Pebbles are calling

A new release of pebble jewellery is now up for grabs in my online shop. As my stocks are all but exhausted, I am planning another raid across the Tasman to visit the promised land.

In my forthcoming fossicking expedition to I have to decide which beaches to visit. Orepuki Beach - Tae Waewae Bay in Southland gets blasted by icy winds from the southern slushipole. The pebbles are rounded and polished by the thumping waves along the beach. It has an astonishing variety of rocks including delicious argillites, deposited by the now degraded Waiau River whose main flow has been diverted so that bucket loads of hydroelectricity can be made to smelt Australian bauxite into aluminium. No wonder the Kiwis hate us so much.

Okarito Beach. On the wet and bleak west coast where forest meets sea and you get the occassional glimpse of inland alps above the clouds. Keri Hulme wrote The Bone People here. The pebbles are grey, schist with the very rare greenish piece of nephrite. The beach is wild and woolly. The people are wild and woolly. And there are real kiwis on the beach at night snorting bugs.


Katiki Beach. On the East Coast right next to Highway 1. A gentle stretch of beach with fossil shells and eroding coastline. Whenever I am there, there is sun peaking through a veil of fine rain and Mr Accordian waits in the car.

Mmmmm, can't wait.

Wrecker Tax Time

It's tax time again I'm afraid so I'm up to my ears in receipts and spreadsheets.
These are the sorts of sums I'd much rather be doing:

(Especially the bit you you have to eliminate the contents of the gin bottle)

Modamuse

The lovely and talented ladies at Modamuse are selling a range of my recycled glass jewellery in their online store and have done the cool promotion you see above.
It's well worth a look to browse through all the yummy items from nearly 20 fabulous Australian and NZ designers that could be yours after just a few mouse clicks!

Act Now

Visiting the local shopping centre as one does from time to time in search of tucker, I noticed this illuminated advert in the dingy undercover carpark near the travelators. At first I was attracted by the beautifully photographed retro styled swimming pool with army men and razor wire but then after I decoded its message, I was impressed by the shock value of this kind of a ad. Especially in a location where you normally find ads for hair products or junk food with all the visuals aimed at encouraging excessive consumption.

Kudos to Act Now I say.

They seem to be an organistion like Get Up but with a youth focus though I cannot find much anaylsis about them online.

Flotsam Drifters

I've been having fun with flickr post-holiday, documenting some of my fave flotsam found, including Mud Island Baby. Also found the wonderful widgets to fidget with via Marta.

Holiday

Just went for a brief holiday with the Accordian at Stradbroke /Minjerribah Island where you can still find some of the old fibro beach shacks to stay in while listening to the wind in the she-oaks.

You give love a bad name

Love Letters jewellery decorating one of the anthems of the 80s that I think I might have once rollerskated to. This one goes out to Dan and Poppilina.

You give Love a Bad Name - Bon Jovi

An angel's smile is what you sell
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell
Chains of love got a hold on me
When passion's a prison, you can't break free





You're a loaded gun
There's nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done








Chorus:
Shot through the heart
And you're to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name
You give love a bad name



Paint your smile on your lips
Blood red nails on your fingertips
A school boys dream, you act so shy
Your very first kiss was your first kiss goodbye





You're a loaded gun
There's nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done





Chorus:
Shot through the heart
And you're to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name
You give love a bad name

Tag Dag

I've been tagged by Mel Robson.
Liana and Florence also copped it from Mel. That means we have to write a list of 6 things about us not mentioned before in our blogs. I didn't have much left so bear with me.

1. I once dressed up as a Giant Red Blood Drop to promote the Red Cross Blood Bank. Kylie Johnson can verify this - as I seem to remember she managed to avoid the whole shebang. When I look back at the hideous photos (I had a particularly bad case of teenage acne) I'm not sure I persuaded anyone of the merits of blood donation and may well have done the opposite. Now whenever they call urgently for donors, as the world's ugliest pox-ridden blood drop of all-time, I feel personally responsible for the dwindling blood stocks.

