that is a bit too small for me. I've always meant to get it adjusted but I just like having these things around anyway.

I noticed while I was taking photos that a lot of these prints have a sort of painterly background to them rather than flat colour. I wonder how this was achieved.

hover

hover, originally uploaded by flowerpress.

Have uploaded lots of new photos to the botanic set on my Flickr page including this one.