Design Made Trade - July 18th - 21st

It's been a crazy couple of weeks in the I&S studio as we prepare for Design Made Trade 2013! We love this show, it's the perfect middle ground between a high end design market and a regular industry trade show, although this year things are a little bit different. Instead being held as a standalone event at the Royal Exhibition Building, this year Design Made Trade is to be held at Jeff's Shed alongside Decoration & Design and Furnitex. D:M:T will feature a curated selection of 30 local design studios and we're excited to be amongst them!

Unfortunately this will be a trade only event and there will be no retail sales at the event, but we look forward to being exposed to a much bigger audience. Hope you can make it down to say hello!

xx Lara.

Big & Botanical - two new interior scale prints

Waratah in Coal & Snow - photo by Sean Fennessy

Over at I&S we've been dying to release a couple of new designs but we've been holding off, waiting for our new website to be launched! However, things have taken a little longer than expected in that department and in the end our impatience has won out.

Introducing two new & rather large prints - Waratah and Silver Gum!

WARATAH
"Inspired by the beautiful, unique Tasmania variety of Waratah, this print was originally carved and printed from a lino block, retaining all the beautiful and irregular textures of lino printing."

I (Lara) designed Waratah late last year, inspired after a trip to the spectacular Capturing Flora exhibition in Ballarat. I knew that I wanted to firstly develop a lino print and capture the beautiful texture of that medium in a screen print. The carving was done over one rather warm weekend down at Fairhaven, perfect weather to soften the lino!


Waratah - original line drawing & carving the lino


Waratah - lino carving almost complete and made easier with Abby's fancy Japanese carving tools


The final lino print. This was scanned and doubled in size before being turned into a repeat


The final result! Waratah in Coal & Snow


Waratah in Turmeric & Snow

SILVER GUM
"Silver Gum came to life one morning during a bicycle ride to work through Royal Park. Enamoured by the leaf forms, Lara picked these almost-flowering stems and popped them in her pannier for photographing later in the back yard. Both colours in this design are printed from a single screen – the second colour is printed with the screen rotated 180 degrees."

Silver Gum is another one of those designs that spent a lot of time brewing in the back of my mind before finally coming to life. The tricky bit was finding the perfect shaped leaf, but once that happened the rest of the process was fairly straightforward. I can't wait to see this print turned into some gorgeous curtains or upholstery.


Silver Gum - laying out stems for photographing


The final result - Silver Gum in Eucalyptus & Moss


Silver Gum in Almond & Snow

xx Lara.