Search high and low for the strangely absent seller.
Find out the company is in receivership.
Hyperventilate.
Find a brown paper bag.
Ring hands. Pace.
Consider making a look alike.
Remember amateur toymaker status.
Ring hands. Pace…
Email Fiona at Hop Skip Jump (aka the cavalry)!

Bless Fiona, she makes the sweetest special friends (and gorgeous books). And she very kindly sent a little extra fabric so Rosie could have her own matching travellers bag to carry her Belizean passport, tickets, letter from her new friend ‘Little Rabbit’, photo of Sienna (to help recognize her) and an all important  snack.

The look on the birthday girl’s face when she answered the door was priceless!

The last shots show another birthday pressie, ‘Toot and Puddle’, a gorgeous book about best friends with different loves – One little pig who loves to go on adventures and see the world and one who celebrates staying at home. The illustrations by Hollie Hobby are beautiful and the sentiment just right. Who knows maybe Little Rabbit will decide to come home one day.

Whenever I’m working hard I get an overwhelming urge to:

• sketch the opposite of what I’m working on – ie: Alexander McQueen fashion .
• look up The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books List 
• read this interview with one of my favorite illustrators, JooHee Yoon.
• look up this Luke Nguyen recipe that made my mouth water as I watched him cook it
• and pin this one as an antidote to my early morning jogs…

Apparently this week procrastination has been working hard too!
Hope your week was great! x

I’ve been turning toddler dresses into preschooler skirts, all without eye of newt or a slippery toad – much to the disappointment of our budding zoologists who’d be more than happy to help me find either.
Feeling pretty chuffed at how sweet all three little skirts turned out and how you can’t tell that the bodice of each dress, which had been well dribbled and gooped on, was ever there at all. Love that! … Is that a wart on the end of my nose!?

In other news – just like magic my stitchy mojo has returned strangely coinciding with the arrival of this gorgeous fabric from Belinda. Part of a stunningly beautiful parcel of Gretchen Mist goodies she sent me just before my blog break.
I can’t stop looking at it. It’s so much better in real life than I can capture through the lens. All those sketchy details are lovely and the cloth itself is buttery soft. I’m going to have problems cutting into it for sure. Hmm … I wonder if Belinda has a wart on her nose?!  ; ) 

For more Creative Space hocus-pocus visit here.

Firstly, thank you so much for all your lovely well wishes. I’m happy to say all is well and a rubbish month is past.
I’m feeling surprisingly rusty sitting here typing away, but it’s nice to be back.

So, on to something a lot more fun. Recently I was approached by Shivani of My Owl Barn blog to participate in her Owl Lovers 2012 Calendar project. It’s a really sweet idea – 45 international artists submit an illustration, you choose your 12 favs, marry them with a month and Voila!  You have your very own free calendar.

So here is my first ever owl, the ‘sweet as all get out’ Eastern Screech Owl. His feathery coat has the most gorgeous pattern which camouflages insanely well when he is sitting in a hollow of his favorite tree. Some have feathery coats in silvery grey some in rusty brown. But the most surprising thing about him is how small he is. We don’t get these guys in Australia and I guess I imagined he was more of a Harry Potter parcel delivery size owl. In reality he can happily sit on your index finger … Awww!

Along with my snoozing fox he’ll soon be part of a set of four sleepy woodland creatures. Which will go into my Etsy shop set to open early Feb 2012. Eep! – dates can be scary things, must write that down on a calendar!

Spring has truly sprung. All the tell-tale signs are there – I have an awful *SNIFF!* snotty cold and the littlest possum and I have been madly cramming small jam jars with ‘suburban wildflowers’ (ie. a loose term including anything rangy that no one will miss).

I’m grateful for these scrappy little bouquets. I’m no green thumb, I have no lush borders erupting blossom – but I am working on making my foxy card part of a series of four sleepy woodland creatures. So it’s helpful to peer at the intricacies in each flower and steal design ideas from the best source possible. Of course the upside of having a cold is I can stick my nose right in each one; pollen hasn’t a chance of getting up there… Bees, however, are another story.

Hope you’re enjoying the changing seasons wherever you are. Happy Creative Space Thursday!