Have you ever bought (or been given) a lovely book and you think to yourself "I can't wait to read that, I'll save it for when I've got enough time to enjoy it" and you're still waiting for that time? Well, times that by 100 and that's my bookshelf. So, in an effort to curb this behaviour, I thought I'd start a little series in which I sort of review/talk about some of the lovely (mostly visual) books I own - forcing myself to get them off their shelves and enjoy their contents and hopefully introducing you to some books you might find lovely too.

The first book I wanted to share is Hello, NY! by Julia Rothman who is one of my favourite illustrators. She has lived in New York City for her whole life, and understandably, has quite a lot of observations, hidden treasures, details, facts, stories and experiences to share from her favourite place in the world.




The book is a visual feast, full of gorgeous illustrations in Rothman's trademark style, colourful and hand-drawn - part tour guide, part memoir. She takes you from her childhood neighbourhood in City Island to the Tugboat Graveyard to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Lower East Side Troll Museum to some of the 'lesser-recognised, under-appreciated buildings of Manhattan' to Grand Central Station and everywhere in between, sharing details, observations and stories.





The book is a lovely homage to New York City and has given me a good dose of 'fernweh' as well as a lot of inspiration for my uni project. I'd love to get my hands on some of her other books. I read a quote I really liked by Julia in this Grain Edit interview that said "I love art that looks like it's for children, but it's for adults" - I feel the same way!




I find Julia extremely inspiring because I think her versatile catalog of work shows just how many roles illustrators can play - she designs wallpaper, book covers, images for use in online and print media articles, wearables, objects, patterns, textiles and lot of other bits and pieces. Obviously I'm a big fan!

Just a quick post to say that I had a little stuff up with Etsy (for some reason none of their emails came through) so I didn't realise that the listing for the hard copy presales of my zine said that it was sold out straight away - a couple of people sent me messages. I'm so sorry! The listing is back up and there are unlimited copies :) Thanks so much for your interest and support!

This is my new zine! It is about weekends spent staying with my dad in Stockton, NSW in the 1990s when I was a kid. It is full of illustrations, drawings, paintings, collages, post-its, haikus and a large written component. It is A5 size, 40 pages in total (10 A4 pages back and front), full colour, bound with thread and printed on high quality 125gsm matte paper. Due to being in full colour, printing copies has been quite expensive, so the price unfortunately reflects that. As a result, I am offering hard copies for purchase and digital downloads.

The listing for the hard copy of the zine is here. The listing for the digital copy of the zine is here.

The zine contains a selection of illustrations I made for my uni Studio Project A unit last semester. I decided to focus on themes of childhood and the nature of remembering and it was a thoroughly worthwhile place to focus my energy - unearthing memories, interpreting them visually and researching memory. The zine ended up being what I handed in at the end for assessment, along with prints of the illustrations. In the early stage of the project, I read a lot about the psychology of memory and found a lot of the science fascinating (memory is so cruel!). I read lots of great things while researching memory, but some of my favourites were this article by Oliver Sachs about the accidental 'plagiarism' of memories and cryptomnesia (George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord' is possibly a significant example of this), the idea of childhood amnesia and lots of articles by Elizabeth Loftus but especially her work on false memory.






In the digital download you will immediately receive the 18MB pdf file of the zine to read on your computer/other device. You can even print it out yourself if you want to. At the moment I'm doing pre-sales for hard copies of the zine - when a couple have been ordered I'll get a batch printed (hopefully no longer than a week or two, it's cheaper to print in a batch) - I have a couple of copies printed at the moment that can be posted straight away.

If you choose to purchase a digital copy and then decide to purchase a hard copy too, I'll credit you the price of the digital copy.




Ps. If you share a childhood memory of your own in the comments of this post (and your email), I'll randomly choose 3 people to send a free digital copy of the zine in the next few days.

I spent a lot of time on my bike.


I did some painting for my new zine.


This little boy filled me with joy with his hammy faces! In the past month he has started to have so much personality - he laughs at things, follows me around, shows me things, tries to make me laugh and seems to really enjoy being around other babies. But he still doesn't walk without holding onto things!


I bought two cute new pairs of Melissas (on sale).


I passed this combi on quite a few chilly Winter morning bike rides.


I went on uni break and got to spend some more quality time with this sweet guy.


I packed up my uni nook and took it all home! I felt really sad about it (we had to pack them up) but I've moved it all home into our backyard studio and I'm really happy there (albeit very chilly!) - I'll share photos of that soon.


There was a jumping castle in the uni ceramics studio out of the blue one day! I had a jump!


I saw some cool typography in the wild.

Watching | The Tunnel (a bit obsessed, we have to force ourselves to go to bed at midnight after bingeing on it each night), Orphan Black & Game of Thrones.
Listening | 60s girl bands (like this mix) and Clairy Brown & The Bangin' Rackettes.
Making | Finishing up all of the semester's uni work. I'm on break now which is such a relief, because I worked so hard all semester. I hope it pays off, but I'm really proud of what I ended up with regardless. I also did a really fun commission I'll have to share sometime soon!
Reading | Hello, NY! by Julia Rothman (I loved it and I think I might do a review about it)
Consuming | Soy mochas (Fresh on Charles has the BEST I've ever had)
Coveting | Old pianos.
Purchasing | A new (used) car, yesterday! It gets dropped off tomorrow! Cute shoes & a mod vintage dress.
Looking forward to | Spending time with my boys over the break, going to Hobart next week to see Clare Bowditch and attend her singing workshop, making copies of my zine to sell (I think I'll do online and real paper copies), starting next semester's uni project & hopefully, maybe going up to NSW for my sister's 21st birthday.