GIVEAWAY

To celebrate the opening of my new etsy shop, featuring my new range of ceramics, I have decided to have a GIVEAWAY!!

Up for grabs is one of my tea cups, which is decorated by hand, using hand screenprinted ceramic transfers.

To enter, follow (if you are new) and please visit my shop and leave a comment below to let me know which are your favourite designs. Given that each heading is the same, copying and pasting the link is perhaps the easiest way.

For an extra chance to win, you can help me spread the word about my giveaway on your blog.

The winner will be drawn on the 5th of Jan.

Good luck and have a great new years :)

its a wrap up

Done and dusted, as they say. After four years, I have finally graduated!

I have had a week of so to recover from all the celebrations and excitement and thought I would share a few pictures of my final few days.

The graduation exhibition was a huge success and I had an overwhelming response to my ceramic range. As a result of this I have had few Christmas orders and so not to waste kiln space, I have been very busy over the last few days producing new stock which will be in my new etsy shop very soon!! Will keep you posted!

red dots!!



Packaging my sales






Final drinks in the empty workshop to celebrate the end of four years.



A sneak peak of new stock in the making

new brooches

Today I transformed some of my hand screen printed linen off-cuts into these cute little brooches using some wooden discs that I've had lying around for a forgotten project.

They turned out quite lovely. They have the smoothness of the wood, whilst still maintaining the texture of the linen. A really nice combination of fabric and wood, with that hand made touch! I think I'll have to wear one to my grad show tomorrow night!

honours assessment installation

Oh, my poor neglected blog!

I have been very quiet lately as I have been frantically preparing myself and setting up the gallery for my final assessment which was last Monday and then recovering from the immune system crash that followed! Have been very tired and sniffly since but hooray...I am ASSESSED!!

Have had the usual anti-climax feeling that follows a years hard work being wrapped up in 15 minutes, which is now being replaced by the dreaded feeling of finding out my results on Monday....eeek!

I keep having flash backs of ridiculous moments in the assessment when my predictable nerves prevented me from articulating anything and having almost no connection with my work what so ever. It was all quite scary. I then look back over the year and remember all the ideas, hard work and pride that I do have with what I have achieved and what do grades really mean anyway, right?

So here are some pics of my assessment installation. I was really happy with how fresh and open the display looked. Having not seen all my work out all together, I was a tad worried that it would look too busy and colourful. The space worked well as giving a sense of an interior and despite some lighting issues, it all came together quite well.

Left wall: Ceramics, Cushions and Collages

Back wall: Fabric lengths, Chairs

Chair detail

Back-up work.

cutlery collages

I have been working on this small series of collages to exhibit alongside my textiles and ceramics as a visual explanation of my design process and how I respond to an everyday object to generate pattern.

I was quite excited about the different shapes and patterns of these orange handled utensils and was hoping to emphasise these unique qualities in the collages.

Am really glad that I chose to use the white box frame opposed to the black, the colours appear to be much more vibrant and fresh.

my creative space

...is the kiln!!

This week has been all about finishing my ceramics in preparation for my final assessment in 3 weeks. This stage is by far the most nerve racking part of the process. I did do a test fire, however with different ceramics to the ones I decided to go with here. To my relief, they turned out beautifully, even more vibrant than when they went in!!! YAY

You can view more creative spaces here.

bentwood progress

After a lot of TLC and elbow grease from a very patient friend of mine, these bentwood babies are finally coming together. Getting them structurally sound was one thing, but figuring out how to upholster them was another. After lots of problem solving, I have finally been able to do a mock up. Am pretty pleased with how they are looking and have been busy printing the finished designs.

I made the decision to use layered abstract shapes so that each chair could be a similar design but with a different composition and colour.

Using a template of the chair I was able to move it around the design to select a composition.

Finally, the fabric is stretched around foam and attached to the base. YAY

Am currently waiting for the wax to dry on the chairs before I can insert the cushions and see how they will look as a finished series. Will keep you posted!!

cushion detail

this is a little detail of how my cushions are coming along, all the covers are sewn, I really only need to tidy up the stray cottons and finish the inserts. This is an idea of how the colours look together. There is also a grey one which completes the 5 colours.

procrastinating

I should be writing my studio report and NOT blogging and posting pointless photos of my dog!! She does, however, look as bored as I feel. Would much rather be outside chasing a ball with her than being couped up in front of my computer. At least the weather is awful which makes it slightly less tempting to be out there.

fergus

I have never been one of those lucky people that win things, but when something comes along that is both vintage orange AND a brooch, it just couldn't have gone to a better home!! I was the very lucky winner of this orange owl brooch by Betty Jo. Liz Jones of Betty Jo creates one off jewellery pieces made from recycled vintage lino, pre loved buttons and all quirky ribbons. I was lucky enough to have been given one of her brooches for my 30th birthday earlier this year and to now have two...WOW. You can check out more of her creations here at her inspiring and colourful blog, Lino Forest.

