Secret Traces

New Blog

2010-07-31T10:43:00.000+10:00

Hi everyone! i have moved my blog to a new address follow the link to keep yourslef updated :)

http://www.melissaavery/blogspot.com

thanks!

Family photo montage

2010-07-25T17:50:00.000+10:00

Mothers day present was a photo-montage of the whole family

Silkscreening bookcovers with gocco screen mesh

2010-07-20T20:25:00.001+10:00

Sneak peak at the book covers and the printing process :)

1. Set up a guide sheet to make sure everything lines up and will print in the same place.

2. Attatch screen to table with tape along the top to create a temporary hinge.

3. Place fabric/cloth under screen ensuring it is lined up with the guide lines

4. You will need screen printing ink, a spatula and a squeegee. Dont forget the paper towl!

5. Place a finger width of ink at the top of the screen using the spatula

6. With a firm even pressure draw the squeegee down. Do not repeat.

7. Lift screen and remove fabric, place the next piece in and lower the screen. repeat :)

Life drawing ceramics

2010-07-20T14:41:00.000+10:00

Buttons coming soon

2010-07-02T20:27:00.000+10:00

Save me!

2010-06-27T11:00:00.002+10:00

Roll up! Roll up! there is a new circus in town

2010-06-25T17:41:00.001+10:00

New book coming soon! limited edition hand bound, stay tuned....

Endpapers for upcoming book

2010-06-25T17:35:00.001+10:00

Little things...

2010-06-11T16:52:00.004+10:00

Finished!

2010-06-08T20:43:00.005+10:00

Finished circus folk! Finally!

now what to do with them....? Any ideas? I'm thinking accessories?

Still Life Painting

2010-06-05T16:18:00.000+10:00

Lazy saturday spent drawing

2010-06-05T16:14:00.003+10:00

inished set of 16 Circus/Carnival Illustrations

Pencil - Watercolour - Gouache

Circus Folk

2010-06-02T20:58:00.001+10:00

illustration

2010-05-29T09:48:00.002+10:00

Gocco print Gift Bags

2010-05-28T16:05:00.000+10:00

Birthday presents! Vintage stamp set for Lisa

2010-05-06T17:03:00.001+10:00

Found 1

2010-04-08T08:44:00.003+10:00

Can't for the life of me.......

2010-03-05T18:26:00.004+11:00

Design pack 2010

2010-01-18T22:01:00.002+11:00

Design idea for a gocco print

Merry Christmas

2009-12-27T17:35:00.000+11:00

Merry Christmas

2009-12-04T18:17:00.003+11:00

Getting back into the festive slowly this year, after last years Christmas explosion.

Another illustration to go with the wrapping paper, this will be on gift tags.

drawing like crazy at the hospital

2009-12-01T23:06:00.007+11:00

I then decided to make them into festive wrapping paper!! You can have it for FREE!!

Click on the image, save to desktop, apply as a background on your computer or use the printer at your office to print your own wrapping paper!

Birthday crafts

2009-11-23T17:53:00.003+11:00

friendship rectangles....of a sort. Me and the girls got together to collaborate on these little squares, there are heaps more this is just a snapshot!

Belated Japan photos

2009-11-23T17:20:00.003+11:00

Beautiful places we visited in Japan

Audrey Kawasaki

2009-08-25T21:36:00.002+10:00

I posted earlier in the year about visiting the Audrey Kawasaki exhibition at Outre gallery in the city, just thought i would upload a pic of my Audrey print hanging in the kitchen room with the kitty

Moleskin drawings....

2009-07-15T15:09:00.003+10:00

ome more little drawings from my book, i really like these morphed people!

Salvador Dali & the Design Market

2009-06-18T11:38:00.005+10:00

Went into the city on sunday with Callie, we went to the design market and had a look around, as usual it was packed and there were alot of stupid women with strollers trying to pretend their lives havent changed since they had children.
I brought a few nice things, the most notable was a travel wallet, a beautiful A5 sized silver leather wallet with places for passports and tickets as well as space for credit cards etc.. i shall have to take a photo and post later.

After the market we went to see the Salvador Dali exhibition, it was a very long wait to get in (about 20 min) and the exhibition was quite large once we were in, i wish i had had more time to look around as there was so much to see, the best part for me was the animation made in colaboration with Disney. (See Link) i really liked the sweetness of the story.