2. Though ovo-lacto-fisho vegetarian, I do occasionally treat myself to a strip of crispy smoked watermelon or a slice of the delicious salty fruit from the pepperoni vine.

3. I used to be a venturer scout. Sharing a tent with 4 other pubescent girls and their many and varied cosmetic products accounts for my allergies to aerosol deoderants, perfumes and hair sprays. That is why I stink so bad and my hair defies any logical explanation.

4. I woke up on Xmas day and my eyes were stuck together with conjuntivitus gunk. I couldn't have been happier though as my highly infectious and unattractive condition permitted me to lie in bed and read outdoor murder mysteries all day long. Once I'd managed to get my eyes open that is.

5. I watch 'Neighbours' every night if I can. I just have to know the crazy antics of Toadfish (is he dead yet?- i missed a few episodes), Stingray, that devil Paul Robinson, stupid Susan and that sleazebag Carl and all the other ridiculous, completely unlovable characters. So anyone calling me between 6.30 and 7pm weeknights will get short shrift indeed.

6. I'm very susceptible to peer group pressure. Otherwise I would have ignored this tagging game. However the tag stops with me. Unless anyone wants to be tagged? Are you up for it Simone?

Back 2 Skool Suckers

Of the current 2 retail crazes I'm finding the back to school stationery festival far more enjoyable than the nationalistic flag frenzy of Straya Day/Survival Day, whaddeva you want to call it.

Could it be a touch of schadenfreude knowing all the little Dick and Doras are finishing their super fun holidays and going back to boring old school to learn multiplication tables and John Howard's new history curriculum? Nah. It is just that I like to celebrate stationery. Before wrecking it. Today I got this rather spiffy giant pencil shelving unit at the local thrift store. It just happens to match Texta velvet touch me pencil pins quite well. Colour me happy Mr Squiggle.

Toast

I don't eat my crusts. Never have, never will.
You can't make me.
Not even when you tell me people are starving in africa.
That the world is running out of food, water, arable land.
So don't even try.
I'm saving them up to string together and enter in Contemporary Wearables Competitions.

Photos of Ayumi's delicious monkey-learning-to-count-crusts plate taken for her Pots in Action page.

Education is the Key

Now there is a right and a wrong way to wear a tape measure.

Looking through a particular magazine post Xmas, I was searching in vain/vainly for an article about MoBWorkspace we'd been hoping for. What I did find was plenty of articles about the businesses who'd taken out adverts, often on the same page and a bunch of ads using tape-measures in entirely the wrong way. It really disappointed me, I thought we might have moved on from this.

Doesn't everyone know by now the correct way to use a tape measure? In a Liana Kabel Measure Up brooch of course. It was on Boing Boing for heavens' sake! Get a ber-loody edumacation!! Plastic Girl, you have much work to do.

Choking Hazard All Ages

I'm always on the lookout for new plastic army men to wreck as the right kind for my flatliners are no longer manufactured. So I came across this rather shocking set of Great Beige Hunters with firearms and Noble Natives with spears and axes in the toy section of my local bargain basement store. I tried to remember what century it was. Admittedly, I am inured to the 'cowboys and indians' sets that you still find on the shelves which are probably just as bad, but I have never seen anything quite as revolting as these. Fortunately they do come with a choking hazard warning. They just got the age limit wrong. These toys may cause choking in decent persons of all ages. If they have an upside, it is that there is at least a female figure included in the set - albeit as "nature-woman-in-bra-with-disproportionately-large-feet-and-hands".

I also found this rather wonderful construction set of yellow and red blokes. Though disappointingly no female role models here, at least there are no guns and genocide.

Lake Manchester

This break we took a day trip to Lake Manchester, a favorite haunt and not an ugly desolate dam like most in our area but one surrounded by bushclad hills. It is one of the quieter places around, built before WWI and it retains the industrial ornamentation and solid dignity of engineering from that time - built to last by craftsmen with quality materials. The nearby picnic ground has been abandoned by family picnickers (they are all at the airconditioned shopping malls) with barbeque areas morphing back into cow paddocks and picnic tables being reclaimed by strangler figs. I once went to a Robert Moore show of paintings in the local hall, the lake being subject matter for some of his works on canvas and fibreglass so I remembered what a great venue it was with it's french doors and wide verandahs.

