Finders Keepers Melbourne

This Friday and Saturday Finders Keepers is rolling back down south to Melbourne. It starts at 6pm on Friday night at the Royal Exhibition Buildings. According to The Age it will be 27 degrees on Friday so it might just be the perfect night to saunter through the park (get some green into your eyes!), have a few fizzy booze drinks, meet up with some friends and check out some art/design/handmade goodness. Gareth and I will be there with lots of cards, calendars, tea towels and brand new diaries. Yes, we have a spanking new product.

70!

We keep getting requests for more ages with our ha ha ha cards. They started off at thirty and I didn't think we would ever get to the 70 mark. As soon as someone requests another number we then go ahead and make them. The girl version is here and the boy version is here.

We Love Zines - Life Continues To Be Confusing by Mel Stringer

A couple of years ago I wrote about one of Mel Stringer's Zines called Telephone and Me and said that is was pretty much the perfect zine in my eyes. I was pretty excited to see there was a new one called Life Continues To Be Confusing and couldn't wait for it to arrive. Again it ticks all my zine boxes, good drawings and a peek into the inner workings of someone else's mind. I also got the kitty bunting PDF that I have still not made up yet, but when I do you can be assured that our studio will look like a colourful kitty wonderland.

Creative Mornings

A few Fridays ago Gareth and I went along to the Melbourne Creative Mornings Talk by Dr. Amantha Imber.  A few weeks ago I saw this video of Creative Mornings founder Tina Roth Eisenberg talking about success in business. Around 2 minutes into the video she discusses her second rule: don't be a complainer make things happen and how she started a few different projects, including Creative Mornings, based this rule. The idea stuck with me and I tried to change my way of thinking about things that would usually be viewed as negative. I was also happy to learn that Creative Mornings had started in Melbourne.

The talk we went to was about creativity and making decisions. I learnt (or maybe even relearned) that decision making should happen in the morning, something I get wrong all the time. In the evening, if going out for a meal I often just want someone to decide on everything for me and having someone do that feels like such a luxury. It is so strange how the brain works sometimes.

The talk also touched on deadlines and that old adage that you come up with your best work at the last minute. This is something I often tell Gareth (when I'm justifying why I'm doing something so late) but Amantha said that it isn't all happening at the last minute because you have had all this time to think about the idea so technically it isn't happening at the last minute, it is a long process where all that time is very important.

If you're wanting to watch the talk it should be loaded up on the website soon and in the meantime there are two previous talks you can watch. We also got to have a look around the pretty amazing Compound Interest space and Gareth spotted a print from the recent Risographica 2 show that he decided he wanted to own very much.

A day at the show

Last time I went to the Melbourne show the year was 1984 and I went along with my Mum and Nanna as a small child with big dreams of living the carnie lifestyle. For the last few years I have been desperate to go back but somehow never made it and ended up feeling sad and let down by my inability to organise a day out. After 28 years away from the hallowed grounds in Flemington (except for Life Instyle a few months back, but the dog pavilion looked a lot different back in August) I finally returned.

They had a cat show. We stood for 40 minutes watching them judge the cats. This cat performed particularly well in the swimsuit category.

I'm going to apply for a stand at Finders Keepers and totally rip this guy off. It will be called:

THE ABLE AND GAME TOUCH A CAT AND LIKE IT FUN TIME STAND

How strong are you? Pay $6 to find out. If you are very strong you will win a giant Spongebob Squarepants soft toy to carry around until you complain that your arms hurt and hand it over to your Mum.

Did you know hipsters model their hair on barnyard animals?

When Devo wrote their hit song WHIP IT they pictured this guy whipping polystyrene cups off a stand.

We got to try fancy Victorian ciders.

We saw this circus act with a man who is a famous clown from the USA and his friend, a man in a sparkly cops uniform.


I give the show a big tick of approval. Gareth and I had a total wow of a time, although he was not willing to join me on the cha cha style ride and we didn't win an over sized Spongebob Squarepants toy.

Confusion in the office

Sometimes we get our worms mixed up.

Our cards make kids.....

....vom!

We got a message from Lou from Totally Innocent last week letting us know one of our cards was on the new show House Husbands. Although we don't dream of becoming famous on TV we were pretty excited that maybe one of our cards could be. We watched the show via the website and finally spotted the card positioned right in front of the young girl vomming all over her Mum. So we made an animated gif about it.