WOW

Went to WOW (World of Wearable Arts), last night. I went to the first one they had here in Wellington after they moved it from Nelson and it was okay... not amazing, but last nights one shows just how much they have stepped it up a notch or two. The designs were great but the themes, dancers and acts inbetween were something all on their own -wasn't quite expecting the Topp twins to make a couple of appearances but they got the crowd going inbetween stage changes. I'd have to say my favourite part was the UV section -there were some amazing and beautiful pieces but the UV and Open sections were the winners for me.

Above: American Dream by Sarah Thomas (Winner of WETA design award) one of my favs from the show.

Firebird, Susan Holmes

Nayyyyyyy

I'm gettting me a Dala Horse!

All the way from Sweden! thanks to my friend who's doing her OE in europe. Curious to see what colour it is!

Russia has Russian dolls, Sweden has Dala Horses, anyone going to Russia anytime soon?

how?

Helen Amy Murray -a brilliant textile designer who has an amazing technique for sculpting 3D fabric pieces. I would love to own/commission a piece from her. I can't figure out how she does it, it looks extremely time consuming but soooo worth it. (patent applied for technique).

Wow! this is the kind of stuff that makes me think yay I'm glad I studied textiles! It's great when you come across amazing stuff like this by a textile graduate Marit Fujiwara (I stumbled across this on another blog Blog-Couture and thought I'd pass it round a wee bit more -any exposure is good exposure right?)

Sand castle sculpture.

go here.

A while ago (okay a year ago) I was in the great land of down under on holiday and sampled a few hundred bags of glorious peppermint M&M's. Unfortunately the magic was short-lived. Upon my return to NZ I could only fit a few (4) bags of them in my suitcase, necessities were dismissed to make the much needed room. These lasted about a week -then the heartbreak began I was missing those M&M's like crazy but I somehow managed to get over it.

Until now.
My friend recently returned from Brisbane and she bought me over a bag of CHERRY M&M’S! They are wonderful little bite sized morsels of delight. I got the bag about an hour ago and thought I could ration them but I really can’t. The bag is half gone already!
I’m trying to prepare for that moment of disappointment when I reach into the bag and grope around trying to find one and come up empty handed....

So my house is having some renovations done on the outside and I came home yesterday to find half the boards around the bottom of the house torn away by the builder so you can see directly under the house, it's an old style villa/ town house raised off the ground about 100 years old.

It's amazing the amount of junk and treasures hidden under there!

Now you see I'm quite scared of spiders and creepy crawlies but if I wasn't I'd be under there in a shot! so far on the outskirts -spider free -I've discovered a set of brightly coloured icecream bowls, a white oven proof dish -1960's Anchor Hocking piece (yes I googled, hey it could have been worth a pretty penny or two... it's not in case you were wondering), a white teacup, a metal teapot, loads of coathangers? some magazines dated 1960's mixed with 1980's, a coke can with the teardrop mouth hole -unsure how old but still pretty cool! There are a lot of pipes, planks of wood, pieces of metal etc under there but I would love to get in amongst it all! I'm sure there is more to be discovered!

Julia Rothman

Stumbled into Design Sponge yesterday and came across an old tutorial entry by Julia Rothman on how to do hand made pattern repeats, this was fairly familar as it's the way we were taught at uni and is a pretty basic concept, it is in my opinion one of the best ways to create a repeating pattern tile -yet reading all the comments left by others I was astounded to see how many people didn't know the technique and all use their computer instead!

Okay granted I spent 4 years doing those patterns at Uni the majority of which were done by hand and photocopier... I'm pretty much a beginner when it comes to creating them straight in design software such as Illustrator and photoshop. I know the basics but it would be great to learn some more! so thanks to Julia's entry I discovered the Live Trace tool in illustrator I never knew exsisted and it makes thing soooooo much easier and quicker!

go here

Vintage Textile Fair

Extremely jealous I'm not in Auckland this weekend, there is a Vintage Textile fair being held at the Alexander Park Raceway on Saturday which sounds quite interesting.

