A Birthday Gift

In November last year I did a two day workshop at Harvest Textiles, which I posted about here.  A few weeks after the course I made the fabric into a groovy pillow for a friend's birthday present.  The lucky recipient also received a rocking chair which had been given a lick of grey paint.  I thought I would share it with you as I'm rather proud of it....

Buttons Galore!

A few years ago my dad gave me a big box of buttons.  He used to have his blacksmith workshop in a skip yard in Scotland and every so often a skip full of random stuff would come into the yard.  Sometimes it would be a skip from a house clearance, perhaps after someone has died or moved house, or sometimes from shops.  One year all our family got Calvin Klein perfume for Christmas after dad found a massive pile of the stuff in a skip! The boxes had been damaged so the shop couldn't sell them.  Bonus for us!  Anyway, back to the point....the box of buttons.  I've had this box for years now and I shipped it to Australia with us because I knew it was too good to throw out.  This week I decided to start sorting through it and sort the buttons into colours.  Not only were there buttons, there were all sorts of habidashery and little clues about the previous owner.  I found an envelop addressed to 'Mr I Kilgour' and a fabric name tag which reads 'Margaret Kilgour'.  The envelope has an Edinburgh address and a post mark date of 1989.

I suppose some people might think it a bit mean to be going through someone else's belongings in such a way, but I don't.  These treasures would have been thrown to land fill if dad hadn't found them and passed them on to me.  I love thinking about the Kilgours and about the amount of years that they had been collecting these buttons.  There are some very old looking ones in here....

There was a great cigar box (pictured here) which had test tubes of different coloured buttons inside it...

White buttons are by far the most popular colour...

Quite a lot of the buttons are still attached to the original packaging material...

The name tag...

The postage mark reads 'EDINBURGH 9AM, 31 MCH 1989'...

I sorted the buttons into colours and put them into glass jars for display...

Paper Garland Decoration

This Saturday we are having a party at our house, our first party in the house.  It's both a housewarming and a birthday party for me!  So this week I have been playing around and making some decorations.  Here are some pics of the paper garlands that I've been making.  I got 2 old music books from a second hand shop, $2 each and used a circular cutter to cut out perfect circles.  I also found some pre-cut circles of vintage atlases at the Glen Waverley Antique Bazar, which I included with some music circles and brown paper.

I used a neon pink thread.  I love a bit of neon these days!

I thought I would try making more 3-D garlands which was simply sewing 5 layers of paper together.  You then just fold them out to make a more bouffant look.

A mixture of different papers...

Vintage atlases ...

I'm not sure how I will hang them at the party, but for now they are hung up around the house on random doors and chairs...

Keiko Minami

Keiko Minami is one of my favourite artists.  She was born in Japan and lived in Paris from 1954 to 2004.  In 1959 she was given the title of 'Official Artist of the United Nations' for her print, 'Tree of Peace'.

I have one of her books and came across it again yesterday and thought I would share her wonderful, whimsical work here.

Hope you like.

And here is the lovely book of hers....

Barry Moser

Yesterday whilst having a look through Readings book shop in Lygon Street I found a fantastic book about American artist/illustrator Barry Moser (biography here).  Never before had I heard of him or seen his beautiful art works!  I am a big fan of wood engravings and lino prints and also portraits, so naturally my eyes were dazzled by his very textural and highly contrasting work.  Here is an interview with Barry Moser here.

'Self Portrait with a Stetson'

'Jonah and the Whale'

 'Flannery O'Connor' (this is my favourite)

'Kathe Kollwitz'

'William Blake'

 'Eudora Welty'

'Moby Dick' illustration for Arion Press 

'Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum'

The book which caught my eye...

And here are some examples of his work....

Agapanthus

At the moment Melbourne is full of beautiful Agapanthus and they are just lovely!  The other morning I was out running and took these photos.  I think I will have to have a go at drawing some of these beautiful flowers...

New Shoes!

I'm loving my new shoes, which I bought in the sale yesterday (even better!). Thought I'd share my shoe joy with you.....