CUCKoO
Petal & Pins
Category: Craft & Design
May 12, 2016
petal & pins at Bowerbird
We are back from our first big mainland market – the Bowerbird Bazaar! Held twice a year in Adelaide, South Australia over three days Bowerbird Bazaar is a celebration of Australian artists, designers and creative collaborations.
This year there were 150+ designers and makers exhibiting, Insitu displays – six rooms featuring stallholder product, creative workshops and demonstrations, a Saturday Speakers Corner for talks by design professionals, gift wrapping for a gold coin donation (to support breast cancer research) and delicious local food and drinks.
Jane and the Bowerbird team’s organisation and promotion before the event blew us away and we knew we were in for a fantastic and fun 3 days.
I was very excited to be chosen to be interviewed for their Meet The Maker series on their blog in the weeks leading up to the market.
Without further ado, let me show you some photos from the weekend.
The friendly front desk girls greeted market goers and behind them a lovely avenue of trees that on Sunday became an enchanting setting for a Mother’s Day high tea.
Posters, banners and booklets featured gorgeous artwork by Adelaide designers Andrew Smart and Heath Riggs.
Fairy lights, trees and lawn created a fair ground feel in the food and bar area.
A display by visual merchandising students and one of the Insitu rooms.
Sunday’s high tea was opposite our stand and I couldn’t resist going over to take some photos of the tables set with vintage china and glass cake stands, champagne coupes and pretty floral arrangements.
It was serendipity that I saw this digitally printed French denim from one of my fabric suppliers just as I was thinking about our stand design – it made the perfect backdrop for our Garden Fairy’s Wardrobe.
As always it was fun designing our display but it takes ingenuity to make it transportable – I think we rose to the challenge well – all this packed down into 3 suitcases and one of my old art school folios with our stock for the two plane trips to get there and back.
It was a great weekend, we had fun meeting people, some lovely conversations, gained a new stockist plus some leads to follow up and our suitcases were a little lighter coming home!
And then there were our evening strolls looking at Adelaide’s beautiful old houses and gardens – but I’ll keep that tale for another day…
November 12, 2015
Little Joys
At the top of the hill there is a roundabout that peels off in several directions past which my street becomes a dead-end. If you walk right down to the bottom you will discover a path that follows a creek bed.
It feels like you are in the countryside, not a city suburb with all the hustle and bustle that entails, and so it is a favourite route when walking with Mr Petal & Pins and Agnes.
At this time of year a pink hawthorn tree adds an extra air of romance to the entrance, the flowers are so pretty they look like bunches of miniature roses and I can’t help but dream of garden fairy dresses when I walk by.
Walking somewhere regularly I think you discover a favorite route that isn’t always about the shortest way but more about the little joys that things along the way can bring.
In primary school I would cut through a vacant block that had wild freesias growing and my sister and I would often stop to pick them.
In high school it was walking past a large overgrown garden with a mysterious old house that you could just glimpse through the corner gates that fed my imagination (helped along with a few urban myths).
Passing that garden nearly everyday for five years felt like a glimpse of ‘otherness’ – how I would have loved to explore it.
These days it is home to the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre thanks to the generous bequest of the original owners and so it feeds the imagination and brings joy in other ways.
On Sunday I am taking petal & pins to the Wild Ones Art & Design Market held at Hazelhurst and a little smile of joy is bound to cross my face at the memory of those days peering in.
October 17, 2015
A Bag Of Grapes
I’ve been making paper cut signage for my market stall inspired by the class I took with paper cut artist extraordinaire Miso last year.
Mr Petal & Pins translated this design into a rubber stamp for paper bags.
The stamp arrived just in time to use for the Spring markets, along with an abundance of grape hyacinths in the garden to decorate my stall and create some new dresses for my Garden Fairy’s Wardrobe.
Now we’re making plans for Xmas markets including traveling to Sydney for one!
You can find a list of market dates and card stockists here.
September 8, 2015
fleurs en papier
I was going to photograph my Spring garden today but it’s raining.
Instead I ‘m sharing with you my ‘Paris Flowers’ that I made earlier in the year.
I called them this inspired by the combination of soft pink wash I painted on the paper and black satin ribbon bows that form the sepals.
Paper flower making seems to be having a ‘moment’ by the stream of gorgeous ones appearing in my instagram feed lately.
There are some exquisite ones by artists making them from crepe paper, special crepe paper mind you not the flimsy bright coloured stuff of kindergarten craft memories.
I think though my métier is for using real flowers for my garden fairy dresses so my fabric scissors are safe from being given over to paper anytime soon.
May 5, 2015
Apple Cosy
There was not much blue sky today mostly it’s been rainy and grey. As predicted the wind has whipped up and I can hear it howling and whirling around rustling the leaves as I write.
Yesterday I picked a vase of flowers and the splash of orange is perfect to add some brightness to inside as a counterpoint to the drab weather, especially as the forecast for the rest of the week is for more of the same.
Not a lot of flowers about in my garden at the moment but lots of Autumn foliage and seed pods so I have used those in my arrangement with a few nasturtiums and minaret flowers.
I popped the ‘apple cosy’ I bought on our road trip to the north west of Tasmania along side the vase (isn’t it cute!). Besides the colours complementing the flowers it’s a perfect symbol of mid autumn at my place since there are apples still on my tree and a cupboard full of just bottled apples ready for a winter of apple crumbles.
I had never heard of, much less seen an apple cosy before – its purpose is to stop an apple getting bruised in a lunchbox. When I saw this little bit of knitted cuteness I immediately thought of my Fairy Dust friend who loves apples so I’ll be giving it to her next time we catch up.
Have you ever seen an apple cosy?
What’s your favourite winter apple dessert?
April 27, 2015
What’s In a Name?
Do you remember my January post about turning my scraps into fabric twine?
My first project with it was to make these.
And I continued with the re-use-recycle idea and folded origami boxes out of Vogue magazine pages to gift pack them in.
Trivet or Doily? – What you call it depends on how you use it!
trivet – doily
handmade from textile offcuts
silk – wool – cotton
origami box
folded from old Vogue magazine pages
recycled paper
February 28, 2015
The Fairy Haberdasher
© Sandra Alcorn 2015
In my studio I have boxes and jars of buttons.
Made from all sorts of things – shell, metal, glass and paste, coconut shell, silk cord and clay. Some are vintage and others made in cloth using an old button covering press.
Bought in bulk or just enough for a single garment waiting to be chosen as the perfect ‘one’, they come from all over the place including a Parisian haberdasher I stumbled upon while walking in the Marais.
But I need to look out carefully to find the fairy haberdasher peddling his wares of ribbons, buttons and other notions.
February 21, 2015
Adorn
Crocosmia Garland
January 5, 2015
Shades Of Pink, Shades Of Green
This morning I made my first Garden Fairy’s Wardrobe dress for 2015 with two different pink geraniums that grow in my front garden.
© Sandra Alcorn 2015
I decided to use two shades of pink together inspired by the two colour effect of the fabric twine I’ve started making.
A Xmas gift of The Sustainable Fashion Handbook by Sandy Black combined with a workroom tidy up spurred the start of this new project to recycle some of the smaller scraps that mount up in my studio.
© Sandra Alcorn 2015
© Sandra Alcorn 2015
I found the instructions on My Poppet. It’s easy to make and all ready my mind is sparking with ideas for what I might do with it.
You can see other ways I use my scraps in my posts Macarons, Memories & Momentoes and Treasure & Mermaids.
Always better than them ending up in landfill.
