MaricorMaricar

London - What we did and what we ate - part 2

2012-02-28T08:54:00.000+11:00

Part 2 of our London wrap up. Maricor is actually there right now for a couple of weeks. Totally jealous!

- Old Spitalfields on Thursdays and Ephemera Fairs: For your antique and vintage fix Thursdays for Old Spitalfields market is the day to go. Also a must visit for designers/fans of antique printed matter are the Ephemera Society's London fairs and bazaars. You can pick up Victorian theatre handbills, antique trading/advertising cards and all other manner of amazing printed goodness. The large fairs that attract vendors from overseas happen twice a year (27th May, 2nd Dec 2012) whilst their are also smaller bazaars during the year.

- Nobrow Independent publisher: their shop/gallery in Shoreditch is an amazing source for books, posters, original art and handmade goods. They also have their own screenprinting studio and work with an amazing group of artists on self published short and long run books. We blogged about them previously and are relieved to find out they are now stocked at Kinokuniya here in Sydney so we don't have to travel halfway round the world for our next Nobrow fix. But nothing beats going to their shop!

- London Graphics Centre, Cowling and Wilcox, Jackson's Art Supplies: our go to places for art supplies whilst we were in London. Between the three we were able to pick up square frames for our embroideries (surprisingly very hard to find off the shelf square frames back home so this was a revelation), calligraphy supplies, poster tubes and the usual paints, art paper and inks.

- Cloth House, MacCulloch & Wallis, Ray Stitch: If you need any embroidery/fabric supplies whilst in town try these stores. John Lewis also turned out to be pretty handy for embroidery thread.

- The Shop on Cheshire St: the streets on and off Brick Lane are choccas with vintage stores but we loved The Shop for it's stash of affordable vintage scarves, aprons and tablecloths. Here's a nice write up on Style Bubble that does The Shop more justice.

- Pimps and Pinups: In need of a hair cut? We were referred to Pimps and Pinups by a friend who'd been living in London for a few years and were pleased to to find out that they have a sort of brother/sister relationship with our regular hairdressers in Newtown, Scissorhands.

- St Brides Library: tucked away in a peculiar spot in Fleet Street is this amazing library dealing mainly with printing, typography and graphic arts, a must visit for any travelling designer in town. They also offer letterpress printing workshops and a host of other events. Looking at their site now they look to be temporarily closed but are still taking research enquiries and their events and workshops are unaffected.

- Bus 55 and 48: we lived in London Fields, Hackney so our way into the city was pretty flexible. We could take the National Express from London Fields Station which was only 3 stops away from Liverpool Street station or as I liked to do, you could take the bus in. Bus 55 and 48 winds it's way down Mare St through Hackney Road finally meeting up with Shoreditch. I loved the buses in London - the convenience of the signage systems, the simple and cheap fares as well as the fact you could pretty much get a bus door to door wherever you needed. Most of the things and places we needed were in East London and the buses allowed us to get there fast and cheaply. Also I liked taking the bus to figure out in my head where everything in the city was in relation to each other. It's a great way to acclimatise yourself in a new city, and the buses in London make it so much easier for you than any other bus system i've tried before.

1. Handbill purchased at an Ephemera Society fair. I love the combination of different typefaces. I wish we'd bought more whilst at the fairs and bazaars, it's just so overwhelming.
2. London Fields in Spring
3. Picnic/working on our balcony over looking the railway line with central London in the distance. We had a pretty amazing view whenever storms rolled in over London but I have to say my favourite memory was during Diwali. The skyline was alight with never-ending fireworks from one side of the city to the other.

London - Where we ate and what we did - part 1

2012-02-13T17:04:00.000+11:00

We thought we should do a round up of the other London gems we enjoyed visiting over and over again during our 8 month stay in London last year. Places to grab an excellent coffee, book shops, art supplies stores, cafes, museums, galleries, odds and ends plus more. So this is part 1 of our to do list* next time we're in Old London Town focusing on places to eat, drink and be entertained. Part 2 will be a loose round up of the art and embroidery supply places we found and designer-y based finds and other places of note.

- London Fields Park: Not as large as Hyde Park but definitely not small either. There are huge chestnut trees that are home to a few sometimes friendly squirrels - for those curious folk that find them as cute as my boyfriend does - as well as enough space to fit hundreds of picnic goers on any given sunny day (actually didn't have to be all that sunny for it to be full some weekends). One end lies next to the entrance to Broadway Market whilst the other corner houses a lido (I never felt hot enough during my stay to try out it out which is a bit of a shame as it's meant to be wonderful).

- Broadway Market & it's saturday street market: maybe accounting for how popular the next-door London Fields park is on a weekend is this great little street lined with cosy pubs (Cat and Mutton and The Dove), excellent cafes serving some of the best coffee you can find in London (l'eau à la bouche, Climpson and Sons), book stores selling great design, art books and magazines (Artwords Bookshop) and tons of other great shops that you'll soon discover. On Saturdays one of the best street markets takes over Broadway Market selling a huge variety of food from different cuisines, baked goods, fresh fruit and vegetable, fishmongers, butchers and delis as well as stalls selling vintage goods, clothing and assorted miscellanea. Our favourite stalls that we constantly returned to were the pie shop (our pick is the chilli beef), the stall in the middle selling marinated olives/stuffed peppers and dips, the fruit and veg stall near the end that became our fresh plum supplier and the vietnamese food stand also at the Cambridge Heath end. If you go there try their bbq pork roll with caramelised pork skewer. There's usually a line but please don't let that turn you off. Service is pretty quick and after trying a few other vietnamese pork rolls in London (we like to think we know a good one) this was by far our favourite.

- Hai Ha on Mare Street (if you live locally or are after Vietnamese and in the area this is our pick of the numerous Vietnamese eateries that line Mare Street. We recommend their mixed vermicelli noodle with pork & spring rolls and the crispy pork belly noodle soup (which isn't vietnamese but I tried it on a whim and it was amazing).

- V&A, Natural History Museum, British Museum, Tate Modern: How awesome is free admission to amazing galleries and collections? We spent many a day drooling over amazing ceramics, minerals, antiquities and masterpieces and still only scratched the surface of the permanent free collections on offer.

- Ping Pong: Their all day/night yum cha-ish dumplings are nice if a bit expensive compared to what we're used to in Chinatown but I had to add Ping Pong for their yummo cocktails. Yum cha with asian inspired cocktails is a pretty spectacular combination and i'm hoping someplace similar in Sydney pops up soon (Melbourne already has Golden Monkey)

- The Book Club & The Hackney Pearl, Railroad Cafe, Wilton Way Cafe, Nude Espresso: besides the cafes on Broadway Market already mentioned these cafes were regular coffee stops for us. Railroad Cafe and The Hackney Pearl are a little out of the way but offer quirky settings and great coffee for the former and a pretty mean Corn Fritter for the latter. Oh and the Hackney Pearl don't lie when they say they serve the best Bloody Marys in town (other cocktail to try is the Gem Garden) Wilton Way Cafe is also home to the London Fields Radio

- Hackney Picturehouse: this opened a few weeks before we left and was literally only down the street from our apartment. It is one of our huge regrets that we weren;t able to enjoy the Picturehouse. We watched Ides of March there and it was honestly the best theatre we've ever been in. Full stadium seating with chairs that all recline...sigh. Also for cult classics and themed nights the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square is amazing. They show an ever changing line up of old favourites, themed series as well as new releases. We went there for a screening of Empire Records that featured drinking games, a dress up contest and sing-alongs.

- Drink Shop Do: Part cafe, shop and gallery. Drink Shop Do is craft and board game friendly. A lovely place for a spot of tea and sandwiches or cocktails at night when the cafe switches it's daytime charm into a nice and relaxed bar/lounge.

- Columbia Road flower market: It gets pretty busy here on a Sunday but it's an enjoyable crush. I enjoyed listening to the stall holders advertising their flowers just as much as the flowers themselves. On one of the side streets we spent a nice break from the crush listening to buskers splaying jazz and with a few cafe's lining the road and shops selling home wares and art there's plenty to do if you don't feel like joining the flower buying tide. Most of the shops on Columbia Road though are closed on non-market days so it's best to check ahead.

*in no particular order

1 - 4 Broadway Market Saturday street market
1: Vietnamese food stall at the Cambridge Heath end
2: Outside l'eau à la bouche cafe
4: Violet Cakes

Land Of Nod

2012-02-07T10:01:00.000+11:00

One of our favourite pieces from last year was the embroidered winter catalogue cover we created for the Land of Nod. We tried something a little different with the treatment for the embroidery and also a new type of fabric. We had a great time sourcing new types of cottons and linens to embroider with and we were very excited when the client requested a denim like linen twill from the swatches we emailed through. It was a real treat to embroider on and really contrasted well with the colours in the design.

Below are a few process images that we can finally share but for the final cover head over to The Land of Nod's blog (there are a couple bonus images there too including the selection of fabric swatches we collected for the piece).

Pages from my sketch book - ideas for the type treatment

Digital colour rough - this is the step where we set the colour palette and this file becomes our colour reference when we begin sewing

We mix the colours in as we sew, for this piece I had anywhere between 2 to 4 colours going at the one time

...and the completed embroidery!

"Summer" and hello again

2012-01-28T22:39:00.000+11:00

Hello! Sorry for the silence around here lately. We've got a lot to catch up on since coming back home. We got through the whirlwind of Christmas and New Years only to get swallowed up by preparations for our sister's wedding last week. It was a beautiful day and all our crossing of fingers seemed to work and the rain went away just in time. A last minute venue change to Vaucluse House also turned out to be a blessing in disguise. All in all it couldn't have gone more smoothly. Surprising since my sister and her fiance were still running around the night before sorting out last minute details and preparations!

Over the summer break we only managed one beach trip (boo) but we did escape up to the Blue Mountains again. From the photos below you can tell I had a lot of fun borrowing my boyfriend's iPhone and macro lens. The scale is hard to translate in these photos as they look just like photos of normal sized flowers but most of these were actually less than 1cm wide.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and New Years!

2011-12-22T17:29:00.000+11:00

This year has been a crazy adventure with a lot to be thankful for, luckily the downs were brief and the highs were high! We hope this year has been amazing for you as well and that 2012 is bigger and better! Thanks so much for reading our blog!!

Be Excellent To Each Other + new Sweater Letters (Family Set)

2011-12-22T17:19:00.000+11:00

These are some pics of 2 private commissions we recently completed. One a quote from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (we love Keanu so this was a fun one!) and the last a family set of Sweater Letters. As always we love to hear from anyone interested in a personalised embroidery. Email us your quote/initials/favourite colours or even an epic battle you'd like to see illustrated and let's have some fun!

WIRED Magazine 12 11

2011-12-14T17:12:00.000+11:00

Hello, we're back! We touched down in Sydney a couple of weeks ago and have since then gorged ourselves on summer fruits and catch ups with friends and family. We're in between studio spaces and rentals but have managed to set up desk spaces at least. It's funny how having even a bit of space to yourself helps you feel settled.

It's been a while since we posted regularly so we have a few projects to share that we'll post about steadily. Firstly we can finally share an embroidery we created for WIRED magazine's December issue which we completed around June. It's for the features introduction page and includes the numbers 12 and 11. For iPad users this embroidery is animated too as a nice little bonus. The piece took about 185 hours to complete. A huge task as the whole surface was covered with needlework and while we were embroidering we were also capturing photographic stills to build the animation.

