Maddie On Things
20 February 2012
Who can resist a cute dog that just stands on things? Maddie On Things
Via Swiss Miss
Who can resist a cute dog that just stands on things? Maddie On Things
Via Swiss Miss
While looking for inspiration for new necklace designs I came across this cool tutorial for making your own geometric necklaces out of polymer clay. So I thought I’d give it a go - not too bad huh?
Just stumbled across my necklace on my favourite site Pinterest - cool!
Ok so I have to tell you about a great aussie site called The Huntress (and not just because they mentioned me on their blog - thanks guys!).
They’re all about finding the best online fashion that ships to Australia and hunting down cool local stores as well, which I can already tell is not going to be good for my budget!
Make sure you take a look!
I have a problem…I get distracted by things…a lot. I get inspired by all sorts of things, from jewelry to furniture and my mind starts to think ‘I could do that!’.
So far, letterpress has seemed to have held my attention for a while now, and has taught me patience, something I’m not very good at when I get obsessed with something. And I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of looking at a perfectly printed piece with just the right amount of impression, it makes me happy just thinking about it.
But being as fickle as I am means I never focus my attention on any one thing at a time and I jump from one hobby to the next. So why am I telling you this? Well before Ietterpress my last obsession was jewelry - more specifically laser cut jewelry. It started when someone showed me ponoko.com and my mind instantly started thinking up things I could make. The first piece I made is shown above and turned out pretty well, so as an experiment I started up an Etsy store called Little Red Lantern. I’ve done a few other pieces (most of which are still sitting unfinished in a shoebox in my closet!) but the alphabet necklace is the one I get asked for all the time. Which brings me to my point. Little Red Lantern has been sadly abandoned over the last 6 months and really deserves a little TLC. So I’m going to attempt to split some time between letterpress and the jewelry and we’ll see how it goes.
Expect to see some jewelry posts mingled in with letterpress in the near future!
Over the weekend I was up in QLD and made a visit to Caboolture Historic Village to check out a little letterpress exhibition they were having. While I was there I got to meet up with the lovely Bianca who contacted me through my blog. Bianca is learning letterpress as well and is just as obsessed as me so it was great to meet, chat about letterpress and gawk at all the old presses they have stored out the back.
I managed to snap a few quick pictures but to be honest I was too distracted looking at all the beautiful old presses and wishing they were mine!
So over the rainy weekend I didn’t get a chance to do any printing sadly, however I did have a new toy to play with! After being frustrated with the quality of my photos I bought myself a digital SLR, a Nikon D3100, and so far it’s been amazing. I’m still learning how to use it properly (my cat is my unwilling subject) but I’m hoping my photos from now on will be slightly better.
I think I want a Vandercook now…
Hope everyone had a good Easter break! I managed to escape the rainy weather for 2 days at least by heading down to some bushland that we own down in Goulburn where the weather was much nicer.
The main reason for going down there? I had my bright yellow, brand new dirt bike to test out! For the most part it was fantastic until yesterday when I was too confident for my own good and went flying through a rocky section, hit a big rock and got flipped off the bike. Now I have a banged up elbow, bruises, scrapes where my goggles dug in and a bruise under my eye. Sigh, that’ll teach me.
The good news though? On the rainy days I was at home I managed to gain a little space down in the garage so I now have a shelf and a set of drawers next to the press. Now I just need to work out the lighting problem as it’s really dark down there. Oh and I sent off a new set of designs to Boxcar Press to be made into plates so I will hopefully have something new to show in the next few weeks!
Nothing much to report of the printing side, I’ve been working on some new designs so haven’t really printed much in the last few of weeks. Last week on a rainy saturday I decided to try printing with my little Adana upstairs in the apartment instead of working down in the garage. Wow, I actually thought with the experience I’d gained on the larger press that it would be easy now on the Adana but was I wrong! Even though I’d leveled the platen and checked the roller height I was still getting heavier printing on the bottom than the top - everything was uneven no matter what I did. Perhaps I gave up too quickly though thinking it was going to be easy.
Anyway, thought I’d post a link to an old Chandler & Price for sale on ebay. I’ve been watching it since it was listed and after much consideration have decided not to bid - for one the price has jumped so much over the last day - maybe a little too much? The problem is there are so few for sale in Australia I think the price of them has become quite inflated. Secondly - I just don’t have the room for it! I don’t think I realised how small my little Hogenforst press is compared to a Chandler & Price! 400kg compared to a 1-1.5 tonne monster!
So for the time being I’m going to stick to the little guy and master him first, I’m realising the limitations of a smaller press but I’m designing around them now, no large designs, keep everything small and simple - which luckily is what my style of designing is!