We had to negotiate a council worker spraying poison on weeds through a firehose but we made it to the dam wall without respiratory failure. The tide had gone out nearly 20metres straight down, exposing the dam floor and bits and pieces of wrecker treasure. Mr Accordian was able to take the photos above and some audio files of the soundscape while I foraged and watched the turtles. We also found an abandoned walking path with overgrown stairs and stone path edges leading up a nearby conical hill with views out to Ivory Rock. The only other people around apart from poison man were a couple of old boys reminiscing about their glory days abseiling down the dam wall, a carload of bogans tearing up the dusty carpark and a surveyor. The surveyor (never a welcome sight in my books) was taking measurements for the dam wall to be raised 5 meters. We wondered if council was also planning to increase the rainfall. It does not seem to have occured to them that we might have hit population capacity for our water supply.

Anyway, this means that another piece of our industrial heritage gets the chop along with half a hill and the decayed ambience that makes this place to special.

I once did a series of brooches and necklaces about the disappearance of grand old industrial machinery inspired by a Glen Willard photo of a locomotive engine. The brooches use elements of the machinery which I copied in silver and fragmented with a similarly fragments printed sprig of rosemary on patinated copper. Perhaps the enduring work of artists and craftspeople can help to document what is vanishing and to sooth souls weary of a modern built environment built shonkily with cheap materials and torn down every 20years or so to be rebuilt in the even crappier style of the day!

Take care of your weather beacon or you will perish

The MLC Weather Beacon has been controlling Brisbane's weather since 1958. Though since the Hitachi takeover a couple of years ago, people have been noticing that the bulbs are not being replaced. And now the new Brisbane City Council building has obscured the beacon from being able to transmit it's weather instructions. Hence we are sitting in a rain shadow and quickly running out of drinking water. To heighten awareness of this issue, I have created weather beacon brooches - available from MoB Store. Your choice- sunny or rainy, sterling silver with swarovksi crystals twinkling away like the real thing.

There is plenty you can do about the climate crisis besides buying my jewellery. Why not join in for Lights out for Xmas?

This Xmas eve, give the earth a present by switching off your electricity. Unplug whatever you can in your house. Decorate the tree by candle light, sing carols, tell stories, take a stroll through the neighbourhood, spend quality time with family and friends, but without electricity and greenhouse gas emissions.

At 7pm on December 24, join with others in your neighbourhood, state and around Australia in creating a voluntary rolling blackout as a protest about our government's inaction on climate change.

Tell others that your are switching off for Christmas Eve. Brought to you by the Walk Against Warming Coalition (Ph: 07 3217 8693) and supported by Friends of the Earth - Brisbane.

Xmas at Chez Wrecker

You might think from this photo that a wrecker xmas is all about decorating the bunya pine with Florence Forrest origami Xmas decoartions while Mr Accordian plays a piano tune.
Well it's not. It is about struggling to finish the JMGQ newsletter, fighting for computer time with said Accordian, trying to finish commissions and really late orders, not having posted ANY xmas packages to friends/family interstate/o-seas, not having done ANY xmas shopping, eating too much haloumi and making myself sick and waking up with the dreaded lergy. Yeah it sucks alright.

Go away XMAS.

Why I Heart Librarians

You may not think it, but this necklace is the jewellery of choice for one sassy librarian I know. Nothing surprises me when it comes to librarians and their desire for personal adornment. With rockstar librarian Nancy Pearl in BrisVegas, (love the action doll), I thought it timely to discuss the topic. During a past life spent working in libraries and even growing up in library culture (father was a librarian) I have been able to study them and develop my own market research theories. You've basically got your 3 archetypes - I'll ignore the male variety as the population sample is too insignificant for analysis - Buffy's Giles is really all you need to know here.