Gotta love a famous crazy guy!

Artwork from the film, the statue is in love with the ballerina

Still from the animation of the dancer

she looses her dress and crawls into a shell

Moleskin deviations....

2009-06-18T10:49:00.003+10:00

Some recent little drawings i did in my moleskin pocket book.
Using watercolour paper, pencil and a mixture of watercolours and gauche.
Esther

Ravindi and Peter

Maude and Franklin

Betty and Nam Jo and Merv

Tam and Ridge

Hope you like!

Nectarine Tart!

2009-02-23T14:18:00.003+11:00

When we finished rennovating our house, me and chris decided to plant a small garden down the side by the kitchen window. The highlight being a nectarine tree, this year was the first time it bore fruit! an amazing 23 nectarines! so i decided to make a tart! mmmmmm......

Felt Brooches

2008-12-31T14:26:00.006+11:00

So the last 2 days I have been a total hermit, I stayed home watching copious amounts of t.v and ordered in pizza! Living the good life... I did however make productive use of my time and finally made the felt brooches i have been meaning to make for months! so here are a selection of my favorites!

Sloth - Vinyl record!

2008-12-28T23:57:00.002+11:00

I made this pendant for a girl who loves sloths, its made from a recycled vinyl record and painted with white accents. For interests sake the record was Classical music - Beethoven

Christmas Ornamnets

2008-12-28T23:47:00.004+11:00

So leading up to the holiday season i partook in many crafty projects! Here are some pics of some christmas ornaments i made.

Moss Terrarium

2008-12-28T12:08:00.004+11:00

This year was our first official Christmas in our house so we decided to put on Christmas lunch for Chris's parents. We went with a traditional roast pork lunch which turned out great considering it was the first time either of us has cooked a whole pork before! Everything was a bit of a mad rush on the day so i don't have any pics! I will be getting some from the in-laws to be asap!

This year I decided to make Chris's present, he is totally in love with moss so i decided to make him a moss terrarium! I got the idea from madebymavis on etsy.

I also included a packet of small animal kingdom animals for humour's sake.....cracks me up every time i see this little moose...

Christmas is here!

2008-12-03T11:23:00.005+11:00

YAY Christmas is here! I decided to put up my Christmas tree early (i know it's meant to be really bad luck!) but i couldn't wait! I only put it up one day early!
So here are some gratuitous shots of my Christmas decorations, i finally started to fill up the shelves! too bad it'll all be gone in a month :(
at least i will have an excuse to go shopping!

lady bird

2008-11-16T12:36:00.003+11:00

Another drawing, this one is indian ink on white scratcher board

Birds

2008-11-16T12:19:00.004+11:00

Now that i have a new table in my lounge i decided that it needed some decorating, i have a lamp that Lisa gave me for my birthday a few years ago, and it hasn't found a place to live until now. Unfortunately it doesn't have a shade....that's next on my list of things to do, but i decided to put it there anyway. I saw some cute little sculptured birds on etsy the other day and thought i would make a couple for myself. Lastly i framed a drawing i did a while back in a frame i got from my new friend Marie E Beck in America! it has taken me a while to fill the frame and find a place for it, but i finally did! Everything looks so cute...i plan to change the table top decorations every couple of months, I would like Chris to put a power point in so i can plug in the lamp....we'll see if that ever happens though....i have a feeling it is going to be a purely decorative item...

Finished table

2008-11-16T11:05:00.005+11:00

Here it is! the finished table! ooohhhh....so cute! I decided to line the top of the table with some of the leftover wallpaper that is on the wall in the dining room...it isn't visible when closed but gives you a little surprise when you open the top! The only thing that i had to spend money on was some chrome silver paint for the handle, everything else i already had.

Side Table....at last

2008-11-16T10:57:00.002+11:00

So i picked up this old sewing table from the salvo's some time ago, it was an ugly brown wood grain laminated surface. Very similar to the piano stool i re-upholstered last year. I still had the paints from the piano stool so i decided to renovate this little beauty for my lounge.

