... on taking an idea and running with it.

Last week I shared some in-progress shots of the speckled egg cards I've been making for the upcoming BrisStyle Indie Market, which is next Saturday. They're now all packed up with their stripy brown-paper envelopes in A6 plastic sleeves, and C has made me a nice little plywood box to display them in on the day. Many thanks, C!

These will be available for $4 each on the day. Hurrah!

Then, I wanted to try a more random assortment of eggs... different sizes and varying shapes, and arrange them like the photo of the real eggs displayed in the Launceston Museum that my friends had sent me. 

I set about taking this idea and turning it into a repeating pattern. I photographed my paper eggs, jumped into Photoshop, and three days later I had just about figured it out! I'd never made a proper repeating pattern in Photoshop before, so I learned a few things along the way. One thing I wish I'd figured out sooner... start with the corners. I wanted this pattern to work as a tile - that is, for the original piece to be able to be repeated infinitely without any discernable join on any edge, not even by one pixel. So, once you have got one corner sorted out, you essentially have all four. Wish I'd figured that out sooner.
Anyway, here's the resulting pattern. This is a piece slightly larger than one tile.

One thing I'm glad I realised early on is that it's helpful to work at the highest resolution you can, although I did eventually figure out that there's a 2GB limit on Photoshop file sizes on my computer. This amazed me - and then didn't, when I remembered that the first computer our family owned had a hard drive with a total capacity of 2GB, and that it cost almost $20,000. Phew!
So, I worked big - this is about actual size:

After I'd triple-checked that everything was in order in terms of the repeat, I could then start to play. Oh did I play. I'd forgotten how lovely working in Photoshop can be, and in fact it's very easy to go crazy with variations and become a little overwhelmed. Once I'd got myself back under control, these were the results:

I'm feeling like it's Christmas morning! There's so many possibilities. I feel like uploading them all to Spoonflower, digital printers of fabric and wallpaper, and ordering lengths of silk and upholstery linen, and wallpapering my whole house.
I'd love to know your favourite version... do let me know!

... on a recent curious visitor.

A little while ago I mentioned that the studio was unusually tidy on account of a curious visitor. That visitor was Susan Schwartz, who had contacted me to ask whether I would like to be interviewed for an article for her new blog, styletribeonline.com. Susan arrived, enviable camera in hand, trailing tripods and notebooks, and we spent over an hour chatting and poking about the studio. It was quite lovely to show her around. I enjoyed it!

StyleTribe has just gone live this week, and the article about Kuberstore appeared yesterday. I'm loving Susan's high-contrast photographs, and I'm delighted that one of my Pekin bantams has made an appearance too! Susan hopes that the blog will become a resource for all things design in Brisbane, and I wish her all the very best for it. I'll be checking in often!
You can find the Kuberstore interview here. Hurrah!

... on variations on a theme.

Friends sent me a couple of photos they took on their recent trip to Tasmania. They saw these in the Launceston Museum and thought of me, egg-fancier that I am.

Isn't that just the most delicious collection of eggs? Such a beautiful way to display them, too. I saw them, thought of my stack of nice old coloured pastel paper (found for me last year by my excellent-op-shop-rummager-friend Beck) and my mind started racing. 

The result was a little stack of speckled bird egg cards. Each one is a little bit different, given the random nature of the speckle, and I've really enjoyed the simplicity of this cut-and-paste project.

I'm using thick watercolour paper as the base card, and I've found a supplier of some lovely stripy-brown-paper envelopes to go with them. I'll make another handful, pop them into some C6 plastic sleeves and try them out at the next BrisStyle Indie Market in City Hall on the 14th September. 

It's always refreshing to try variations on a theme - just call me Egg Girl!