Thunder & Stingo

Thunder & Stingo

How awesome is this - Mikaela our Swedish intern has launched her own label of designer screen printed goodness with her friend Stina - Thunder & Stingo!

Stina is a Swedish graphic designer also living in Melbourne, and the pair has been pulling some late nights getting their label off the ground in time for the Scandinavian Christmas Bazaar. Which is on THIS WEEKEND! If you get a chance to pop down she'd totally appreciate it. I'm definitely going to check it out - a whole market of Scandinavian craft/designer awesomeness! Sounds good to me :)

Scandinavian Christmas Bazaar

Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th December

Swedish Church, 21 St Georges Road, Toorak

Stina works at the cutting table preparing labels - and looking so cute!

Miki working hard at the overlocker - her new favourite machine

Thunder & Stingo teatowels

Thunder & Stingo t-shirt

Thunder & Stingo t-shirt

xx Lara

Teatowels in the shop!

Hey folks, just a quick note to let you know that our teatowels are in the shop!

Because they're made from the very ends of our print runs (whoo, less wastage!) the range will be constantly changing, but here's a few that are available right now:


Kangaroo Paw in Red Orange - Teatowel


Wrens in Dusty Pink - Teatowel


Kangaroo Paw in Charcoal - Teatowel


Bonsai on Olive - Teatowel

And thanks to everyone who came down to say hello at our MARKit stall on Sunday! We had an awesome day. Cold. But awesome.

xx Lara.

MARKit!!

Letters + Branch = yay

Hey folks, don't forget the MARKit Design Market on this Sunday at Fed Square! We're super excited to be a part of this design market alongside so many amazing, creative peeps, and hope you can come along to check it out!

We've been busy working on a few new xmas-gift-worthy items, plus some new display ideas to make our stall look extra good. Including these gorgeous teatowels, which I had as much fun photographing as we did making them...


Organic cotton/hemp teatowels - screen printed and sewn in our Kensington Studio


Organic cotton/hemp teatowels - screen printed and sewn in our Kensington Studio

The most exciting thing is that most of them are made from the very ends of our print runs, so the print only covers 2/3 of the teatowel and the rest is blank. We love this look! Sometimes we just get bored with seeing all-over prints every day and these feel a bit more like placement prints which is really refreshing.

Thanks to Miki for all her hard work sewing these :)

Anyway, hope you see you guys down at Fed Square on Sunday, yay!

xx Lara.

Window Furnishings Australia

We've been in the press a few times now, and overall it's been a bit of a weird experience. Usually our message gets garbled, misquoted or we just end up sounding like ditsy girls. So we've learned to be a bit cautious with interviews & take any press with a pinch of salt.

So we were VERY pleasantly surprised to read this fantastic article from Window Furnishings Australia! Dawn seemed to really understand us & translated that perfectly in to a really well written article.

Thanks a bunch, Dawn!

And I only mention 'hippy love' ONCE! I'm so restrained...

Ha!

xx Teegs

Talented ladies!

Some more loveliness has made it's way to our inbox!

Nikki conveniently requested a more man-appropriate colourway of the rooftops way back in March & after faffing about for ages with basecloth & colours we printed up this little guy!

Featuring Rooftops in Black on Charcoal. Nice work, Nikki!

Lace Fans in Robin's Egg blinds, handmade by Adele for her daughter's bedroom - gorgeous work!

Gorgeous custom printed large scale Birch in Soft Moss for Justine's nursery.

Catherine bought our Allsorts Quilt Kit and modified the design slightly - it looks so awesome!

How wonderful are these creations?!

xx Teegs

Deep in the Woods

You know how sometimes there are people out there who are amazingly talented but tucked away in quiet places (in this case at the end of a cobblestone laneway) and you wish that more people knew about them? Well Steve from Deep in the Woods is one of those people.

Deep in the Woods - handcrafted reclained timber furniture

When we first moved into the Younghusband building, there weren't many other people around in this cavernous place. But Steve's workshop at the end of the laneway was always lit up, as he worked long hours into the night turning salvaged timber into amazing pieces of furniture.

Deep in the Woods - handcrafted reclained timber furniture

I wasn't the only person who told him that he really needed a website to get more exposure, and am so glad that a contra deal with our other talented neighbour Angus from Lettuce (who now has a dining table so large it can only fit in his studio!) resulted in the awesome website below:

Deep in the Woods - handcrafted reclained timber furniture

Deep in the Woods - handcrafted reclained timber furniture

It took us a while to get to know Steve but since knowing him better he's been so generous with his time, spare tools and skills. The other day he took the time to cut a new window out of perspex for my car after someone broke into it. How nice is that!

