Ink & Spindle goes Monochrome*

Oh yes. We are very serious, über cool, designer types... Look! Cute bike! Old camera! Hipster glasses! An ampersand! Not smiling!!

This week at Ink & Spindle we're doing something a little dramatic. We're going Monochrome.

As of Sunday, our textile range will be limited to Black, White, Charcoal and Almond prints... *with a splash of Red. And we'll be launching the new range tomorrow at the MARKit Design Market at Fed Square!

As with all of our ideas, this one was born over the printing table as we were discussing our textile range and how our market stalls always tend to look. "Too colourful", "too pastel", "too French provincial looking" ...is what we always whinge. How did that even happen? I prefer earthy, natural tones, Teegs prefers something a little bold and dramatic.

So then we thought about the gorgeous hemp/yak basecloth we'd seen. And how it'd look great with black printed on it. Or black and white. And how nice it'd look alongside our charcoal basecloths. "Hey we should do a market stall with nothing but black, white and charcoal. With a dash of red thrown in. And we could do some really w*anky designer photoshoot to go with it because it'd be so 'cool'. HA! Yes! Let's do it!"

The new textiles will be up in the shop on Monday. Come visit us tomorrow for a sneak peek (and a bunch of awesome products & kits we made)!

xx

P.S. - don't worry this isn't a permanent change, your other favourites will be back in stock soon once our darn basecloth supply problem is over ;)

P.P.S thanks to the lads at Lettuce for the lending Teegs the hipster glasses...

Did you see??

Well, I think we're officially "successful". We've made it. Whatever "it" is..

Why, you ask? Because we made our television debut last night, of course! It was on our fav Melbs TV show, Offspring.

Exciting. VERY exciting.

We printed some special textiles to be made in to Nina's bedlinen - Birch & Bonsai in Juniper!

The opening shot! Check out that Birch in all it's glory...

And a nice close up of the Bonsai. WAKE UP, NINA!!! It was just a dream...

Then later in the episode, dear Nina got some hot fake-tv-doctor, fake-tv-lovin' on (or under..?) our fabric. Yup. We were preeeeeetty happy about that!!

There was lots of "squee!" & "lolz!" text messages flying back and forth between us for most of the show. And lots of yelling "zoom out, dammit!" at the TV during the bedroom scene... see the bed there in the corner??

Yay! Thanks Offspring!!

xx T

This is what you get when you mess with us

It may seem like we're doing a lot of fighting battles these days against big evil companies out to screw creative businesses of their livelihood and homes.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. But this time we won:

Dodgy rip-off teatowels recalled from the shelves

See this? See this huge pile of boxes of teatowels dramatically arranged at our front door? These were dropped off to us late last week. Recalled from all the shelves of one big, bad and terrible homewares chain who ripped us off.

After getting our lawyer (the very wonderful Sharon Givoni) onto the offending company they agreed to recall the product, but of course took no responsibility for ripping off the design. OH! no... it was the company in India who manufactured them! Who, when we approached them exclaimed:

"oh golly what a coincidence! We came up with this design our very selves! Please, see this power-point document of 'reference material' that we obviously just scraped together at the last minute as proof we didn't copy you!"

Pah! I really hope some designer, SOMEWHERE got into a LOT of trouble for ripping off our design and then sending it back as product to the hometown of the designer. Stupid.

So anyway, as you can see, we have a LOT of these dodgy teatowels to somehow get rid of. We absolutely refuse to sell them or put them back into circulation. Whilst being almost idential to my Birch print you can see where they've done a hack job of it and we don't want people associating this dodgy version with us.

So, we're asking you. What do you suggest we do with these 1000+ teatowels? What good use can they be put to, without damaging our image? We're definitely open to donating them, but who to? The person with the best suggestion will receive (you guessed it!) a bunch of teatowels! Personal use only of course ;)

xx Lara.

URGENT - help save our building

The Younghusband Wool Store - Photo by Angus Booker

Most of you probably know that we are incredibly lucky to have our studio within the gorgeous Younghusband Wool Store building in Kensington.