Textile fair

The thing with vintage items that facinates me the most appart from their beauty and quirks is the story behind them -as in who owned them, how did they come to be where they are now, I love losing myself in stories and imaginings.

(but I'm always madly in love with the illustrations/prints....)

new challenge -Spoon ring

Trawling through Trademe yesterday I came across this amazing ring, I had to get it. I'd seen one on the net before which made me keen to hunt one down. It's made from a silver teaspoon from the 1930's. Apparently it was really big in the 1970's to make them, all you do is cut off the bowl of the spoon and file the rough end then bend/shape the ring around something round using a rubber mallet (sterling silver is easiest to work with as stainless steel is too strong unless you have a blow torch handy).

So I'm waiting for my ring to arrive and in the mean time I'm off to search all the antique shops I can find in hopes of stumbling across some gorgeous teaspoons to try it out myself! Might have to have a few practices yet though, I'll be sure to post!

Cherry Coke!

So excited!

Went to go get my usual afternoon sugar fix and came across Cherry Coke!

okay so this is quite a big deal for me -I love the stuff (that and Dr Pepper), when I was little my sister and I would bike out to my dad's work on a Saturday morning and he would give us a dollar between us (I know -cheap you're thinking but to us we were the richest kids in town) to spend at the dairy across the road, so we'd always without fail buy a can of Cherry Coke then come back and split it (millimetre by millimetre) into two glasses. then sadly for some reason they jsut stopped selling it here -our hearts broke. -so instead we'd get two 50 cent mixtures.....

Unbelievable!

Okay so I was searching on the web for a few particular vintage children's books and I am horrified to come across this new law the USA is going to pass banning the selling and distribution of Children's books printed before 1985! It's ridiculous! that's a whole lot of amazing illustrations to get rid off! a piece of history they are willing to throw away!

So apparently they have claimed books printed before this time contain inks with a lead base which is considered unsafe for children even though there have been no reports of books causing any harm to anyone with regards to the lead! I don't believe how they could do this! would they do the same if all books before 1985 had lead based inks? no I don't think so!

Makes me mad!

Vintage Books

Went to the annual city bookfair today and headed straight for the kids table finding several amazing vintage books with adorable illustrations. I have a large collection of these and have slowly been collecting a series of traditional tales illustrated by Maraja from the 1950's -there are quite a few of these and everytime I go to a bookfair I always manage to find another, so far I have four -very exciting today as I found another. (please excuse the fuzzy pics!)

I really like the style of drawing from these books from the 1970's, the first I found today and the second I got from a previous bookfair.

This I think is my favourite find of the day, a beautifully illustrated book of flower faries drawn by Janet Laura Scott, the images are so delicate with thin pen lines and watercolour fill.

Also came across a great little book called 'Sarah's Room' which is illustrated by Maurice Sendak -who illustrated 'Where the Wild Things Are.'

Kate Sutton -Illustrator

One of my all time favourite illustrators -Kate Sutton, her work has a certain naivety and simple charm which I adore. I particularly love her 'Consequences' range based on the childhood game of fold a piece of paper in three and each take a turn at creating a part of the body.

just a couple of my recent pieces to get the ball rolling......
You could say I've become slightly obsessed with my nanas garden, she has the most amazing range of flowers which have become a token part of my work to date.

(you can see more of my stuff on StylePortfolios -http://www.styleportfolios.com/portfolio.php?username=JessicaLeigh )

bits and pieces of me

Okay so bear with me as I try to navigate my way around creating a blog... this should be fun...? entertaining...? enlightening...?

So I'm at that stage where I've been out of Uni for a year or so now and wondering what I'm going to do with myself, when I bump into an old friend who suggests maybe start a blog, so here I am digging in and telling anyone who'll listen a little bit (possibly a lot to come) about me and what I like.

For some people this comes easy, that transition from Student to real-life worker and bill payer, unfortunately not so much for me. I have no idea what I want to do and where I want to go -only that whatever it is it MUST include some type of creative outlet involving colour, pattern, print & textiles.

So like I said, bear with me and I'll try to make this something interesting and intriquing for the both of us.