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Surprise! It’s Friday! I really have no idea where my week went, but I suspect you’ll find it under a pile of eraser leavings and pencil shavings. I keep a tin full of them, I’m not even kidding. As for the picture, I wanted to share just how fancy I am. Even when brushing one’s teeth one must maintain a semblance of fanciness. Mine can be found in the spittle of toothpaste on my upper lip. D: If you’re on dailybooth you should add me!

Enough of that, how about this:

• Esther Coombs does amazing doodling on tea cups. If you know me, you already know that I’m so hot for teacups AND doodling, so I was rather struck with the vapours when I came across Esther’s work. You can buy her doodly crockery on etsy but this lovely specimen is long sold

• I love most of Steven Meisel’s photographs, and this one is tres fancy. Neat hedges? Check. Black gown? Check? Incredible headwear? Check? Secateurs? Check. Rightio, let’s go bask in our fabulousness.

• This is my type of coffee table book. You can call me an ironic jerk, I don’t care.

• My lovely friend Kathleen, who is a fellow fancy lady, took this photo with her iPhone. I was shocked. What kind of world do we live in where most of us can have access to such amazing technology? A PRETTY AWESOME ONE. Who’d want to live in the past? Certainly not me. Of course, that’s my whimsyfscking type over the top, I couldn’t resist!

• These are my feet, totally reeking of fancitude. Sorry about the blurry picture old chaps, but I don’t have a snazzy iPhone I went to the shops and people stared at me. This is just how I roll. I can’t decide whether to call this look “Nana Chic” or “Nana Glam” – how about you decide?

I just picked up three of my beautifully framed pieces from Bizarre Framing and dropped them into KILN Gallery for The Illustrators show, a group exhibition I’m so chuffed to be part of. I saw Nigel Buchanan’s gorgeous giclee prints lined up against the wall, and said hello to Shaun Campbell and his fancy car as he was bumping in an installation. The show also includes Jim Tsinganos, Brett Lethbridge, Ron Monnier, Courtney Brims and Lucia Masciullo – some incredible names in Australian illustration that I’m rather honoured to be included with!

Now I shall present to you a taste of The Illustrators!

Nigel Buchanan

Jim Tsinganos

Shaun Campbell

Brett Lethbridge

Ron Monnier

Courtney Brims

Lucia Masciullo

And little old me!

Come and take a look this Friday night if you’re local. Tomorrow the KILN site should show all the pieces in the Illustrators show in the online gallery, so if you’re in an art buying mood you can get a heads up! The show runs from Friday 31 July for three weeks.

I’ve said it before, I’m very lucky to know Kate O’Brien and even luckier that we can muck around in her studio. We ended up going for a 1980s portrait studio vibe replete with vaseline screen filter and bad perm. Then I applied my pens to create Fancy Lady magazine: Australia’s leading monthly periodical on fancy beauty, fashion and lifestyle.

I changed my Twitter user picture late last night, and since then I’ve had a gamut of reactions from “THAT’S AWESOME” to “that makes me vaguely uncomfortable”. For some reason, I have a tendency to relish in making people feel uncomfortable. Maybe Kate and I should do a whole series of really skeevy portraits, and actually compile a real Fancy Lady zine. haha!

In this exciting installment I divulge five more names from my list of the world’s up and coming awesome folk. They dabble in writing, modelling, designing, entrepreneurship, art and being pretty cool.

Heidi – writer and fat celebrity

Heidi has to be one of the sweetest and most honest people I have ever met, even if we’ve only hung out via email and IM and never shared a coffee. Over the past few years, Heidi is one of the amazing people who have provided me with support and love, not just for my career but personally and emotionally too. Last year I collaborated with her to create the “Pretty Face” t-shirts – a reaction to one of the lines often heard by fat people. Dammit, of course I have a pretty face, there are no buts! (You can buy the Pretty Face shirts from her etsy store!)

Chloe McGenn – artist

Chloe started painting last year, and I have been amazed at her progression! She paints cupcakes and animals and other things in a very whimsical and colourful style, and is now selling greeting cards with prints of her original artwork on them.

Anekie – model and designer

Ms Anekie is a most delightful young lady, with various talents that extend to being incredibly photogenic and creating beautiful garments. She also has a kick arse sense of humour – something I rate very highly! See the dress in this photo? Anekie made it and modeled it, and Kate took it… it’s amazing to know I live so close to such talent.

Jesha Rowlands – t-shirt entrepreneur for Owl Movement

I have only known Jesha for a short period of time and already knew how great she was, but it was only recently that I discovered that she ran Owl Movement: a t-shirt company that specialises in chronically adorable gear for your top half. Because I am totally the sort of person who is impressed by this kind of thing… Owl Movement’s shirts have been worn on tv shows like Veronica Mars, VH1’s Best Week Ever and Top Chef!

Natalie Tan – illustrator

I met Natalie through Tumblr only in the last few months, but I very quickly came to adore her personality and her illustrative style. There’s a lot to be said for young women who put it all on the line, and I think Ms Tan’s star will rise pretty high because of her kick arse attitude.