1. Lifestyle Librarian. A passion for books, knowledge, databases, cataloguing, internet etc.
   
   Navy cardigans and sensible shoes are the unofficial uniform here. These come in 2 main categories:
   a) Conservative on the outside while groovy on the inside proving once more that you can't judge a book by its cover. These ones are politically and socially enlightened and may surprise you with their dance moves. They are a good market for brooches - on their navy cardigans and small neat earrings with strings of beads.
   b) Conservative on the outside, conservative on the inside - somewhat of a stereotype I'm afraid and definitely a minority group in the throes of extinction. These are the ones that perhaps should have gone to police academy but somehow wound up in library school. Noted for an overzealous approach to enforcement of library rules and lack of sense of humour, they have no use for unecessary adornment which only gets in the way when they have to tackle misbehaving library patrons.
   
   
2. Liberated Librarians. These are the stylish and/or geeky ones out to prove that being a librarian does not exclude one from excercising the personal expression of weirdness. Who knows what they do in their spare time but don't be fooled by the strange garb and hair colour- these ones really know their stuff and are the prime target for contemporary jewellery and designer/unique clothing. From afar they resemble flocks of brightly coloured parakeets chattering away and sharing information and style tips. Anything goes and they like to outdo their colleagues - something that the savvy jeweller can use to their advantage.
   
   
   
3. Lipstick Librarians. Avoid these women. You can normally hear the approach of their trashy stilettos (*clik*clak*clik*clak*) although they may engage stealth mode on carpeted surfaces. They are generally to be found in sections of the library called 'Corporate Services' and are characterised by an all consuming lust for power. If you do see one approach, the best course of action is to ward them off with dusty printed matter which acts like a form of kryptonite, weakening their powers. As potential jewellery clients, don't bother. These women have no class and are only looking for ways to conspicuously display their power and status.
   

Christmas With Nana Mouskouri

I tell you, it broke my wrecker heart. Listening to this beautiful LP record of Nana's Xmas songs in the knowledge I was about to put it to the blade. Big fat tears rolled down my cheeks as Schubert's Ave Maria began to play. It was definitely not your usual Xmas musak I can tell you. Very light on the falalalala-ing. Heavy on the love, compassion, longing. Which is why I have decided to share it with the world in a wearable format. For only $50 you can own your very own little piece of it, quite literally. Go to my purchasing page and you will understand.

There are 12 brooches in this very limited edition, each one is named after one of the 12 memorable tracks on the album and each is sold with a certificate of authenticity containing a fragment of the original record sleeve.

And if you do want to buy the original uncut version you can get it on cd it here. I think I may have to succumb.

Thanks to Felicity of Mullumbimby who found this very magical record in an op shop down there.

Lucy Goes to Manhattan

My Lucy Goes to Manhattan range of neckalces, earrings and bracelets is inspired by the dazzling lights and Art Deco skyscrapers of Manhattan. I imagine a young girl chasing her dreams into the big smoke. The series was first began as an ironic gift for blue eyed innocent girl called Lucy joined the cultural drift from Brisbane to Melbourne a few years ago. As far as I know the metropolis has not yet gobbled her up!

The Lucys were launched in Glam-r-Us, and available in MoBStore from last thursday and have been walking out the door with some very glamorous ladies and popping up at gala events around town.

Made from sterling silver and Swarovski crystal.

New shop opens in BrisVegas!

Plastic Girl and I took the art world by storm last night as guests of honour at the galah opening of Brisbane's super new GoMA, Asia Pacific Triennial opening and the revamped QLD Art Gallery. Arriving in our pumpkin coach from the suburbs we joined the thronging celebs - a veritable who's who of Brisbanian society. I could definitely see why we'd been invited.

Was it fun? you bet.

Did we drink alot of bubbly? oh yah.

Did we sit in the drought effected dry water feature eating noodles and chatting with Barby and Mal? mmm noodles + jewellery talk...

Did we walk straight past the Art to get to the GoMA Store to check our product and all the cute stuff to buy? maybe.

Were we disappointed? No way!