There were a few changes to the final embroidered piece, colours were changed and tweaked. Once it was completed we realised that the 12 and 11 got a bit too lost in the pattern so we swapped in a few more red tiles into the mix. Normally we would have unpicked the tiles and sewn in the new colour but as we had animated the piece as it progressed this option wasn't feasible. Instead we digitally tweaked the colours frame by frame.

We were lucky our apartment was high up or else neighbours might well have wondered why our windows were boarded up. The makeshift studio we set up at one end of my bedroom needed to be completely blacked out for the photography. A bit of a shame we worked on the piece right in the middle of the London summer, we hardly got a chance to enjoy the sunshine.

The Lovers, the Dreamers and Me - a Jim Henson tribute show at Gallery Nucleus

2011-11-20T04:53:00.000+11:00

Here's a peek at a couple new embroidered pieces we've created for a Jim Henson tribute show at Gallery Nucleus titled The Lovers, the Dreamers, and me. The Cookie Monster makes an appearance for the show which opens on the 10th of December and any guesses for which Sesame St characters inspired these special edition Sweater Letters? More details here and on the Gallery blog there's a little write up on our artworks as well as some of the other wonderful artists who are taking part in the show.

Back to Oz

2011-11-03T22:26:00.000+11:00

We're counting down until we bid London farewell and head back to sunny Sydney. I'll miss this wonderful city and I hope it won't be too long before I can come back again. An endless summer sounds pretty awesome, 6 months in Sydney and 6 months this side of the globe sounds like an ideal arrangement. If only!

Before we fly out we're holding a special clearance in our BigCartel and Etsy stores. 30% of our handsewn embroideries and a 3 for 1 special on our risograph prints (BigCartel). For the 30% discount on Etsy please use this code BACK2OZ.

Makers, Dreamers: We also have a brand new poster available of our Makers, Dreamers embroidery. "We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams" is a quote taken from Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy via the film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.

The original embroidered artwork was on display at AMV BBDO and now a limited edition of 100 A2 sized giclee printed posters are available. (please note that the posters are smaller than the original A1 sized hand embroidered poster)

A2 posters (including 12mm border) hand numbered and signed. Printed on Hahnemueller Photorag paper using archival inks

Posters will be mailed rolled.

From WIlton Way to the World's End (and a little bit beyond)

2011-10-29T04:48:00.003+11:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. We've had a crazy few weeks that have included a local street party and Dog show a road trip round Scotland (from Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye, Isle of Harris & Lewis, Inverness and back) to meeting the Queen. I won't make this a wordy post since the photos will probably be more interesting. Just an explanation on the post title, i've always loved Neil Gaiman's reference to the World's End pub in his Sandman comics and was very excited to see we were staying just down the road from an identically named pub in Endigburgh. We were staying just off the Royal Mile on the Canongate and the story goes that,

"Gates along with the old city wall enclosed the city and citizens from the Canongate and beyond would have to pay to gain entry. Poorer residents within the city couldn't leave as they couldn't afford to pay to re-enter and so stayed within the walled city their whole lives. The area inside the Netherbow gate became known as the World's end because for many residents this was where their world ended" (from http://www.edinburgh-royalmile.com/)

1, 2: Victoria Bark dog show at Wilton Way.
3: Glencoe, looking over Rannoch Moor
4: Isle of Skye, on the way to the 'Fairies' Glen'
5: Isle of Skye
6: Isle of Lewis
7: Isle of Lewis: we took a road by accident through some pretty isolated countryside. This house with its red door was a welcome sight.
8: Highland cows at Culloden.

Tea with the Queen

2011-10-11T06:21:00.001+11:00

This thursday Maricor and I will be on our way to Buckingham Palace for an evening reception with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. We're honoured by the invitation, excited and more than a little nervous! We're notoriously shy so we'll have to make sure we don't retreat to a safety corner and properly enjoy the night and meet the other guests.

We've also had the usual wardrobe dilemma, which has been compounded by the fact we didn't bring any formal wear for our visit to the UK. Eeek.. oh well it's given us a good excuse for a bit of shopping!

Mr Postman

2011-09-29T05:01:00.000+10:00

We've just arrived back to a surprisingly sunny London after a week road-tripping around Scotland. A proper roundup of what we got up to will come soon but in the meantime here is a belated post about a few special deliveries that arrived in the mail recently.

The letterpressed wedding invitations I designed for our big sis and her fiancé arrived all the way from Sydney safe and sound. The tactile and warm touch of letterpress printing fit in beautifully with the vintage theme they've chosen for their wedding. They went with Crane Lettra 300 GSM in Pearl White and Kraft brown envelopes with their own custom envelope liners.

We were also gobsmacked to receive another invitation... for a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh! The reception will be in October to celebrate The Queen's upcoming tour of Australia. We have British Council Australia and Realise Your Dream to thank for this incredible invitation.

It's pretty random, I didn't think we'd be attending any formal event while we were in London, let alone a reception at Buckingham palace, so I didn't pack anything appropriate in my suitcase. Been busy hunting for formal "Day Dress" wear but we're having trouble finding anything that fits. And ideally we'd love to wear an Australian design in keeping with the theme of the event but that's proving a little difficult. Unfortunately we can't take a camera in with us but we'll try to soak it all in and report back.

Defeat Deflector & Makers, Dreamers

2011-09-15T08:13:00.003+10:00

Just a quick post about a couple of works we have out and about in London. We've donated "Defeat Deflector" (a piece from the "Turns of Speech and Figures of Phrase" show that we held in March) to Artarama where it will be auctioned off to raise funds for Age UK and the White Ribbon Alliance. Artarama is organised by Karmarama London and the show/auction is on the 7th of October. There'll be exclusive work by Rankin, Rob Ryan, Al Murphy and many more.

We have also completed a new embroidery called "Makers, Dreamers" which is on display at AMV BBDO as part of a typographic group show. "We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams" is a quote taken from Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy via the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

This is our largest to date, 841 x 594 mm. I'm not sure exactly how much thread that amounts to, but I bet it's something crazy. The original A1 sized artwork is available for sale, please email us if you're interested. A limited edition of 100 giclee printed posters are also available for £45, A2 in size, hand numbered and signed and printed on Hahnemueller Photorag paper using archival inks (please note that the posters are smaller than the original A1 sized hand embroidered poster). Please email us if you would like more info. The posters will be available from our Big Cartel store soon.

We have another group show that we'll be taking part in later in the year. It's a tribute show for Jim Henson at Gallery Nucleus in the States. Look out for some Sesame St flavoured "Sweater Letters" and a Choc Chip C. Other artists include Cat Rabbit, Isobel Knowles and a fellow Handsome Frank artist Helen Musselwhite. Can't wait to see what these talented ladies create!

And I almost forgot, we have a new Sweater Letter. We're slowly going through the alphabet and filling in the gaps. For "B" I've been influenced by the clashing colours of 80's knitwear. This is also available from our Big Cartel store. We're making our new Sweater Letters available as limited editions of 3, each one will still be hand embroidered so there may be slight differences.

** Update: I've signed and numbered (handstitched) the B Sweater Letter piece **

Denim and Weave

2011-09-06T05:49:00.051+10:00

Denim is tough! As part of the Denim group show we were invited to take part in curated by Dell Stewart, we came across a few road bumps. Finding the right cloth and technique that would work well with the fabric was a matter of trial and error and was just as frustrating as searching for the perfect pair of jeans. The Cloth House on Berwick St have a great selection of denim cloth but we were still umming and ahhing about the amount of fade we wanted and the texture of the fabric. We wanted something that looked a bit lived in (we even contemplated looking for a second hand denim jacket but couldn't find one with a large enough clear piece of denim), the right shade of blue and we needed it supple enough that we could sew onto it.

Below are some photos of the final piece called Echo. In this piece, threads harvested from the denim are embroidered back onto the cloth and re-combine with denim. The aspect of denim that we were intrigued by is its specific tactility, the way it embodies the history of its use. We wanted our marks although recent to be absorbed into the fabric through the use of denim on/within denim.

Echo
203mm x 203mm
Denim, cotton thread

We also recently took part in a group show in Sydney called Alphabet Soup. Presented by Art on the Wall and Weave it was a celebration of letters and literacy. All the works have been donated by the artists involved and proceeds go towards the charitable programs organised by Weave. They provide support for disadvantaged groups in the community and the funds raised will go towards the mentoring and tutoring programs they offer.

Each artist created a collection of 3 letters for the show. We really wanted to do a new piece with paper so for our K, M and R we experimented with patterns and layering.

Summer/Autumn and "Back to the Start"

2011-09-01T08:59:00.008+10:00

There's now a chill in the air and the blazing sunsets we've come to expect have faded away to ones
that are grey, white and pale. Brrrr, luckily we're going to skip the northern winter and will be home in time for summer in Sydney. We realised we have less than 3 months though before we head back so we're cramming in all the things we kept putting off: galleries, museums, cafes and curiosities. We jotted them all down and each week we have a lucky dip. Our fist pick was the flower markets at Columbia Road where we enjoyed a leisurely Sunday of people watching and flower hawking and came away with a chili plant and some thyme. But not as successful, was our trip to the Natural History Museum. We got diverted by heavy rain and a sea of children to the bedlam that is Harrods on a wet weekend in London. Some things I learnt that day – avoid museums during the summer holidays especially on a weekend, Harrods is crazy and somewhere I need not visit again and I'm very picky about my almond croissants. Since then we've had trips to St Bride's Printing Library, Victoria Park, Brick Lane Sunday Markets, Rough Trade and No Brow which have all been a lot more exciting.

Below are some of the goodies we picked up from the No Brow store. Everything We Miss by Luke Pearson, Flesh and Bones: A Colouring Concertina by John Sibbick and Rise & Fall by Micah Lidberg. A place you must visit if you're in London, No Brow are independent publishers that work with graphic artists and illustrators to produce exquisitely tactile printed works. They have a show coming up in September that looks like it will be pretty awesome. Masks is an exhibition of works from Ben Newman and it opens on the 15th of September.

And lastly here are some stop motion animations that have blown our minds lately. Johnny Kelly from Nexus Productions beautifully crafted stop motion animation "Back to the Start" has just gone live. There's a behind the scenes here and some production stills from the shoot.

And a classic animation that we were introduced to at LIAF, "Hedgehog in the Fog". Stunning, mesmerising and so technically brilliant.

Looming + Odd & The Nimble

2011-08-16T02:38:00.003+10:00

Hello, just a quick post about my first weaving - Co keeps mixing it up and calls it looming, hehe - project on the rigid heddle loom I received for my birthday (thanks M!). I love puzzles so had a fun night assembling it. I was a little impatient and didn't follow the instructions properly and bought knitting yarn (which I was told expressly not to use) as I could easily buy some nearby. The end result is a scarf that looks and feels a bit like a hessian sack! Luckily after a wash it has softened a bit but I'll be sure to source proper weaving yarn for the next project.

Our good friends Sam and Esther have also just launched their new online store, Odd and the Nimble, selling lovely handmade jewellery and home wares as well as prints. Please do check it out!

Gusto Gusto!

2011-08-02T07:34:00.004+10:00

There are a handful of words to describe rice in the Filipino language. There's a word for unmilled rice, milled rice, cooked rice, rice porridge, burnt rice, leftover rice, fried rice, and rice muffin...but today's post isn't really about rice. It's about a play on words. Well actually just the one word. Gusto.

