Shanghai Nights

I'm finally back in Melbourne from my 1.5 months worth of holidays! Spent most of my time in Malaysia and the rest in China. It was my first visit ever to China and it was split between Shanghai and a small town in Fujian, where my friend's home is based.

I knew that Facebook and Youtube are banned in China. But little did I know that most of the western/ english websites were banned there as well. Access to some (like job search engines, I know coz I was trying to apply for some) are still available however it was extremely limited. I couldn't even gain access to my own blog! Which explains my most recent hiatus from the blog...As to why the lack of posts whilst in Malaysia, let's just say that I was too busy going out, shopping and pigging out when I was back there ;)

This post is dedicated to photos taken during the evenings. The lights were absolutely beautiful that I just had to share it over here.

Story Me

My bestie from highschool is an amazing illustrator who is working in an animation company called Story Me near Bangsar. Just a week after I arrived in Malaysia for holidays she invited me over to her office. It is the best and most amazing studio and working environment I've ever seen. Her colleagues are friendly and down to earth. Always smiling and funny. I'm glad that her office offers such nurturing environment to work in. Their office is warm, comfortable and the deco has such creative and personal touch to it. Everyone works on Mac desktops and their library is consisted of books of illustrations and animations from Pixar, Disney and others. Also, who gets to have the TV on the entire time when they work? Well, them. They were playing Spiderman on their flat screen TV and I was seated on the couch in front of the TV, with full, floor-to-ceiling view of the surrounding towns and courtyard some ten floors below or something. The surrounding glass windows really opens up the office space, beautiful! I wouldn't even mind staying there! 

 

Sitting in front of the TV with a great book to read through :)

I love my sandals!

A Happy Ever After

Eileen and Joshua got married just a few weeks ago, coincidentally on my birthday. It was the most beautifully decorated and themed wedding I have ever seen. The newly weds held back little to make their special day memorable- they even had a huge, inflatable outdoor cinema, with special bean bag seats for the couple and a candy/ snack bar for the guests as we watched a short movie of the entire day's happenings. Then Joshua played the guitar and had Daniel sing for his new wife after the clip. The couple's first dance together as husband and wife followed after. Very romantic and heartwarming.

 

Congrats Eileen and Joshua! Wishing you both all the happiness in the world :)

The Exhibition

After months of planning and preparation, it was finally happening!

What an event it was at the opening night. Turn out was amazing. Despite the gloomy and rainy weather during the day, the rain cleared by evening. The exhibition looked great and we had lots of compliments and congratulatory emails forwarded to our lecturers. A (very happy and proud) graduate, finally!

The photos below were mostly taken on the day I was rostered to curate the exhibition so it was less crowded. I'd say nearly if not all of us showcased our final project for the year. We could do whatever we wanted so the outcome looks really diverse. I only managed to snap a few people's works. I shall let the photos do the talking :)

Triangles on the wall are the artwork from all of us. 

On the table are our really awesome catalogue booklets

Mara's handprinted lengths, Rachel's plant with a knitted cover and Sarah's plant on the right

 Cassie's handwoven bags

 Teresa A's digitally printed fabrics

 Celina's digitally and hand printed work

 Handmade shoes with woven fabric and pom poms! By Nerida

 Georgie's minimalistic and really versatile designs

 Hannah's beautifully illustrated and hand printed swatches

Hannah's family came over for a visit when we were curating. Her little 4 year old niece, Serena, was soooo adorable and very cheeky! Wouldn't allow me to take a photo of her properly

 Erin's multicoloured fabrics intended for fashion

 One of my favourite work from the exhibition by Marie

Rachel's illustrated postcards, gifts and souvenir ideas

 This has got to be my favourite by far, illustrated and painstakingly collaged by non other but Sarah!

Her work is absolutely amazing

Here's the designer herself. Just so happened we were curating at the same time.

Check out her blog here

 Here's my little corner on the opening night itself. 

My plate and cushion got cropped off the photo but you get the idea. 

They are a range of products that were all printed and made by hand, apart from the framed artwork. 

I love my tea towels :]

There you go. A short tour around our wonderful little exhibition. There's a group photo of us 27 girls as well but I'd post it up once Georgie's given me the go-ahead :)

One more day to go!

We started bumping in yesterday and will continue bumping in today as it's the opening night tomorrow already.  About this time three years ago I would have just finished my interview for this course. Now I'm at the other end of it. How time flies. Grateful that though these three years had been hard but definitely so fulfilling and worthwhile :)

We've put a lot of effort in organizing for our end of year show. We baked to fund raise this entire year and trust me, baking is the last thing many of us think during the uni weeks, there was already too much to do. Yet many of the girls put aside their own time just because this means a lot to us. This is only a very small part to the planning of this show. There were lots more that we did along the year till this point. Finding a gallery, looking for sponsors, designing and printing invites and catalogues, laser cutting, business cards, cleaning, mopping wiping, painting etc. Not to mention we also just had the Moonee Valley exhibition just last week. 