But the real breaking news of the night was from ceramicist Mel Robson that she has started a blog - she told me what it was called - after a german biscuit/substance but the bubbly seems to have wiped it (along with other stuff I am sure) from my mind. So hopefully she'll leave a comment and tell me!

Other news:

• New outlet Pomme in Victoria has my Threads Revisited and Sea Jewels- love this gallery website!
  
• Jewellery party this Sunday at QUT Art Museum 2 -4. An opportunity to stuff ya gob with yummy cakes, buy jewellery directly from myself and Liana Kabel and see some live Wrecker action. I'll be selling domestique themes: Neo Luddites, Flatliners, Bombay sapphire Sea Jewels/shardies, Hoopies and Nana Mouskouris.

Umbrella Day

Before I became involved with the Umbrella Collective (we had our fabulously successful inaugural fair on Saturday - see photos above), I had no idea what bunting was. It was discussed rather intensively at one of our planning meetings and I was left scratching around in the dark trying to figure out what they were all talking about with such passion! Because I did not own up to ignorance in the beginning, I did not feel I could confess my lack of understanding later in the conversation so it was not until I got home and did a google search that I discovered what it was all about. Buntings are the gorgeous flags (see above) that Kylie J made to decorate the buildings with. Not quite the same as the plastic ones used to decorate a car yard. They looked great with the gorgeous signs she made as well.

It was a really great day- thanks to everyone for helping especially the volunteers - we love you! More Umbrella Events coming soon!!!

DadArt

Well that was the BESTEST BIRTHDAY EVA!

The highlight, apart from my mother singing happy birthday to me on the phone (all the way through) was that I received another piece of original DadArt. This year, a self portrait. The man is caught in the teddybear frame of domestic trivialities - a powerful allegory for the modern male. Where to next for masulinity begs the question? Previous examples of DadArt in the Wrecker collection are the Duchampian inspired Dysfunctional Toast Rack (for bread found in the bottom of supermarket bags) 1998 which takes aim at the sickening debauchery of western civilization and the The Mango Pup, 1996 an obvious woof in Koons' direction and self reference to Dad's own New Zealand origins.

I usually love it when people make stuff for me and this year was no exception with such talented fronds. I got my very own Majic Cat Tangram from Florence Forrest:

And from multiskilled plastic girl, some fab new STRIPEY knitwit chunky knit bangles and a nautical themed b-day cake (delicious - did not taste like plastic at all!). Now I have 8,9,10mm set of nauticals and am ready to set sail on a a new year of Wrecking.

Wrecker Birthday

On this day one year in the early 1970s the baby Wrecker slopped into the world, baby hammer in hand ready to take on the mean streets of Papakura.

The flame trees always remember Wrecker birthday. This one planted outside the front door never fails to draw comment from a landscape architect friend.

LAF (incredulously): IS that an Illawarra Flame Tree you have planted there?
Us: Yes
LAF: do you realise how big they get?
End of converstation.

Then later, out on the backyard

LAF (incredulously): Is that a Blue quandong emerging from the Wayneforest?
Us: Yes
LAF: Do you REALISE they grow to 40 metres?

What can I say? We are jungle people.

Delightful Things Preview

I've been going bananas trying to make sense of all my jewels for the Delightful Things Umbrella Collective craft fair on saturday. I don't know why I thought I would not have enough work! At the moment it is all on my bed waiting to be priced and put into some sort of order. Unfortunately I have been at a xmas party this arvo and am in no fit state to do it though it must be done in order for me to go to sleep so there was a strategy here at least! I am drinking coffee and psyching myself up for a long night ahead.
Here are some of the promo cards I've made for it:

Nautical Week 5: Sea Birds

Coastal Birds toys: Florence Forrest

Photos of Birds: Wayne Kington

Sandgate artists Florence Forrest and Rachel Arthur have collaborated to create a wonderful Coastal Birds series of soft toys. They are available (unless they are all sold out which I suspect is a strong possibility!) until 25 November in the Furry Friend's exhibition in Surry Hills, Sydney.

