Loving these links

This week entailed a fair amount of National Stationery Show stalking on twitter... golly gosh there are some talented stationer folks out there. One day (dreamy moment here) I will see it all for reals.

+ Loved the Yellow Owl Workshop hand painted booth. See more of their instagram photies here

+ Chuckle-worthy, cute and typographic cards as selected by Design Sponge
(Love that 'Tired Thankful ' birth announcement. hehe)

+ These incredible watermelon worshipping socks - there's even a patter for the crafty knitter!

+ A so fresh and so clean selection of desktop downloads (of which I have just pinched the spotty one)

+ Great quote from a great article by an excellent lady (via another fabulous blog)

“Don’t have a favorite font. Do have a favorite type designer.” 

- Jessica Hische 

Vivid Sydney starts this eve which is a super exciting date on the winter calendar  Three weeks of lights, ideas and action! Hurrah!!

Looking forward to sneaking in to see some speakers at Semi-Permanent tomorrow. It's a welcome treat as my brain needs watering. Also headed to the annual Zine Fair at the MCA, Sydney on Sunday - always hectic but worth the effort. Have a jolly one too lovely readers x

Field Trip in Sydney

If you're in Sydney and you're feeling like being inspired tomorrow... then head along to this brilliant conference. Three of the fabulous and lovely artists from my book will be speaking along with some other big talents too. You will get to see into the processes of these fine folk as they perform projects 'live' on stage. I for one am EXCITED!

Shimtokk // packaging lovelies

I don't know which rock has been blocking my view but I only just found the wonderful world of packaging that is Shimtokk. Made up of Joke of Tokketok and Sally of Shim+Sons, they are full of great wrapping ideas and they also run some pretty great looking packaging workshops too... for those lucky enough to be in Portland. ie. not me *sigh*







The packaging 101 workshop pictured below. fun fun. looks good enough to make the kids jealous!

Sydney Biennale // Li Hongbo

I don't know if it's just that my eye naturally gravitates to paper artworks or if in fact almost everyone in the Sydney Biennale is favouring paper as their medium of choice, but it sure did make me happy to see so much of it this weekend. We caught the ferry out to Cockatoo Island to have a look at the installations and one artist in particular stole my paper heart... the work of Beijing artist Li Hongbo.



Walking into his installation felt like entering Willy Wonka's Paper Factory. A sun streaked room completely filled with hundreds of paper fans of brilliant colour growing up from the floor all around us. A vision of beauty... or so you'd think...



... but in actual fact all these beautiful blooming flower-like growths were actually formed of various gun models. Handguns, machine guns and all manner of guns... cleverly transformed into beautiful blooms. SO-DARN-JOLLY-GENIUS!

Some words from the artists mouth (or pen probably?!) More here:

The ‘flower’ in my work looks so bright and grandstanding, whether people can really comprehend the damage hidden behind it. When the muzzle points to any creature, no matter for what purpose, it represents the end of life or a painful struggle. We are all losers when the fall of lives reveal in our sight. 

There was abit of a queue to get in the room which almost put us off, but it's well worth seeing if you're in Sydney... even now that I've given away the punchline!

Finders Keepers // Andrea Smith

I'm quite in love with the new Finders Keepers, Sydney markets flyer by Andrea Smith. I didn't even realise at first that it was paper collage!!! (you can imagine how doubley excited I was on closer inspection) Tres Excellent!!



The window art she did for Made 590 is great. So cute!





(I found the little fella below on her website too and couldn't resist adding him in!)

Rat Pack Prints // Crispin Finn

I have been following with envy all the excitement of the PickMeUp Graphic Art Fair in London the past couple of weeks. So many amazing things on show and so many amazing workshops... damn the man who has not yet invented an intercontinental rocket!



Crispin Finn's new rat pack prints created especially for Pick Me Up pretty great! Jaws and Breakfast at Tiffanys (both shown below) are my faves... but the whole shebang would make a great set too!?!

Bianca Chang // Paper Workshop

As part of the A4 paper festival workshops I was lucky enough to meet the lovely Bianca Chang and listen to her spill her working beans in the workshop she held at Object Gallery. I made a (sort of legible) letter 'e' which I must admit I was rather proud of, but best of all it was just great to get making with only paper, a ruler and a scalpel.



It's no surprise that Bianca's work is incredibly delicate and the accuracy required is way beyond my skill set (as proven in the above photo). It made me appreciate that much more how incredible her pieces are because of it. This video of the making of her A4 exhibition pieces shows exactly how incredible they really are!


Bianca Chang - Recent Works, June 2011 from Bianca Chang on Vimeo.

A big thanks again to Lisa for organising the first week long paper festival in Sydney. It was no mean feat I'm sure and was perfectly pulled off (can't wait for the next one!)

BIG love to Japan

So very very horrible what's been happening in Japan. Sending big love and courage to everyone over there. Lots of great artists and designers are fundraising via their various talents which is a hugely wonderful thing to do. I have no such art but can support via others who do. Here are some if you too want to help in some way (every little helps)...