We're looking forward to one day doing some collaborations with Steve, so stay tuned :)

xx Lara.

Suziam - talented she is

You've heard us waffle on before about the talent in this building, and here's yet another example! Suziam (AKA Owl Posse AKA Susan, who works downstairs at Lettuce) bought two old armchairs a couple of years ago at the Chapel St Bazaar and then in classic crafter form took a couple of years to find the right fabric and some spare time to actually recover them.

But she finally did, in no less than Teegs' Lace Fans in Robins Egg. They turned out awesomely!

Here's the before shot:

Suziam's chairs - before

And here's the after:

Suziam's chairs - after

Nice work Suz! Oh and check out Suz's other crafty awesomeness at her blog Owl Posse. Yay!

Restocked!

The Allsorts Quilt - Dusty Pink, Red & Charcoal

Hello all!

Just a quick note to let you know that we've just restocked a bunch of stuff in our shop - including more Allsorts quilt kits - yay!

The Allsorts Quilt Kit - Blue, Green and Charcoal

There's also heaps more meterage of all the popular colourways that have recently sold out. Yay for having a fully stocked shop again!

Oh and guess what else? It's Teegs' birthday today!! Wish the special lady a happy birthday everyone!! We're about to take her out for a special lunch/arvo tea at a surprise location :)

xx Lara.

More Markets!

How is it that just a few days after exhausting ourselves doing FK & Bowerbird on the same weekend we decide that we should do two more design markets before the end of the year? But we just couldn't say no to these ones!

We've very excited to be a part of the MARKit Design Market this time around - it's at Fed Square in the Atrium and full of awesome independent designers (the best kind).

MARKit @ Fed Square - Sunday 28th November

And then there's the very new and very exciting sounding The Design Exchange market! Located in the gorgeous Mining Exchange building in Ballarat, it'll be a great opportunity to see some new faces (customers and stallholders alike) and get out for a bit of a road trip. Yay!

The Design Exchange market, Ballarat - Sunday 19th December

Hope to see you at one or both!

Younghusband Love - our fav new neighbours!!

As you know there is endless talent crammed between the walls of our fantastic, rickety, leaky old Woolstore & this time I want to introduce to you Revolt Melbourne!

Ryan, Tim & Steve are the geniusii (I made that word up) behind Revolt & they, along with a team of extremely awesome & talented people, have created a mind-blowingly amazing, multi-purpose arts venue.

It has to be seen to be believed & lucky for you, me & all the other regular folk, they are inviting us all to their Grand Opening!!

It's happening very soon - Saturday Nov 6th, in fact, so if you're in ye olde Melbourne town you really ought to come along!

We're all gonna be there az! And I will even be in costume, coz it's also my birthday (woooots!) & I need very little excuse to a) make stuff & b) dress up! Yaysies!

So go get your ticket & look forward to seeing all you cool* kids there!

xx Teegs

*by 'cool' I actually mean 'fellow geeks'. Whatever! :)

New bundles!

Hellloooo, just a quick note to let you know that there are a couple of new "3 fabric bundles" up in our shop! Thanks to Lou and Miki for their hard work this morn putting them together all pretty like.


Three fabric bundle in Pink & Red (yup, still loving that dusty pink!)


Three fabric bundle in blue

Yay new (ish) stuff!

Our second ever birthday!!

A-hoy hoy!! I am return'ed from my lengthy blogging absence. Long time, no typey-typey, eh?How are we all..? Good? Aces, glad to hear it.

Oh, me? Yes, I'm good, too - thanks for asking..

Things have been rather on the busy side since we last spoke - I've got sooo much to tell you, but we all know that Lara will yell "a good post's a short post! With photo's!!' at me if I begin on a rambling stream of consciousness.

SO! No rambling stream of consciousness. Instead, check out some of our party pics:

(Lara got a spanky new camera for her birthday a few weeks back & my, my, does it take a pretty picture, even in very low, yellow light)

Me, Luz & Lou

We were running late, & still prepping the nibblies when our guests started to arrive.. of course. So typical Teegs & Lara. Thankfully we had the wonderful Jonathan to help us out julienning carrots & celery! Thanks, Jon!! :)

A bunch of awesome folks come to our party.. including NONE OTHER than Louie's wonderful mum Lorraine & gorgeous sister Cleo, who came all the way from New Zealand!!

