A happy workshop

This is what we like to see... happy people in the workshop! It's not hard to take a photo of our chief sewing expert Claire... she is always smiling. Which makes us happy too! You can see our cutting table, tunnel dryer (for fixing textile printing ink) and just in the background our rotary screen printing press. Most of our equipment is on castors so we can move it around in our limited space.

Workshop Viewing - new lampbases

Look at these lovely lampbases! Each one is different as most are turned from reclaimed timber posts. One of these in the centre (No.5 counting from the left) is a sheoak stand and it's very unusual due to its size. Sheoak grows with small branches and trunk so you don't often find pieces this large. It has a beautiful wavy grain.  We oil the wood with an organic orange oil which makes it feel silky and brings out the grain.

Workshop viewing

Custom wildflower magnet set in production on the work bench today. This set is designed for the Port Hedland Visitor Centre based on Pilbara Wildflowers.

Sketchbook viewing - the Edge

I make tabs for different sections and subjects!

Sketchbook viewing - Sketch to onesie

 From sketch....

to organic onesie printed in our workshop with eco-friendly water based inks.

New sketchbooks

Even though we have a shop, we are notoriously bad at shopping. We love very old things and very new things but always consider who made it and how long it's going to last. We can be both impulsive or take months to make a decision. However, we so have a weakness for books and one of us has quite a vast collection of potential sketchbooks (I WILL get through them all).

I couldn't resist these two which I bought at Montage Pop-up store over the weekend. Using vintage maps, charts and musical covers, they are extremely well made and hardback covered. I wanted them all, but in the end came away with these two.

Now all I have do is draw in them and make sure I don't mess up the first page. For anyone into creating sketchbooks you will understand this point. Often I will leave the first two pages blank and come back to them later when feeling a bit more confident :)

Sketchbook viewing - drawings for Kings Park installation

People ask me if I draw these in pencil first... nope! I like to draw in black pen. If I go wrong I start again or let the drawing develop and try to resolve any composition as I go along. This really comes from when I studied at art college and my tutors used to comment that my sketchbooks were always more interesting than my final designs! So now I use the drawings straight from my sketchbook and enjoy taking the risks with the pen. From here I scan my drawings and they are developed into a print.

Sketchbook to product

Books

We love books... which is why we stock a very select few that we like. 'Ten Tiny Things' and 'My Super Hero' are both written and illustrated by local people. Chris Owen teaches at Coolbinia Primary and lives in North Perth and Kyle Hughes-Odgers is a Mount Lawley based artist. Meg McKinlay and Moira Court are also both local to Perth.

Leather notebook covers

New leather notebook covers made to fit moleskin note books perfectly. Hand-dyed vegetable tanned leather engraved with three different designs. Perth, Conveyors or Wildflowers. Stitched perfectly in Perth.