Letterpress magic

I recently did a letterpress workshop at The Little Press. I've loved letterpress for ages and always wanted to try it out and when I saw this workshop which allowed you to print your own design, I knew it was for me!
I decided I wanted to to a poodle design but then it turned into a unicorn poodle which I liked even more! 

The photopolymer plate of my unipoodle design with some paper samples

The workshop was run by Emily and Rob from their spacious West Perth studio and was a small group of six. We split into two groups, one setting up the presses while the other mixed the inks. We used one of two hand operated presses, called Little Leo and Lilian, to print our designs.

My poodlecorn on the inked up press, Lilian

Everything has to be just right to get a perfect print which includes adjusting the amount of ink, the height of the paper, the pressure and lots of other little things. But it turned out well in the end!

Poodlecorns on a selection of papers, including a handmade one by one of the other participants.

After a yummy lunch of pumpkin soup and turkish bread, we had time for a little experimenting with the old woodblock type which Emily was lucky enough to find on a trip to India.

I had a fun day and would love to do it again and make a friend for my magical poodlecorn!

Uppercase lowdown

One of my favourite magazines is Uppercase from Canada and I was very excited to find out that the creator/designer/editor, Janine Vangool was coming to the Perth Writers Festival! She was on a few panels speaking about magazines with people from Dumbo Feather, Kinfolk, Smith Journal and Alphabet Family Journal. I was impressed to hear how she can produce a whole magazine by herself every few months and still have time to spend with her family and to sleep! After the talks, I got to meet her and she is a very nice lady :) She even wrote a lovely message in my copy of the latest Uppercase. Such a happy fangirl moment!

Made on the Left Christmas market

Last weekend was probably my biggest achievement of the year so far - the Made on the Left Christmas markets! It was over two days in Forrest Place, Perth. I am on the volunteer committee and help organise it and boy is it a lot of work! From our first meeting with the City of Perth in August, we started planning and organising and working working working! There's so much that goes on behind the scenes that I never knew about before I joined Made on the Left. Sometimes it was overwhelming and stressful but it all worked out in the end. Phew! I'm so proud to be part of the Perth creative community, with so much talent on offer! Thank you to everyone who supports it by coming to the Made on the Left markets and everyone who helped out to make sure it all went well. We did it!

The numbats are out of the bag!

I can finally reveal the rest of my numbat illustration!




I was so excited to be asked to do the poster for the July Made on the Left market. It is my favourite market to do and I like it so much, I am even a volunteer committee member and part of the team that organises it. I had my first stall at a Made on the Left market in 2008 and haven't missed one since so I am very happy to be able to do this illustration. I chose numbats as the stars of this poster as they are a WA emblem (and I like drawing cute little animals). I like to image that somewhere out there a group of crafty numbats is getting together and making jewellery, knitting and painting, getting ready for their very own market (possibly called Made in the Bush). They'd have bunting made out of gum leaves, their goods spread out on tree trunks and pay for things with termites...

Made on the Left winter market

Made on the Left poster by Natasha Muhl

I'm looking forward to the July Made on the Left market at the State Theatre Centre of WA on Sunday 28th July from 11am - 5pm. It's going to be huge! There will be stalls on four levels of the Theatre Centre so make sure you look at all of them! You'll find me in the entrance foyer so come and say hello!

Montage party!

It's party time at the Montage Pop-up shop! On Friday night from 5pm we're having a party and you're invited! There will be nibbles, free raffle prize draws and as a special treat, 10% off everything! We hope to see you there!

Tall Rabbit

Caldi

Fluid Ink

Major Mitchell

Little Mo & Friends

Lamonster

Eeva Margita

Simonette

Tall Rabbit

After Many Years

Omosis

Neddynibbles

Paper Plane

Anna Hadwin Crochet

Ella & Lily

Monster Craft Fair Crafty Monster!

I've had monsters on the brain recently. Fortunately they were cute monsters! I immortalised this crafty cake decorating critter in an illustration for the Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School Monster Craft Fair & Open Day poster, designed by the talented Bronwyn Rogers. Now there can be monster parties every day! Yay!

Tall is short?

TALL Rabbit has been SHORT listed in the Illustration category of the Create Design Awards 2012! It is for a series of Splendid Fairy Wren illustrations that feature in the Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School's Bonifacion year book, beautifully designed by Bronwyn Rogers Design Studio. Yay! :)

Tall Rabbit's Melbourne Adventures

I've just come back from a whirlwind trip to Melbourne and boy did I pack a lot in! I went to markets, met some lovely crafters, went to a conference, visited galleries, got some supplies, ate yummy food, caught trams, got some cool new magazines, saw gogo dancing nerds on vacation, partied in the National Gallery of Victoria, found some very cute goodies, visited the Etsy Showroom and even managed to fit in some sleep! I've got so much to report back on so check back soon!