Our new embroidery is Gusto Gusto! (pronounced goo'sto gus'to!) and it's a play on the Filipino word gusto (want) and the English word gusto (enthusiasm, zest, energy).

"I want energy" sounds a little lame, but Gusto Gusto! has the right motivational tone don't you think? This was a little phrase I had written down in my notebook a while ago and is another motivational typographic piece along the lines of "You Gotta Keep Cheering". Sometimes you need a little helpful reminder to keep going, don't give up, be persistent. One day Ca and I will create a series of these type pieces and we're going to call it "Say SO'S".

Anyway I've rambled a bit, here is the finished piece which is available from our Big Cartel store. And below are some pictures of the tools we've used. Most of the process we share on this blog has focused on the creative side of things but I thought we'd share a little insight into the equipment we use to create our sewn illustrations. People have asked if our embroideries are hand sewn or machine done (every piece is entirely hand sewn) so we thought it might be interesting to share with you the tools we use.

We began sewing using an embroidery hoop, crewel needles and cotton embroidery floss and calico. And this really hasn't changed much, save for a couple of modifications to the hoop. We've also just bought an embroidery stand and a larger scroll bar frame which we've used for a recent project but most of the time a simple embroidery hoop has been adequate. In the process photo below you can see the hoop clamped onto the frame which is an Elbesee Posilock standing frame.

One helpful tip with the hoops is to bind them, we found the tip through Mary Corbet's site Needle 'n Thread. This is a great site for anyone learning embroidery and as self taught embroiderers we've definitely found it useful. Binding helps protect the fabric and prevent it shifting as you work. We still use the first plastic hoops we learnt on and while they're cheap and great for beginners, they have a tendency to mark the fabric which doesn't come out after washing. Perhaps we pull the fabric too tight and damage the threads in the weave, but sometimes a ghost of a circle is left on the fabric even though we have made sure to take the fabric out of the hoop after each sewing session. So to avoid this marking, wind ribbon or scrap material over the plastic and it's good to go. No marks and the fabric fits more snugly in the frame without having to pull on it too tightly. A bit of a geek confession but we feel a bit bad-ass wrapping our hoops like we're preparing for a boxing match :)

"Denim" group show at Mr Kitly

2011-07-26T07:53:00.000+10:00

Quick post about a group show Maricor and I will be in called Denim. It opens at Mr Kitly in Melbourne on the 5th of August. We had a few aches and pains with this one and started again a few times. Denim was a surprisingly hard fabric to work with, we originally wanted to source a faded and used item of denim clothing but were afraid we wouldn't be able find one that would yield a large enough piece of fabric so we opted for a new piece from the Cloth House. The denim was not as kind on the cotton floss we usually use (it damaged the fibres whenever the thread was pulled through the fabric) so we devised a way to harvest threads from the denim to work back into it.

We wish we were in Melbourne for the show, the piece by Renilde on the flyer is amazing. More info on the show can be found at this blog http://ruggedcottontwill.blogspot.com/.
Thank you Dell for asking us to take part!

Ephemera Society London Fair

2011-07-18T08:30:00.001+10:00

One of the perks of being in London is that we are able to indulge in our love of markets, vintage and paper in one combined geek out. Our trip to the Ephemera Society's Fair was as exciting as our childhood trips to the Lollipop Shop (remember the one that used to live in the basement of the Queen Victoria Building at the top of the small escalators?). Tables upon tables of lovely printed labels, their ink still vibrant despite some of them being more than a century old, theatre bill posters advertising curiously titled shows in a jumble of typefaces.. a lot of printed matter to make a designer swoon.

Mr. Jimmy and the Riomaggiore skyline

2011-07-06T19:18:00.001+10:00

"I made a huge mistake" One of my favourite lines from one of the funniest shows that should never have been axed, Arrested Development. I'm hoping all the rumours surrounding a movie release will actually turn out to be true. Sorry for going off on a tangent. This is a post about our latest embroidery, a private commission based on a Rolling Stone lyric and the reason why the images may look a bit blurry.

"Mr Jimmy" as I like to call it was the first piece we completed and sent back from London, it's also quite large. Too large to actually fit into a regular mailing envelope since we were sending it pre-stretched so I made a makeshift package for it. Paranoid that it might get damaged in transit I reinforced my handiwork and packed it pretty darn snug in layers of bubble wrap and card board and sent it off via Royal Mail. But because I was so pre-occupied about the packaging I posted it without taking any proper scans or photos. Dang!! As soon as I got home I realised my huge mistake but it was too late.

Luckily I had been sending progress snaps to the client and had taken a few pics of the finished piece for approval. Sadly most of the shots I took were out of focus happy snaps using my point and shoot Pentax and the lighting was pretty shoddy. So nothing good enough for print but scaled down the blurriness is hardly visible on the web. This is the finished piece it's roughly 40x40 cm

The palette was inspired by the colourful architecture of Cinque Terre (photo by Robert Crum, seen here on the Plenty of Colour site which is an awesome resource of inspirational projects all celebrating colour). I travelled through Europe after graduating from University and fell in love with Riomaggiore, one of the five towns. Everything about the town was magical, from the first glimpse of the clear blue sea as soon as the train clears the tunnel to the patchwork of colours of the town's architecture. It's definitely a must see if you're planning a European holiday and I'm hoping Ca and I get to revisit while we're based in London.

I knew I didn't want to use just cherry red for this artwork (a nod to another line in the lyric) and restrict the design to hues of reds and pinks. So when I came across this image on Plenty Of Colour I thought it was perfect for this embroidery. The cherry red would be mixed up and contrasted with shots of turquoise, green and yellow to create a vivid splash of colour.

I followed our usual process of sketching then inking the lettering in watercolours. Initially the design was against white but I discussed with the client the option of sewing onto black fabric to highlight the colours and give a bit of a twist to the design and I think it turned out really well.

Here is a dodgy snap of me hunched over the magnifying lamp. Besides a couple of pencil cases full of brushes, pens and tiny tubes of watercolours and Ca's sewing bag stuffed full of threads we weren't able to bring a lot of our tools and equipment over over from Sydney. So over the last couple of months we've been slowly re-stocking our "studio" with a lot of boring things like cutting matts and metal rulers and more exciting things like a loom and a standing frame (ok, only exciting for me but I get to stab sew two handed!) One of the first things we hunted down in London was a magnifying lamp to help our poor eyes. This one is a daylight lamp which is handy for night time sewing, showing truer colours.

We have more commissions that are just wrapping up so hopefully will be able to share these with you soon.

Process: Go Play

2011-06-29T07:34:00.002+10:00

I mentioned earlier that i'd be posting some process from our Go Play illustration or ESPN agazine, sorry it is a bit delayed!

For this type of embroidery, loosely grouped within the Sweater Letter series which is heavily patterned block type - our process differs slightly from our other typographic pieces like Macho Distrust. Because the patterns and stitch work are quite intricate the design process is usually less organic. We plan out the patterns with as much detail as we can right from the start and set the colours for each element before putting needle to fabric.

With works like Macho Distrust we'll set a rough colour guide by going through a watercolour step but we still freestyle a fair bit. But for Sweater Letters after choosing a rough colourway from our thread library we'll then take our preliminary sketch into Illustrator to vector, enabling us to tweak the colours easily as we need. There's usually a lot of umming and ahhing over what colour should be dominant or should this colour be next to that one if it re-appears here... etc so being able to quickly undo on the computer is a godsend, the alternative being potentially unpicking a whole day's work and we'd rather not do that!

London Fields and Turner skies

2011-06-20T06:50:00.001+10:00

Hello I thought i'd write a post about where we live here in London and share some photos. We live in a small flat in a high rise right next to the park (and also right on top of the train line). It has its quirks, one side of the flat is curved with small windows cut into the side so it feels like we're in a floating boat perched high on the 10th floor. Being so high is great, we hardly notice the trains. And also the views are wow. I've never really wanted to live in a high rise before, I used to roll my eyes whenever Michael talked about wanting a place with a view of the city. I much preferred the idea of a garden and being part of the comings and goings of your street.. but I think i've been converted.

We have an almost clear 180 degree view of London because there are no other high rises near us. When the weather is good the sunsets are amazing, fiery and dramatic. And when the weather is bad it's just as amazing. You can see whole storms wash over the city, enveloping the skyline in a shroud of fog that just as suddenly lifts. We had one day when it was crazily alternating between grey cloud and rain to blue sky and sunshine.

I'm going to miss this view. Now if only our balcony faced the west, when I want to look at the sunset I have to jump onto a chair or the kitchen counter :)

1. The view from our balcony facing central London.

2. Some spools of vintage silk thread we picked up at a Vintage fair in Bethnal Green.
3. This was taken at around 9pm, the summer days are getting long. Sunrise is at about 4am and it doesn't get fully dark until past 10pm. The day sneaks up on you though, I think I have the whole day left to finish off work and then I check the clock and it's already 5 and time to think about dinner.

London. Perfect summer one day, rainy winter the next..

2011-06-07T22:39:00.002+10:00

Hello, sorry it's been a while between posts. We had some alarming news last week concerning the flat we just rented that had us distracted and anxious for the whole of last week, but I think (and i'm trying not to relax too much in case I jinx us) that everything is going to be ok now. It was a fairly black week and I'm so glad we had some friends to talk to here and back home otherwise I don't know how we would have coped. When the dust settles we'll be able to shed more on this as I think it will be very helpful information for anyone planning to move to London and are looking to rent a place here.

Ok so with that yuck news aside, Maricor and I are very happy to be able to share some of the new work that has kept us busy since landing here. We were commissioned by ESPN Magazine to create an embroidered piece of typography. Each issue they commission an illustrator or designer to a unique GoPlay graphic. For ours we extended our family of Sweater Letters, in the next few days i'll be able to post up some of the process work behind this project. And hopefully soon we can share more information about the other commissions we've been working on. There's another music lyric that's currently en-route to the framers back in Sydney as well as another set of Sweater Letters that are almost complete.

We're also been heaps excited to be featured in a few magazines lately, Freehugs Magazine from Russia and Nice Magazine an online magazine created by Nicework studio in South Africa.

In this issue of Freehugs Magazine we were asked along with Bratislav Milencović, Alex Trochut and Teagan White to discuss hand crafted typography and its relevance today. Although each of our styles and approach to design is quite different, it was interesting to see that our motivations seemed quite similar. We all like to develop details in our work that draw the viewer in, desiring to create type that communicates something more than letters and words.

The third issue of Nice Magazine features our work alongside a bunch of amazing creatives including Coralie Bickford-Smith and Serial Cut. You can download all three issues here for free.

Bottom image: Freehugs Magazine spread, image on right hand page by Bratislav Milencović.

Sea Sew

2011-05-24T08:22:00.002+10:00

We've finally unpacked our suitcases and have settled into a new home here in London, which explains why it's been a tad quiet on the blog lately. Although we didn't have much to move besides a couple of suitcases we've been busy criss-crossing town picking up stuff for the home, all the major things have been taken care of (kettle, tea and toast!) and its slowly starting to look like our place.

We've been on the look out for some brightly patterned textiles to make the place look cosy and we scored a great knitted throw from the Bethnal Green Vintage Fair on the weekend. If anyone can recommend any great second hand stores in East London we're keen to collect a few more bits and bobs for the house - crockery, cushions etc.

