Stylist in the House

One of my goals for this year is to be more proactive about sending out media releases so yesterday I made time to photograph some of our new products.

With the natural sunlight that filters through our lounge room windows, I can take decent photos with my Panasonic Lumix but thought I could use some help in the styling department.

Send in the troops! I invited my friend Julie Palmer to assist me because frankly, the lady oozes style! You may remember my previous post about Julie and her business Olive and Joy here.

This photo was me having a little fun but I really liked Julie pretending to sew the table runner at her antique Singer machine. The other props are all mine - yep, lucky me. You can view more images over at Julie's blog.

Our linen tea-towels are always popular and I will be listing the new ones on the website as time permits as I only have so many hours in each day. I already collapsed from exhaustion early last night.

I had to get up at 4.30 am this morning to pack everything to be freighted to Sydney and dropped it off at Melanie's at 7.00 am as we are both exhibiting at LIS.

Seeing that I was running out of time, I woke my man up at 5.45 am to help and had to bribe him with breakfast afterwards at The Wicked Sisters. Highly recommended!

I still have a lot to do before next week but am treating myself to a pedicure this afternoon because tomorrow evening I have a date to see this hottie. Is anybody else going?

Olive and Joy

Olive & Joy is a new on-line store that brings together the creative vision of Julie Palmer and her love of interior design. Many of you may already be following Julie's blog. I just adore Julie's style!

Here's Julie from the time she attended one of my screen-printing classes (more images here). We stayed in touch ever since, having developed a wonderful friendship and business relationship.

Let's find out more about Olive & Joy. Here is the story in Julie's own words:

We named Olive & Joy after our two maternal grandmothers who never met but whose grandchildren (Andrew and I) fell in love. Olive was my grandmother's middle name, also my great-grandmother's middle name and my mother's middle name. Joy is short for Joyce, Andrew's grandmother's middle name.

It was important to me for the name of my blog and now business had some special meaning to me. I also love the fact that the names also represent other elements such as colour (olive) and happiness (joy) so our customers can create their own interpretation on what he name means.

I hope that our business can bring some colour and joy into the homes of our customers through the items we stock. It's a lovely thought :)

Olive & Joy is inspired by handcrafted and vintage items with a ton of style thrown in! Whether it be an actual vintage item such as a refurbished chair or vintage vase or using an old method of printing such as the letterpress posters we stock in our store.

Hand printed fabric is utilised for most of our cushions from beautiful designs by Thea Samios (Julie's words) to the amazing vintage patterns of Florence Broadhurst. The quality and heart of hand printed fabric has made a great impression on me and is something that I would love to develop in terms of our own range in the future.

At the moment Olive & Joy stocks a great range of cushions, prints and upholstered ottomans. The range will expand to include lampshades, hand printed tea towels and carefully selected vintage items early next year. I enjoy the variety from screen printing fabric to sanding back an old chair and hunting down vintage items to stock in the store.

We are quite flexible on where Olive & Joy will take us in the future so we are going to go with the flow and see where this creative journey takes us.

Thanks Julie! I have no doubt that you will do very well. And I know that all you lovely readers support local and independent businesses, so off you go. Shop at Olive & Joy.

Rectangular cushion featuring Thea & Sami Marguerite design; hand-printed in black on natural linen for Olive & Joy.

All images are courtesy of Olive & Joy.

Screen Printing Yardage

Yesterday, we hosted our Open Studio and I would like to say a thank you to all the lovely blog followers and newsletter subscribers who visited.

Julie Palmer took some great pictures and has posted a thorough commentary on her blog, Olive and Joy, explaining the yardage printing process.

I was just excited as those who watched as it was the first time we printed our Peacock design on the Provincial Natural Flax, one of my favourite fabrics and a joy to print on.

For those who visited, you will be pleased to know that my partner in printing and life, has finally been taken to the hospital (by me) and will remain all week. He was limping around on an infected leg yesterday. He has been diagnosed with Cellulitis, brought on by his long flights recently but made worse by his refusal to seek medical help earlier.

This week we are supposed to be moving house but there are already delays with the settlement and I will have deal with that and all the other moving related hassles alone :(

I often wish that my life was simpler and a little more boring.

Photos courtesy of Julie Palmer.

Lessons Learnt

I'm going to share some lessons learnt from last Saturday's screen-printing workshop.

Lesson 1: Inspiration can literally come from anywhere and everywhere. This image of a laundry basket was the starting point for Julie Palmer's design.

Here's Julie busily cutting out her stencil.

Add a couple of birds and wow! This is not your average run-of-the-mill tea-towel. I see future competition here. You can find out more about Julie at her blog Olive & Joy.

The bird images were borrowed from fellow student Victoria Bansey, who I must apologise to for failing to get on film.

This is one of Victoria's cute bird prints.

Lesson 2: Using Permaset Aqua inks, you will need a 43T mesh screen for printing t-shirts and fabric. The "T" stands for the thread count per inch. Screen-printing with high thread counts will not allow ink to flow freely and will cause screens to dry out quickly.

Students often come from the Gold and Sunshine Coasts to our classes and we had a student from Germany last year but James Beattie has officially broken our record for travelling the farthest. He is visiting from England. James kept things simple with this abstract landscape print.

Lesson 3: Classmates make great screen-printing assistants if the teacher is hiding. James is holding the screen for Melissa Imsirovic who was printing her Ampersand design all over cotton jersey fabric. She will be sampling the printed jersey for her upcoming maternity wear range.

Lesson 4: You can easily print onto dark fabrics if you have the right inks. This was printed with Permaset Aqua Supercover inks. Although still water-based and solvent-free, they are not something I normally use for my fabrics as they are much more expensive and thicker than the standard range; fine for t-shirts but not so great for fabrics.

Lesson 5: Don't turn your back on your class. Students will kidnap your mannequin for their own evil purposes when you are not looking.

*Sniff* Bye Justine.

Screen-printing class update: Next 2 classes are fully booked but new date has now been listed for March 27th. Secure your place here.