Wedding Keepsake - Ross and Cesar

Ross is one of my most fun and oldest friends from my Uni days...and despite our distance (he lives in New York) we remain good friends albeit via social media and the odd overseas package.

I wasn't able to make it to Ross and his now husband Cesar's uber hip wedding in New York almost 2 years ago now, so I wanted to make something special to commemorate their wonderful day. Something that they could hang in their cosy brownstone apartment in Brooklyn.

It gave me a chance to indulge in my most favourite pastime of hand drawn lettering and to come up with something personal and unique.

I could have just made them a normal print on paper but I wanted to amp up the special on this one. So, I got it printed at Onstone, a great local business who print on a stone compsite surface and use upcycled materials to frame the printed surface. Creating a one of a kind piece with its own character and charm.

Logan's Birth Announcement/Thank you card

There were lots of things I knew I wouldn't have time for after Logan was born and I was ok with that. However, I had one thing that I wanted to do and that was to design and make Logan's birth announcement/thank you card. Making my own cards is my thing, i do it every year for Christmas and for Birthdays and other occasions when I can. So, this was not negotiable. This was a once in a lifetime thing and I wanted them to be special.

So amongst the haze of the first couple of months I sat down with my sketchbook and tried to come up with a cute idea to commemorate and celebrate Logan's first few months with us. My general lack of energy and lack of sleep did nothing to help my imagination and I nearly went down the pre-designed print off the internet route. Alas, my imagination kicked in and I came up with this little design. Super happy with the result, I felt like the old me was still in there and I could fit in some creative projects when I put my mind to it.

A mixture of hand drawn lettering and computer wizardry I came up with Logan's 'stats' for the front. The accordion style card allowed me to add a little summary page of Logan's cutest moments from the first three months (yeah it took me that long).  The addition of a twine bow parcel style bow and washi tape decorated letter L tag, made it look like a little gift.

It has taken so long to write about these its almost time for me to come up with some first birthday invites...! So exciting!

So this happened....

Yet again it has been longtime between drinks....when I say drinks I mean blog posts. I 'relaunched' my wee blog back in October last year but what I didn't know when I jumped back into blogging was that an extreme state of tiredness and general exhaustion was about to hit me like a bat and doing anything other than working and functioning would become hard. Blogging was not on my radar!

What caused this sudden lethargy? That would be the intense physical challenge of growing a tiny human. So yeah I had a baby back in April of last year! That meant I was pregnant through the hottest time of year in Australia and whilst I fared pretty well one week of over 40degree heat every day was a challenge. Despite lacking in motivation pregnancy and I became friends not BFF's but it felt like the 9 months went by in a flash! Although, I'm sure if you ask others I wasn't saying that at the time.

Fast forward to now and Shane and I are the proud parents of our little man Logan Fraser born back in April 2014. Nine months old already!

It has been a crazy whirlwind of learning how to take care of this gorgeous little human...except for a few bumps early on we are doing great and the little man is thriving.

Loving his first Christmas!

So much so Mumma is even getting some time to spend on things like blogging and creating...although I should probably be doing more things like cleaning and laundry. That can wait right...Mum needs some 'me time'! Which for me time is not cleaning bathrooms and ironing clothes!

Whilst, I don't plan to make this into a Mummy blog as I think there are plenty of those out there who are doing it better than I ever would, I plan to carry on as I did before. Writing about little projects, events and random things I find interesting. Which I would imagine will be baby/kiddie related from time to time.

Here's to my second...'relaunch' and return to blogging! I am excited. 

Design Files Open House - Hawthorn, Melbourne.

The Design Files Open House was back again this weekend in Melbourne and I was excited!  I dodged the gloomy Sunday weather to seek out the not so secret location in the backstreets of leafy Hawthorn. The colourfully decorated Mini peeking from the garage was just a taster of what was in store inside.

Kirra Jamison customised Mini tucked away from the Melbourne rain.
 

For the third year Lucy and her team at The Design Files have pulled together what can only be described as a truly inspired and unique event. Like the previous two open houses a unique home was selected as a backdrop for a carefully selected selection of some of Melbourne and Australia's best design and art pieces. With one big difference its not just to look at, everything was for sale.

This year colour was a big feature of the house with Dulux one of the major sponsors, alongside Mini, Jardan and Country Road. Each area of the home was accented by a bold colour wall which really made a feature of some of the hottest artwork around at the moment. Including pieces from some of my favourites Kirra Jamison, Rachel Castle, Lucas Grogan and Miranda Skoczek amoungst many others.