Besides moving we've also been busy sewing - we've got a few exciting projects we can share with you now. A limited edition pop-up book is being produced by Katana and created by the very talented Benja Harney for Kylie's Aphrodite Les Folies Tour in Australia and we've been asked to contribute some sewn illustrations for the book too. Below are some process pics and here you can read all about the making of the book. Look out for the wonderful illustrations by Jon Zhu!

A couple of weeks ago the etcc exhibition rolled into Sydney as part of the Semi Permanent design conferences. We posted a little about the exhibition earlier and here are some pics of the show. Below is our work and the creative commons licensed image that was the inspiration. Images courtesy of aMBUSH Gallery.

We've also got an interview up on The Creative Haven where we give a bit of an insight into our work process, how we got into doing what we do and the people who inspired us in the first place. Thanks Carly for featuring our work!

Collect

2011-05-11T20:45:00.003+10:00

We caught the last day of Craft Council's Collect exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery on Monday and
boy am I glad we got in to see it before it closed. I would love to collect a few of the pieces on show but alas will just have to look longingly at their websites in the meantime.

Below are a few of the artists that were standouts for me. I was taken in by the colours, patterns and textures of their works so although they are seemingly simple in their shape and form there's a lot going on when you get up real close.

Steffen Dam - Cabinet of glass curiosities. From afar his jars and glass cabinets seem to hold delicate aquatic specimens frozen behind the glass. Instead each piece is exquisitely rendered entirely in glass using a variety of techniques with some effects created through glass blowing processes that are traditionally seen as mistakes or faults.

"During my first ten years of glass making I was practicing and experimenting with all the different techniques to become a good craftsman. While doing so, I discovered a new kind of beauty in the fringes of the well crafted glass I was making. In the area of mistakes and faults - the unwanted air bubbles,
ash marks, soot, cracks and crookedness - I found something that cannot be predicted or sketched beforehand. I set the established and traditional techniques aside and started making glass all "wrong" in an attempt to capture the good in the bad. Out of these experiments came the "Fossils", "Plants" and other objects - like frozen extracts of chaos to be watched undisturbed" - Artist statement from exhibition.

Maryrose Watson - Textile geometry and reflections of light. I loved the colours and intersecting lines that caught the light in her works. And I like how they were presented. It may seem like a simple element, a formality at the end of the creative process, but framing and the choice of mounting can really enhance a piece. It's something I don't really think about enough when I'm creating work but it ends up being a very important element when the piece is finished and on display. In Maryrose's works the woven threads wrap around heavy oak frames which are then mounted onto a second layer of oak. Giving the impression that they are suspended - floating on the wall.

Liam Flynn - Turned wooden vessels. Very beautiful and exquisite pieces, I could happily stare at one for hours and be absorbed by all the quiet details in the grain of the wood. These were some of the pieces I was itching to run my hands over!

Philip Moulthrop - Beautiful patterns and colours laid bare. Loved the splashes of unexpected colour and the intricate patterns uncovered in the wood.

David Pottinger - Woven patterns rendered in clay. Since ca and I go crazy over woven textiles normally it's no wonder we love Melbourne artist's David Pottinger's ceramic pieces whose patterned surfaces evoke the texture and detail of textile pieces. Here is an interview and studio visit posted on
The Design Files.

Jack Doherty - Ceramic alchemy. "One Clay, One Colouring, One Firing" a restrictive process but
the works themselves had a variance in colour and texture that belied this technique.

Jennifer Lee - Ceramics. It's difficult to put into words the beauty of Jennifer Lee's work, there's a
quiet quality to them that does not shout out and call attention to itself which is perhaps why I'm struggling. What I love about them is that each one looks perfect, the balance and their delicate forms seeming in contrast to the rough and subdued earthen texture of the clay.

Etcc Exhibition

2011-05-05T07:26:00.001+10:00

Hello again, I have some news to share about a group show Co and I will be taking part in called etcc. "etcc is a remixable art exhibition that seeks to explore ideas of creation and appropriation in the visual arts sector."

It opens next Friday at Ambush Gallery and is touring as part of Semi Permanent. There's an awesome line up of artists and it's also a pretty interesting format for a touring exhibition. Contributing artists selected a Creative Commons licensed image to base their artworks on. These new works will then be passed onto the next line up of artists on the tour to remix in turn.

Full details for the show can be found here.

Here's a sneak peek of our work. We'll have to beg someone to take some better photos for us on the night!

Show n' tell

2011-05-05T06:37:00.001+10:00

I finally got around to scanning and photographing what co and I got up to at our class the other week so we've got a bit of show and tell for this week's post. The second day of letterpress class saw us work with wooden type to create 2 colour overprints. I played around with 'O' & 'As' while co got a bit tricky with her prints and offset her overprint to create a really nice xx pattern.

On our third and last day our project was to create fantasy business cards. I really love the new cards Hungry Workshop created for us so thought of creating a limited edition UK souvenir batch using one of our favourite catch cry mottos printed onto our existing cards.

Last weekend we headed to the Ephemera Fair on the lookout for vintage craft books, embroidered greeting cards and anything typographic and we didn't come home disappointed. I eyed some embroidered cards that I found at the very first table I found myself at. I though really hard about whether I could afford one (or maybe two) but contented myself with just the small booklet of stitches. We went on to discover a friendly retired printer that had an amazing collection of printed ephemera, antique labels that were as vibrant as the day they were printed. We also found another embroidery book and this lovely patterned annual report for the Society of Compositors. I thought the title referred to musical composers until co explained it meant type compositors/printers which explains the awesome printing.

Handsome Frank

2011-04-28T23:02:00.000+10:00

We have some exciting news to share, MaricorMaricar have signed to the wonderful UK based illustration agency Handsome Frank! We're really stoked to join the family and be part of an amazing roster of creative and unique illustrators. If you are interested in commissioning work please get in touch with them or directly with us.

Playing with type

2011-04-25T03:06:00.001+10:00

Last week we went to Easter School at Central St Martins. For three amazing days we got to play with lead and wood type and live out our type geek dreams. Years ago while at UTS we had the chance to go on exchange to CSM and being the naive silly girls we were, we didn't pursue it and regretted it for a long time. Thanks to the British Council's grant we received last year we finally got the chance to make good and study at CSM if only for a few days.

Letterpress is enjoying a revival at the moment, (Maricor posted last week about the letterpress cards that the Hungry Workshop made up for us) we're fans of the tactility and craft involved with letterpress especially in the movable type variety. In the class we were taught the fundamentals of setting up lead and wood type and creating short runs using the medium sized Farley press and the smaller Adana press. The thing that struck us the most about the process was how much it felt like you were solving a jigsaw puzzle when setting up the type blocks and spacing. And since we both really enjoy fiddly things like puzzles we were having an awesome time.

The downside was we didn't have enough time. Set up and cleaning takes so long that we really only printed for about 15 min out of the 10-4 class time we had each day. And I don't know how we can continue the new letterpress fascination we've now developed.

Our uni lecturers used to tell us stories of lead type being dumped onto the gutter when the huge presses were shut down. Helen Ingham our instructor told us a lot of the CSM letterpress type were salvaged from those dumping days. The history in the corridors, stairwell and workshops at CSM is overwhelming and to think it will all be gone soon, shafted all over to new campuses to make room for a luxury hotel development makes me sad. I hope all the letterpress equipment we used survives the move and continues to be used.

The Hungry Workshop are awesome

2011-04-19T17:18:00.000+10:00

For our trip to London we really wanted to get some proper cards done (finally!) and wanted to do something a little special and something fitting to the tactile work we do. Luckily we stumbled across the letterpress work of The Hungry Workshop run by the awesome duo Simon and Jenna. Letterpress is something we've been dying to try as we've been interested in printmaking for a long time (we did a short course in stone lithographic printing at COFA a few years back and we've booked ourselves in for a letterpress course at Central Saint Martins while we're in London which started yesterday - so much amazing stuff to share about the class so we'll make sure to write a proper blog post about it after it wraps up).

Please check out their site, it's chockas with some amazing prints they've collaborated on with other designers as well as custom designs they have created themselves. They were tremendously helpful with getting our business cards done and ready in time for our trip and we couldn't be more happier with the results. Below are the cards, we chose an uncoated, thicker card that suited the handcrafted feel of our work.

Beer Matt Board 390gsm
Pantone Black 5

Viral dancers

2011-04-12T07:28:00.002+10:00

Great view from outside our window on Queensway the other day, watched a production crew and two prankster pop-locking dancers hidden in cardboard boxes jump out and freak out passersby. Trying to read the logo on their shiny orange and purple tops, one of them has a ranga up fro a'la Kid 'n' Play.

Will no doubt see the video up on youtube soon.

This week we managed to get away for some proper tourist fun times and spent a few hours at the Victoria & Albert Museum but unfortunately the Textiles room was closed! And won't re-open till 2013!! Bummer, but there was still heaps of things to occupy ourselves with and we will no doubt be revisiting again..and again.

Afterwards we lost ourselves in the amazing scarves hall at Liberty, drooled over a couple, the patterns, the colours!! Oh well, first excuse we get to reward ourselves you know where we'll be heading.

And just to prove we haven't been slackers, here are a few snaps our friend Catherine took at Kensington Park over the weekend. The sun was out and it was WARM, dare I say hot for London in the spring so we packed up our sewing bags and took our work to the park. Here's a sneak at the sewing we're currently working on, there's a few commissions on the go so in between house hunting and quick trips around London seeing the sights we've been busy bees again sewing up a storm.

London Calling

2011-04-04T06:52:00.001+10:00

So long Sydney, we're sad to say goodbye but hello London!

We arrived early Tuesday morning at around 5.30 and after 24 hours flying thank goodness we opted for a cab transfer from the airport. I doubt we'd have made it to our friends' place otherwise. The flights themselves were pretty good but any extended period of time suspended in halfway time between your old timezone and your new one is always disorienting and exhausting. On the second leg from Hong Kong to London we somehow managed to score first row seats which meant we had extra leg room. I felt a bit guilty though. Since we're small asian girls we were in the least need, especially as there seemed to be a whole fleet of giant rugby fans/players crammed in nearby.

Our first week has been a mix of work and exploring.. sadly more of the former. We sorta nerded out and made sure we hunted down an art supply store, fabrics and craft store and grocery shops nearby. No denying where our priorities lie :)

On Saturday we checked out a couple of Markets around east London. I scored a rope necklace at the new Designers Markers Market and we ogled the beautiful food (and people) at Broadway Market. We're hoping to find a rental nearby since the markets are so amazing. I miss living in Newtown and it feels somewhat similar, a cross between Newtown and Surry Hills.

This week we have a commission to finish that's been keeping us from exploring more. I shouldn't complain about being busy but it's a bummer we're stuck indoors. Oh well we'll just have to sew like crazy :)

Maricor and I have also put up a massive update on our site. The full series of embroideries from our Turns of Speech & Figures of Phrase exhibition is up as well as the latest Global Village artworks and an illustration we made for Anorak Magazine's Food is Fun series. We are also proud to share our latest animation that we created for British Council Australia. Together with Republic of Everyone we created an animation to help launch Big Green Idea, a great funding initiative by the British Council. We worked on it before we flew out and had to multitask more than usual for this project. Making the props, rigging, lighting, camera ops and post production. It was a bit of a stretch at times! Although it was a busy two week we had a great time working on it, coming up with the cute paper characters and learning new techniques.

