Today

Usually Friday is the most productive day of my week. I work in my studio all day, at least twelve hours but often more, and get a lot of drawing or printing done.

Today I accidentally took the day off. I went for a walk with Mum which turned into lunch with Mum, which turned into shopping.

After that I ended up at her house rifling through some of her childhood things while she sewed another pillow for her dogs after they chewed the last one to bits.

1. My mum's old salt and pepper shakers
2. Her and her brothers' childhood stamps, with beautiful little packages made from vellum paper. I love the classic design on the pastel book and letter card. There is also a receipt from Fosseys (department store) dated 1966!
3. Lovely little bundles of stamps. As I've said before, I am a total paper nerd, and these made me very happy!

I hope you have a good weekend! Hopefully you have a day off too.

Golden Kiwifruit

I tried my first Golden Kiwifruit recently. Being a huge fan of the green kind, I was a bit disappointed in the taste. It was too sweet, I love the tangy-ness of the green kiwifruit (I even eat the skin). Anyway, when the days get warmer I want to try this recipe for Kiwifruit pops. Have a great weekend!

Sneak Peek - Shop Update

I have been very busy over the last few days designing, carving and printing new greeting cards. This is the new "Congratulations" card in pink and blue to welcome new babies into the world! I will be printing these in more colours so they will be appropriate for any 'congrats' type situations but for now just pink and blue.

The letters are hand stamped because the letters I carefully carved into the design read back to front when printed (I overlooked the first lesson in lino printing, which is anything you carve in will print as a mirror image). I think it looks better now than it would have though, so happy mistake!

Pinterest picks

For those of us in the Southern Hemisphere (well for me at least), the winter months are dragging on and on. Harley brought up the idea of us heading on a road trip this summer, and since then I've been dreaming about sun, sand and the opportunity to wear less than three pairs of socks at one time. Until then I've been trawling pinterest for holiday inspiration.

1. Colourful popsicle
2. Ice Cream Truck - original source
3. Tide - original source
4. Umbrella by Vicki Dvorak

DIY gold painted deer.

I know I'm a bit late jumping on the 'paint something crap gold and call it gilded' train, but this little deer sits on my desk and the opportunity presented itself.

New hand printed card

A new card design added to the shop.

Blueberry & white chocolate buttermilk scones

Harley helped me bake these scones on the weekend, and we shared them with his parents. Believe me when I tell you they taste much better than they look! At first I thought the dough wasn't sweet enough, but when you find a chunk of half melted white chocolate the very slightly salty flavour is a perfect match. They are definitely best straight out of the oven.

RECIPE:
2 Cups self-raising flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
60 g (2 oz) butter
2/3 - 34 cup buttermilk (as much as you need to make a fairly soft dough)
And we added:
200g frozen blueberries
200g white chocolate

Adapted from Margaret Fulton's Encyclopedia of Food and Cookery (Hardie Grant Books)

Shop update

I have added a new "Neighbourhood" linocut block print to my shop. I made this print by printing on the paper surface twice, layering the ink after the first layer had dried.  It comes in two colour schemes: red and blue, and black and red