fiwee

There is something I love about an art and design market. Perhaps it is the pop of colours, being surrounded by a unique array of beautiful handcrafts, or just hearing artists and designers talk about their love for what they do and sharing their art with appreciative audiences.

MarkIt is held biannually at Fed Square inside the light filled Atrium, showcasing over a hundred of Australia’s inspiring and independent designers and artists. As I walk in, there are already crowds huddled over a stall with beautiful hand-bound and embroidered books, handmade felt badges of Red Riding Hood, little bears and foxes, and sweet locket necklaces. My eyes are then drawn to an exquisite display of neon beaded plant hangers by Peaches & Keen. On further inspection, I discover a variety of colourful necklaces and earrings with the same striking neon colours throughout. The various designs make it very hard for the customer to decide which one they like best! There is an assortment of jewellery stalls, one of my favourite being Miss Wee who specialises in simple sterling silver pieces effectively using geometric shapes. Hexagon bordered pendants, heart-shaped rings, triangle-paired silver bracelets attached to a delicate string of coloured thread are pored over by many. Another lovely jeweller is Naomi Murrell who has a gorgeous folk line of wooden, sterling silver, enamel & brass jewellery. Her new summer collection of earrings are a delicate balance between coloured enamel and brass shapes, which I find very endearing. I also see many girls hovered around Emily Green’s popular Fimo colour beaded necklaces, each with a unique colour combination. These have become an iconic necklace to wear around Melbourne.

Amongst all the stalls, I find a special artist who I have been following since her Craft Hatch days a few years ago; Dawn Tan aka Handmadelove, who is an extremely talented illustrator of all things food! Her water-colour hand drawn illustrations are in the form of ice-cream pillowcases and softies, a painting inspired by crustaceans on her recent Tasmania trip, marshmallow and Malteser necklaces, burger plates with matching fries cups, and banana and rhubarb silk scarves. Dawn’s art and creative passion in everything she makes always puts a big smile on my face.

I continue to walk past beautiful vintage goods, a variety of patterned retro print lampshades, refurbished mini suitcases by Trunk & Orderly into lunchboxes, camera cases, backpacks and Kinder cases, as well as cool jukecases by Son Valise. A new stall catches my eye called Harvest Haversack which has an adorable display of organic cotton clothed bags for an assortment of fresh produce, namely apples, carrots, onions, bread, potatoes, fresh herbs and a gorgeous red texted mushrooms bag. I can imagine how perfect these would be for a day at the farmers’ market.

Finally after being immersed in all these amazing creations, on my way out I linger at the Cat Rabbit stall which has hand sewn magical fantasy creatures with colourful feathered felt headpieces. Their wonderful charm makes me smile the rest of the way home where I continue my love for these handcrafts online and in blog land. We are always surrounded by so many undiscovered and beautiful things in the world, it is heartwarming to discover these amongst inspiring artists at special places like MarkIt.

Every now and then, I think there is so much more to life than just work and earning money. As much as I have enjoyed and am thankful to my new job for the past 6 months, I admit that on the other hand I have somewhat been neglecting my blog, my creative mind and love of all things craft, handmade and vintage.

But it’s this that has suddenly inspired me to blog again (and hopefully will let me find that balance again of blogging more). My creative sister, Esther got me back into cardmaking and papercraft! I did start here and here. But she has built a great collection of supplies to inspire me to make cards on regular occasions. I realise it’s nice to have something else to come home to and enjoy, take my mind off work, a creative hobby that you dream of making into an etsy store!

It is my sister Vanessa’s 30th birthday today, Happy Birthday Nessy! I made this card for her, an ocean whale with a big blue felt 30 and waves:


Here is another card I made, from my sis’ owl puncher, he sits on a green branch against an embossed red background and even has a little blue heart. Who doesn’t love owls?


I love cards and how something so simple can mean a lot to someone and put a big smile on their face. I am always meticulous in choosing the right card and writing a message from the heart. And don’t you think handmade cards make the gift of card giving that extra special and thoughtful?

It has been exactly one year since we moved into our lovely townhouse in Malvern East We have been very happy here. To commemorate, I decided to do a blog post on all the art work we have collected so far for our house over the past year.