Non-stop stop motion

2011-03-17T21:59:00.000+11:00

We're very excited about the latest project we've been busy working on which will go live very soon, in the meantime here's a sneak peak. A paper based stop motion animation...in two weeks. No tag teaming on this one, all hands on deck!

Muscle On

2011-03-07T15:08:00.001+11:00

A few big things to blog about this Monday so this is going to be a long post!

First up, our first ever solo show opened at Mart Gallery last week. Huge thanks to Mel for having such an awesome space and hosting us, Sam for lending us your muscles for bump-in, Ly for coming early and helping set up and Ben and Michael for manning the drinks table and to everyone who came and made it such a great night. "Turns of Speech & Figures of Phrase" will be up for the next 2 weeks until the 19th of March. Also Ca and I will be at the gallery this Wednesday (the 9th) from 1:45 - 3:45 if anyone wants to drop by and have a chat. There are a few more pieces still up for grabs, we'll have pictures up soon.

We'd also like to thank these sites who have posted up our work, its awesome to know that our work is liked! Cheers Sick of the Radio, Design Work Life, Graphism, Walk the Sand, Portable.TV, MrXStitch, August Empress, Las Teje y Maneje, Banana Meet Cute, Jessica Swift, Might & Wonder and The Brag for the very kind words.

We mentioned in the last post that we we're madly tag-team sewing the last piece for the show. Well, in between the sewing we also took turns whipping up an illustration for Anorak Magazine's Food Is Fun project. Our paper illustration is now up on the Anorak site, it's bursting with fortune cookies, fruit and vegie kebabs, cursive hummus and more yummy stuff. Here's a process pic of some goo-ey glue paste type...

We're prepping for our trip to London so we're sorting out what we can take with us and what we'll have to leave behind. As we're not going to be able take all our prints with us our Big Cartel store is now on sale! Our risograph prints are all reduced and I've put the sewn piece "Get All Up In My Goat" up on our store too.

We're heading to London at the end of March, please get in touch if you're in that part of the world and could use a couple of nimble fingered illustrators/designers.

Tag teaming

2011-02-28T21:55:00.001+11:00

Our first solo exhibition is happening later this week and we're so close to finishing. We're cutting it a little fine again, but we couldn't resist doing one more embroidery. A week out from opening night we decided it would be a great opportunity to work on a larger piece so we're madly sewing to get it finished for bump in.

It's a little different to the rest of the works (we're calling it the bonus track of the playlist) and is a hint to what our future embroidered projects might look like so I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out. Co took some photos of the set up we McGyvered up for it. To handle the size of the design (75x75cm) we improvised a frame/stand by pinning it to the top of an old clothes horse we had lying around and it's done the trick so far. We're literally working around the clock to get it done in time. Tag teaming sewing shifts so one of us sews while the other naps. It feels just like uni days and our final year Major Project!

Also for those in Melbourne, Matt Huynh's latest exhibition of work Aurora sounds like it's going to be amazing. I'm pretty bummed that we we won't be able to see it. There's more info on his blog and site but here's a little excerpt that got me very excited. "This installation is a very large-scale charcoal and pigment drawing on 100% cotton watercolor paper running down the length of the entire gallery." Woah.. i'm usually overwhelmed working any larger than A3! The show opens March 10 at Lamington Drive Gallery.

And another project well worth supporting is the "What Song is That" project by Little Gonzales and Michael Wilton - a book of quirky pictograms. They've set up a pozible (fundbreak) project. Click here for more info on how to support them and help get the book published.

Macho Distrust - process

2011-02-21T16:16:00.001+11:00

Thought it would be nice to share some of our process work in the lead up to our exhibition. I really enjoy 'making-of' videos and looking at process work and seeing how ideas develop. Not to mention it's always great when artists/designers share tips, I hope we can do the same.

This piece is one of co's and is inspired by Blondie. The words aren't meant to be taken too seriously. We were drawn to them because our work has often been described as cute, feminine etc and we used to think that was a bad thing. We've realised we do what we do, trying to act differently (in this case macho) or be something else is a waste of energy and also maybe insincere. I was reminded of this after reading a blog post by Lilly Piri this morning.

Co worked up the type in a series of pencil and pen sketches. The type is then refined using water colours with some adjustments in Photoshop. Sometimes we'll start a piece knowing what colour combinations we'd like to use but the water colours help add some randomness and some interesting gradients we'd not usually use.

Busy Bs

2011-02-17T20:29:00.003+11:00

Hello! This week has turned out to be pretty hectic so the usual Monday blog post is terribly late. We've finally finished the pieces for our Mart show and they are at the framers now. We'll be posting up some process work soon.

Also, recently we've had some lovely write-ups about our show. We were pretty stoked to be on Booooooom! and also today the amazing Pip Lincolne of Meet Me at Mikes just posted up about our work too. Yay! We'd also like to give a huge thanks to Yen Magazine, Lifelounge, Frankie, Tough Titties and What Katie Does for writing up about us as well.

Also if you have time, we posted up some new work over at our site. There's a new Epic Battle and also the Sweater Letter co posted a sneak peek of a few weeks back is now finished. Hope you enjoy!

MaricorMaricar at Mart Gallery March 3-19

2011-02-08T15:13:00.001+11:00

Maricor and I are very proud and excited to be having our first ever solo show next month at Mart Gallery.

'Turns of Speech & Figures of Phrase'is inspired by song lyrics misheard and mixed up. We've swapped pen and paper for needle and thread to create a mixtape compilation of hand-crafted type, based on lyrics borrowed from bands featuring Blondie, Paul Simon and Pavement.

The show opens on the 3rd March 5.30PM, hope to see you there!

What we did this Summer

2011-02-07T11:10:00.007+11:00

We've just had a week long heatwave in Sydney. At first I was rejoicing after complaining about the lack of beach worthy days over the Christmas /New Year's break but after the first 4 days of 30+ heat in an unair-conditioned apartment that absorbed heat and refused to let any breeze it got a bit much.

Luckily since we work from home and are flexible with our hours we were able to escape to the beach every few days to cool down. Balmoral beach has become our favourite spot. It's calm and stays pretty shallow for a good stretch so I can learn how to swim without getting dunked every few minutes and best of all it's usually not that busy.

I tested out my Christmas present from Michael at the beach - an old Polaroid sx70 One Step Sonar with some colour film from the Impossible Project. It's been tricky figuring out the best lighting. So far all our shots have had a very pink/purple cast. We created a protector for the film so it's shaded from sunlight as soon as it exits the camera but still no luck. Has anyone got any tips for using the Px70 Colour Shade push film? I'd really like to get the colours looking more even and some darker blues.

Over the Christmas Michael and I stayed for a week in the Blue Mountains and took care of Sheba, Charlie, Olive and Dennis. I've never had a pet so looking after two dogs and two cats was pretty exciting. It was nice having a full house and despite a few minor accidents I think they were pretty happy. Charlie and Sheba are a pretty odd couple, Sheba is so big and yet you get the feeling that it's Charlie calling the shots. He's pretty adorable especially with his mane of fluffy hair on just the top half of his body, he looks like he's rocking a Mad Max style outfit. (no photos of Olive and Dennis but M's cat Freya dropped in for a few days)

My gift to M was some lens attachments for his iphone camera. I'm amazed at the amount of detail the macro gives and the wide ispretty impressive too. Here are some test shots using the macro and wide on the same cactus plant to compare. The lenses are available from Photojojo.

Mirazozo @ Sydney Opera House

2011-01-25T22:45:00.000+11:00

Great inflatable sculpture at the Sydney Opera House forecourt - a maze of light chambers that kind of feels like a cross between being inside a womb/the colour fields you see when you have your eyes closed and you're sitting under a tree swaying in the wind on a sunny day/Tron. All the "lights" are just the sunlight shining through the coloured panels in the tents fabric. Go and check it out, I recommend pre booking a spot.

Mirazozo
Sydney Opera House Forecourt
3-27 January

Photos: Jon Zhu

Hello 2011

2011-01-24T19:00:00.002+11:00

At lot has happened already, I can tell 2011 is going to fly right by.

So far:
- Moved out of our yellow house in Newtown and bid a sad farewell to Faheems, Black Star Pastry, Delicious Rolls, Pastizzi Cafe, Art on King, Gelatomassi, Pho 236...

- Got burnt and a suffered a little heatstroke in an attempt to shed a few boxes of stuff before we store our belongings away for our UK trip. A garage sale in 30 degree heat is not a good idea, market umbrellas are essential, pack only one ute to the brim with loot for the market instead of 2, if it's a sunny day it's a good idea to keep your jewellery in the shade ...these are just some of the lessons we learnt from our garage sale and market days.

- We confirmed dates for our solo show which will be held at Mart Gallery in Sydney 3 - 19 March. We're just finalising some details now and will post up more info soon. Which means we've been busy sewing like crazy, more pics to come...

- And ABD7 is happening early this year. Once again we're taking part in the group show at Wedge Gallery Books Kinokuniya, it opens 2nd of February and runs until the 27th.

- Oh and by the way we've just opened up a Big Cartel shop to sell our prints and sewn pieces, welcome to "co & ca's cornershop"

Happy Holidays

2010-12-28T18:53:00.000+11:00

Tis a little late but Maricor and I hope that everyone has and is enjoying a great Christmas and holiday break. We'll be a bit quiet for the next few weeks as we're also going to be busy moving house and preparing for our first ever solo show next year. But we'll be back!

Deep Fried Xmas

2010-12-20T15:04:00.002+11:00

Co and I had our annual Christmas dinner with our uni friends over the weekend and it was a seafood feast as usual. We swung by the fish markets earlier and managed to buy about a kilo of sashimi but since we had extra guys this time round we figured we'd need the extra food. We also came home with some cooked and raw prawns for the bbq grill, oysters and pippies. Our group is obsessed with chilli XO pippies so it's on the menu every year. We also had spicy meat patties, beef Kofta and cucumber salad, white wine sangria and ice kachang for dessert. Sorry for the details, I get very excited about food.

Co and I were on a budget for gifts :( so we decided to make embroidered cards. I wish we'd thought of making them earlier so we could have made a bunch for our online store (check back in the new year for more details about that!) and I forgot to document them before we sealed them up but I do have one to show. I also made some dark chocolate rocky road with Michael, complete with homemade marshmallows, macadamias, glace cherries and dried cranberries (Michael's idea and a very good extra chewy factor). I used this recipe and made the adjustments..
I was bit heavy handed with the first chocolate step so it set with a real thick layer of chocolate that made it a bit hard to eat.

[Correction: sorry poste dthe wrong link for the recipe, here's the rocky road recipe]

Sunday sunburn

2010-12-13T13:12:00.001+11:00

I'm a little sunburnt from the weekend after spending most of Sunday at the combined garage sale we held with our older sister and her friends. We've had a few good garage sales/market stalls before and I was looking forward to a good day yesterday but the combination of a slow Sunday crowd and the heat made it a very exhausting and trying day. We got so hot we'd take opportunities while no one was around to sneak a lie down under the tables. We might have had heat stroke in hindsight. Hopefully the market stall we've booked next month for Kirribilli will be busier since we really need to offload some stuff before our UK trip next year.

It's quietened down for the year in the studio so we've taken the opportunity to work on some small embroidered bits for xmas giveaways. We're trialling stitched patterns onto cardboard and i'm quite pleased with how they've turned out. We've had to adjust our process to work on card and also the artwork is much simpler but I like how it's more linear and geo inspired. And not to mention a lot faster to finish than i'm used to!