Help Japan poster by Signal Noise



Cards and prints by Hilda Grahnat (who I posted about here)



Posters by Wieden & Kennedy



Make City postcards via Upon a Fold



pdf of the gift wrapping zine by Hello Sandwich

Happy Hearts dear friends

via Bookshelf Porn

Finders Keepers & The Paper Collective Launch

Such an inspiration filled weekend it was. The Finders Keepers market was great as always (& came away with only a few little treasures. phew!) and the launch of Paper Collective was so at home there too.



The clever little beans from Trial + Error, Melbourne were responsible for the buildings installation... & their hours of cutting and folding were well worth the effort I'd say! There were also paper masks, bow ties and origami headbands which spread the paper love through fashion.



The creations that came from the workshops corner were quite spectacular too - handmade paper, confetti bows, gift bags & xmas goodies... not to mention the awesome paper bombs decorating the heavens made by Yumi of Dear Plastic.



Big hooray to Lisa for co-ordinating such a magical land and for such a fun couple of days. To think this is only the beginning of it all... oh my!

p.s. In case you missed out, here is a wonderful Hello Sandwich tutorial for making confetti bows... such cuteness!

Paper Convention Collective... is taking off!

Finders Keepers markets are always a reason to make my toes tingle... and this weekend not only are they having their fabulous annual Christmas markets in Sydney, but also it's the launch of the wonderfully exciting Paper Convention Collective!



The brainchild of the lovely and talented Lisa from Lox&Savvy, the paper convention is an event scheduled for next year with all kinds of paper based brilliance set to be on show. So in anticipation, tomorrow night and all day saturday at the carriageworks, there will be paper workshops galore (see the schedule here) I'm lucky enough to be helping Lisa out so do come by and say hi... and see what the beebuzz is all about!

p.s. isn't the Finders Keepers flyer below divine too... illustrated by Jefferton James

Halloween cards // Egg Press

Halloween has never really been a big thing down here in Oz but this year we're going to a halloween party so I am excited about the dress ups and fun things that go with it. These cards from Egg Press make me even more enthused...

Market delight // Finders Keepers

Spent a big chunk of Saturday roaming the Finders Keepers Markets at Sydney's Carriageworks. It was full of so much talent it was almost abit too overwhelming... almost! I came away with a couple of porcelain jewellry delights from Angus&Celeste, and not even an ounce of paper (there were too many good ones to choose from i reckoned) These were some of my favourite things:

+ The neons of Lox+Savvy's 3 fold shaped cards.

+ Me and Amber with their screenprinted designs onto mounted old book pages

Studio on Fire // Open Studio

Wish today that I lived in Minneapolis... would love to see the insides of Studio on Fire

(insert sad face here)

The Package Project

If you like sending and receiving curious snail mail packages then you should apply for The Package Project too... I've wanted to be a part of one of these exchanges for a long time and now there is an Australian based and lovely one from folk at Cupcake Couture. Go and sign up now...

Semi-Permanent // Conference Highlights

We managed to luck some last minute tickets to the Semi-Permanent conference in Sydney which was brilliant... spent all day there on Friday and then just for a peek on Saturday (had a wedding to go to so a peek was all that was possible unfortunately)

I knew I'd be in awe of Jessica Hische and that really was the highlight of the lot for me. She went through and spoke about some amazing projects (and some hilarious - a boardgame about divorce notably) from high school til today and about her techniques and process too. Every piece of her type work is incredible and it was a real suprise to find out that she does it completely in Illustrator and not hand rendered at all.

It was also exciting to find out that her Daily Drop Caps would be going up to 12 different alphabets! whoa nelly!! (I was also really excited I got to have a wee little chat to her on Thursday night too... I was  ridiculously starstruck! what a groupie!!)

My other main event for me was listening to the brilliant story of one of the wonderful Frankie magazine. It was great hearing about their startup story and how they used to post polaroid cameras to celebrity interviewee's in replacement of a photo shoot because they couldn't afford one... and how this accidentally worked in the favour to fulfil their aim of 'making famous people ordinary and ordinary people famous' by making everyone look snapshot-ed. How cool is that?! Louise was great and I will love Frankie even more because of her story now!

Mel Kadel & Travis Millard were hilarious (taking the stage with a 6-pack of Coopers) and again their stories were great. They live in a treehouse in LA (Fecal Face studio visit here) and that alone makes me a tinge of green with envy.. but Mel's drawings are really great too and their banter made me like them even more!



Another that was unexpectedly interesting was the Glue Society with their brilliantly leftfield advertising ideas (wow, what minds they have) & the best ever sculpture (below) from Sculpture by the Sea in 2006.

There were loads of other great tales of creative folk too and I'm full to the brim with inspiration now...  so now I just need to be less lazy and do some work of my own!

Jesse LeDoux // Exit Strategy Exhibition

If I was in Chicago tonight i'd be going to this exhibiton. Jesse LeDoux's illustrations are capitally cute! (click on the images to look at the details) & the description makes them even better:

"This new work playfully creates obtuse diagrams of the negative energies in daily life and the possible escape routes to finding happiness."

See more (and buy) here

Asuka lighting festival, Japan

I think this may just be the most beautiful festival ever... so dramatic but so peaceful at the same time... Oh, I do so love Japan! I can't seem to find out what it's all about though sadly... & can only find all these amazing photos (by Shotam)