I just adore textiles. There are so many new textile designers emerging in Australia and it's incredibly exciting for me because it's something I have always wanted to get into. I read the blogs of Kristin Doran, Lara Cameron, Danielle Smeets and Bianca van Meeuwen and besides the longing I have to own some of their fabric, I would love to be able to do similar things.




Kristin Doran's Dandelion Garden; Bianca van Meeuwen's Icy Blue Floating; Lara Cameron's Gingo in Robin's Egg; Danielle Smeets' Flower Garden in mustard yellow.



The whole process has been a mystery to me, but I know it involves screen printing - something I have done a bit of at university, but nothing as complicated as patterns printed on bolts of fabric! I have always been way too intimidated by the entire process to enquire, but lucky for me (and you?) Craft linked to an amazing blog post about how Marimekko fabrics are made and it has somewhat demystified things.... but those big machines sure look scary and expensive!

I may just be insane enough to simply get a silkscreen created and start doing it myself now! Does anyone have a long table and a garage I can borrow?

This strangely moves me... and by the way, how amazing is it that you can now post videos on Flickr?

I found it on TwitBuzz, after rediscovering my own neglected Twitter account. Join me! It's (reportedly) the cool thing to do. Maybe one day I'll Twitter about something incredibly embarrassing and instantly regret ever signing up for an account. And then I'll Twitter about that regret.

I have heard rumours that Twitter is addictive, but I'm still not convinced. Maybe because I don't have my sms messages enabled. Maybe because I'm not following enough people. I'm not sure what the magic formula for Twitter addiction is. Perhaps if I give it a chance, and let it invade my life, I will have no choice but to succumb?

In a Billy Connelly way of doing things, this brings me back to the above video. There's absolutely no way that there can ever be a "no news day" in this era, not when people can bug you with their micro-blog posts on your mobile phone!

Go to tedcreated.com.au, click on the GALLERY page and scroll on down until you see my piece of fabulosity. Click on it and drag the slider to "I'm diggin it!" You can vote every day, so keep going back every day to vote on mine!

I wish I could direct link, but it's flash :(

I went over to hang out with the fabulous Kate O'Brien today, to help her out on a shoot and to get me some wedding photos!

The conditions were incredibly trying on the day, it was almost about to storm and the winds were pretty much gale force, so by the end of the photos many of us were a bit grumpy!

If you're interested in this kind of wedding shenanigan, click through to have a look at a few more photos.

When I posted my entry about the beautiful Amelie's Petite Maison, I mentioned the Eumundi Markets and the story that I had to tell about our visit on that particular trip. On our visits to the Sunshine Coast, we seem to have fallen in to the habit of checking out the markets and luckily for us, we were staying mid-week so we could scope out the Wednesday morning market action. The markets are awesome, with lots of local makers, bakers, growers and sellers, and they totally beat any market I've seen happening in Brisbane for sheer scale and quality of the items available.

On this particular Wednesday morning, my husband (that's still weird!) and I had strolled through almost the whole markets without spending very much, as we'd totally blasted our credit card and available cash money in the lead up to the wedding. And then I clapped my eyes on an amazing colour plate from an early Snugglepot and Cuddlepie printing, and it was all over.


Aleta Jansen with a stunningly framed Tenniel illustration of the White Rabbit.

I spent the first five minutes gasping at everything I lay my eyes on... there were illustrations from so many children's books that I grew up with (vintage books that belonged to my mother and my aunties and uncles). I was literally biting my knuckle as the proprietor, Aleta, came up to greet me. We struck up an amazing conversation with both of us talking about beautiful books and artists and illustrations. She kept tempting me with illustrations, like the beautiful Beardsley pieces; however when she found out about my love for Alice in Wonderland, my Achilles heel had been struck.