Also I finally copied over photos of the recent Art by Design group exhibition co and I were part of. Sorry for the poor photos I didn't manage to get all the angles so I have inadvertently missed some of the artists. Naomi launched her site with more info on all of the artists that were involved. You can check it out here.

PS we had our first swim of the summer!

Liquid pencils, lace and other things

2010-12-06T17:52:00.000+11:00

Been a while between posts, a lot has happened in the meantime.

"Liquid Pencil" tests: Fun times testing out a new typographic piece as an inked up poster before the sewing phase. I had bought a bottle of "Liquid Pencil" (Derivan) on impulse a while ago but haven't had a project to test it out on 'til now. It's less liquid than ink and more the consistency of globby paint but it glides off the brush smoothly and has a nice thick look to it with a graphite finish. I used it in combination with masking fluid which was a bit hit and miss. The bottle of masking fluid is quite old and probably past its prime but seemed to be working alright, although some areas dried too thin and ended up not masking at all. Overall I'm pretty happy with the results, I know I probably could have composited it digitally in photoshop with all the masking etc but its nice trying to do it the old fashioned way. The roughness of the edges where the fluid pooled at the corners and brushed edges of the mask add that extra bit of charm you can't emulate digitally. Or...I suppose you could but it wouldn't be half as fun.

Kevin Tran exhibition: We checked out Kevin Tran's exhibition at Mils gallery after seeing his work posted up online, the works up close are so vivid and detailed. Thanks to Catherine and Matt for the heads up on the show. (On a side note we went down to chinatown after the show for our favourite cheap eat at the Chinese Noodle House. Nothing beats special braised eggplant and combination hand made noodles!)

Lace Study Centre: We had a great time chatting to the extremely helpful ladies from the Powerhouse Museum's Lace Study Centre. They were nice enough to share their love of lace and give us a quick demonstration and pull out some amazing examples from the museum's collection. We went straight out and bought a book so we can start learning how to lace. So many possibilities.. so many things to make. First step, modify some chopsticks into bobbins.

Gaffa Gallery: Went to the exhibition openings at Gaffa gallery which were jam packed with a lot of great works. Anna Fraser's photographs and Linelle Stepto's flora/fauna studies are some of the works on display right now. After this show we also had a food odyssey, this time it was a reunion of sorts at KFC. We used to live on popcorn chicken while at uni. It's greasy and usually leaves me feeling a little ill afterwards but the smell always beckons me back!

Yen interview

2010-11-23T10:25:00.000+11:00

This month's Yen has just come out and has an interview that co and I did with Yen's editor Annie Sebel. We met her at Black Star pastries for some yummy sweets and coffee and had a chat about just winning the British Council's Realise Your Dream Award, how we work together, the occasional screaming matches that come with being sisters and how our high school art teacher introduced us to Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics and led us on our path to becoming designers.

We're still very shy so we had a quick 90s dance off before hand to calm our nerves. But we needn't have worried, Annie was super nice and friendly!

Sole Cola

2010-11-18T12:38:00.000+11:00

Our latest collaboration with the guys at GEA Interactive is live. MaricorMaricar designed the digital home for Sole Cola, the vivid artwork of the multi talented Roderick Smith.
"Sole Cola is an exploration of found objects, vintage papers and mixed media - a fascination with combinations of colour, form, texture, patterns of positive and negative shapes, areas of counterpoint, visual minutiae and textual stories subconsciously expressed". Roderick is a regular renaissance man, an artist and musician, he is one part of the band Firekites.

ABD Risographs & Sewn Pieces

2010-11-16T18:40:00.001+11:00

The risographs we printed for ABD6 show are now available for sale on our site. Here are photos of the prints and the details for each are below. Also the remaining sewn pieces from the show are available to purchase from our site.

Los Muchachos Bestial - "Leche Derramada"
202mm x 275 mm
Risograph on light weight matte paper
Open Edition, signed
Will be mailed flat, padded.
$27 unframed (inc postage within Australia)
International buyers please email us.

Los Muchachos Bestial - "Enredado"
202mm x 275 mm
Risograph on light weight matte paper
Open Edition, signed
Will be mailed flat, padded.
$27 unframed (inc postage within Australia)
International buyers please email us.

"Diamonds On The Soles Of Their Feet
297mm x 420 mm
Risograph on light weight matte paper
Open Edition, signed
Will be mailed rolled.
$42 unframed (inc postage within Australia)
International buyers please email us.

Pinching Ourselves

2010-11-15T20:21:00.002+11:00

The last couple of months have been pretty awesome for ca and me when we thought it couldn't get even huger, BAM, something comes up which makes us pinch ourselves and wonder if its all for real. The nominees we're announced for Plus Camerimage 2010 and in the music category sitting amongst the big names Lady Gaga, Gorillaz, Fever Ray, Florence And The Machine, Eminem and UNKLE et al is our clip for Murder By Death.

Plus Camerimage is an international festival dedicated to cinematography and our animated clip for Murder By Death's "White Noise" has been nominated in the music video category and to say we're chuffed is a huge understatement! We're excited just to be amongst great directors and to have our work seen by the jury.

Other things that have happened this week include; meeting one of our creative heroes, Deanne Cheuk, missing out on a SOYA award but huge congratulations to the winners and all the finalists, taking part in the I Can Draw You A Picture: Re-Building lab at LiveWorks, getting an ass-whooping in Scrabble, taking down our group exhibition ABD6 and parting with some favourites and enjoying a day in the sun at the Newtown Festival.

Capture the Fade Photography Exhibition opens at the Paper Mill Gallery this Wednesday and guest judge Bill Henson will announce the overall winner of the competition. Congratulations to our friend Gene whose work will be exhibited and good luck for the anouncement!!

One last thing for this Monday's post, ca and I have started work on our next series of type and thread pieces, below is a sneak peek. Oh and since ABD6 has finished up, the unsold pieces will be put up for sale soon on our site, we'll keep you posted.

/co

Upon A Fold

2010-11-08T20:10:00.003+11:00

Ca and I were so excited to see one of our pieces on the awesome site Upon A Fold's blog. If you don't already know about it, its one of the best blogs on the internet all about paper, "a little peek into the world of paper artistry". Forgot to say their shop is full of paper goodness too!

"Don't wake me I plan on sleeping in"

2010-11-08T17:59:00.000+11:00

I had an early day today, I woke up at 3am to watch Formula 1 with Michael. I used to watch it as kid and remember it being really looong and only watching the beginning and end but now I've started to really get into it again since Michael follows it pretty religiously. It's funny it doesn't seem to take forever like I remember.

This week co and I have started our new series of musically inspired embroidered type. We're having fun with watercolours designing the type and figuring out colour schemes before getting into the embroidery. Co finally cracked open the watercolour set she bought at Tokyu Hands when we visited Japan last november. Meanwhile I'm still using pencils and have a feeling i'll be switching over soon, i'm jealous of the colours she's getting. These are the threads I picked out for my next canvas, a lot of aqua greens and purples.

Also i'm very excited that my mini orchid is finally sprouting some new life. I got it last November and I was worried it was slowly dying because nothing was happening. But now it looks like there are 2 new shoots coming out of the old flower stem.

Gemini

2010-11-01T14:55:00.000+11:00

Spent part of last week making repairs on the siamese twins we made for our 'Triangle Circle Square' animation. I'm not sure if i'm just excessively messy but I always manage to attract dust and fibre particles and have a horrible time keeping the white clay clean. Because we sort of rushed that animation some of the details we're a bit dodge, since I had some time on my hands I remade the arms and one of the legs. All that's left to do is patch the limbs onto the body and make a new collar since the other one got banged up a bit.

It was fun making the twins, they're actually based on an old illustration series co and I did based on sideshow freak zodiacs. We hope to make some more miniatures inspired by the awesome Ultraman toy monsters we got in Japan but we're still in thread and paper mode so it might be a while 'til we get around to them.

Paper + Type + Ramen

2010-11-01T14:25:00.000+11:00

I've had "Keep On Moving, Tokyo Japan Nov '09" pinned to my inspiration board ever since our trip to Japan last year but hadn't got round to doing anything with it till now. I started out sketching some type treatments for another sewn piece based on this line, but along the way its switched from being sewn into something made out of paper.
The words are just a reminder for me to keep creating and making things. Tokyo is such a vibrant place, there's a constant flow of movement and there's so much stuff to soak in. I came back really inspired and this poster is just a quiet reminder to keep creating.

Tough Titties

2010-10-25T12:35:00.000+11:00

We met Lou and Alex from Boccalatte at the Realise Your Dream awards night and they told us about their new blog toughtitties.com.au that is a showcase for creative females. I think it's an awesome idea, and hope word spreads. At UTS our course was probably 80% female if not more but once we started working professionally the female presence seemed significantly lower. I've always wondered why. Sorry I ramble.. please do check out their blog and recommend a tough titty!

PS co and I also have an interview up.

Nit-tweets

2010-10-25T12:11:00.002+11:00

http://twitter.com/maricormaricar

We'll still be blogging though!

Matt Huynh "Alluvia" Ehxibition

2010-10-18T20:30:00.002+11:00

Another good show to check out if you're in Sydney is Matt Huynh's "Alluvia" exhibition at the Paper Mill Gallery, opening on November 3.

'Alluvia' refers to the earth washed down a body of flowing water, sometimes resulting in the formation of a fan at the base of deep slopes. When this collected earth has been found at the base of Martian craters, they are indicative of water’s presence and suggestive of proof of life.

This kaleidoscopic illustration collection reflects upon the enduring fragments of the universal in the personal that harmonise towards a holistic and romantic relationship with our future.

The show descriptor above is intriguing, looking forward to the show!

/ca

Turns Of Speech & Figures Of Phrase

2010-10-16T19:45:00.002+11:00

Here are the sewn pieces we created for ABD6...a few we've already posted about but there are a couple of new faces. "Get All Up In My Goat" was a drawn illustration I posted about earlier but we decided to extend "Turns Of Speech & Figures Of Phrase" into an embroidered series. Besides Hungry Colours and "Gotta Keep Cheering" we also have "Tongue Tied Hopeless", "Epic Battle"and Sweater Letters "A", "O" and "J". These are for sale during the exhibition.
There's a great bunch of artists and designers exhibiting as part of the show. We got a sneak peak at some of the pieces when we dropped off our stuff this morning, beaded geo pendants, knitted fast food sculptures, embroidered tote bags, and risographs! I think the site is still under construction, Naomi has been run off her feet organising the show (huge thanks!! You're awesome Naomi, I can't believe this is the 6th year for ABD) but as soon as we get more info on the site we'll post it up here so you can check out the other peeps.

Rizzeria

2010-10-16T19:17:00.001+11:00

Ca and I checked out an awesome printing collective in Sydney called Rizzeria this week. We were looking for a printer to make some posters of our black and white illustrations for the group show ABD6 (which opens tomorrow at Kinokuniya books in the city). And can I just say the prints look frak'in good, I was a bit worried that the fine lines so close together would look like a mess but the details held up real good. How can I describe riso prints??? It's in between screen printing and photocopying if that makes any sense... We are planning on doing a whole lot more experimenting with risographs, illustrations and posters which take advantage of the process, I can't wait to start!

