Because I can't find a rule saying Inchies have to be flat*

27 Feb 2011 Made with bits discovered lurking on my workbench yesterday when I was tidying up.

A scrap of left over grey striped fabric. A blue leather flower I picked up off the footpath weeks ago. And an itsy bitsy red park bench that came in a railway model I bought at Trash and Treasure in January (you can see another bit from the kit here)(*Not that I've bothered looking)

And now I'm exhausted

Good thing I just made the bed(ding)

That's not what I meant when I said "I should get the vacuum cleaner out this evening"...

(Yesterday's stripe, now in grey...)

A spot of colour on a grey afternoon

I've been playing with fabric printing again.Which means I have a pile of sewing to finish this evening...

Going green

With life round here returned somewhat to normal, today I worked on my January mini swap (which has morphed into a February mini swap.) I spent some time designing some basic fabric patterns in miniature, something that's been on my list for a very very long time.

Alas I won't have time to print them through Spoonflower for this swap, but the printer in my studio seems to be doing just fine for what I'm after...

(And I'm having fun playing with my new chair...)

Floored

Or should I say "flawed"?

Because although I discovered that thin felt makes it though the freezer paper and printer process perfectly, the end result is definitely not a permanent print. And I'm scared that if I try heat setting it with the iron like I do with normal fabric it'll just melt.

Not one to be stymied this early in the creative process, my next step is to find some wool felt and try again. The concept that I could be able to print a miniature rug of any pattern I want is just too alluring to give up this soon.

I also plan to do some experimenting with matte fixative. Or should that be "mat fixative"?

Watch this space...

Felt good

- Leaving work this evening and deciding, on a whim, to pop into town on the way home to see if I could find some plain flocked paper for an experiment I wanted to try.

- Parking in the paid carpark without wondering if I had enough money to pay for it.

- Randomly bumping into an old friend who I thought was still overseas. And having time to sit and catch up.

- Discovering, once I got home, that the piece of felt I'd bought (after failing to find the flocked paper*) does, indeed, go through the printer if attached to freezer paper. I'll share the results tomorrow but am super excited at a number of possibilities...

(*Try saying that five times fast)

Burnt out

Tonight I went to the opening of the Canberra in a Matchbox exhibition at photoaccess. My Inchie makes me feel all Brett Whiteley.

I arrived terribly early so went and sat across the road in Telopea Park.

Watching TV.

On my iPod.

(How very twenty first century of me....)

I think I need more sleep

I've started seeing pink elephants...

Calm after the storm

22 Feb 2011Going into major lockdown to get my project finished

23 Feb 2011 Travel and trepidation.

This morning I'm cleaning up the mayhem left behind:

(Yes, it's another picture of my studio looking like a bomb's hit it. But it's Thursday (I believe?) and it's been far too long since I participated in kootoyoo's My Creative Space)

Getting closer

And a random added thought: what happens if, like tonight, I actually prefer the final photo to the actual Inchie? The Inchie is lovely but, after trying to shoot it under artificial light and shoving it through Picture Manager* to try and pull the colour back to something close to normal, I end up with the photo above

The original photo?
(*My Mac went "Tic tic tic" when I started it tonight so I suspect I may have witnessed its death rattle but have no time to check properly.)

You knew I couldn't stay away for long, didn't you?

18 Feb 2011The dreaded Black Square of Inertia (or of being too busy doing other things)

19 Feb 2011Making big plans

20 Feb 2011 Keeping the madness in check.

And I just remembered yesterday was Saturday, when I was supposed to draw the calendar giveaway. So without any further ado:Congratulations, M1K1. Your calendar will be in the mail. As soon as I find it under one of the piles which have mysteriously appeared around here over the past few days...

It's all good...

In fact, it's better than good, but I do have to ask myself, why, when I'm scheduling two* major new and very exciting projects for this year and one* for next year (on top, of course, of creating an Inchie a day, working full time in a job where my brain gets stuffed with more new information each day and, apparently, running a website) does the universe decide now is the perfect time to land the opportunity of all opportunities on my head?

Which has basically cleared my (non work) schedule for the next week. At least.

Oh that's right. Because I like it.

Excuse me, I'm just off to bang my head against a wall, breathe deeply, pull out a new notebook to start some major scheduling and planning. I may be a little absent round here for the next week. I'm sure you'll understand...

(*I haven't mentioned these yet)

I found the money tree!

Today I received unexpected back pay from my old job. Talk about being paid to do nothing...

Donkey, OK?

Yesterday something happened that I've been looking forward to for weeks (no, not THAT, although it fits the bill, too)

I got an email from Canberra Theatre Centre telling me about a show I didn't already know about. Bliss!

Even better, it was The Dancers Company, the regional travelling arm of The Australian Ballet. I had to go! I rang a friend who I knew would enjoy it too, to see if she wanted to join me.

I got her messaging service: one of those whizz bang ten second voice to text thingos. I left a message.

When she rang back she was a touch perplexed. Apparently the service had decided that I was asking if she wanted to go to the ballot of Donkey, Ok?

Not the ballet of Don Quixote.

I'm tempted to ring her again and spout a stream of New Zealand place names and see how it copes.

An upper of a day

The Inchie (made of the mailing label fromthis!)

