Illustration + Design

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Worn | Comfy
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C and I went to film society tonight to see The Boy With The Bike. It was the last film for the year and there were absolutely no seats left in the theatre. I quite enjoyed it. We had a walk around the city beforehand and went to get dinner at our favourite terrible food court in town and I finally got around to posting out our thank you postcards for our picnic back in July. I feel like I've had things like that sitting on my to-do list for months. I hate writing things in bulk, they feel like form letters! I have about five left over if anyone cares for a cheesy wedding postcard!

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Tasmanian Summers are my favourite Summers. Last year was still unbelievably hot, but the nights tend to be cool and you can get relief from the sun easily in the shade. In Newcastle, you just roast all day and all night and have to go about every day stuff in discomfort. My uniform lately has mostly just involved this skirt, a shirt tucked in and sandals. I always feel like maxi dresses and skirts just accentuate my lack of height and roundness, but pregnancy feels like the perfect time not to care about those kinds of things - hopefully my fashion rules apathy will carry over into post-pregnancy too.

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I found this little cat ornament at a garage sale a few weeks ago, before Morrissey died and now when I walk past it on the way to the front door I think of my sweet little black cat.

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Here is a bonus cheesy self timer picture of C and I. Very few photos of us together exist so I'm trying to make a bit more of an effort these days.

PS. This week the baby/squid is eighteen weeks cooked!

I Love | Zines
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Lately I've been feeling a strong desire to make a new zine. I'm not sure what I want to do with it yet but I'd like to get something together early in the new year involving doodles and lists and general miscellany. I visited the Sticky Institute when I was in Melbourne last month and it reignited my zine adoration. Last night I finished work at midnight and decided to lie in bed and read some of my collection of zines until 4am. Sadly I've given a lot of my favourites away over the years, but hopefully their recipients enjoyed them just as much as I did. I thought I'd share some of my favourites.

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+ Cartography for Beginners, MOTE and Ten Things You Didn't Know About Ten People.

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+ I Am A Camera and Statistical Analysis of the Things that Happen But Don't Matter.

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+ Antonyms for Demure and Epitaph for My Heart.

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+ The Annoying Treehouse, Daily Drawings, Stab Heart & Disposable Camera.

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Just for some vintage interest I thought I'd include the first zine I made, back in 2006 called Qwerty. I seem to only have the (extremely battered and water damaged) original copy of it left and it all felt very cringeworthy rereading it last night but it's cute to have as a memento. I'm sure the writers of many of the zines I love feel the same about their past works.

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+ Kept haphazardly in a shoebox.

Do you have any zine recommendations? Have you made a zine?

Some zines I'm coveting:
+ Anything by Mel Stringer
+ Valet of the Dolls
Filmme Fatales
+ Everything by Vanessa Berry
+ The Various Things I Eat
+ Never Date Dudes From The Internet
+ This Is Not My Cat
+ A Life Less Ordinary

Two | Pictures From My Holidays
There is a house under there.
An old ice cream truck hiding in an alleyway.

Over the last few weeks I've had my Grandma, sister and my parents all stay with me in separate lots. My parents go home the day after tomorrow and this house is going to feel very empty soon. I love having visitors. Being so far away, visitors are few and far between, so we hit the visitor jackpot this time around. We took my parents to Hobart on the weekend to see the Museum of Old and New Art (one of my favourite places on earth) and the Salamanca Markets and earlier this week we took a trip with them to the East coast of Tasmania and swam at the (freeeeezing) beach. The pictures above are of a house I saw in St Helens completely covered in foliage and an old ice cream truck I saw hidden in an alleyway in Hobart. They were the only pictures I took on each of those trips. I've lost my photo taking mojo over the last few months. Maybe I'm not seeing the beauty in things like I used to, or maybe I'm seeing it, but just not feeling the need to capture it. My SLR is tucked away somewhere with a dead battery. It's sad when creative enthusiasm for things that once brought you joy dwindles. I'm hoping it will remerge soon. I like to take photos just for the sake of documentation, not necessarily trying to make a work of art. I know that future me will appreciate the photos I take now, just like the present me appreciates the photos I took in the past. So, I will endeavour to take at least a photo a day, of something, anything, from now on, an informal kind of 365 project if you will. Have you ever partaken in a 365 photo project? Any tips?