SOYA 2010

2010-10-13T09:37:00.001+11:00

Great bit of news for Ca and I, we've made it to the finals for the SOYA awards! Whooop! Wow, we would really love it if we won it, the mentorship with Deanne would be amazing for us. Trying to start off on your own (or together in our case) is really tough and this year has been exciting but also a really steep learning curve for us. So any advice or tips or yeah just chatting with Deanne about how she's navigated her career would be awesome. I think we've mentioned before that she's been one of our creative heroes, she's achieved a lot as an illustrator, designer, art director, publisher and more.

As part of SOYA 21010 there's a new People's Choice award, you get to vote for your favourite finalist and have a chance of winning a trip for 2 to Sydney for the Awards night ceremony. The finalist voted the People's Choice walks away with $2000 in flights. Check out the finalist gallery and please help us out with some votes, voting closes midnight November 1. Cheers!!

Bingle Car Insurance

2010-10-12T17:27:00.003+11:00

The paper project we mentioned a few weeks ago has gone live so we can finally share more details about the job - a series of stop motion Bingle car insurance tvcs created by Scott Pickett from the Jungle Boys. Co and I created the 2d paper elements working with the super talented Benja Harney who created the 3d paper sculptures. My favourites are Benja's car, co's driver and customer rep scene and the Sales Department building. It was heaps of fun coming up with the different characters. The most nerve wracking part was drawing on top of Benja's lovely creations, we didn't want to screw them up!

Here's one of the five animations, and some production shots from the shoot.

Art By Design Exhibition

2010-10-04T16:33:00.003+11:00

So at the moment we're sewing day and night. This long weekend we were hoping for some nice weather so we could take our sewing outside and enjoy some time away from our little "studio" but its been pretty miserable the last couple of days. Oh well, at least we've got the daylight magnifying lamp to help our weary eyes at night. The reason for all this sewing is that Ca and I will be showing work in the upcoming Art by Design 6 group show at the Kinokuniya gallery. The details are below, if you're around drop by, we'll be putting some of our sewn work up for sale during the exhibition. We're pretty torn about which ones to keep but all sales are going towards our UK trip next year. Which means we're going to part with some of our favourites. We're also planning to sell some posters of the illustrations we've done this year. It's opening on the 17th of October and runs till the 13th of November, hope to see you there.

Embroidered Tote Bags

2010-10-04T16:33:00.000+11:00

We popped by Icarus store during the week and had a browse through the new stock Nathan just received from Opening Ceremony and Band of Outsiders. Nice stuff! Ca and I ended up leaving with two new OC embroidered tote bags. We're suckers for patterns and embroidery and these are pretty awesome.

Almost beach time!

2010-09-27T16:55:00.002+10:00

The weather has turned and i'm pretty confident I can pack away my winter leggings! I'm really looking forward to summer and having friends over for dinner parties and cult movie nights.

We finished the paper props we were working on last week. Hopefully the TVC will go live soon so we can show you what we've been up to. It was a really fun project and to top it off we got to work with Benja Harney of Paperform. We had blogged about his work after seeing the Pop Up Alphabet Co Op show at Object Gallery so we were really excited to work with him. We hope we weren't too fangirl!

Oh and we probably should have posted about this before it happened but the UTS: Sydney International Animation Festival ran over the weekend and the embroidered Architecture in Helsinki video screened as part onedotzero's Craftwork program. We also entered a short animation into the MAKE IT competition run by the CIIC.

And the last bit of news is that Co and I have been shortlisted for SOYA in the Visual Communications category. We're keeping our fingers crossed that we'll make it to the finals as we are huge fans of Deanne Cheuk who will be the mentor. Her mix of art direction, typography and illustration has been a huge influence for us, so to be able to meet and get some much needed advice would be awesome.

Phew that was a long post...

Did we mention we like paper?

2010-09-20T19:07:00.002+10:00

Co and I have been busy working on a couple of exciting projects for the last week. One is a stop motion TVC that we're helping make paper props and illustrations for. We're almost done and are definitely looking forward to the weekend and Jingle Jangle and celebrating Realise your Dream!

Realise Your Dream

2010-09-14T09:38:00.003+10:00

It's been pretty crazy for Ca and I lately which is why we're a day late with this week's post. First off we got the news that one of our illustrations has been included in the year's Curvy book. Which is being guest curated by Fafi and Colette Paris founder Sarah Lerfel and art directed by Deanne Cheuk. We're pretty chuffed!
In another bit of awesome news we received the British Council's Realise Your Dream award last week. So Ca and I are going to be making our way to the UK next year!! Exciting stuff!

Also it looks like we're going to be non-stop for the next month or so as we've also confirmed we're going to be taking part in the annual Art By Design group show at the Kinokuniya galleries. At the moment we're planning on creating more embroidered pieces as well as exhibiting some of our recent black and white illustrations.

You Gotta Keep Cheering III

2010-09-06T17:13:00.003+10:00

Co has just finished her latest and (I think) final version of You Gotta Keep Cheering. She's tried out pen, then paper cut out, for this one she's used needle and thread.

Here's a detail of it, the full version can be seen on our site.

Over the weekend we visited the The Pop Up Alphabet Co Op exhibition at the Object Gallery, curated by Sarah King. With typographic works from artists and designers like Benja Harney and AFOM it's the sort of show Maricor and I would love to be part of.. maybe one day! One of my favourites was Sarah Maxey's poster and card designs.

/ca

I want to go to there

2010-08-30T13:10:00.000+10:00

I went and lined up for macarons at Adriano Zumbo's cafe on the weekend. Thankfully the line wasn't as crazy as I heard it could be, we waited only 15min or so. Being my first visit, I was curious but open-minded and I'm pleased to say they were pretty good! My favourite was the passionfruit chocolate version. I'm looking forward to the cherry and coconut one I saved for today's afternoon tea.

We tried to go to rozelle markets afterwards but the stalls were packing up by the time we walked down. I miss poking around markets and garage sales and finding random knick knacks. The little miniature of Paris was one of my finds on a particular good garage sale saturday. I managed to go to two and found bargains at both.

I love the little details in the street scene. At the moment it's hanging up on my inspiration board. It's good motivation to keep working! The glass jars holding our new embroidery thread are from the second garage sale. We went to Morris and Son's in the city and went nuts buying thread. They were from a discontinued line so we though we better stock up in case we can't find them elsewhere.

/ca

Epic Battle

2010-08-23T13:02:00.001+10:00

We've gone a bit thread mad lately and are both working on some more sewn artworks. My table is pretty messy at the moment. I dream about finding one of those really nice old wooden drawers to keep all my little bits and pieces.

We went rummaging through our materials last week and came across some old projects we started for the Poketo project. In the end we went for something else (I think we were worried that the stitching wouldn't look right on the wallets) but we want to finish these and hang them up somewhere. Get some colour in our house other than the lemony yellow that is EVERYWHERE.

We're going to call the gnome and dragon piece 'Epic Battle' :)

/ca

Designer Disco

2010-08-16T15:50:00.001+10:00

Over the weekend Ca and I were part of the Designer Disco lane way exhibition for Sydney Design Festival. We forgot to bring a camera on the night to take pics of the light-boxes, dang, but here is the poster sans the light. Its called "Something Close To Nothing (but different to the day before)". The theme for the exhibition was music, so we took that line and played around with the idea of making nothing out of something....the solid space of the poster is made up of thousands of lines built up to create a flat texture...at least that was the idea. We hope the lyric isn't too obscure, can you guess which song its from? I hope we didn't give the impression we think music means nothing!

Thanks to Australian INfront and Future Classic for hosting the Designer Disco event.

Hungry Colours

2010-08-09T19:36:00.001+10:00

Just finished our latest typographic experiment this time using needle and thread. A few weeks ago I posted this design as a watercolour and ta-da now it's sewn :) It's based on The Unicorns' song 'Ready to Die'. But I've only just realised that I've been singing the song wrong all this time! He's saying cougars not colours but I think I prefer it this way. You can see full design up on our site.

/ca

Neil Gaiman at Graphic

2010-08-09T15:38:00.000+10:00

Over the weekend the Graphic festival took over the Sydney Opera House, we were pretty excited to see Neil Gaiman in the flesh and hear him read his short story "The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains". Although I was disappointed not to be able to get Neil to sign my copies of Sandman we came within inches of the man himself at the opening night drinks. We were a bit awestruck at how many of our creative heroes were at the event! Next time we're gonna have to pluck up the courage to introduce ourselves. It was a great festival with some informative workshops and hopefully Graphic 2011 will be just as awesome.

Gotta Keep Cheering

2010-08-02T16:06:00.000+10:00

True to our word, here's another Monday post....
Second stab at "You Gotta Keep Cheering, this time I've approached it with a scalpel blade and dusted off an old set square for some "precision" cut out triangles. I'm happier with this design, a lot more brighter than the first attempt and it was good to break away from drawing for a bit. I've got a callous on my finger, I suspect the A2 page worth of lines for "Something Close To Nothing" had something to do with it. Maybe I could whip up a thimble especially for drawing (or perhaps just cutting up an old glove might do the trick) for next time. Or, I guess I could learn to hold a pen the right way...

In the meantime we're exorcising our obsession with minute lines and patterns and have created some geometric based illustrations for posters, perhaps a t-shirt and for fun. Here's a process snap of the one of the designs.

Away from the desk we've had some fun at Jingle Jangle a "monthly night of Rock N Roll, Exotica, Soul, Rhythm N Blues, Beat, Rockabilly and 50s and 60s Pop" at the newly re-opened Good God Small Club. We checked it out for the first time and we'll definitely try to make it a regular thing. The music was great and the dancing was fun.

Back Soon

2010-07-26T16:32:00.003+10:00

Co and I have made a pact, we're determined to blog more regularly. At least once a week to be exact. Blogging more, means working more so we have things for show and tell. That's the plan anyway, we'll see how we go! Oh and hopefully it'll also help us improve our writing and conversational skills :)

Mondays seem like a good time for blogging. We'll have hopefully been inspired by weekend outings and been refreshed by lazy sleep-ins. This weekend I was good and got out of bed not too late, I spent a day at the Biennale on Cockatoo Island and also watched Inception. Both were pretty awesome. I don't want to spoil Inception by over-hyping it so that it can't help but fail to meet expectations, but I gotta say it was pretty darn good. I was lost in the story for the whole 2 hours and a bit. I love when movies do that. Make you forget about everything else except for what is happening right now and worrying about what's about to happen next.

The Biennale was an almost-didn't-happen. I almost didn't see a couple of artworks that in the end were some of my favourites. Just after leaving the ferry, I bumped into my friend Dara who works at the Biennale and luckily she pointed us towards a few works that we hadn't planned on checking out because we were in a rush. Amongst them was Isaac Julien's Ten Thousand Waves. His work was moving and beautiful and to think I wasn't going to see it..

This has turned into a pretty long post. Yikes. So work, I do have some new type experiments to share. I've brought out the watercolour pencils and tried to work in colour for a change. I'm going to keep at it and try a few coloured patterns that i'll hopefully have done for next time. The other one is a sign I made for the newly opened Icarus Store. It stocks menswear (poo I cant fit anything) from the likes of Patrik Ervell, Loden Dager and Commune de Paris. The stylish interiors were designed by Lenny Wong, an exciting young designer from Sydney. Co and I are taking turns working at Icarus Store on Fridays but i'll be there tomorrow. Also a few doors down is shelf/life. I'm keen to have a proper look at their homewares and craft on a day i'm not working.