Semi-Permanent Perth 2011 - A design conference with beer!

It's not at many conferences that you can enjoy an alcoholic beverage* whilst listening to the speakers but this typifies the relaxed atmosphere of Semi-Permanent Perth - where speakers present with a hangover (remarkably well, considering!) and our books don't quite make it on time (I finally got mine 2 months later!).


I'm not sure why Semi-Permanent extends its conference tour to Perth but I'm glad they do. I can only assume it's more of a franchise with Semi Permanent lending the name and a few speakers and Artrage/Bakery doing the the rest. I've been to the conference in Sydney and it's a slick 2 day affair to an audience of hundreds, unlike the Perth event! It's nice to be able to see speakers in a more intimate setting though and helps Perth feel not so forgotten by the eastern states. I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to go to a design conference in my own city for once. Yay, no airfares!


We had a rather dapper MC with a self-proclaimed "pleasing baritone" (who was that guy?) and after a few technical issues, the conference was underway.

The first speakers were Sonja and John from Nude Design Studio, based in Perth. They have been producing their minimal contemporary designs for about 3 years and had some valuable tips about alternatives to using stock photos and some legal 'advice'. They seemed disappointed that in their first year, they barely made $28000 but when I found out they did this while travelling the world and working on a mini laptop, I was impressed!

For Sydneysiders, Morten & Daniel of Supervixen seemed awfully nice! And they actually got through their presentation in the allocated time, which they said was a first. Well done! They both started out in motion graphics by learning on the go and believe that mistakes don't have to be failures, they are just another part of learning. I was quite excited to find out they developed the cute food characters on the Wrigley's ad! I love that doughnut! :)

Next came Gemma O'Brien, an ebullient & passionate type enthusiast. She shares her love of type through her blog which amazingly enabled her to be invited to speak at a design conference in Berlin as a 2nd year design student - wow! She just loves type!

Ken Taylor, a Perth-born, Melbourne-based illustrator was the 4th speaker. I've seen him speak before but he is such a talented illustrator, I'm not complaining! He shared a glimpse of his working technique which is always interesting to see.

Lastly, Brendan Savage from Fuel VFX told us about how he was 'living the dream' getting to work on big movies including a lot of Marvel Comics movies and a prequel to the 'Aliens' movies. Although it was potentially financially very risky with the company not being paid for their work they did for pitches, even though they could spend weeks on it. But without doing a pitch, they would never get the job.


Overall, it was an interesting day, surprisingly not as well attended as last year's conference (maybe due to their lack of a 'big name' international presenter). Thanks to all the speakers and organisers and I look forward to next year's conference! 


* They did wait til 12:30 to open the bar...


P.S. It is a few months since the conference but I have been so busy, I've only just had a chance to post this!

Semi-Permanent Perth 2010

(Left to right) Little Design Horse, Clare Martin, Tin&Ed, 

Leif Podhajsky, Beastman and the Semi-Permanent goodies

A few weeks ago, it was Perth’s turn for the Semi-Permanent conference, and while it is significantly smaller than the eastern states’ incarnation, it is still worth getting along to if you are interested in creative events. This year it was held in The Bakery (which looked surprisingly similar considering it had been closed for renovations for so long...). It wasn’t the best venue for a conference because the seats were not very comfortable and they weren’t tiered meaning we had to peer between people’s heads to see the pictures. First up was Little Design Horse who told about the jetsetting life of a textile designer and their latest venture of Future Shelter. I was quite jealous of all their machines including the laser cutter, the silkscreen printer and the screenprint drying machine - I was imagining how many hours I could save if I didn’t have to iron my prints to heat set them! Next was Clare Martin, a photographer who showed some of her photos, mostly of people from ‘ghetto’ areas in Canada and America who were often drug addicts – some of these images were quite confronting. After a short break came Leif Podhajsky, a graphic designer with some unusual views. He had some techniques which seemed a little dodgy e.g. using images from porn websites or scanned in from old magazines without permission and then altering them. After an extremely short lunchbreak (too short to get any lunch as we found out when we got back and the next speaker had already started!) was Beastman, an artist who does a lot of grafitti type work i.e. painting on walls. I liked his idea of getting a group of artist friends together and organising an exhibition to promote all of them. That’s something I’d like to do, if only I knew enough artists! Lastly were Tin&Ed who seem to have got some pretty good opportunities to do some interesting work. Overall, it was a good day to hear about how other creative people work and we came away with a Semi-Permanent book, bag and some posters! Yay for free stuff!