Our Verve portraits were our very first pieces we bought to put up in our new house. The first we have is our ‘Canvas’ set which goes nicely in our bedroom, the ‘Mondo’ black and white portrait of Dan is kind of goth like which sits at the top of our staircase, and the ‘Mondo’ picture of my lips adds a big splash of red to our living room and sits above our couch. Although very expensive and regrettable decisions made, I think in the end they definitely add a unique and personal touch to our house.





Walking along Brunswick Street one day, we came across Galerie Montmartre, and being in my vintage state of mind, I went crazy yearning for their huge range of colourful vintage posters of advertisements of the 1900s. I knew I just had to buy one… the first one we bought was ‘Talco Paglieri’, with a cute baby powdering herself. We put this in our bedroom above our dresser:



Then along came a sale at Galerie Montmartre, and we found ourselves back in their gallery shop! We fell in love with Paris furniture exhibition advertisements, and had to buy a few. The colours of the ‘Salon’ against a silver background are simply striking, and Dan loved the bold linear colours against the black of the ‘Formes Scandinaves’ poster.



We also bought a brightly coloured and very cute ‘Choco’ poster from ‘Tour De France’ for our dining area, which I think is absolutely gorgeous and true vintage style!



Here is a piece of Japanese artwork by ‘Kozyndan’ which we purchased at Outre Gallery on Elizabeth Street. It is really a visual illusion of so many details! I especially like the white rabbit.



This piece is entitled ‘Water Dreaming’ by ‘Hoang’ (studiooat) which we bought at Paddington Markets in Sydney last year. Each of his pieces tell a story, this ‘water dreaming’ symbolises ‘the cycle of the universe and the truth we can find in all experiences…’



My inspiration wall has grown since I last posted about my new desk space here. It includes a little poster ‘Gaz’ we also bought from Galerie Montmartre, very cute!



Here are a few photos at our door entrance which sit above our shoe cupboard, and an adorable little dog that welcomes us home. He looks like he came straight out of a Studio Ghibli movie. I actually bought him from Howard’s Storage of all places!



I finally have framed my Christina Gordon ‘Jamfancy‘ prints. My favourite is the ‘Counting Buttons’ which fits nicely between our windows in the bedroom. And the other is ‘A Little Wild’, just at the base of our staircase. I just love their wide eyed expressions, and the texture of her artwork.




And then there is my favourite piece of artwork by the very talented Dawn Tan, an original honey jar drawing that goes so well at the entry of our kitchen. Thank you Dawn!



Hope you have enjoyed all our house artwork, I think this whole collection adds so much character to our house and puts a smile on our faces everyday. It really does make our home feel like our very own.

I’m sad to have neglected my blog lately, as well as reading other people’s blogs. Finishing up at Hal Leonard and starting work at Melbourne Recital Centre this week has taken over my life completely. Not to mention a cold sickness on top of it To make up for this, here are felties I worked on last week, which I made into brooches and gave to my Hal friends as little farewell gifts. Let me introduce you to Parisian Sailor Puppy, I think he is very cute:


Mushroom Girl feltie also makes a reappearance (see previous feltie post here), and there is also a blue Babushka and a sleepy Fox:


When you lie them all together, you can see that the Babushka is the chubbiest. Sailor Puppy is very thin, and also seems to be the only one wide awake!


Hehee sleepy felties. Fiwee has been sleepy all week, goodnight x

So you may have heard of the ‘Insert Coin Here’ exhibit curated by Nella Themelios and Kim Brockett during the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival last month. Basically there were 2 vending machines that moved weekly around the Melbourne CBD containing limited edition balls of fashion art by various Melbourne based artists.

This is so my kind of thing, so naturally I had to save up my $2 coins and go get my balls quick smart, because they were heavily in demand and sold out very fast!! I went on the first day, a Sunday morning of the third week at ‘Alice Euphemia’ on Flinders Lane. To my sadness when I got there at 11am…the shop was closed!!! Noooooooooooo.


After eating breakfast at Flinders Lane, I ventured hopefully back to the shop and HOORAH, it was open!!!! And there they were, the two glorious vending machines filled with balls!!! I was a little excited, it was my mission to get Dawn Tan’s ‘Mountain Tea’.