Well, it's finally all coming together now and it'll be a great celebration for all of us of what we've achieved so far. Great work ladies!

Here are some photos I took of the bump in yesterday. Probably got a bit carried away with the camera apps on my iphone. 

Our graduate exhibition runs from 1-7 Dec, Tues- Fri 11am-5pm. Opens on Saturday from 12pm-4pm. Hope to see you there :). Oh it's free too. The more reason to come!

twentyseven

Took this photo while we were putting together the twentyseven catalogue. Exciting!!

Folkå

Ta-da! Here's the debut of a small part of my final project on the WWW.

The theme for Folkå revolves around a fictional character of a girl in the shape of Suzannah (illustrated above), who lives in a rural part of Eastern Europe and leads a humble and traditional farming lifestyle. I've produced a range of home and living products including cushions, tea towels, a mug, plate, framed artwork and a tote bag based on this story. It is an entirely illustrated project by yours truly. It wasn't easy but all I can say is the results are pretty cool. All the motifs and artwork on the products paint a picture of her home and way of life :)

We'll be having a graduate exhibition so you could come check out my work and range for this project.

Our exhibition is named twentyseven at Fitzroy Gallery, 274 Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy VIC.

Check out our exhibition website cleverly done by Sarah Strickland. In it will have details of each one of us graduating this year. Sarah's work is illustrative and really beautiful. Definitely worth checking out!

Opening night on 30 November 2011, running through from 1- 5 Dec 2011, Tuesday to Friday: 11am – 5pm Saturday: 12pm – 4pm 

Love to see you there!

Screen Printing

The past 8-10 weeks have been really intense, to say the least. We had to aim for quality in every single bit of our work. For my latest project, there were both quanlity AND quantity. Have been working on my final project and port folio for at least 8 hours per day, easily reaching 12 hours and beyond in the last month. Stress levels were at its all time high during mid semester but they were managed by lots of planning. 

I plan and write down what I need to do for the day/ week pretty much every day, up to 2-3 times a day. A little excessive really. But it really does make you feel SO good every time you finish and cross each item off. I could have easily crossed off (or rather vigorously inking them till I couldn't even see the words) more than 150 (detailed) items in the past week. Planning has been keeping me on track and helped me work methodically for the past one month or so. 

In this post I just wanted to share a bit of my process. I've been in and out of the printing lab for the past two weeks. It's a place that I love and sometimes hate. I hate it when things don't work my way, especially when certain tedious and time consuming processes had to be repeated just coz something that was out of your control went wrong. That happened quite a few times to me. Felt like screaming coz everyone was running on strict deadlines. 

Another thing I could hate is colour mixing and testing. Testing colours could easily take an entire day. And when all work is finished and the printed fabric was taken to be steamed or heat pressed, the colours might darken/ lighten or worse, turn yellower/ greener etc. That happened to me. But there wasn't time to redo coz it could mean repeating a day or week's worth of work, depending on how many colours went wrong. 

What I do love about screen printing is, despite all that could go wrong which you might have to painfully repeat, the results can be absolutely amazing. Even better than digital printing in some cases. Not to mention the fun part of printing. Love it!!

Seems like this would be my last time ever that I'd be screen printing in my life. I just can't see when or where else I could hand print design work apart from uni and this is already the last week of my course. 

So here are a few shots of me screen printing and what I've been up to. 

 Colour mixing with pigments. A process very much like mixing a cake batter using a spatula.
Colours here look so good and yummy!

 Hosing off the screen after exposing designs with intense UV light, which allows the exposed areas to harden and the unexposed areas to be easily washed off  from screen

 Me holding a squeegee about to print. This shot was from last sem's work but
thought I shouldn't miss out a shot on printing in this post

 My final project! Very folk-inspired ;) About to be made into a cushion

 A tea towel design printed on natural linen

 First time printing my design on decal paper...

...and transferring them onto ceramic!! Fiddly but fun process!

Will show more of my illustrations and finished products of this project, which I've named Folkå :)

Mara Hoffman S/S 2012

I seem to always start off my blog by saying how busy I am with uni work, hence the lack of post. 

But today let me just start by saying how INSPIRED I am of the mexican embroidery art! I LOVE and DWELL in absolutely everything colourful/ Central American/ folkloric/ European traditional costumes now. 

Love Mara Hoffman's collection for S/S 2012. It's exactly what I've been dreaming and thinking about. Wish I could travel to Latin America now. 

Her work is absolutely drool worthy. I'd wear it in a heartbeat if I could. 

All images from here.