Gorgeous packaging!! I love parcels :)

Fergus and friends

studio report

Things may be a little quiet on the blog front over the next week. Am recovering from an intense two day cushion sewing fest where I managed to get all my 15 covers pieced and sewn together ready for assessment. Am really happy with how they turned out :)

My goal for the coming week is to lock myself in a library cubical and make a solid attempt at finishing my final studio report draft. This stack of books is a good start!!

cushion pieces

I spent the entire day today printing pieces of fabric for my cushions. I will be exhibiting 15 cushions in 5 stacks of three in groups of colour. The colours that I have settled on are grey, yellow, pink orange and blue. Today I printed and heat pressed (my least favourite part of the printing process) my orange, blue and pink pieces. Hopefully they will be all finished by the end of next week. Then there is still my chairs left to print and upholster, my collage series, my lengths, my ceramics..oh, and a 5000 word report to finish too :( all to be done in 6 weeks. Yikes!!!

white on natural

Oh dear, I would have to fall in love with this colour combination at this stage of my project. Just can't seem to justify the cost of linen at the moment and have already settled on my finished work ideas. Ah well, can always piece these samples into my cushions and day dream of massive linen lengths later when I'm no longer a poor uni student!

printing , cutting and arranging

Yikes - this is a time consuming project!!
Am hand screen printing and sewing 15 floor cushions for my exhibition. The largest size is 85 x 85cm to the smallest which is 45 x 45cm. Have only printed and cut 6 so far and that took ALL day. And this is only one of 6 body's of work all due in November. Argghh

colour, colour, colour

Today was all about mixing lots and lots of colour!
Earlier this semester I did a four day colour workshop with Merv Moriarty which gave me a greater understanding of practical colour mixing, colour matching and the relationship of colour. Towards the end of the workshop Merv gave a quick demonstration on Illustrator on how to lock a chosen set of colours into a colour wheel and spin them around to see the different variations of colours within the same tonal range and hue.
I sat in an Illustrator class with the second year students who were practicing this method and creating digital colour swatches and got a quick lesson in how to do this with the five colours that I have been using. The result from this was a great excuse to perhaps introduce some pink into my work! I mean, who doesn't love a bit of pink pared with grey? May sound pretty awful if pink isn't your thing but below you can see how it seems to blend nicely with my other colours.
I am usually quite meticulous at keeping a record of my recipes but unfortunately I was in a bit of an experimental mood today and the up side of this is the most beautiful navy blue that I have ever mixed and the down side is that I'm not entirely sure how I quite got it. Ah, well..it's still lovely all the same.

wednesday inspiration

It is just by coincidence that  the artists I chose to post today are both Queensland based artists. There must be something in the water there because both these artists work are just amazing and use the ideas of collecting in such an inspiring way.

Donna Marcus is a collector of vintage kitchenware and aluminium tins and arranges them in to these gorgeous patterned compositions and sculptures. The original purpose and familiarity of the object seems to be lost in the beauty of the arrangement.

Donna also has breath taking collections and sculptures of jelly moulds which I will find a picture of and post.

Victoria Reichelt is a painter who's inspiration comes from collections of ordinary object. The process of collecting, arranging and photographing the objects, she says, is as important as the painting itself.

Of course the suitcases caught my particular attention. If you didn't already know, I am quite obsessed with vintage suitcases. You can view my collection here.

hint of colour

For my final exhibition I am planning on having some lengths of fabric on one of the walls to show my patterns on a larger scale and as an over all design. To relate this back to my ideas about the notions of collecting, I am planning on using the repeat pattern as opposed to my randomly placed designs as it is the patterns created when grouping and the repetition of form and colour that I find interesting in collections of objects and am hoping to emphasize this in my work.

As each length will be the same repeat, I want to add an individual touch to each one to highlight the the unique qualities of an individual object in a set. Today I was experimenting with the same repeat and different hints of colour to try and get different effects.

I am still trying to get my head around the theory and conceptual side of my project which is why some of the above may not have made any sense. At least the patterns may be pretty to look at.. I do hope so!!