... on countdowns and crossings off.

Well, the countdown is almost over - it's Finders Keepers this weekend. I haven't done it before, so it's  a shot in the dark, and I'm apprehensive because I have no idea what it'll be like or how it will go and whether the wind will blow my veranda stall away and will the folding table bear the weight of my display and what are 'fire resistant timbers' (I'm just ignoring that little piece of info in the stallholders manual!) and what will I do if I run out of change and... and... can you tell I'm anxious!?

But, I'm almost there. I've got lists, MULTIPLE lists, with lots of things crossed off them, and only a few more major (but achieveable) things to do before bump-in tomorrow evening. I've got stock levels that I'm comfortable with in two ways - if I sell out of a particular thing that'll be surprising and delightful, and if I sell none of a particular thing then it's not too much to have on hand. I've got a new cast plaster letter display that fits in much better with the look of my stall.

The map of stallholders has now been released, which I have popped up on my Facebook page. I'll be at stall D10 which is on the veranda near the stairs going down into the garden. Visitors who stop by can have a first look at my newest wee linen nest, containing an extra-special speckled egg.

In the spirit of getting things done, recently I crossed a big thing off my list of things to do. You know you're a bit slack in the 'do website' department when you get an annual hosting renewal notice before you've managed to get around to designing your site. Hello something-more-than-a-holding-page-at-kuberstore.com!

I've done this using Squarespace, as their level of customisation potential was able to balance my 'desire to make it look a certain way' with 'I am a web design gumby' and 'I'd like to be able to change this whenever I want'. Doing Finders Keepers was the kick I needed to get my website sorted out, and I'm glad, as quite a lot of traffic is coming from the FK stallholder profiles right now!

So. Fingers crossed for mild weather and smiling faces and non-collapsing tables! See you there if you're going, or stay tuned for a Finders Keepers wrap-up next week. Cheerio!

... on little bits of signage.

I'm just about ready to pack everything up for tomorrow's BIM at City Hall. You know, every time I'm preparing for a market I find something that I can do better. Each market I've done up until now has seen me scurrying about at the last minute sorting out something small but vital - pricepoint signage.

These folded cardboard signs have worked well in terms of angle and size, but as they've been taped together at the start of the day and then thrown out at the end, I've been having to re-create them each time. I can only fit three to an A4 page so I was going through lots of card. Plus they have a tendency to blow away. I liked the look, but as I've got at least three more markets to do before Christmas and I'm almost out of card, I wanted to sort out something less disposable. Enter C and his mad saw skills. Bless the man, again.

He rummaged about and came up with a piece of timber from a pallet, and chopped it up into lots of triangular prism shapes for me. A once-over with some sandpaper and they were just as I'd imagined. All my pricepoints fit easily onto a single printed piece of A4 card...

... and they certainly won't blow away! They tone in nicely with my old wooden display items and my little wattle forest, and my shredded paper egg display nests that are also making their first appearance at tomorrow's market.

Is anyone's market setup ever 'finished'? I feel that each little thing I improve upon contributes to a better display, but I don't know whether it's ever going to become a static or finished thing... and that's good!

... on plants.

There has been so much going on in the garden recently. It seems that just about every day there's been something new to sniff. One of my favourite flowers as far as scent goes are those little old-fashioned white freesias. This year I got a stack of bulbs from The Digger's Club and put them in a big shallow pot on the deck.

The native bees are still around, and it seems they like freesias too. Look at their little pollen balls!

My big pots of pansies, heartease and anemones have been flowering spectacularly for weeks. I don't think I've ever had such success with flowers in pots before!

The vegie garden (with the new hardwood edges) is packed full of greens, and they're now at the stage where we can hardly keep up with the output and need the chooks to help out! There's some carrots up the back there too, they should be ready in a couple of weeks.

 

This morning there was a first flower on my extra-special purple beans. I do so love purple food.

Speaking of chooks, (who are somewhat garden-related as that's where they live) Marilla had been sitting in an expectant trance for three weeks. Over three weeks, actually, as it took me about ten days to source some fertile eggs for her!

Of the twelve eggs, five hatched, which isn't a bad result considering the eggs came through the post. There was a possibility none would hatch, as who knows what happens to a fragile package en route? But there's now five one-week-old Pekins cheeping in their coop, which is just a wonderful thing. 

Look at those feet! Time for me to go and pick a colander of greens for our dinner, and squeeze a few chicks. Not a bad way to finish the afternoon!

... on finding, keeping, and other excitement.

Excitement comes in funny forms around here, sometimes. One recent burst was a result of a delivery of recycled shredded paper from Ecocern. It was some days late, having been misdirected from Sydney to Perth, but seemed none-the-worse for its WA holiday. Not so hot on the carbon miles, however!

It came in a large tightly-rolled bale, 20 kilograms of it. As it wasn't available in Brisbane I found two other BrisStyle girls to share the costs with, and once unrolled, each share filled a huge (wheelie-bin sized) garbage bag. I've got enough shredded paper to last forever, as you can see by my little foot in the photo below. Mountains of it. 

As soon as the paper arrived, I just had to pull a bit off to try out an idea I'd been chewing over. I wanted something to display my large hanging egg decorations in at the markets, and I had in mind a messy shredded paper nest on a sanded branch sitting on my linen tablecloth.

That's a work-in-progress photo, but you get the idea. A couple of those will almost certainly work a lot better than my previous paper-bag-with-the-top-rolled-down technique, which was admittedly only a temporary fix!

So, now to begin preparations for the upcoming markets. The next City Hall BrisStyle market is on the Saturday-after-next, on October 12, and I'm currently making a batch of my large natural-toned eggs. 

Dry, trimmed and sanded, these cast plaster eggs are ready to be drilled.

Once they've had their little metal rings glued into them and the glue has cured for 24 hours, it's time for the eggs to be painted with their base colour.

Maggie Beer's fruit paste containers make excellent mixed-paint pots. Thanks, Maggie!

Now for a most exciting happening. I did a happy dance in my seat (you know the one) the other day when I received news that my application for the next Finders Keepers market here in Brisbane had been successful. I'll be occupying a debut stall site on the veranda of The Old Museum, so let's all cross our fingers for calm weather, or I'm sure Kuberstore will be taking flight (in many, many pieces) out over the RNA showground! Weather predictions aside, I'm so delighted to have this to prepare for, and I'm sure the next six weeks will simply fly by. Eeek! But HURRAH!

... 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!