Coffee!

I think Melbourne smells like coffee.
There is even a coffee expo. I got involved in it too – Me and two more artists had to decorate the coffee machines for an upcoming auction. If you know anyone planning to open a cafe in Australia – tell them to come and have a look on those Italian (of course!) machines.
This was one of the sketches – coffee monster, but together with the client we came up with another idea.

After that there was some stencil cutting.

And spray painting in the basement.

And more stencils.

And markers.

The result! Well, it is jut front panel, hope to get the picture of the whole machine.

And the monster? It became a greeting card!

Flip Flops

It was an early (for an artist) morning, I was still sleeping and then the phone rang. Unknown number. I answered. It was Nick from Etiko, who told about how they saw my designs somewhere and got contacts and would like me to make some drawings for thongs. At that time I was still very new to Australia. I am still afraid of speaking with people via phone, because sometimes I just don’t understand. And then. I was still sleeping. What? Why? Thongs? The only thing I could think of was… underwear thongs 🙂 

But it was all about Australia’s favorite footwear – flip flops. I had to create few designs each of them represents some organisation or charity project.  And everything is fair trade made!

It took me a while to take a picture of finished product but there they are.

See the koala! We were camping, koalas were roaring all night, so I look not very fresh in the morning, but I have nice footwear at least!

Get them there!

Tags

There are so many nice blogs and websites with some fun DIY projects. Sometimes it feels that it would be nice to make something. But what and why? And now I had the reason – I made some t-shirts and needed some hang tags.

This is how I did it. First – cut the cardboard.

Put it in a neat pile.

Spray paint the sides. If you try this – don’t forget:
1. to do that in a well ventilated room or outside;
2. cover everything around with newspapers;
3. cover the top card with peace of paper if you don’t want to paint it;
4. put something heavier on top of the pile;
5. spray from +-30cm distance.

When it gets dry, I just stamped both sides. This stamp is laser cut, but you can make a stamp yourself.

I made a hole with a thick needle. It would be nice to use a hole puncher, but this cardboard would kill almost any puncher.

About stamps – I don’t have pictures of smaller stamps now, maybe another day, so there is a big stamp I made for paper bags. Too big for stamp pads, so had to apply paint with that rolling thing. Have no idea of it’s name.

Funny thing – I made tens of these bags with red paint and it didn’t get dry even in a week.

Well good news – paint dries in a sunshine in an hour. S I had to hang all bags on a clothes dryer outside, something like 7 bags at a time. It took a while because we got sun only a few hours in the morning now 🙂

Blue Island Press cards

One day I received a little parcel. It was a collection of cards made by Blue Island Press – a company printing and selling greeting cards. And they have chosen some of my designs to be printed too.

Now the nice part: they have cool backs.

They are printed on a very nice paper – see the close-ups.

And they will be sold even in Bath, UK.

Bath during winter.

And I got an email from them about my cards being accepted in the shop of Gallery NSW. Oh yeah!

And another good thing – I’m still making and selling my cards myself and in small local boutique shops.