Florence has interpreted the evocative drawings and paintings of Rachel's so cleverly. It is of great releif that she promises to work on the series more in 2007. They capture so well the pelicans and segulls that Wayne Kington has photographed on a recent trip to Amity (shark) Point at Stradbroke Island (thanks Wayne). The mother of pearl sky is a strong feature of the landscape in Moreton Bay and the soft toys bring to mind the pearlescent watery light.

Heading Out After the Storm: Rachel Arthur

And thank Florence for showing me the work of Rachel Arthurs. I am particulary drawn to this painting (oil and graphite on printed cotton) above. I love fishing boats and tales of the high seas and am reminded of the little ditty Dad used to sing to us:

You shall have a fishy
In a little dishy
You shall have a fishy
When the boat comes in.

Dance for your mama
Sing for your papa
Dance for your mama
When the boat comes in.

Nautical Week 4: Happy 60th Birthday Mrs Wrecker!

Today is the day that my wonderful mother, Mrs A. Wrecker to you, turns 60.
I know, hard to believe with my youthful looks.

Here she is both as a darling beach baby and later as madame lash at the WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER, her favorite stomping ground as a young lady. This is the flimsy nautical connection I am going to make- in fact both shots are taken at the beach, mum's favourite spot to flaunt herself in a succession of teeny weeny bikinis and floppy hats and visors during the 70's and 80's, much to my small-minded embarrassment. Though not as much embarrassment as when she did bikini clad gardening in our suburban front yard in Brisbane. In fact, Mrs Wrecker never misses a chance to soak up the rays that she has been deprived of during a grey English boarding school childhood though blessedly she has now converted to a one-piece.

Mrs Wrecker is where I got my sense of fair play and determination as well as my great body! And she probably had no idea at the time, but the macrame years were very formative for me and I have fond memories of visiting craft shops and trying to get her to buy me all sorts of materials while her focus would have been more on the next owl or plantpot holder.

Although I seriously let her down on the netball court and generally showed the sporting prowess of a wet sandwich, my competitive sporting mum continues to take pleasure in whipping 18 year old boys on the squash court. What she does off the squash court is her own business.

Nautical Week 3: Ayumi Horie

I adore the work of this US potter, Ayumi Horie.
She also has a wonderful website where you can purchase her work and see her pots in action. Does anyone else from Brisbane want to be in on a shipment of her work to cut freight costs?!

The whale and bird cup is my favorite and reminds me of the Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan song from Alice:

Fish and Bird

They bought a round for the sailor
And they heard his tale
Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we'd never heard
A song of a little bird
That fell in love with a whale

He said: you cannot live in the ocean
And she said to him: you never can live in the sky
But the ocean is filled with tears
And the sea turns into a mirror
And there's a whale in the moon when it's clear
And the bird on the tide

Please don't cry
Let me dry your eyes
So tell me that you will wait for me
Hold me in your arms
I promise we will never part
I'll never sail back to the time
But I'll always pretend you're mine
Though I know that we both must part
You can live in my heart

Nautical Week 2: I love crappy ship paintings

From the Wrecker collection. Or really the Accordian collection curated by the Wrecker. He started collecting these dodgy ship paintings (I did worry about the symbolism - was he preparing to leave?) and I had to hide most of them they were so bad. But these I like.

I love the blue one with its thickly applied impasto paint- you can almost imagine the assembly line heirarchies of palette knife wielders over brushworkers. It is a great bathroom painting. Foggy and mysterious. The yellow/green one tones rather nicely with the lounge and gives the living room a touch of the exotic east.

Thanks to Handmade Life whose velvet painting collection gave me the idea to blog this.

Nautical Week 1: It's so hot right now

You don't have to attend an exhibition opening with Matthew Bacon wearing his sailor suit to realise that nautical is the new black this season.

And it is very easy to get the look. You will need 3 things:
Blue - navy blue, royal blue, Howard blue
White - you know, the colour of the current Australian immigration policy.
Red - radioactive red, Robespierre red, wrecker red, commie red, take your pick.