/ca

New type work

2010-07-19T19:20:00.003+10:00

We're busy on some new type work and patterns, here are some bits and pieces. We're working on a new series called "Phrases of Speech" all based on twisted idioms and turns of phrase that Ca and I are guilty of dropping into conversations now and then. "Get All Up In My Goat" is a classic example of me getting my phrases mixed up. It's a mash up of "All up in my grill" and "Gets my goat" and was the inspiration for this series.

"You gotta keep cheering" is sort of like our motto. I scribbled the line down in my notebook a few years back after hearing it chanted at a BSS gig in Sydney. It might seem a bit egotistical (it was Keven Drew chanting it out to the crowd) but it was really the opposite. On the night he was feeding off the energy of the crowd, who were really into the gig, and feeding it back into the show. And not wanting it to stop, anyway, I thought it was a cool motto. Still undecided about the type treatment, kind of needs to have more energy or be more loud to suit the sentiment. Will keep at it and post up what we end with.

Sydney Design: Designer Disco

2010-07-18T16:01:00.002+10:00

Co and I are just about finished creating our lightbox design for Designer Disco. "Australian INfront is extremely excited about bringing the Designer Disco to life with the record label Future Classic. This offshoot of Future Classic’s insanely popular underground clubnight Adult Disco burns the disco flame until late, late, late. Meanwhile, in the laneway behind the venue, an exhibition of lightbox artworks illuminate and enlighten. The array of cutting-edge Sydney designers involved include Alter, Future Classic, Greedy Hen, Leif Podhajsky, Like Minded Studio, Miricro/Maricar, Sensory,
Sopp Collective, String Theory, Toko and We Buy Your Kids."

10pm till late, Saturday 14 August
The Civic Hotel & laneway, 388 Pitt Street
Cost: $15

There's a typo in our name (we're Miricro/Maricar) nevertheless we're excited to take part along side these awesome designers. Here are some process shots of our design.

/ca

Album Artwork

2010-07-14T17:24:00.002+10:00

A new batch of Global Village albums is live and in stores. This time round we visit South Africa, France and explore African Blues. As always it was an enjoyable mix of hand drawn illustrations, patterns and textiles. Also we have another album artwork design for Universal Music, for the compilation Songs For Sweater Weather. For this one we rummaged through our closets for the comfiest looking knits and broke out the thread and needle for some sewn type. Credits for the stripey sweater on the cover goes to our housemate Karen. This colourful sweater was bought on her recent trip to South America! Me and ca are pretty excited about all the great textiles, patterns and traditional handicrafts from there so it's on our list of destinations we have to visit.

Global Village designs created for Mathematics.

Typography misc I

2010-07-14T14:30:00.001+10:00

We'll be updating our website soon with more typography work but in the meantime these are some type experiments from our time at Mathematics for pitches that didn't go ahead.

Oxygon RD2

2010-07-12T15:42:00.000+10:00

Part 2 is done and up online, view and vote for it here:
http://play.sydneyoperahouse.com/index.php/graphic/810.html

Please help us get to the last round and vote for our video! Voting ends Wednesday 14 July 9am (AEST). We've also posted a video diary of some behind the scenes footage, a little about the inspiration behind the animation and some bloopers that didn't make the final cut. Click here to view the diary.

Graphic Festival: Meet the Mythmakers of the Modern World is a 2 day festival of performances, talks and workshops celebrating "comic books, illustration, animation, music, multimedia and other new ways of telling stories". Check out the program for a full list of events.

Oxygon Animation

2010-07-06T14:36:00.006+10:00

MaricorMaricar and our friends Michael Blanche and Sam Hoh have made it to the second round of Graphic Festival's animation competition with out animation "Oxygon". Oxygon is the story of two lost cosmonauts and their misadventures in space. Thanks for all the support for our clip, you can watch the first instalment here.
We're working hard on part 2 of the series, its another 20 sec animatic continuing on from the last animation. As part of this next round we need to get a Facebook group up and running and get as much people behind the project, so please help us and join our group. Here is the link for the profile, we'll be posting up a video diary and process work as well as some random bits of inspiration along the way.

'Blerg' IdN magazine 100th issue + Australian Edge interview

2010-06-11T11:05:00.003+10:00

The stop motion animation we directed with Michael Blanche is finally finished! We didn't want to jinx it in case it wasn't finished in time for the deadline but now we can say what it's for. We'll post the final animation when the issue comes out.

Also co and I have an interview up at AustralianEdge. Thanks Clayton and Duncan!

Diamonds on the Soles of Their Feet

2010-06-10T14:46:00.002+10:00

aka the Mushies.
First bunch of illustrations from the new series we're working on together. To paraphrase Paul Simon, they had diamonds on the soles of their feet. The fae folk danced 'til dawn and left these behind.

More to come, maybe some in colour!

/ca

A new animation

2010-06-06T18:00:00.001+10:00

We've got a new animation in the works, it's a stop motion one with miniature sets. We're experimenting with a few techniques with lighting and lenses and we've done all the animation in camera. This piece is a joint collaboration with co-director Michael Blanche and our super talented friend Becky Freeman aka Sui Zhen is providing original music.

We're just putting the finishing touches on it so in the meantime here are some progress shots. The process has been interesting and to describe it as hectic would be a huge understatement! The turnaround for the whole project has been 2 and a half weeks but we're all chuffed with the results.

co/

Murder By Death "White Noise"

2010-06-04T11:53:00.002+10:00

Here is the finished animation for Murder By Death's "White Noise", the band were awesome to work with! We had fun with some stop motion in this video but the majority of it was created in After Effects using hand drawn graphics, built props, bleached chicken bones and bits and pieces we scavenged from our garden and our clothes.

Murder By Death - "White Noise" from MaricorMaricar on Vimeo.

Smiling Flash

2010-05-19T15:40:00.001+10:00

New pics of my latest drawing. This was actually based on an old drawing I had done back in my uni days. I was hell bent on clearing up some space and was sorting out old work to chuck out. I came across this drawing (the old piece of cardboard on the lower left of the photo) and I thought I could do something with the girl in the striped top. I had to discard my first attempt, I wasn't happy with how I had dropped in the pattern behind her and I also wanted to make it a full figure drawing. I've included it in here just for kicks, I actually dont mind the pattern so much now...

The text is taken from a Broken Social Scene song "Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl"

Biennale Of Sydney

2010-05-19T15:22:00.001+10:00

The 17th Biennale Of Sydney opened last week and I was able to spend an afternoon at the MCA taking in some art. It was a lot to squeeze in a few hours so I'll definitely return for another visit as well as check out the other venues (I'm looking forward to taking a trip out to Cockatoo Island and seeing Cai Guo-Qiang's installation).

One artist that stood out to me was Fred Tomaselli, the first time I had seen his work was actually on the cover of The Magnetic Fields' "I" album. Up close and in person his work is so amazingly detailed and vivid. His technique of suspending elements in resin makes it a hypnotic experience when you stand in front of his large scale paintings.

Detail from the cover of The Magnetic Fields' "I" album.
Gravity in Four Directions, by Fred Tomaselli.

WIP - "White Noise" music video

2010-05-11T22:58:00.002+10:00

We've almost finished our latest project, an animated music video for Murder by Death's track "White Noise". The band have been awesome to work with, they came up with the idea for the video and asked us if we would like to work with them after they saw our animation "Say Hello to the Ground".

These are some style frames for the animation and I've also posted some photos from the mini stop motion shoot we did. Thanks Michael for building us an amazing animation stand!

/ca

Miniatures

2010-05-02T21:52:00.002+10:00

Did some quick-ish miniature lace patterns, one for a birthday card for my boyfriend. I think it looks better reversed out of black. (On a side note we went to Pendolino's for dinner, their veal ragu is amazing. I can't stop thinking about it and am trying to think of good reasons why we need to have another special dinner soon.)

/ca

Enredado

2010-04-22T23:50:00.003+10:00

Here's a pic of a new illustration, I'm calling this one "Enredado". Initially I was going to add this to the Muchachos family, but now I've got plans to base a new series on this mandrake character.

Dimensions: 11cm x 14 cm

New Site Live

2010-04-19T17:27:00.003+10:00

We've said it for a while, but now it really is happening. Our site is live, check out our new home - maricormaricar.com. Our blog will still be updated with assorted behind the scenes happy snaps and creative bits and pieces.

Built by the very friendly and talented dudes at GEA. Thanks Adam and Sam!

MaricorMaricar website Coming Soon!

2010-03-23T22:09:00.002+11:00

We've had the coming soon sign up at www.maricormaricar.com for a long time but now we can say truthfully that it IS happening and hopefully in the not too distant future. Our friends at GEA are building it and fingers crossed it will be live at the end of March/early April!

Global Village pitch artwork

2010-03-17T23:28:00.001+11:00

Sorting out some old work and came across some concept art for the Global Village cd artwork that didn't get used in the end. Created while at Mathematics.

/ca

Global Village compilation artwork - Americana, Balkans & Caribbean

2010-03-11T19:11:00.005+11:00

CD artwork for the third instalment of the SBS/Universal series of Global Village compilations. Created for Mathematics.

Shout Out

2010-03-06T17:12:00.001+11:00

We'd just like to say thank you to the wonderful people at Behance, Motionserved, AustralianEdge and Australian Infront for posting our work up and featuring us. It's nice to know people like our stuff!

Los Muchachos Bestial

2010-03-06T14:48:00.006+11:00

Finished off those random doodles into a series called Los Muchachos Bestial. These are a mixture of pen (regular copic pens) and ink and nib scratchings. While preparing content for our website I came across some old illustrations where I had started using dots to build up contours. It inspired me to use the technique again - check out "El Bandido", I've muscled him up a bit.

/co

Leche Derramada

El Bandido

La Mascara

La Babosa Hambriento

Illustrated Lace

2010-03-05T17:05:00.003+11:00

Some new drawings i've been working up. It's been refreshing doing work on the fly but frustrating when you realise you've screwed something up and have to figure out how to cover it up or else make it work. The next challenge is going to be embroidering these suckers!

/ca

Empire of the Sun - Live Visuals for Parklife 2009

2010-03-05T16:45:00.009+11:00

Live visuals created for 'Walking on a Dream' by Empire of the Sun, for their debut live performance at Parklife 2009. This was the finale for their set and was also used as part of their Aria performance. Created with Michael Blanche whilst at Mathematics. 3D modelling by Ben Dunlop.

You can view their Parklife performance here.
The live visuals for the rest of the set were created by Michael Blanche, Matt Kamen and Ben Dunlop.

So What

2010-02-23T19:05:00.003+11:00

My first figure drawing in a while. I've tried a few different things in this one, some ok results and some not so ok results which required some cleaning up. At the moment I'm experimenting with nib pens bought from Japan. They're awesome, but a lot trickier to use than the regular pens I'm used to. I've used them to create texture in the blocked in dark areas.

/co

Sketches

2010-02-21T17:41:00.000+11:00

Still practicing my drawing. I haven't gotten the face and expression right so i'll be posting another version later. But I am happy with these colours and the amount of detail and roughness in the hair, so at least it wasn't a wasted effort.

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Sketches - faun version II

2010-02-21T17:34:00.003+11:00

I wasn't totally happy with the face for our 'We Make Do' piece so I thought i'd give it another go...