oh blog how I neglect thee

dear blog, it's been 1 week since my last posting. I've been busy and haven't had any good photos or stories to tell. I'll try and be more regular, well maybe....



So this will hopefully be of interest, especially to our Melbourne friends.
We are having a wee exhibition beginning september 24 of old toys and games etc. It is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival and these are our invites fresh from the printers. Please let me know if you'd like to come and (if you're in melbourne) I can send you an invite or two. Please leave a comment or email with your postal details. And sorry to overseas folk I'm not that generous in the postage department. I'll no doubt be reminding you all of this in the coming weeks on this here blog. And maybe a sneaky preview.

oh etsy how I neglect thee

our wee etsy shop has been a little barren of late. I hadn't checked and all of a sudden some things were out of date and poof (as in a puff of magic smoke) they had disappeared. So to make amends I have uploaded this collection of three cards made by me.
They're a digital collage / print sewn onto cards, packaged with an envelope and in a cello bag. The graph paper used in the background came from my Grandad's shed. He once worked at a stationary shop and me being the hoarder that takes after him, I now have a pile of old exercise books, out of date calendars etc. Oh well Grandad at least someone is now using them. One diary is from the year I was born. 1972. Jeepers we hold on to ridiculous stuff.

not so nice...

Yesterday (being our weekend), the three of us trammed it into the city to see the Art Deco exhibition on at the NGV. Of course things didn't quite go to plan. No sooner had we made it to the city, Arthur was hungry and needed the toilet. So a quick detour for coffee (for us) and vegemite on toast for Arthur and we walked to the NGV. As with most 3.5 year olds, walking long distances can be slow going and tiring for all involved. A lot of the time Arthur ends up on my or Nick's shoulders to fasten the pace. We had maybe taken 5 steps in the door of the gallery, with Arthur on my shoulders and not even making it to the counter to buy our tickets, when the cloakroomm attendant told us off. ..."it's gallery policy that you can't have children on your shoulders"... I looked at her dumbfoundedly and instead of asking what the ***? I took Arthur off my shoulders, looked at Nick and we both decided to forget the Art Deco exhibition. Since when do galleries make such policies and for what reason? Maybe someone out there can enlighten my obvious naivety. I would've thought that tired children on shoulders was a better alternative to running around, screaming ones trying to touch artwork. But hey what do I know. Life seems to be made of a load of stupid rules at time. Last week Nick got told off in our local park by a council officer for having our dog off the lead. There's no signs saying that it's not allowed anywhere. But I'm guessing that a dog playing ball with it's owner is a bit better than junkies and alcoholics in our innercity parks
I promise I'll be in a better mood for my next post.

calling Dr Feelgood..

I'm quite sure I'm unable to relate these 2 photos to each other, but they were both part of yesterday, so it's kind of a start...
It was dreary weather in Melbourne yesterday morning when we headed to the market as Arthur decided he was up around 5.30am. It was fairly depressing and not too many second hand gems for us (or our shop either). Except Nick scored the Dr Feelgood album, by Motley Crue. So we've been channeling the big hair bogans in us from yesteryear, with Arthur jumping around on our bed to Kick start my heart. How ace is music, when you haven't listened to a song in years, it can instantly bring you back to a time your life that you had put aside in your brain somewhere.....much like the toys we used to play with when we were a child. I think I had mentioned that I was getting around to framing some photographs of squeak toys to sell in the shop. I've managed two so far.... Yeehaw I did it. Who would've thought you could segue from Motley Crue to squeaky toys. Nice. Maybe I should get a job at Today Tonight or a Current Affair. They're 2 current (ahem) affairs programs here in Australia who are notoriously bad for linking the unlinkable stories together.

dust, stuff & procrastination

Or should that be stuff the dust, I'm procrastinating? The down side of collecting all sorts of things is the need to dust. Dust likes stuff. I like stuff, but I don't like dust. Although I think I'm good at procrastinating.
I spent around 2 hours dusting and cleaning our bedroom last night and I'm still not completely finished. Damn those big ikea shelving units. Oh well, now that I'm in the shop today I can dust here too, or not and upload photos to flickr and blog about dust and you can peek at our stuff.

hello cushions

We have recently added some very ace cushions to the shop from bonjourmoncoussin. They've travelled to us all the way from Bordeaux, France. You may have seen their cushions around about many a blog of recent. I'm trying to remember where I saw them first....I know that I placed our order and then saw them here. Today I will be photographing and adding a few of their cushions to our bigcartel shop.

I wonder what happened?

This photo was taken a few years back at bernie's car yard in Flemington. Nick and I used to go there and wander around and dream about cool old vintage cars pre Arthur. In somewhat interesting turn of events, Lombards ( paper / party supplies ) next door went up in smoke, so long car yard and hello urban development. Bernie used to (and maybe still does) hire vintage cars out to tv and movie production. Inside the yard he had a great collection of memorabilia. I printed this photo up for an exhibition a while back, but didn't end up exhibiting it, so it's been living under the stairs. Today I felt like putting it in the shop, because I can. Oh and by the way there still is a bernie's car yard, now in South Melbourne, but it's no where near as ace.

holy smoke batman

Arthur has spent the last 24 hours dressed as Batman. This morning was no different with him jumping around the house in his batman suit on a bouncey ball hopper thingamy. Kids in costumes are pretty cute.
Yesterday I spent a wee bit of time dusting in the shop, which led to a bit of rearranging, pulling a small shelf off a wall out the back and utilising it for a card display. I love cards and have been making and buying more than a few for the shop. Running out of horizontal space I decided that it was time to go vertical without having to buy some fancy rotating card display.

camera gremlins

My camera has been playing up. Sometimes working, sometimes not. Darn digital age. It wasn't exposing, which I can't really fathom given that it don't work with film. ie: the picture on the back of the camera was black. (And yes I had the lens cap off).Shutter was working etc. I rang the camera clinic, have to bring it in...hmmm the delay to even take a peek at it was around 10 days. Jeepers 10 whole days without my camera. I still have my film camera, but there would be no blog / flickr pics. So I took the lens on and off, battery in and out, blew on it (how very professional and hi-tech of me) fogged up the mirrors. And lo and behold, she's working again. So I've taken a pic of a new little arrangement. Liana's jewellery has been living in the glass counter ever since we opened so I thought it was time to break her out and how sweet it goes with our vintage stacking cups.