Gloomy day Melbourne/Sarajevo

Today I'm in Melbourne and it's a gloomy day and a bit drizzly. One year ago I was in Sarajevo and it was about as grey, with moments of blue, but without the drizzle.

Today I'm trying to get through a bunch of emails and am procrastinating by looking at photos. One year ago I walked along the last remaining stip of the Sarajevo Tunnel, strolled past the Miljacka River and ate an ice cream at a cafe called 'Dallas'.

Reading

Looking forward to reading these soon. There are so many great magazines around, who said the printed word is dead?

The newly redesigned desktop, a local mag, is looking really great. And the last few covers have been amazing (this one by mashdesign.com.au).

Issue number 5 of Extra Curricular, from New Zealand, is out and I hear it has a nice little spread on tea towels (including the Tree Towel and some other lovelies, including one from Ink & Spindle.)

More loveliness from UPPERCASE, the new issue of Work/Life. According to UPPERCASE, "the primary goal of the Work/Life series is to promote the illustration talents profiled to potential clients" and this new issue features the work of 100 illustrators from around the world. And another great cover.

Happy days :)

The international language of hello

I feel like I've been semi-hibernating for a while now - thinking, planning, formulating. And doing a little bit of playing around for fun (above) and some printing. Below are the new colour combination for Raindrops - burnt pink and blue. Hopefully I'll have some panels ready soon.

PS. I definitely have a thing for raindrops. Here are some other posts where I've drawn them -

March 2008 I, March 2008 II, July 2008, September 2008, April 2009, December 2010, and above, April 2011!

A summer in pictures

There have been floods, fires, cyclones and all sorts around this country - it's been a traumatic and action packed summer. I didn't see much of that stuff, but did see quite a few babies and some countryside. This is a few tiny bits of my summer, in pictures taken with my phone (hence the somewhat dubious focussing on some of them).

Season's Greetings

A quick hello and season's greetings! Thanks to everyone who's bought some of my wares and said nice things throughout the year, it's much appreciated :) May Santa be kind to you and have fun.

XO Susan

Bunting, rain and shopping

Here are some pictures from the market on the weekend. It was fun. Busy. And I did shopping as there were lots of beautiful things, yay. There was also bunting. Lovely stallholders. Nice food. Lots of rain followed by lots of sunshine. And I had some new things there. All up it was a great day. And now it's four days to Christmas and I'm sick and have way too much Christmas shopping and baking still to do, but all I want to do is sleep!

Lovely bunting!

Some of my neighbours

Me and my super sweet neighbour Emily Green

My new fabric, Raindrops in blue

My new Christmas cards that I finally have a photo of!

Booties

Window Shopping

Started setting up my stall at Harvest Workroom today. The window looks so pretty! And inside is such an amazing blank canvas...will have to remember my camera tomorrow :)

Harvest Love

Super excited about the Harvest Christmas Market this Saturday. I'll have a few new things I've not had time to photograph yet and hopefully I'll also be able to pick up some cute gifts too (so far I've had no time for any kind of shopping but have my eye on these or these for my niece, who's turning six months old today!) And you can read a wee profile of me/my work on the Harvest site.

One thing I have made time for is the annual Christmas bake-a-thon with my friend, Alicia. It takes hours but we always end up with an entire kitchen table covered in sweet treats, fun. This time we took over her kitchen (which is so cute, along with the rest of her house and dogs) and used approximately SIX slabs of butter!

Getting in the spirit

Even though I have about a million things to do in any bit of spare time (don't you love this time of year?) I managed to get to two market-type events today. And it was such a lovely & sunny day, which made me feel slightly less guilty.

First up was the Scandinavian Christmas Bazaar at the Swedish Church in Toorak, which I've been waiting all year for. It was super nice to again hear the lilting tones of Swedish speakers (and those of other Scandis) - such lovely sounding languages, even if I can't understand! And there was gravlax, of course, along with kanelbullar and other treats.

I dragged Jed along and he seemed kind of OK about that, although he did spend most of the time sitting around looking kind of bored while I looked at every single thing I could, including lovely Christmas decorations (above are a wood-cut snowflake, heart, leaf and moose from nordliving) and lollies and clogs.

On the way home, Jed deposited me at the Melbourne Design Market (he'd given up at that stage and could think of nothing better than lying on the couch). I spent way too much time at the Note Maker stand (the stationary obsession that started in childhood lives on), which is where I got the super cute Merry Christmas sign from (in the top photos). And how good are the ceramic bells below (argh, but forgot to take note who made them - sorry!) **UPDATE** Thanks to Lizzie who let met know that the bells are by Ingrid Tufts. Thanks, Lizzie!

Eating

As a completely random aside, here are some snaps of me and my niece Lily, who has just started eating "real" food (if you call moosh food!) Such chubby cheeks, so cute! 

She loves reading (or at least books with bright colours) and even helps turn the pages of books (pretty amazing, I think, for someone who's only a few months old) so I've just bought her some books for Christmas, yay!

Harvest Textiles Xmas Market

Super excited to say I'll be at the Harvest Textiles Xmas market this month (eek, it's December now!) Yep, the Harvest peeps are now at their own space in Brunswick East, where they'll have screen printing classes and all sorts of goodies. Below and here are the details of the market, where there will be lots of lovely handcrafts and even ginger beer and homemade ice-cream for sale, gotta love that.

To launch the new Harvest Workroom we are throwing a xmas market. It's going to be a great chance to buy your loved ones unique presents and to support local makers. There will be craft, clothing, homewares, textiles and music stalls, as well as fun activities like "print your own wrapping paper" and craft activities for kids. Check out some of the makers and creators who will be there below.

Where: 512 Lygon Street, East Brunswick.

When : Sat 18th December 10-5pm.

Raindrops

It's been raining all the time in Melbourne. Goodbye drought! Summer? Bah! I've been thinking about raindrops forever, as they're so pretty, and here's my new fabric design featuring them. They're small (well, about 2cm high) which is something different for me (everything I usually do is so big, or so it seems to me). Now if only I could get the blue colour right...and maybe a grey? Watch this space!

It's oh so quiet

It feels like forever since I've posted anything here and that's because it has been forever! I'm working on lots of things but never seem to have the time or energy to say anything about them - I guess it's the end of the year and I'm tired or something. But hopefully I'll have some photos of some of those things soon.

What's making me smile today are the flowers in my lounge room - so bright and cheery. And thanks to my favourite fruit shop for gifting them the other day.

It's a freebie!

Just a quick note to say that there's FREE SHIPPING in my Etsy shop until the end of November (midnight AEST) woo! And I often have more things in stock than are listed, so send me a message/convo me in Etsy if you're after something that doesn't seem to be there.

Happy November!

Last week

The last week has zipped by way too quickly. Feel like there's not much time for fun stuff, but at least I got to walk in the park and drink nice coffee (and admire amazing lighting made from Fowlers jars.) Oh, and it's November already. Really? How did that happen?