Tuesday, March 30, 2010


I've made a new blog to display all the beautiful interior design images that I find around the web. I'm feeling very domestic lately, I'm hunting down vintage stoneware plates with just the right kind of floral patterns, big homemade pottery vases and 1970s house plant books (they always have the most awesome interiors). I didn't want to load down this blog with everything, so I made a new one instead. I had started a Tumblr, but I find it very difficult to get it to load properly, so I've chosen Blogger instead.

And there's some new jewellery in the shop- I'm challenging myself lately to make more delicate and simplified pieces, as I realised last week that a lot of my work is unintentionally very big and bold. I've mostly been inspired by the Japanese fashion styles of Natural Kei and Mori girl.


You can see the Elizabethan ghosts are still haunting the place too.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Choice Fruits

I'd been eyeing this book on Amazon, and then recently went to my Dad's house and found it in his book collection! Dad has hundreds of books, mostly 1800s through till 1950s with a heavy aspect on DIY and the history of ordinary people (and you wonder where I get it). Anytime I get an idea about something there's always a book I can borrow.

(I'm a bit in love with this chap, he's so scruffy and elegant!)

If you want to know how to shoe a horse, make cheese, build a peg-and-dowl table, forge a set of gates, butcher a pig, build a steam train, decorate your brand new 1920s bungalow or make a punch and Judy set, Dad's got a book on how to do it.


I love photographs of real people from history, there's so much more to learn than the 'proper' books written about important dates. I couldn't help getting this one on eBay last night:


...can't wait till it gets here! (I bet Dad has one already.)

Friday, March 26, 2010

And the Sparrow came home

Oh my dears- so long it's been! I've been out in the wild woods, being shunted around by the weasles and run off the road by Mr.Toad, but I'm back in the burrow now, safe and sound.


I had my holidays- both markets were rained out by the biggest storm the area had seen for 10 years. I did enjoy my vacation though- walking along the beach and wondering if the storm would make it to the carpark before us, curled up under the blankets listening to the rain pound on the caravan roof, organising needful visits to the (outside!) toilet in those brief patches when it wasn't raining...

of thorns or flowers

And no sooner did I return home from my adventures than my computer died! 6 years is a long time in computerland, and it had to be carted away to have a complete overhaul at my friend's house in the city. The nest egg has gone from being an ostrich's to a finch's, but never mind. One simply cannot live on library internet alone, and my life would certainly be impossible without a home computer.

of darker bodies

Just before I went away I was visited by the lovely Miss Bennett, who came to my little town for the afternoon to photograph my creative space. It was quite something to keep to myself while shutters clicked and tripods perched. The results (below) are wonderful! It's an odd feeling to see something of your world- your blog, your jewelry, your studio- published somewhere that wasn't you, I don't think the surrealism of it will ever be lost. It's the nicest kind of surrealism though.

Gosh I am glad to be home!

Friday, March 5, 2010

Strange things are afoot in the Circle K

Oh I am the quiet little sparrow aren't I? Apologies on that, I've been laying low on the internet thing lately. I've been reading The Artist's Way- for those of you who don't know, it's a massively popular book written by Julia Cameron which has a bit of a cult following- creative types swear by it's course to unblock the sink in your artistic mind.

Two of the things she recommends are the Morning Pages, where you must write two pages of whatever-comes-to-mind every morning, and The Artists Date, which is essentially a little time set aside for you and your inner artist to just be together. Both of these I have trouble with and will admit to not doing. Sort of.

I prefer to write in the evening, it empties my head and allows me to switch off. Writing in the morning would disturb my routine and that would cause more damage to my fragile sensitive mind (partly joking). The artist's date I don't have a problem doing, but...about 80% of my time is just me and my artist. We're joined at the hip.


Despite all of this, and despite doing virtually none of the exercises, I have still reached breakthroughs. I don't know if it's co-incidental in reading the book, but I don't believe in co-incidental occurrences so we might have to assume it's the book. Just by reading it I'm saying to the universe 'I'm ready to do more again now, I want to open back up to art.' Just by reading it I think I'm opening that part of my brain that's been sitting quietly for a little bit while I go about the pinned-down routine of crafting practical items.


I do consider my jewelry to be art. But there are other forms of art that I feel like I have left behind. Jewelry has restrictions- I must think about wearability, asethetics in design, shipping requirements, durability, workmanship etc... when I'm making 'proper' art I don't have to think about if it's going to be smooth to the touch or leave a stain or wear away or disintegrate if it gets wet.


So I've been clearing space in my brain and on my desk for painting and paper collage, for textile panels and shadow boxes. (You can see the sort of thing I'm thinking of in the images through here). I realised the other night that so many of the ideas and visuals that my mind shows me are not for jewellery at all, but for larger art pieces. It's my hope that in exploring 'proper' art again I will come full circle and my jewelry will be even more of a pure expression of whatever it is inside me that keeps me creating. We shall have to wait to see what we shall see.

In the meantime, there are two new pieces in the shop (and I'm late in telling you!)...

...and I'm off tomorrow afternoon for a weekend away in the coastal town of Venus Bay. My best friend's partner has a house down there and we're all banding together (with his bush furniture, my jewellery and her 'vintage circus burlesque' corsets- yes I'm trying to get her to get on Etsy!) and doing two markets. Foster and Tarwin Lower, if you happen to be in the area!


It'll be smashing to get away for two days. Technically it's a working holiday, but who can ever call being at a market 'working'? Besides that there'll be yoga and music and thrift safaris...and who knows what else.