First I managed to score a gorgeous little ‘Pocket Garden’ book by Kyoko Imazu:


I also received a few other little treasures including Sharon Margaret’s ‘Lightbulb brooch’ and ‘A Little Breakfast’ pin by Simon MacEwan How lucky am I!:



But no mountain tea bag We left to go shopping for a camera bag for Dan’s Nikon, where he ended up buying a cool crumpler bag for his precious camera! But all I could think of was balls and mountain tea! I had to go back and give it one last try. I don’t know if it was just meant to be or Dan’s luck, but somehow he put in $2 and out came…
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….
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………DAWN TAN’S MOUNTAIN TEA!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is a tea bag with a mountain brooch inside, such a neat & sweet idea:



I had to immediately twitter Dawn as soon as I got home:
@paperkites omg! I can’t believe i managed to get your ‘mountain tea bag’ at Alice today amongst a few others!! Hehee I’m so lucky!
@fiwee3 HAHA.. Gosh! You got one of my mountain tea brooches! You can take it out from the tea bag and wear it.. Hehe
@paperkites oh! It looked pretty in the teabag, i didn’t know! A mountain brooch – Too CUTE! Such a nice idea

Oh little balls of art, what joy you bring to fiwee and thank you Danny for your ultimate luck x

I know I have neglected my blog for the past month Here are my long overdue blog posts about my latest pieces of art collection!

First here is a wondeful Sydney zine from one of my favourite Melbourne artist – Dawn Tan (see my other Dawn Tan blog post here). It is filled with the lovely spots of Sydney to visit and eat at, and includes colourful maps and many illustrations of happy smiling ice-creams, sushi and ‘The Rocks’, so cuteeee:





I also had to buy these prints, a ‘oh honey mountain’ print and a ‘friendly grizzly bear’ to go with my wise hare and owl:

Dawn is a very sweet person and gave me these prints too, a gorgeous ‘Mandarin Duck’ and an original honey jar print which I am in love with!!! I think it is one of the nicest art piece I have, I need to find a frame for it so I can hang it in my kitchen, it is so very very lovely

Meet my new little friend Pom Pom, my sister adopted her from jennylovesbenny, and kindly gave her to me! Isn’t she full of handmade cuteness:



She has her own crocheted hat:


And has already found a friend of her own – Mr. Froggy!


Sending lots of positive energy and luck for me today x And Happy 1st Birthday to my gorgeous chubby nephew – Jacob!

I promised I would update my blog tonight, but the one thing currently on my mind at the moment is this game.

Yes the new Final Fantasy RPG game came out last week! It is going to keep me very preoccupied for awhile. I spent 50 hours of my life completing my all time favourite game Final Fantasy VII. Let’s see how long this one will take!

What I love about Final Fantasy are it’s mad graphics and combat scenes, the uber cool characters with their insanely awesome weapons and swords…and of course their life-like hair:

I love my dumpling baby nephew Jakey, he’s so cute & chubby

I took this picture for the Much Love project, where you have to take a photo of a red heart and name something you love! She then puts collages together weekly for this month, a very sweet idea that I had to be a part of! It is a bit late for Valentine’s Day, but here’s to LOVE every single day…

And here are more cool light pics using my fibre optic flower that changes colours (see Christmas Lights), taken with Dan’s Nikon D90 and his new tripod. Neat!! My fave is the smiley face

After reading a Design Files feature on Christina Gordon, I just had to buy one of her gorgeous prints!! She is a local Melbournian too, I never realised how much talent and art inspiration Melbourne has, it’s so great! I love her style and the colours of her artworks, the girl characters remind me a lot of Blythe Dolls (which I also love!) with their big staring eyes and somewhat sombre expressions.

It took me forever (a month to be exact!) to choose which prints to buy from the wonderful collection at her jamfancy etsy shop. After changing my mind countless times, I finally came to a decision on two prints! Upon receiving them, they are just as lovely as I thought they would be. I am very very happy with my decision, I hope you think so too!!


Top Left: ‘Counting Buttons’
Top Right: ‘A Little Wild’
Bottom: cute thank you card from jam fancy!