Now the current fashions do stick with the Tricolore but strictly speaking there is a 4th nautical colour (used at sea for markers, flags etc) and it is Yellow. P'haps not everyone's favorite colour although worth noting as Craft Victoria are having a yellow Xmas retail bonanza soon.

So sticking with the 3 colours (Craft Vic can keep the yellow), I was under the impression from the Kieslowski 3 Colours films that each colour of the French flag officially related to one of the words in the slogan from French Rev'n:

Liberty: blue
Equality: white
Fraternity: red

But apparently this is a load of steaming Beasley according to this and this -the colours were really just chosen by happenstance and some other bogus reasoning was made up after the fact.

Now why am I reminded of my own conceptual methodology?

It does bring me to my new nautical range of threads revisted made from vintage beads. Aren't they lovely?

And to get into the naughty zone (about as risque as i get), I even painted my toenails with Revlon's Robespierre Red nail polish mum got for me back in 1989 for my school formal, being the Bicentenary of the 1789 French Revolution. All this nautical frivolity and jewellery order avoidance compelled me to have a dress rehearsal for the QUT jewellery party in front of my long-suffering cat. All very top secret stuff so I can only tell you that I will be wearing a floor length gown in an intense radioactive red, the hue of which has not been seen in dress shops since the mid 1970's. I think the skills and knowledge to make such a red has been lost to mankind, like the fine gold granulation produced by goldsmiths of the ancient world.
Or maybe they just banned the chemicals.
You may wish to wear eye protection if you are planning to be in the vicinity.

By the way, as a means of avoiding my overwhelming resposibilities, I am going to do a nautical week. Because I really, truly would much rather be at the beach right now. Please join me.

Badge Ladies

It can be hard work sharing the limelight with a feisty Tupperware Lady. The high drama, the hot air, the plastic fumes. It can be very competitive at times. Not so much in the Jana Pitman/Tasmin Lewis sense as in the Jana Pitman/Tasmin Lewis sense.

So in the upcoming jewellery party at QUT Art Museum as a sideshow of La Femme Domestique,

Plastic Girl is going to come dressed as a real life Tupperware Lady - the badge, the hair the frock, the makeup, the shoes, the accessories. Which leaves me precisely where? I could come in drag as her boring husband (not that she has a boring real life husband!). Or should I come au-naturale (not nude) as Rebecca-the-Wrecker, with hammer badge, king gee overalls, tool belt and hammer dangling from hammer strap. Or would that be stupid?

Any costume suggestions?

Hair Doerupperas in the News

I was sooo excited last Thursday that I might be in the Sydney Morning Herald that I could barely sleep the night before. Everytime I closed my eyes I kept thinking about how wonderful I was. I sprung out of bed at crack of sparrow and we headed to (S)Lutwyche Village for arancinis and muggacinos. Long-suffering Mr Accordian dutifully went and purchased the SMH for me.

Again and again I went through the paper and could not find anything about myself. Lots of stuff about other people, horses, dogs, footballers but not about me. Desperation set in as I combed the business and sports sections while the accordian applied himself vigorously to some Ekhart Tolle. I swung from hysteria to logical reasoning about what could have gone wrong. Then I realised we had the wednesday edition being sold a day late in Brisbane. Of course we are always playing catch up in the deep north and it's not just daylight saving I'm talking about.

So hurray for designspotter who set the ball rolling. Some of the press that I received from listing my Neo-Luddite Hair Control System in designspotter included Sydney Morning Herald cutting above (Thurs 2 Nov) and below groovy blogs.
Popgloss
Style hive
This Next
Zamazing.org

I also was recently in the Canadian Green Living Magazine print and online and Modamuse.

I was so pleased with myself that God had to punish my hubris with a weekend away camping in the rain and I returned wet and humbled to a full inbox of orders to make.

So does anyone have some more old computer keyboards for me? Or how about prising some keys off for me and popping them in the mail? I'm running out of ctrl, alt, tab, insert and end keys. Calling all office workers...wanna see the boss lose ctrl?