On the back wall were Arthur Rackham illustrations from the 1907 printing of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I am pretty tough, but tears sprung to my eyes! Rackham's illustrations have entranced me for the longest time. Unfortunately, we just didn't have the cash to buy one of these beautiful pieces that were framed so lovingly however, there were a few smaller (and again, wonderfully framed) Alice pieces by John Tenniel from 1910, and while I don't have the same emotional connection with Tenniel, they illustrate key points of the Wonderland story that have played in my mind since childhood.


These two illustrations from CHAPTER VIII: The Queen’s Croquet-Ground were the pieces we ended up buying. Ever since I was a kid, I was entranced by the thought of a woman who could intimidate people so much that they'd literally paint white roses red just to make her happy; and of course, the croquet match itself, with the flamingos and hedgehogs - we played mock croquet for our wedding photos, so I had to choose this one as well!

Aleta and her husband were in the process of putting up a website in order to sell her wonderful collection of ephemera, so I had wanted to hold out until aletajansenartworks.com was online before posting this entry. I checked again tonight, and they have put up a front page so hopefully this means a fully functional site is not too far away. Please bookmark it and check back in the future, because she has a formidable wealth of knowledge about books and illustration, and is very skilled at tracking specific things down for her clients.

Let it also be a lesson to those of us who have had very old books in our possession with delicious illustrations from the ye olde times, but let them fall into disrepair or thrown them out. You could've been sitting on a goldmine! Indeed the early printings of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie are worth a mint!

Now that I have more time I'd like to be able to focus on contributing more to the knowledge base available for Adobe Illustrator on the world wide interweb tubes. If you have a tutorial request, or a simple question, let me know so I can start planning a series of posts on de-mystifying this fabulous piece of software.

You'll notice to your left, a piece I created all in Illustrator for the TED696 competition. Basically, you get to dress up a brown paper bag (I'm all about brown craft paper at the moment actually) for Toohey's Extra Dry. Dmote, Shepard Fairey and Luca have designed three bags to kick it off, and the first week's entrants are now in the gallery. When my entry is up I'll post about it again and implore you to vote for me every day! Mama wants a MacBook Pro!

In my design, I have included paisley motifs taken from my sketchbook and paintings and vectored them. I was always going to work on vectored paisleys but put it off because of the time involved and the complexity of some of the designs. Now I've started, it's almost like an investment in the future because I'm going to build up a bank of paisley motifs that I can include in future designs (including patterns for Naked and Angry!) Some of the Illustrator techniques I used in this piece include custom designed patterns and borders as well as extensive use of the pathfinder pallette (dividing, merging and cropping).

In case you hadn't noticed, I love drawing. I take a pen and paper everywhere just so I can doodle - I doodled through school and university, meetings (like the above), tv shows, and lectures from my parents! I was excited to find out from Jo on RedBubble that there is an international drawing day named "Drawing Day" that is starting this year on June 7! I hold the firm belief that everyone can draw. It's a learnt technical skill, not a mythical god given gift, and through a bit of study anyone can pick up a pencil and render a scene or a concept.

Drawing is a way of clearing my own mind, and it helps me to think through ideas as well as to be receptive to new ideas. My teachers used to scold me for "not listening" when they were teaching a lesson and I was furiously scribbling with my biros, when in reality I was listening very carefully and receiving absolutely everything they were saying. Once I explained it to them and recounted word for word the lesson that they were teaching, they were quite happy to let me doodle through their lessons. I've had the same problem when I've sat in meetings... but, hellooooo - I'm a designer!

There are so many ways to participate in Drawing Day 08, but the way I'm going to participate is by uploading my drawings to the Drawing Day flickr pool, and posting them here on my blog. If you're going to participate, comment here so I can post everyone's drawings in a special Drawing Day post! If you've never said hello before, this is the perfect way to break the ice :D

Paisley Hell - $300
504 x 609 mm

When I put these paintings up at the cafe my friend works at a lot of people online were interested in them. Fortunately for you, they didn't sell at the cafe (I suspect people didn't know they were for sale because my artist's cards were removed from beneath them) and I have picked them up, so they are available directly from me now.

