Stripy red bowls... and giveaway winners!

About a month ago, I spied these ultra-cute stripy red bowls in Kmart for $2.00 each. Insane, yes? I didn't buy them at the time, but filed their existence safely away in the back of my mind.

This afternoon, John needed to go to the shopping centre for something, so I told him I needed to 'look at something' at Kmart. Of course, I returned with $8.00 worth of stripy red ceramic goodness. It's ok, though - it means I can move the remnants of our ugly old dinner sets off to Lifeline to make way for them. Here are my new purchases on a disgracefully unironed Thea & Sami Spoon and Whisk tea towel.

I decided to use my new bowls to draw the screenprinted bag giveaway a tiny bit early. Drumroll...

The winners are... Tracey and Rachel! 

I will email both of you shortly to arrange delivery of your prizes.

More screenprinting workshop... and a giveaway!

You can now see Thea's overview of the weekend screenprinting workshop on her website. The other ladies produced some fabulous designs (many far more ambitious than my own!), and I think we should all be very proud of ourselves. Here's a picture of me at the studio with one of my newly printed bags.

Image: Thea Samios

I also forgot to mention that after the class, John and I stopped off at Love Love Studio (in Newstead, Brisbane) to pick up a print we purchased at a recent exhibition. On hearing that I've just done a screenprinting course, the guys were kind enough to give me one of the screens they had laying around the studio. How awesome is that?!

Now for a giveaway! I'm giving away one each of my apples and pears bags! Keep in mind that these two bags are far from perfect - they certainly have their flaws! If you would like to win one, just leave a comment before 5.00pm Sunday (Brisbane time - keep that in mind daylight savings people!).

Pavlova

One thing I've never mentioned on Flying Ducks is that I didn't take home economics class after the compulsory year in eighth grade (as I hated sewing!). Instead, I took a class called food studies for two years. This class attracted a lot of naughty kids, as they thought it would be a 'bludge' kind of subject. It wasn't. Food studies gave me some skills which I will keep for the rest of my life - basically, the fundamentals of how to cook pretty much anything. You know, the stuff your nanna used to teach you - how to make a white sauce, how to bake meringue and choux pastry, how to make a biscuit or cake batter to adapt for almost any purpose, and how to fix stuff that's gone horribly wrong!  I even won the award for being top of the subject for two years running.

This weekend, I've used those skills during some rather successful cooking sessions. Last night I made a free-range organic goat (yes, goat - sorry vegetarians) lasagne. John bought the goat mince from the organic butcher a month or two ago (I have know idea why), and it's been sitting in the freezer waiting for me to pluck up the courage to cook it. It has an extremely strong flavour, and was perhaps a tiny bit too strong for a lasagne. But it was tasty nevertheless, thanks to my excellent lump-fee bechamel sauce made from scratch.

Today, I made my first ever pavlova. I plan on making one of these for the excellent Shilo before she heads home to New York in a couple of weeks, and I decided to make a trial pavlova today just in case I needed to perfect anything. Before you ask: no, I did not buy one of those White Wings Pavlova Magic things. I made my meringue using good old-fashioned egg whites and caster sugar. And it was super easy! Add whipped cream and berries to the cooked meringue, and you get this...

 

I'm going to see if our lovely old neighbour Merv would like to share it with us.

The china flan dish is from Japan. I picked it up at Lifeline in Toowoomba last weekend for the princely sum of $4.00. It doesn't have any chips or scratches, so I think it was an excellent find.

Overview: Thea & Sami screenprinting workshop

Today, after anticipating it for many months, I finally got to attend my screenprinting workshop with Thea & Sami. Thea taught myself and four other lovely young ladies how to screenprint our own basic designs at home, and also gave us an brief overview of how her own commercial practice works.

To start, we all cut out our design ideas that we came along with, and then tried out printing them on calico. I printed the set of two apples on a small screen to start, and then moved on to the three pears on a larger screen.

I liked the paper outline that was left over from my first screen so much that I took it home to frame.

After perfecting our techniques, some us us printed on other items that we'd brought along. I printed up my designs on some of the tote bags I had laying around.

Now I have officially 'graduated'! And I also have a much greater appreciation to the level of skill and hard work that goes into Thea's practice. She really is a wonderwoman!

I also snuck in a little bit of retail therapy while I was at the studio, and picked up a few of Thea's beautiful tea towels that she had on sale due to some extremely minor imperfections. I LOVE them!

If anyone in Brisbane is keen to see how a real screenprinting studio operates, you're in luck! Next Saturday (30 October), Thea & Sami will be opening their doors to the public, and they'll be pulling out their super-sized screens for demonstrations. You'll also have the opportunity to pick up some clearance items at bargain prices. It sounds a little too dangerous to me!

If you're interested in taking one of Thea's classes for yourself, you can book on the Thea & Sami website. Places often fill months in advance, so make sure you get in early.

Home Decor Event: Bedroom and office

Today as part of the Being Tazim Home Décor Event, you can see an overview of our bedroom and office.

There are still two posts to come! The Home Décor Event runs until 24 October.

Home Décor Event: Introductory post and living room

My first two posts in the Being Tazim Home Décor Event are now live.

The first post is a brief introduction to the Flying Ducks blog and what I do — from interior decorating to cooking and craft. The second post is a before-and-after feature about our living areas. Many of you may already be familiar with a lot of this stuff, but newer readers who haven’t trawled back through the archives might enjoy this little overview. Here's a sneak peek of a few of the images I've included (which have appeared on Flying Ducks previously as well).

Keep and eye out tomorrow for a feature on the bedroom, as well as posts about the office, kitchen and bathroom to follow. You can also win prizes by commenting on many of the posts in the Home Décor Event. Thanks so much to Tazim for inviting me to participate!

Screenprinting workshop with Thea & Sami

This Saturday, I am privileged enough to be attending one of the extremely popular screenprinting classes of Thea & Sami! Thea is going to teach me and the four other participants how to print up our own basic designs on natural fabrics, and I’m very excited to have a go!


Over the last few weeks I’ve been browsing some royalty-free stock image website for inspiration, and I’m leaning towards a design in the vein of these vectors of apples and pears. My idea is to have an image of a whole apple with a cross-section sitting next to it, and the same for the pear design. I’ve coerced my lovely husband into drawing up my designs in the size I want so I can take them along with me on Saturday.

Images: Shutterstock

There have been some really great designs produced at previous workshops, and I'm hoping that mine turn out just as good!

In addition to printing on the supplied fabric (and perhaps even a tea towel or two!) in the class, I’m going to take along a whole heap of spare calico tote bags that I have laying around from when I started my hugely successful (sarcasm) Etsy store. Christmas presents ahoy! Perhaps if they turn out ok I’ll even think about having a little giveaway to celebrate…