But our building is under threat and we require your URGENT action! The owners of the Younghusband building are asking the City of Melbourne to rezone the site so that they can erect 12, 8 and 7-story residential towers.

This development will destroy the small business and cultural hub that has emerged over the last few years, leaving artists, designers and other creative small businesses without studio and office space.

Please submit your objection by tomorrow Thursday 19th of May at the LATEST.

Here is an objection letter template:

Dear Robyn Hellman,

I object to proposal C177 because…….. [whatever your objection is] and it would affect me as follows: ………. [however you think it will affect you], [indicate what changes you would like, as in height reduction or reduction of apartments].

Yours sincerely, [your name, address]

Email objections to: robyn.hellman@melbourne.vic.gov.au by Thursday 19th May.

Thanks so much everyone!!

xx Lara, Teegs and the folk of Kensington

MARKit!!

The last month or two around here has been nothing short of insane. We've been juggling so many things there's been no spare head space for blogging, hence the lack of substantial updates - sorry guys!

In between working on our new Inklet range (more soon!) attending Bowerbird Bazaar (which was so much fun, thank you for everyone who came and visited our stall!) and printing for Nancybird, we've also been secretly planning yet another new and exciting range which we'll be launching at the upcoming MARKit Design Market at Fed Square:

We've been starting to tire of our usual market stall range, so at MARKit we're going to turn our collection on it's head and do something kind of crazy and the opposite to usual. We think you'll love it! More soon!

xx

P.S. - you might have noticed that our online shop is looking seriously sparse of late! That's because we've been having some huge basecloth supply issues and haven't been able to print a lot of our fabrics. But don't despair - the full range should be back in stock in about 4 weeks! Thanks for being patient! xx

TV love.. made in Melbs!

Offspring 2 - photo from Nancybird

Tonight people!! It's the premier of Season 2 of Offspring!

We'd normally be pretty excited anyway because it's both of our favourite show & we love playing 'spot the location' as it's shot in our beloved Melbs, but we're UBER EXCITED about it this season because we made some textiles especially for Nina's bed!!

So we have no idea which episode they will appear in, but keep your eyes on Nina's doona & look for Birch & Bonsai in our lovely pale blue Juniper colour (we loved the colour selection - thought it was very Nina) :)

The great thing about the show is they are really keen to use Melbourne based labels, such as the gorgeous and much coveted Nancybird! Emily is one of our favourite customers and an all-round wonderful and inspiring person, so we're super excited that her bags will be featured too...

Offspring 2 - photo from Nancybird

Offspring season 2 starts tonight at 8:30! So grab a glass of wine and some chocolate ice cream and curl up on that couch under a granny square throw and get yourself a-watching!

xx Lara & Teegs

Sneak Peek - Inklet!

Eeee! We are totally excited to give you a sneak peek of a little project we've been working on here in the Ink & Spindle HQ! Introducing.... Inklet!

Leon & Mahlie wearing Inklet tee's - Pirates in 'Leon Blue' and 'Pink Mahlie'

Since Dana of Twiglet moved into our studio and we started printing on jersey, it only made sense to combine our skills and start producing a gorgeous little range of organic wares for little ones. And so Inklet was born! (Twiglet + Ink & Spindle = Inklet, get it??)

Leon & Mahlie wearing Inklet tee's - Pirates in 'Leon Blue' and 'Pink Mahlie'

We'll be soft launching the range this weekend in Adelaide at the Bowerbird Bazaar which we're veeeeery excited about. We just have tees, lovely soft blankets and bibs for sale, with onesies and legging to follow soon.

Of course everything is 100% certified organic, printed and manufactured in Australia (even the jersey!)... and sweatshop free. Yay!

Leon & Mahlie wearing Inklet tee's - Pirates in 'Leon Blue' and 'Pink Mahlie'

How cute are Dana's little ones posing for our shoot. So good in fact that we decided to name the colourways after them ;)

Raaarh!

Yay! Hope you like them :)

xx Lara, Teegs and Dana