And, as I stuck today's inchie up on the board, I noticed

that it was exactly two weeks ago I saw the sneak peek pictures on the Uppercase website.

An august occasion...

This morning I met with ANCA to discuss curating their 20th anniversary show. In a (fairly typical for me) example of synergy, the opening date is August 12th.

I told them I might declare, if asked to curate any more shows, that I was only available for shows opening on August 12th. A unique selling point indeed but I'm not sure it will be a terribly successful ploy...

Miniatures on Monday

Two new-to-me blogs today:

First up, courtesy of Ampersand Duck, Miniature Artists' Books, full of papery not-quite-12th-scale loveliness (they're so beautiful I think we can safely ignore the not-quite-12th-scale bit...)

Then, via Junk Culture (don't ask how I ended up there, OK? I can't remember as there was a lot of surfing this weekend...) these miniature landscapes by Eszter Burghardt, made mainly of food...
A new modern dolls house from Ferm Living
And look! Someone else is doing Inchies:
Matthew Jones' work in thoughtworks at Bega Valley Regional Gallery. Do I see a weekend jaunt in my near future?

(Another fab Ampersand Duck link. Which reminds me that I don't think I ever shared the Paper Chipmunk link she sent a while back...)

Swaps on Sunday

With the calendars out of the way I got to spend today focusing on two mini swaps I've arranged: one now overdue (with permission), the other due at the end of the month.

They both have quite different themes so I've spent a very enjoyable few hours rummaging through my miniature paper ephemera boxes and online, gathering inspiration.

Tomorrow the making begins!

Commemorating the calendar completion

Which means I can now focus on my January mini swap.

Better late than never

At last, only 8 days late, may I announce my 2011 blogiversary giveaway?Up for grabs is a prize pack containing a full set of bookmarks covering the first six weeks of my 2011 Inch by inch challenge. And a copy of my 2011 calendar: (Which includes one now completely unnecessary January page.)

If you'd like to be in the draw to win this pack, simply leave a comment on this post and I'll draw a winner on Saturday 19th. As usual, I'll post anywhere in the world.

The now-verging-on-the-edge-of-becoming-a-habit Saturday Inchie catch up

(I'm OK as long as I don't do it a third time.)

First up, here's a much more successful rejigged version of the Inchie from 8 Feb 2011, which involved a scanner, Photoshop, a printer and a sticker machine:9 Feb 2011 and the very big sleep:10 Feb 2011. The Craft ACT opening:11 Feb 2011 was the National Library talk:And, although I feel like I've been lurching along at times, I finished week 6 without succumbing to a dreaded Black Inchie of Slackness.

A day of odd connections

I spent lunchtime today at The National Library, attending a fascinating lecture by Liam Wyatt about his time as Wikipedian in residence at The British Museum.

I was so inspired I thought he would be a great speaker for this year's National Digital Forum in New Zealand (you may remember I was fortunate enough to attend last year's as part of my Te Papa internship.)

Except, when I asked him if he'd ever spoken in New Zealand he said "Yes... at Digital Forum". Damn! Beaten to the punch. I couldn't remember seeing him on the programme though, and I found out why once I got back to work.

He presented in 2009. Damned Kiwis and being ahead of the the rest of the world when it comes to such things...
And I returned home this evening to discover an anonymous comment (thank, Anon!) informing me that a photo I took of National Library was used on the ABC blog today, illustrating an interview with the new Director General of the National Library.

So. Very. Tired.

Yes there are Inchies. Not yet photographed.

There may have been a nap after work yesterday, from which I awoke 8 hours later. At 1:30am. Just in time to go to bed.

Tonight there was a Thingy at Craft ACT, which is just as well, otherwise I probably would have come home and had another 8 hour nap. Followed by a 5 1/2 sleep (there is a difference, you know...)

Well that idea sank like a lead balloon...

My new mobile phone arrived yesterday and I spent the evening coming to grips with life in the 21st century.

My old Nokia 3310 lay, gutted and abandoned, on the corner of my desk and I had the sudden thought that I could use the keypad as part of my day's Inchie.

Except, it would appear, rubber does not stick to paper. And P-Touch tape doesn't stick to rubber. Well, not with the adhesives I was using anyway...

So yesterday's Inchie, so far, is a major fail:Oh well, these things happen...

On form

My life at the moment seems to be full* of form-filling and fact-checking (try saying that three times fast!)

I'd prefer it to be full of couch lolling and champagne quaffing but there you go.

(*Not quite full, actually: there seems to be room for random unexpected offers of potential creative-type projects for later in the year. And some exploration the idea of an exhibition early next year)

Slept half the day

Because I stayed up all night inhaling a TV series (as I'm wont to do)

Hello. I'm The Shopping Sherpa and I'm a "TV Bulimic"*.

(*Who doesn't actually watch TV.)

Armchair travelling

I spent some time yesterday afternoon going through my old trip diaries as I had to gather information about which country I was in and when. Stumbling across photos I'd forgotten I'd taken and reminiscing about adventures I had made it a very enjoyable hour or so...

A trip to the dolls house shop

I headed down to visit Victorian Dollhouses this morning to pick up skirting board (it had been driving me nuts that I didn't have any: you probably didn't even notice!)
While I was there I picked up some art supplies, and this crazy teacosy:

which I photographed next to my mug for scale...

Anne does lovely modern work, which I've shown you before.