Peaks and Previews

It's that time again. I've sent my latest book in our ABRR on and am awaiting the arrival of my next one. This last one was called 'Tags' and is the beautiful book belonging to Penny. Here are a few peaks.






The preview is some of the wonderful paintings by Patsy Worledge. Patsy and I are holding a joint exhibition in September and October. Her work is beautiful. Patsy will also be exhibiting some of her bags. She doesn't have a blog or website, hence no link.
I'm waiting for the gallery to show our details on their site, then I'll add their link in my side bar with all the information.

Our Melbourne

We went for a walk on Saturday around the newest part of Melbourne. It's an on going redevelopment known as Docklands. The area used to consist of dilapidated old wharves and warehouses. It's now been rebuilt with very unusual apartment blocks and a vast array of restaurants. It's an on going project that will take some time to complete. They've tried to save as much of the old part as possible as we don't have a lot of history being such a young country. The area has many art sculptures and lots of different textures. We're even getting the equivalent of the London Eye ferris wheel. They now have a row of glass trees that have tiny lights in the ends of the branches to light up the leaves at night. It's a constantly changing scene with art works coming and going on a regular basis. It's a regular home to the anti whaling ship, the Sea Shepherd, which berths there between confrontations with the Japanese whaling ships.
It's a great place to visit. Would I want to live there? I don't think so. Give me a home among the gum trees anyday.


Vintage Board Book Workshop

Today, Sunday, was the vintage board book workshop. As you can see from the faces and all heads down, there was incredible concentration. The ladies really took the job on board as we had a lot to do in such a short time. They all went home with their books assembled and some pages decorated. I took photos but they turned out blurry, so I have to wait till we get together again to show off their wonderful efforts. Well done girls.

Type, type and more type

What a find Judy, Jen and I bid on an old typographers cabinet, (well they did the bidding, I did the pick up). The luck was it was in Melbourne so it had to be picked up which meant there were less bidders. This is just a sample of what was in the cabinet, nineteen drawers in all, each one full or partially full of type. They weigh a ton. I know each tray intimately now having carried them, with my husbands help, to and from the car. I'm looking forward to using the trays in my bead drawers. I might turn one into a piece of art one day too.



I love drawing houses and this is my latest one in my sketch book. I made this book from various weights of paper, including water colour paper, brown paper, tissue, even tracing paper. This allows me to use all sorts of media and not just sketch. I find a blank white sheet of paper a bit daunting sometimes.



This is a painted and mixed media collage that I've just posted on my Etsy store. I've built it up using a variety of acrylic paints, papers and mesh and added some of my hand carved stamps for final decoration.



These are my latest pair of earrings I've made. They are not too long or heavy. They are also on my Etsy store.

Things for Etsy

I've been trying to get some more things ready for my Etsy store. Today's a public holiday here in Melbourne and I've spent most of it photographing my work and loading onto Etsy. I still have a few more things but will add them later.


We went for a walk in the forest which is about ten minutes from home. We have some of the tallest trees in the world, Eucalyptus, or mountain ash, it's not until you're well into the forest and realize how tall they are, they block out the sun making you thing it's much later in the day.




This is Sherbrooke forest and is renowned for it's famous lyre birds. The male has brown tail feathers, similar in shape to a peacock, only smaller and brown. They are the most amazing birds, they imitate other bird sounds and anything else they hear, chain saws, machinery. They are incredible. We heard two competing with each other, it was like a forest full of bird song. We caught a glimpse of a female scratching away at the forest floor, they are very shy and not easy to find.




This is the other extreme, the tiny fungus on the forest floor.

Check out Jo's blog, she has a great article on rusting fabric and paper. She's also a lady from the hills.

Necklaces and pink boots

I haven't had a lot of work to post this past week as I'm working on so many things and none are finished yet. These are a couple of necklaces I delivered to Touchstone gallery this week, along with some earrings. I'm still working on some for my etsy store.
I have an exhibition coming up in September with my very talented friend Patsy. We have a room each in the Highway Gallery in Mt Waverley for 2 weeks. I'm exhibiting paintings, jewellery and journals. Patsy paints and makes fabulous bags and books She's also colour crazy so it should be a buzz with colour. Sorry Judy and Jen.




I couldn't resist these little feet and gorgeous legs, they belong to my two grand daughters, one's two and the other is three. Can you guess what their favourite colour is?.

Retreat art

This is some of my work from the classes I attended at the recent art retreat. The book above isn't quite finished yet, I still have to work on the cover. The class was Nina's Parlor Question book class. It's a tiny little book that fits into your hand and is made from small cabinet cards. I thoroughly enjoyed this class. We all went at our own pace, I haven't finished all of my pages, but I can add to it later. Poor Nina had an awful flu virus while she was here and was slowly loosing her voice. Nina's such a professional teacher, she continued on regardless.



This was my effort in Traci's Art Quilt class. This class was amazing. I learnt some wonderful printing techniques and made lots of papers. I'm looking forward to experimenting further. Traci's a great teacher, sharing so many of her ideas.




What can I say about Misty's class that hasn't already been said by her other students. This was my first class on the Friday and was called Mixed media layers. We worked so fast with Misty demonstrating and then we trying it out ourselves. Misty's a fabulous teacher, again sharing so many of her techniques. I learnt so much, I hope I can remember it all.

Very special guests

I'm working backwards here. Some of these photos were taken before the ones in the previous post. Two of our special guests arrived early for the Artistic journey retreat. I was going to pick Misty up from the airport on Tuesday morning, but she called me Monday night to say she'd missed her connecting flight to Oz, so she would have to stay the night in LA. In the afternoon I met Nina at the airport after her weeks teaching in WA. I took her back to my house, what a nightmare of a trip on the free way, it should have been free that day, it took three hours. My husband and I took her to one of our local restaurants in the hills for dinner. Nina seems to meet up with fellow Americans wherever she goes, one of the young waiters was from the US and had recently visited Nina's neck of the woods.



Bright and early, 6.00am to be precise Nina and I left to pick Misty up from the airport, she made it this time, early in fact.



We came back to my place then off to meet with two very special people, Samm and Mandy, they were so excited, they'd been communicating via email with Misty for some time so were very keen to actually meet her. We had a great lunch at one of the galleries on the Peninsula then went to the beach to hunt for sea glass.



Two very excited ladies.



Treasure hunting.



Misty the photographer.



Nina the beachcomber.



Back at the apartments. The three musketeers.

This was the last day. Traci was off to Sydney so she couldn't go with Nina, Misty and me to explore down town Melbourne. We walked our feet off, stopping at one of the many cafes in the little lane ways and arcades Melbourne is famous for. Again Nina met up with a fellow American who was a waiter at the cafe where we had lunch. I think they must love working in our cafes. We only managed to see about a third of the city before the light and our stamina faded. The city turned on it's magical night lights, where Southgate on the Yarra comes alive. People hustling and bustling to get home. Black suits everywhere. It was the end of a wonderful day and a wonderful week of excitement and creativity. I made some very special friends and I'll miss them all very much and can't wait until the next event.