STAGE ONE: Deconstruct and undercoat in white - followed by 3 coats of matt dark black brown paint

Room make-over

2008-11-03T16:39:00.005+11:00

Last weekend i finally got around to making some pin boards for my study, i just purchased two cork boards from the dollar store (about $15 each), got some cute white and tan fabric and some white ribbon and converted them into these pretty pin boards! The fabric was attached with a staple gun and then the ribbon was attached with small daubs of hot glue! it took me less than 30 min to do 2.

the boards in their new home! I don't know why but my room looks a bit messy! i swear i just cleaned it! it's just full of eclectic bits and pieces!

A few weeks ago i went to ikea and picked up this mini plans press, it was an expensive item for me at $220, but well worth it as now i have a safe and clean place to store all my papers (some of the paper i have is quite expensive too!) I converted the top of the plans press into a jewellery making space, i am yet to organise all my beads etc, but expect to see some jewellery when i do!

I also got these 2 shelves from ikea, they are now up in my lounge room, i picked up the "m" and "c" on my spa retreat with the girls in Daylesford (i love how indulgent and snobby that sounds)

Pretty Picture

2008-10-28T07:18:00.004+11:00

A few other Polaroids i have taken lately.....enjoy!

Spring Cleaning

2008-10-26T09:37:00.004+11:00

I have been in a bit of a spring cleaning mood lately, last week i cleaned out my wardrobe and ended up donating 2 huge garbage bags of clothes to the salvos, I also purchased some new shelves from Ikea, a lamp and some picture frames to decorate my lounge room.

This week i have been spring cleaning my laptop, i have so many files on there and they were all so disorganised! however, they are now resembling some kind of order. In my sorting frenzy I found this little collage i did at uni and thought i would share it with you. I like how innocent and hopeful it is.

Black sheep

2008-10-23T22:53:00.005+11:00

Just a little something i drew at a design teachers conference i went to a few weeks ago....forgot how much effort chinagraph pencils can be!

Polaroids

2008-10-23T16:09:00.006+11:00

So i am totally in love with Polaroids lately, i just love the way they look and the vintage feel they have. I have been taking lots of photos too and recently converted them into Polaroids using photoshop. I just love the way the images look cropped. Here are a few i took of Lisa recently at manifest. She was dressed as the Queen of Hearts.

Jewellery

2008-10-22T13:03:00.007+11:00

Here are some of the other pendants i made during the holidays. They are made using silver bezel cups, images are then chosen and glued in with decoupage glue (lots of coats) and then sealed with liquid gloss resin.

this one is a gift for someone at work

Iggy and Poe strike again! I gave one to Angie

the raven....this is for sale in my etsy store if you like it!

oh deer! this was a gift for a craft swap

Shrigley

2008-10-22T12:31:00.007+11:00

I'm a big fan of David Shrigley, Lisa brought me one of his books "Ants have sex in your beer" for my birthday last year. When we went to the Melbourne Design Festival a couple of months ago i purchased a set of rub on transfers with his designs and decorated various little nooks in my house - much to the displeasure of Chris....ooops.
I was making some jewellery for a craft swap on craftster and thought i would make some pendants for Lisa as i know she's a fan too.

Pendants for Lisa :)

All Packaged up ready to go to their new home!

Imaginables!

2008-10-22T10:06:00.012+11:00

This week is the last week for the year 12's and so i decided to send them off in style! I got together with my friend angie and we came up with these 2 cute little critters, Iggy and Poe. We busted out the Gocco printer and the rest is history!! Some pics of the progress for your enjoyment.
Poe

Iggy

Making.....

the text on the cards reads...

"Your imaginable is here to help you make good design decisions, and to inspire you with new ideas.
Just when you thought it was safe to break out the glitter, and use comic sans, your imaginable will jump into action and karate-chop it into the bin! (Metaphorically speaking).
Now, the next time you go into your craft draw to pull something out, think to yourself...
“What Would My Imaginable Do?”
With your imaginable by your side, and a little bit of hard work, anything is possible!"

Want one for yourself? check out my Etsy store there are a couple left!

Collaboration

2008-10-21T22:05:00.005+11:00

I have recently been in the mood to decorate, I went to Ikea on the weekend and purchased some new shelves and a lamp to decorate my lounge room. Chris must have caught the bug too because he decided it was time to paint the canvas that has been sitting against the wall for months.

In progress shot...