I bought a set of really basic gouache paints and some tiny paintbrushes recently and have been having a lot of fun playing with the bright colours. I found some postcard and coaster sized canvases at a local cheap shop and have spent the last few evenings painting them. I want to send some of the postcard sized canvases through the post (will have to see how they stand up to the rigours of the post!). I also made a set of coasters to give as a gift to my sister in law.



Postcard number one (sent to a surprise recipient).



Postcard number two (also sent to a surprise recipient).


Some other postcards I'm working on.


Before painting the coasters I traced around a glass to make a centre circle.



I really enjoyed painting the tiny detail although it did make me think to myself "why does everything creative that I make end up so damn repetitious!?". They took me about an hour each to paint - I impress myself with my patience sometimes (although now I feel like my eyes are permanently crosseyed).




I am happy with the way the coasters turned out, but I am a little worried that unsealed, they might get ruined easily as gouache is water based. Does anyone have any recommendations for sealing water based paint on canvas? I tried using PVA glue/aquadhere but it made the colours run. I'd be really grateful for any wisdom!


In their proposed use!



One of the best things about gouache paints is that once they've dried on your (makeshift in my case) palette you just have to add a little water and you can get them to return to their original consistency. This means a lot less paint wastage.

I think I might have to buy some more little square canvases and make some more coasters - maybe even for myself!

The past few weeks we've been going to regular parenting classes run by the hospital. Some of it is very 'Baby 101' and makes me think that a lot of people musn't read or ask questions, but a lot of it has been really interesting and informative. I now know how to swaddle! And I feel a lot less clueless about breast feeding! I am so grateful that hospitals now run these kinds of programs - I feel sad for women in the past who would have had so little information available to them (and were totally discouraged from breastfeeding! When my mum had my brother in 1980 she was the only woman in Melbourne Womens Hospital who breastfed!).



I have been feeling a bit miserable lately because I am just so bored! I can't think of any other time in my life that I've actually been bored. I have very few commitments and nothing impending, which is great really, but boring! All of the fun, creative things I felt like doing when I was working/studying I now don't have the same enthusiasm for. I've been doing a bit of painting lately though, so it's not all sitting in front of the tv watching back to back episodes of Auction Hunters (although a lot of that is going on too).



I had thought that baby movement slowed down a bit towards the end of third trimester but this guy just feels like a washing machine all the time (especially when I listen to The Beach Boys). At our last checkup the midwife viewed my stomach with wide eyes as he kicked around wildly. It's pretty fun to watch at night when I have trouble sleeping (which is often). People keep telling me "oh he'll be a hyperactive child then!". Yay?

+ Apologies for terrible iPhone photos! Must invest in new camera!

Today Holly and I went for a little opshop trip and picked up a couple of goodies each. I tend to get a bit entranced by patterns and colours and let that override whether or not something is practical/worth the price, but I am getting better! I especially have a big soft spot for vintage textiles. Below are some of the goodies I picked up today and on the weekend while at the markets. I also bought a couple of miscellaneous baby things, but they're far less interesting to photograph. I'm sure Holly will share some of her fun bits and bobs on her blog shortly too.


A retro knitting holder (my friend Sara taught me how to knit over the weekend!) and a framed tea towel (?) of a cafe scene.


I just liked the title of this little book and thought it might be good for collage, likewise with the old postcard.


I picked up this mountainous print at the markets and it fits nicely on the mantle in our bedroom. I like to collect prints of scenes of mountains with rivers, I'm not sure why, there's just something interesting and mysterious about them to me. Sometimes they remind me a little of Twin Peaks.


A retro patterned quilt cover (which Holly was originally going to get, but decided against and I thought it was too fun to not be taken home), a cute retro patterned baby sleeping bag (top), a Sesame Street cot sheet and a cute swaddle.


A cute crocheted lap blanket and a retro tablecloth that still had its tags on.


While on the topic of opshops, I remembered this photo I took last week at the opshop of a painting of a man that looks a bit like my uncle. I found another painting of the same man in another part of the shop later. I thought they were quite good, but decided I probably didn't really need kitsch paintings by a stranger of a man who looks a bit like my uncle.


Holly was so sweet and gave me a little package of goodies for my birthday, including some of her gorgeous Pannikin wares. I shall have to collect some fun bits to gift to her in thanks (our birthdays are five days apart).

Have you had any fun thrifting finds lately?

My friends Tim and Racheal got married in January and I flew back to my hometown for the occasion. Like us, they had traveled back home to get married, after spending a few years living in Western Australia, and they had a lovely simple reception at a local venue. I definitely related to that feeling of wanting to return home to get married - when you grow up in a beautiful country town and have a lot of memories attached to it and a lot of friends and family still close by.



Tim and I have been friends since my first year of high school and he has always been someone who is ridiculously dependable and supportive for me. He's one of those friends that when you think about them being so far away your chest feels a bit tight and you wish so much for less distance. He has a great sense of humour, is often inappropriate to comedic effect and is obsessed with cars; last time I checked he was studying to become a race car mechanic. Racheal is the perfect foil to his craziness.

At the wedding Tim asked if he could commission me to write up their vows for them in an interesting way and when I requested more of an idea of what he was after he left it totally up to me - I hate that! Ha. I had a some fun with it and played around with colour and text - I wanted something playful and messy. It is so challenging to migrate from drawing exclusively in Photoshop (with my beloved ctrl + Z) to drawing by hand where every mistake you make is permanent. I drew the image on paper that was too large for my local Officeworks to make a flatbed scan of, otherwise I would have enjoyed playing around with the digital copy in Photoshop for a bit and printing out a copy.







In the nicest possible way, Tim and Racheal are kind of like beauty and the beast. Racheal is so sweet and kind and lovely and Tim is silly and loud and obnoxious (in the best way). I hope a little of that dynamic comes through in the drawing.