Sara Fanelli

My teacher brought in a Sara Fanelli book today. I'm in love with it! She does beautiful hand typography and mixes illustration with collage. Defiantly a must have book :)

Bird nest ipod/phone case

Looking for something a little more unique and stylish to carry your phone or ipod in?

Well I just listed this adorable little case!! my mum wanted me to make her a case for her phone, she had looked all over but everyone seemed to make the same boring phone purses, so she described to me what she wanted and this is how it turned out. We loved it so much I made another one to sell. HERE

Hobby Horse

Remember these? Handmade hobby horses are such lovely things, I don't know why there aren't more of them. I guess with all the gadget toys today, these just arn't as popular as they once were.

(1) Hobby horse at Ku-ture by Carolyn Anne
(2) Hobby Horses by Sloebertje
(3) Homespun hobby horse ornament by misseskwitty
(4) Full view by Carla Sonheim

Behind the scenes

The design process, is a very interesting process and each designer has there own way of developing there ideas to get to the final product. So I thought it might be fun to share how I got to my latest design, rather just posting it and saying 'look what I made!!'

After getting some bird nest fabric from pippijoe I felt inspired to do something using bird nests.

So I started just looking around the web fro bird nests to see if anything would trigger an idea..


And then I cam across these 2 images which suddenly began to trigger ideas...

('Marcel' by Sea dream studio)

I love the little beret thing on this birds head which got me thinking of making my bird sort of french looking. ('A Chaque Oiseau' by John Alan)

And this picture had a really awesome quote on it in french!! it is a french proverb that means, 'to each bird his own nest is beautiful' prefect!!!

But now i had the idea, how was i going to turn this into a purse...


I decided i wanted to make something a little bit similar to this, in terms of having a panel at the top and tucks.
(Pleated cream and gold flower print clutch by Bespoke Boutique)

I wanted a purse that would allow for a design in the middle but I didn't just wantan ordinary zipper purse design. I quite liked the idea of using tucks.

These are my initial sketches..

In the very bottom sketch, you can see I also considered using gathers instead of tucks. But in the end I went with the tucks.

I then began to work iut how the whole design would fit together.
I decided it looked too squashed putting the bird next to the nest and moved it above, to even out the composition.

I was feeling a bit uncertain how it would all work out, so I did a mock up drawing on photoshop. I chose to go with balck and white and use lace to give it that french look.

I then mocked up a prototype.

I was happy with how it was working, so I decided to go ahead with the design. You may think.. well what if I wasn't happy, all that work and then you scrap the idea. Well yes, thats just how design is either you develop the idea futhur or if it really isn't working then it gets the heave ho. Theres been a few designs I have never gone ahead with as I felt it wasn't working out.

So.. now to fabric. As you see in my photoshop illustration I wanted to use a nice black and white print. But I had a look through my stock and and didn't have anything suitable.

So I bought this fabric 'Urushi' by Alexander Henry


Finaly I began to make the purse! :)

And here it is..

The Finished thing!!


FRONT
BACK

Numbers

I love typography, and numbers are no exception.

(1) France by Numbers- Tereasa Heeley
(2) framed Number Tags- Every Jot and Tittle
(3) No. 1 original Photo Greeting card- Photolena
(4) Vintage School supplies- Lilypad Lounge
(5) Number 15 School book style- Scarlet Beautiful

Spring is coming

This post is only really relevant to those of us in the southern hemisphere.
I'm absolutely freezing, and still wearing many layers, but I have noticed the shops are already gearing up for spring. And the look for spring is frilly skirts, light floral dresses and blouses, belted volume and denim.

I made a little collage on polyvore, to give you a sense of the up coming spring trends. if you are keen to know more about spring fashion trends visit fashion-era, they go through the trends in more detail.



And a few etsy finds to get you in the mood for spring things.



(1) Pip the pony, lino pendant- Betty Jo Designs
(2)Birds paper negative- Beard and Howell
(3)Droplets- Clever nettle
(4)Blue bird wedding cake topper - Middleburg

A blog of freebies

Design is Mine has a new blog called Design freebies! A blog dedicated to finding all the wonderful, creative freebies available online.

My favorites include these pinhole cameras from Corbis. They are amazing, I want to make one.

And these paper houses and shop fronts from paper museum.


These would make awesome school holiday projects for children.

Polariod etc.

Look!! I got my vintage Polaroid camera at last!! It turns out it was sitting up at my post office for a week, some how I missed the first notice from parcel delivery, that is if they ever left it.
Now I need to work out how to use this thing and get some film for it before the film becomes extinct.
I had a look where the film goes and it looks like someone left some old film in the camera, it is obviously really old as the one on top has gone brown and the batteries seem to be dead. But I'm sure I can find a use for dead Polaroid film :)

my other bit of photo fun, is these...
.. last night as I was drifting off to sleep I looked out my window and the moon was bright and shinning through the window. For some reason i thought i'd try take a photo of it, but it just looked like a white speck on black. Then I had an idea! I tried changing the shutter speed on my camera, the longest it can do is 4 seconds so I went with that, and had a play with shots of the moon and the lights outside from neighbors houses. it was actually quite fun. So much for going to sleep..
The first shot is the moon, the rest are house and street lights.

On the subject of photos and Polaroid... here are a few of my favourite Polaroid images sold on etsy.

Empire state building- Futurowoman fotographie

History of Gay Polaroid transfer- Ribsmalone

Tell me a secret- Alicia Bock


Cyclone in Coney Island - She hit pause studios

Flight of the cubical riders- Bottle rack photo

Bird cake tea cozy

I noticed that my tea cozies have been rather popular lately, so I decided to introduce a new design. So here it is the bird cake tea cozy, based on my bird cake art print.
I used yummy brown tea and coffee colours.

Isabella Art

Today I came across this gorgeous shop on DaWanda called Isabella Art.
Isabella makes these gorgeous shadow puppets based on her illustrations. I just love the detail that has gone into these.


Crazy Rocket girl


A dream's boat ride



The Joker

High socks

Right now im loving... knee/ thigh high socks. I bought two pairs recently, black and grey.
When some people think of knee/ thigh high socks they think of the Asian school girl look with the high white socks. But not me...

This is my black pair worn over red stockings (and yes the typewriter is relevant, haha, ok maybe not)

untitled by lenaah


Sock dreams by long sock addict
'Knee socks' by Bnittoli
Plum Jam on style mob

Knee Highs Volume II by Reldom

Ohlately by yyellowbird

pippijoe fabric purses

Some new purses now in my shop using the gorgeous screen printed laundry Birds and nests fabric from Pippijoe in Melbourne. It makes me want to do some screen printing.

Birds on the line purse



Bird nest purse