A trio of lovelies: Dana, Cleo & Lorraine!

Massive thank you to Dana (the lady behind Twiglet) who gave Lara & I a wonderfully beautiful Bride & Wolfe wall hanging each!

AND Lorraine made us a giant birthday cake. We do mean giant. We're still working our way through it...

Another big ol' thank you to Natalie (on the right) from Bunni, who gave Lara & I lovely hand cross-stitched rings!

My bestie Tim, came for a while - then left with my other bestie Kat to go see The Melodics gig (withooooout meeeee... yep, so gutted I had to throw a party instead) (tough life.. no, really..)

Sharing the birthday love: Luz & Shanny - so cute!!

Lara eventually started to fall asleep, so I released her from duty on the proviso that I'd stay & host party things if she came back & cleaned up the next day. She was so happy to do that, you shoulda seen her face. Ha! Sucker ;) S'if I was gonna go home anyway..

Miki, our lovely Swedish intern (you haven't really met her yet, but I'll make her write a post soon...) brought another few Swedish friends and her hilarious Kiwi housie, Heather along & we ended up watching YouTube clips down at Lettuce at 3am of Flight of the Conchords with the last remaining troopers (Thanks Gus! Thanks Renae!). I think most of the hilarity was lost on the Swedes... the rest of us had fun tho!

Then the besties came back, (hooray!) so we took the Swedes next door & hung out with our rad Younghusband neighbours at the very-soon-to-open Revolt Melbourne, til the morning birds sang at us.

xx Teegs

(p.s, Lara just proof read this post & her comment was: "well, it's not tooooo random & ramble-y.." think I passed!)

Anyone for a bit of Dusty Pink?

I hope some of you saw our previous post about the Allsorts Quilt and thought "ohhhh yeah I gotta get me some of them dusty pink fabrics" (or perhaps something more eloquent). Because they're also now available in our shop as yardage too!

It's been a long time since we've printed pink as we're not usually pink type ladies, but as the wonderful Suzie Fry said to us "that is the only shade of pink that I'll tolerate" (or something along those lines) and we tend to agree. Pink, but not too pink.

Anyway I do waffle on, here's some pics of some new colourways! (note: not just pink)

Wrens in Dusty Pink

Ginkgo in Dusty Pink & Deep Red

Wrens in Deep Red

Kangaroo Paw in Charcoal and Sage

You might have seen the above print before but slightly different - we originally printed it with Teal Dashes in the background but decided they were a bit too strong and that there needed to be more contrast with the charcoal Kangaroo Paw. So we invented a new, softer colour called Sage and it is gorgeous! We like this much better :)

Rooftops in Deep Sea

Yay for new colourways! Now... to get around to designing some new prints (pah! with all our free time! not.)

xx Lara.

The Allsorts Quilt Kit

The Allsorts Quilt Kit - Dusty Pink, Red & Charcoal

The Allsorts Quilt - Dusty Pink, Red & Charcoal

Hey guess what! The Allsorts Quilt Kit is finally available for purchase online! Yay!! Here's some more pretty photographs to make you go "mmmmm" and think about worthy xmas recipients.

The Allsorts Quilt Kit - Blue, Green and Charcoal

The Allsorts Quilt - Blue, Green and Charcoal

The Allsorts Quilt - Blue, Green and Charcoal

The Allsorts Quilt - Dusty Pink, Red & Charcoal

Some practical info - The finished quilt measures 120 x 150cm and is 100% organic. The kit includes everything you need to make the quilt top, but you can buy binding and backing fabric from us too. You'll need to supply your own batting.

Hope you like it!!

xx

You Are Invited

Photography and styling by Gabriella Moxey

Who would have thought that it was over two years ago now that our beloved Ink & Spindle was born. Time has absolutely flown by and we've loved (almost) every minute of it!

We'd love, love LOVE you to come by and help us celebrate our 2nd birthday NEXT SATURDAY!

Everyone is invited, even if we've never met you before! Just rock up and enjoy the company of some lovely ladies and gentlemen, and we'll have plenty of drinks and snacks on hand.

RSVP to info@inkandspindle.com.au or leave a comment on this post.

Hope to see you there!!

xx Lara & Teegs