Above: I designed these A G E S ago and couldn't wait to show them here, and now that they have arrived in stores for the Christmas toy rush, I can. They are small handpainted wooden eggs that make a lovely sound when you shake them. Below: the artwork which was sent to China for the manufacturers to interpret in three dimensions. I think that they did a good job. (There was a fourth design -- a flower -- which was deemed boring by the higher powers and cancelled.)
An important lesson about Australia for foreign readers of this blog (hello dear cousins!). Here, kangaroos deliver our strawberries...
Butterflies guard our homes (this one is quite close to mine actually)...
Pineapples help us to see...
...and our ubiquitous tomato sauce comes via a koala.
I am taking part in a game started by Pip Lincolne over at Meet Me at Mike's. This week, players have been asked by My Bricole to share their special creative weapon. Mine has to be my beloved copy* of Auguste Racinet's The Costume History, first published in the 1870's. A seemingly endless, enormous treasure trove of people, costumes and cultures that I open at random pages regularly and always find something that intrigues me. There's nothing to beat the colour, pattern, detail, interaction between the figures, oddity and variety of human glory that it documents with Victorian zeal. And when I feel that I have been too saturated by this dip into history, I go for something cooler, like Vitamin D. But when I want to go back to the endless glories of human culture, I go back via (Un)FASHION by Tibor and Maira Kalman. Brilliant!
Above: presenting Gustav, brother of the previously posted Franz. My obsession with the strangely proportioned little German doll continues. In addition to that obsession, Gustav gets to have another manifestation of one of my great loves: Scandinavian/Spode inspired blue and white decoration. He is quite a profound little fellow, containing in his body both a blue citrus fruit tree and and entire landscape. Perhaps I am becoming the hippie I have always threatened (my mother) that I would become. Om!!!!
Above: meet Franz, the Little Wooden Man. He is based on an early 19th century cloth doll which I found in a book a long time ago. I have always been charmed and intrigued by his strange proportions and I thought that I would have to use them as inpiration for something one day: whether it be a drawing, object or even an ongoing character. Franz is the first fruit of that exploration, and I don't think that he'll be the last. I have put him up for sale in my etsy shop and I feel a little sad as I am quite fond of him. But hopefully he will have all sorts of brothers one day who will visit me, if only briefly. And I kind of like the idea of him going to live somewhere exotic. In the meantime I badly need to improve my photography skills...
A selection of mirrors from my newly opened Etsy shop! They measure 18 cm across and are all hand painted using acrylic, then varnished. I really enjoyed painting these little mirrors, especially choosing images from books like Auguste Racinet's Complete Costume History and Bernhard Roetzel's oddly named Gentleman: A Timeless Guide to Fashion and various ephemera from both my collection and brilliant sites like this one.
A Hawaiian vacation print for Seed. The scenes were all painted separately in watercolour on textured A4 paper. I used colours which were not correct but as contrasting to one another as possible. The pictures were then scanned into Photoshop, and each colour was 'picked out' (made easier as they were contrasting), placed in a different layer and re-coloured until it looked right within that month's range. My favourite image above, and the finished repeat fabric artwork below. The resulting shorts will be posted onto this page in the last week of October. 
These images are from my favourite patchwork book (more a magazine, really) All About Patchwork: A Golden Hands Special, published by Marshall Cavendish, London, 1973. The above image is one of my favourite photos ever. I also wish that I owned that bicycle.
Above: this boy is a dead ringer for my brother when he was little. Almost as cool, too. ;)
Above: this patchwork dog is so much better than the soft toys everyone is making now! Easier too!
Above: who could resist a patchwork robot?!
Above: the back cover.
Above: I came across a lovely blog this week which reminded me of these little 'diary entries' that I did a few years ago as part of a class exercise at Latrobe College. It's surprising (a) how few of those clothing items I am still wearing three years later even though I am trying to be green and not changing my wardrobe as crazily a fashion industry employee might (b) what a negative frame of mind I was in!
I love Indian miniatures, for their unexpectedly pleasing colour and pattern combinations, incredible detail and compositions which challenge western eyes long accustomed to perspective. I have owned and loved a copy of Indian Painting by Douglas Barrett and Basil Gray (Skira, Geneva 1978) for over fifteen years but (sshhh!) I have never read a word of it. So unfortunately I know nothing about their iconography or social context. 
Above: Lady Listening to Music. Guler Style, Jammu, about 175o. (25.5 x 21.5 cm), p. 181. 
Above: The Approaching Storm. Guler Style, about 1750 - 1760. (15 x 23 cm) British Museum, London, p. 175. 
Above: After the Bath. Bundi School, about 1775. (15 x 22 cm) Allahabad Museum, p. 148. Does this look familiar to anyone who has used the facilities at my house? A little framed photocopy of this lives in the bathroom.
Above: Lalita Ragini (from a Ragamala), painted by Sahibdin. Mewar School, Udaipur 1628. (15 x 21.5 cm) Khajanchi Collection, Bikaner, p. 135. The composition! The bold contrasting colours! That dark red against the yellow! The horse, a rather strange breed with a pretty horizontal pattern! I could stare at it forever. Even better, I could visit Bikaner and see the real thing.