I will gladly ship within Australia as well as overseas, but p&h will be extra and insurance is recommended. I accept PayPal, or Direct Deposit if you have an Australian bank account. All works feature painted sides, title of piece on rear, and are signed under "N.Baird".

Check out the other three after the jump!

This post is mostly for SEO purposes, but will probably be helpful for my general readership as well. In case you haven't caught up, I'm married now, and I'm going to assume my husband's surname in the good old fashioned way. So please remember, Natalie Baird is Natalie Perkins!

It's quite weird having to transition from one name to another, not to mention having to find some way to recycle my beautiful business cards! There'll be an easing in period of course, but I hope to have everything changed to Natalie Kate Perkins by the end of the month, when I get my official name change certificate in the mail!

I want to share some photos I took of the amazing cottage we stayed at last week. It's located in Montville, Queensland which is a two hourish drive north of Brisbane. It is part of a bed & breakfast adorably named The Spotted Chook and is fully self contained, overlooking a lush cluster of hills and trees - the best part is that you can sit in the spa on the balcony and appreciate the serenity! The cottage was decorated in a beautiful French country rustic style and was just the most fabulous place I have ever laid my head.

A while ago I collaborated with my amazing friend Heidi and contributed some of my artwork to her campaign. Now, the pictures of lovely pretty faces wearing the pretty face tshirt design are rolling in!


The drawing is based on Things You Should Say Every Day #1 and if you like it, buy a print from RedBubble and a tshirt from Heidi!

Basically, my illustration refers to (and reclaims) a "compliment" a lot of fat women have received... "oh but you have such a pretty face". Well, damn straight I do - but don't you go negating my body! Heidi is spreading the body love and intends on creating more tshirts to sell, including more of my own illustrations!

If you're interested, head over here to find out more.

I am not a cook, and usually I'm not even remotely interested in baking but on the odd occasion I will cook cupcakes for people that I adore. My friend had her birthday party last night and so I decided to make these braincakes for her to celebrate our love of the undead! I was pretty proud of the outcome, but professional cake makers will probably baulk!

My braincakes consist of:
Cupcake - based on the vanilla cupcake recipe from the Crababble Bakery Cupcake Cookbook
Intestine icing - white chocolate with lots of red food colouring
Brains and blood - marzipan and strawberry ice cream topping

I just had one then and it was pretty delicious, though I couldn't eat all the marzipan brain :(
Everyone seemed to love them last night, though I couldn't bring myself to eat one after baking them all afternoon!

I thought I'd post a little teaser of moments from our wedding on Saturday. It was an amazing day! We were all on the edge of our seats and hoping for the rain to hold out. Of course, it held out - but the wind was relentless in its quest to tear down all my carefully made pom poms and lanterns and make an absolute mockery of our hair styles.

The above photos were mostly taken by friends and relatives - but the big image was a teaser from my photographer Kate. It so happened that we were merrily having a game of imaginary croquet (well, the jack was imaginary!) and I stood square in some very real and not at all imaginary dog poo.

I promise to update straight away when I receive more pro shots!

Literally. The last two weeks have been super exciting, and not for the reasons that you might suspect!

A few days before the wedding my site hit its bandwidth limit, and after being stressed out for five minutes I just resigned to leave it until after the wedding. It turns out that quite a few of you really really like me! It is also apparent that I've been the target of spam attacks, which probably also contributed to the embarrassing downtime. I have my trusty technician husband (!) slogging through all the logs on the server to figure out what the real problem was, and then he'll explain it to me in 2 or 3 syllable words so that I then understand.

I've upgraded my hosting package which kind of hurts the old hip pocket to be truthful. In the past, I've been loath to consider advertising on my blog, but at the moment it's a very sensible solution for helping to solve the minor financial drain!!

Speaking of financial drains (oh, smooth segue!) we had our wedding on the weekend! But more about that later... ;)

Yes I am the poorest blogger in the world, but I'm a little preoccupied :P
I drew this last night as the inside cover page for our wedding guestbook.

I hope people doodle and write their memories and wishes all over the pages!