chesty bonds

i drew these little figures for toy shapes and when i came back to them later i found my daughter had added some extra features. Those cute little faces have just got to find their way onto something.

i've been jazzing up some of my old t shirts lately by stitching silhouettes on them of things i fancy - bullsheads and cactuses mainly - and now i think each one of those critters is going to end up on my chest too.





we're off down south tomorrow to glorious Dunsborough for a week in a beach shack (a very comfortable, cozy beach shack). I'm worried about the cat and the garden and the guinea pigs and the fish and the drive but i'm sure i'll manage to enjoy myself somehow.

charity case

A few years ago a mum at school i'd never actually spoken to asked me out of the blue if i had a sewing machine and if so would i like a bunch of fabric she was clearing out of her recently departed grandmother's house. Of course i said yep and yep and when she gave it to me it was an amazing collection of 50s and 60s vintage (and that awesome bag that you can see in this picture). This sort of thing happens to me a lot and i like to think it's because people realise that i'm going to appreciate their old stuff more than anybody else. Mr M reckons it's just because people feel sorry for me.

Anyway this is what i made this week, my favourite style skirt and a matching stuff.

dem bones, dem bones

i've long been keen on bones. I used to make myself jewellery from little whitewashed bones i found on the beach and bone mobiles from bushwalks. Femurs, hips and jawbones complete with teeth dangle all over our garden and the bookshelves are loaded with bird, quokka and turtle skulls.

When i discovered osso buco a few years ago, it became one of our winter staples and i amassed a huge supply of those fantastic chunks of smooth white bone because i'm also notorious for not chucking anything away (well chicken carcases and chop bones usually find their way to the bin if the girls don't salvage bits first).

Anyway what i'm getting at is that whiplash has inspired me to get all those bones off the kitchen bench and on to the wall.



Haven't decided where to hang it yet but i think it has to go somewhere near this congan mask.


I'm not sure whether this would be considered a normal use of weird household waste or a creative use of normal household waste but i think i'll plug for the weirdest waste category.

what we did

went to a rugby match for the first time ever this weekend (complimentary tickets) and after watching the Western Force bungle their way to a 7-8 loss by doing absolutely nothing, i don't think rugby will be taking up a lot of my time. Luckily the beautiful sky held my rapt attention for the 90 minutes and the misery of the Force supporters was quite touching so it was time well spent.


On Sunday we spent more pleasant hours at the Freo Arts Centre while John Bannister sang and played his trumpet. And during the rest of the weekend i made these Valentines Day cards to enter into the Craftzine recycled Valentines Day Card Contest.

2007!

Some years i design a family christmas card, like this one, to give to all and sundry and lazer print them out in bulk. But other years i'm just too idle.

This year i hadn't done anything but decided we needed a few cards to give out to the grandmas and distant aunts. Earlier this year my daughter was given a flower pressing gizmo for her birthday and i've been gleefully flattening anything that bloomed in the garden. I love unusual plants and flowers so here are my cards featuring strange and exotic hybrids that i would love to see growing in my back yard.





I'm going to enter these in Whiplash in the decoration category (or should they be gifts? - dunno) but i'm having trouble with the whiplash badge which is not appearing. Aah well, never mind, happy new year to yerall.



Ah there it is - but i had to cut and paste from one of my old posts. Hmm another of life's mysyeries.

bullshirt

In the last few months i haven't been up to much making but lately i've had a minor productive flurry. I made a new toy for stuffaduck which should appeal to anyone who's been looking for a surfin' hammerhead bear...



...and designed a bunch of promotional christmas stubby holders for Mark's company who are ocean environment specialists, because it's impossible to separate beer and the environment...



























and finally i added a fluffy bull's head to one of my old bond's t shirts (why not? - i'm in a bovine mood)

cow neck

I've been thinking over the last few days about something to post for this month's Whiplash comp. The 'alt craft' theme is tricky because really what qualifies as alternative these days when you can buy 'Ugly Dolls' in K Mart and fab eyeball marbles in a gift shop in Snape in the uk and then you pop over to Walberswick for some hag stones...(sorry, can't stop going on about my holiday).

So yeh, the boundaries are pretty blurred and for me the word 'alternative' was forever tainted in the early eighties when a bloke i shared a house with liked to refer to his trendy New Wave mates as 'my alternative friends'. I used to imagine they were his spare set in case the original ones couldn't come out to play.

But i have decided to post something and as this is the only thing i've made this month, this is it.


Thanks to the girls for letting me plunder their toy boxes and now the question is not whether it's alternative but whether it's craft. And as there's no 'Silly Idea' category and no skill involved this is entered in the design section.

conventional coat hat

The Whiplash project this month is wardrobe surgery which is how most of my clothes come about so i thought i'd better get involved. I bought this old jacket from my local St Vinnies for the princely sum of two bucks but it was longer than i wanted so i cut a chunk off the bottom, hemmed it and added darts. It's been freezing here in Perth and i feel the cold more than most so i decided to use the leftovers to make a fluffy hat.







When i explained to M (the Man) the deconstruction/reconstruction theme he said that making a hat out of a coat was too predictable and conventional and what i should be doing was i don't know, fibreglassing an old shirt and turning it into a suitcase or something. Which apart from the fact that i've got enough suitcases isn't a bad idea.
In the meantime though, i'll be out sweltering in my new fluffy hat because - yep the sun's out and it's warm!

looking down and out

Planning our upcoming Big Trip has set me thinking about past journeys. Here are some scribbles i made looking out of windows in Spain, Morrocco and India. Thankfully i'll be taking a camera with me next time. All that doodling in sketchbooks is really for those non parental types

phwash foosh blam aaaah!

Ugghh i hate cleaning. I've wasted valuable hours today cleaning the bathroom and bedrooms - with the girls back at school i didn't have an excuse for the squalor. But what gets me is i've scrubbed, slopped, vacced and mopped and i'm just going to have to do it all over again in three months time! It's cruel.

Someone gave me a Batman comic when i was living in Spain and i've carted it around for over 10 years (an easier and jollier read than Freud's 'Paranoia and Obsessive Neurosis' which i also have in Spanish) But a couple of weeks ago i saw something on the interweb about making bags out of woven magazine pages and was inspired to do this with it.





Yes i know i have enough bags, thank you for pointing that out.

serious craft committed

This week i've been involved in all sorts of crazy stuff.
I mean no beany kid should be expected to get about without a pair of crutches and a nice pair of earrings according to my girls...


and there's been button bouquets...


more silly hats and fun with our best friend the sticky tape...


the craft which always has to be produced after watching Playschool, in this case a 'lightbox'...


for which, thankfully, we have a ready supply of empty beer cartons...


and the silliest of all...


the mouse cozy.