I present to you four more of the most awesome people around, including a musician, burlesque star, jewellery designer, writer and photographer! They all have my seal of approval

Sharon Walker – jewellery designer for Kittycat Black

Sharon’s polymer clay sculptures caught my eye years ago, and I got to know her through our hugely irregular but always fun Stitch n Bitch sessions. She is a huge role model for me, being incredibly focused and driven to make her business succeed and caring for a growing family as well!

Chelsea – “Erin GoBraughless” with Big Star Burlesque

Chelsea is a hot redhead who performs with Big Star Burlesque as Erin GoBraughless, the daughter of a potato farmer and a whiskey heiress whose three passions include drinking, fighting, and dancing. I think Chelsea has huge balls to do what she does – recently she even performed in a bacon bikini!

Melissa Maples – writer and photographer

Melissa has a fabulous way with words, and she is my go-to lady on what I can and can not do with the English language (though I probably fall foul of these rules daily!) She blogs about living in Turkey, and posts photos of garments with hilarious slogans available for purchase by the discerning tee collector at her local bazaar as well as other very beautiful shots of Antalya and surrounding areas. Melissa and I are suspiciously similar in personality, which is probably why I think she’s so great!

Bryn Ridd – Twist Oliver, Twist

Bryn plays the synth for Brisbane band Twist Oliver, Twist, and has always been a lovely supportive friend. He manages to have the most fabulously groomed facial hair, and always makes me laugh! Bryn also does film, photography and painting. Oh is there no end to your creative scope, sir?

I have a lot of talented friends, and I only realised it when I sat down and thought about writing profiles on all of them to share with you here! I have friends who are photographers, artists, designers, models, performers, publishers, writers, musicians and activists. For most of these guys, I’m lucky to have fallen into their company as just a “friend” while others I met in a professional sense and then we developed a friendship. Because there are so many, I am going to break this up into a series of sorts, to allow you to digest the sheer amount of talent and creativity I have around me!

Tea Tasbihgou – jewellery designer for Sacré Coeur

I met Teayam online so long ago now! She does heaps of creative things – illustration, modelling and jewellery design. She recently started up Sacre Coeur, and creates steampunk styled accessories out of the most beautiful found objects. Of course, I chose the above image because there’s a paisley pendant in it, muahaha!

Mark Payne – artist and designer

Mark and I struck up a friendship on Red Bubble when he sent me a ffffound invite (no sorry guys, I still don’t have any and even if I did I’d give it to one of my mates!) Since then he has been one of the biggest supporters of my art practice – he even won the auction for my drawing at the Brisbane Twestival! His graphic work is beautiful – foreign worlds of fragmented and dizzying objects twisted like bright alien car crashes.

Kate O’Brien – photographer

I had the fortune of befriending Kate a couple of years ago when I was planning my wedding. I had admired her vintage-esque photographs for a while, and nervously emailed her asking if she’d like to photograph our wedding – she agreed and we became friends! She has also never done another wedding since

Ashley Moyer – fat activist and Chunky Dunk organiser

It may or may not come as a surprise, but I am fat and I am a fat advocate. Ashley is one of my fat activist friends: she has been a cheerleader and is running Chunky Dunk in Portland this year. Chunky Dunk events are private pool parties for people of size and their allies, and were started last year to provide a shame-free venue for swimming, bathing and bomb diving for fat folk. I really want to be Ashley when I grow up, and start Chunky Dunk parties here in Brisbane, Australia!!

Stick around for the next few days to cop a load of my other talented friends!

I thought I’d post some of the work that was in the Drawing Room show which was curated by Audrey Kawasaki. I was really really excited when I first heard this show announced, because three of my favourite Australian artists were included.

Lilly Piri – Cherry Bees

Catherine Campbell – Gudrun and Ursula

Eveline Tarunadjaja – Ugly Duckling

I really really really really want to get to a point where my work is good enough to join these lofty ranks, I admire the hell out of these women and their work.

And this is the amazing drawing room that Audrey created in the gallery window – she said it ended up being very similar to her room!

Secret Anatomy of a Young Girl by Elsa Mora

Elsa Mora’s work just continues to astound me. She is an artist whose work I can fall into for days, and I would never come out except for coffee and biscuits (Scotch Finger, yum). She has just issued a new series of prints based on her delicious paper cuts in her etsy store.

Further to her awesome talent – she just seems like such a beautiful person just going on what I’ve gathered from reading her blog! You should add her if you like beautiful paper crafts – she doesn’t just create amazing cuts, some of her work is incredibly sculptural too. You just want to touch it. And maybe play with it a little.

I’m seriously toying with the idea of pulling out the credit card… I wonder what Nick would say (eep!)

Drawing Day was FUN on Red Bubble! thickblackoutline and Natalie Tyler graciously hosted the Drawing Day group, and even had a mini-challenge to draw a new avatar in the forums.

Drawing Day Aftermath by Mui-Ling Teh Read Full Post

Here are my favourite picks of the bunch over on the Drawing Day group on Flickr!

by Michelle Mia Araujo

This is my favourite drawing of this set. I wish I could favourite it 100 times over! More Drawing Day/ Flickr contributions are behind the cut.

Stay tuned for the Drawing Day/ Red Bubble post!

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