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Sadly, my pockets were not quite deep enough for what was hanging on the walls! Never fear there were still plenty of more affordable items on show including dependably fabulous textiles and homewares from Melbourne favourites Bonnie and Neil, a new range of accessories from Homework, new project from Lara Davies and Jess Wright of Harvest Textiles fame!  A couple of new discoveries for me were the small desk accessories and objects from Studiokyss and the delicate glass work from Amanda Dziedzic.

I could quite easily ramble a lot more about all the wonderful things on show, but well why bother when you can go check them out on the Supplier page on the official Open House website.

Wonderful lights in the garden bobbing around on bamboo supports just like flowers in the breeze.

Sadly I only managed to snap a few shots with my trusty iphone for instagram as it was so busy but check out the professional shots from the house at The Design Files.

Look out Sydney you guys are next located in Surrey Hills from 5th - 8th Sept

Modern Calligraphy with Lulu Lucky and Blog Society

I remember when I was young getting a calligraphy set for Christmas, I am not sure what came of that set but needless to say I did not become a master calligrapher that year.   

Roll on 25+ years and the desire to learn calligraphy was still very much with me. To say I was excited when scrolling through Instagram and a post from the wonderful Blog Society announcing modern calligraphy classes with Lulu Lucky popped up in my feed!!  I was all over it and signed up straight away despite the fact it was up in Sydney. A week or so later a follow up post announcing another class, this time in Melbourne had me in a fluster emailing Jaclyn founder of Blog Society asking if I could switch.  A little reorganising and I got into the Melbourne class thankfully.   

Roll on to two weeks ago and I made my way to the Pop and Scott  workshop space in Northcote, Melbourne. Just walking into the studio, I knew it was going to be a good day. With Melbourne weather turning on its charm, the ladies had the fire stoked and our workspace decorated beautifully with fresh flowers and lovely finishing touches. Such a great contrast to the raw workspace we were in.

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Sitting down at the heavy wooden table, a brown box tied with a grosgrain ribbon awaited us! I almost didn't want to open it! You have to understand, to someone like me who revels in ribbons and packaging this is heaven! Diving into our boxes, Kara (aka LuluLucky) talked us through the bits and bobs. A cute little clipboard contained all the essential information to get started, a thick pad of paper full of possibilities, all the writing implements and the all important lettering guide.

Boxes await us! 

Lovely box of loot! 

We started by tracing the letter guide with pencil to get comfortable with the letter forms and the flow of the strokes of each letter. Harder than it sounds, it was very different to my normal writing style and was way harder than it looked. We hadn't even gotten to the ink part yet! 

Concentrating hard on tracing

A welcome break for lunch....such intense concentration makes you hungry you know! A yummy spread was provided and allowed us all to have a chat and discuss our successes and failures for the morning. Fed and hydrated we launched into the ink and nib! Oh my its really hard, not helped by the fact that I thought I was going to be a natural.

Ink practice... 

Kara assured us it can take a while and to just keep practicing until you find your style. Some of the class really were naturals, which did not help my cause. I will say though that sometimes it is the imperfections that make it great. In a world of technology, little ink splatters and wobbly lines gives it that handmade quality. That's what I say anyway.

Sadly, the class was drawing to a close and the room was full of the chatter of a room full of people now hooked on the art of modern calligraphy. I want to say thank you  to both Kara of Lulu Lucky for being so encouraging and of course to Jaclyn from Blog Society for bringing together a fantastic class! I cannot think of a better way to spend an afternoon.

I am practicing like a demon at home and getting slightly better and I think even finding a style of sorts.

Getting some style....of sorts! 

I'm back...!

Well hello all! What can I say it really has been a while, over a year since I posted with any regularity.   

I have to say I considered saying goodbye to my little corner of the internet, because frankly I was so overwhelmed by all the wonderful blogs and images online, that I questioned why I even bother? Whilst having access to whatever you want online is great ,it can also create a feeling of mediocrity.

Anyway, I got over myself and decided to revamp things a little and thought so what I if I write this and only my Mum and friends read it! I enjoy doing it, right? So, from now I want to write about what I like and not what I think people will like. I'm not at the cutting edge of design so don't expect to read about it. It will be just an honest blog of things I stumble upon, Melbourne happenings and other general odds and ends. I have changed to a new site, moved away from blogger and now have my own web address www.littlelettersdesign.com!  My blog will be here, but I will start posting more photos in my galleries, news and events and a shop coming soon.

What better day to re-launch Little Letters than today my 35th Birthday! Happy Birthday to me and welcome back Little Letters!