advent calendar day 25

IT'S CHRISTMAS

If you've followed my calendar all the way up to here, I hope you've enjoyed it! A very merry Christmas to you all and my 2012 bring you much happiness and joy! Click the caption to find your last festive treat!

advent calendar day 24

TWENTY FOUR

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 23

TWENTY THREE

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 22

TWENTY TWO

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 21

TWENTY ONE

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 20

TWENTY

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

computer on the blink

If you simply haven't been able to sleep for the past two nights due to the absence of day 20 and day 21 of my advent calendar then I sincerely apologise. I realise this must be a huge upset for some of you, but computer is sick, what can I say. Simply knackered. So until computer is all better and returned home I cannot update my calendar. I do hope to resume normal service later today.

advent calendar day 19

NINETEEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day18

EIGHTEEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 17

SEVENTEEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here! WARNING: If you are at all offended by bad language I suggest you skip today!

advent calendar day 16

SIXTEEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 15

FIFTEEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 14

FOURTEEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 13

THIRTEEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 12

TWELVE

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 11

ELEVEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 10

TEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 9

NINE

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 8

EIGHT

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

vintage french ephemera feast

I'm a sucker for vintage ephemera... especially if it's French! I have found the most incredibly stream on Flickr belonging to Agence Eureka. A vast collection of quality labels, vintage children's books, ephemera and so on. These labels first caught my eye, but then I started to pour over the collections (and I shall be for weeks it seems) and turned up some real gems like these book covers.

Aren't they beautiful! Some of the images are creative commons so do take some time out to pay a visit.

advent calendar day 7

SEVEN

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 6

SIX

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 5

FIVE

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

advent calendar day 4

FOUR

Click the caption and find a festive treat each day until Christmas! If you missed a day click here!

shortbread buttons

And while we're on the subject of recipes... such a beautiful blog this. And amazing shortbread buttons, with a full tutorial and this beautiful illustration, courtesy of the super-talented Eva Juliet. Yours free to download!

store your recipes here

This seriously has to be the most beautiful recipe box I've seen! Each box is unique and is made by local craftsmen from locally salvaged hardwoods. The lids are then screen printed with two different designs, a gorgeous 'floral' option (my choice) or a simpler 'type' option. From the Rifle Paper Co.

sweet stars

Ooo... how nice! I've just started making Leo cinnamon french toast in the mornings, which he devours. But what could be nicer than star-shaped french toast as seen in Sweet Paul's latest magazine! Cookie cutters at the ready!!

kareem rizk

A few years ago I came across the work of Melbourne-based artist Kareem Rizk. I used to have one of these lovely bird images sitting on my desktop for simply ages, I loved it so much.

Bird No.1

Bird No.2

Bird No.3

Bird No.4

Bird No.5

Bird No.6

Today something accidentally made me find him again and I'm so happy I did. Amongst his many achievements he's collaborated with another favourite artist of mine, Eduardo Recife. Why not pop on over to Kareem's website to have a closer look at his amazing work!

it's a black friday, cyber monday offer

For the whole of the weekend up to midnight PST (Pacific Standard Time) I will be offering all customers to my shop this exclusive free 8x10 festive 'JOY' print with their order. I have created the print especially for this weekend only... it will never be repeated or for sale!

To bag your free high-quality giclee print, first would you kindly follow my blog and like me on Facebook. This is a mere 2-click movement. Then hop on over to Etsy and purchase one or more prints and leave me this message in the 'note to seller' box when you checkout: (you can copy and paste this bit ;)

I saw your lovely JOY print on your blog/Facebook page and had to have one. Please include it with my purchase!

Three prints and over will qualify you for a second free JOY print, plus a 10% discount on the total sale. If you buy three prints and over, please also add the coupon code OLB10 when you checkout. I look forward to seeing you in the store!

a big thank you

Today is a special day for all our friends over the pond... a day to give thanks and think about others. So I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very special day and to say thank you for all your support over the last couple of years. It means a great deal to me, it really does! (And a special thank you to this lovely lady, who has been particularly good to me over the past months!)

So after you've stuffed yourself silly with turkey, tomorrow marks the start of the frantic shopping period for Christmas. Why not pop over to my little shop to see if there is anything there you think would make the perfect gift.

I will be giving away an exclusive print on all orders over the weekend - a little snippet of which you can see here - so please check back tomorrow for the big reveal and more details!

work in progress

Way back when... when I started this blog, I promised to share with you a little of my working progress, which I realise to my shame I have never done! So I shall hopefully remedy that a bit by sharing with you a little something that I am currently working on.

I have always loved vintage wallpaper, infact I have a bit of a 'thing' for it. I take a lot of inspiration colourwise from glorious 70s wallpaper, and my recent Home Sweet Home print was based entirely upon this beautiful print. I discovered it had come from this amazing shop, Retro Villa, in Copenhagen. The story behind the shop is great and you must read about it and its wonderful owner, Mette Helena Rasmussen! There I found several more amazing floral prints and they have inspired a whole host of ideas in my head. Following on from my Ampersand print, I am now exploring how to form letters from the elements that make up the wallpaper pattern... this is what I'm doing!

Image: Retro Villa

[Step 1] I find a print I like. I really like the shapes and different sizes of this particular pattern... I know it will work well for what I have in mind!

[Step 2] I then start re-drawing each separate element of the pattern in Illustrator.

[Step 3] I lay out the elements to see what I have and give them a hierarchy in my layers palette. The very smallest flowers I arrange into groups. Then I set about re-colouring the artwork until I find a colourway I like. Sometimes this will just work by accident, other times I will turn to images I've saved on my computer or Pinterest for a bit of inspiration.

[Step 4] I choose a font... for this kind of detailed work, simple bold fonts are best. My favourite is Franklin Gothic Heavy.

[Step 5] I outline the font and make guides.

[Step 6] Then comes the fun bit! I start filling the guides in with the flower shapes. I add a few of the large flowers first to each letter... I'll show you an 'S' as an example.

[Step 7] Then I add some of the second layer flowers...

[Step 8] I continue adding the second and third layer of flowers and finish filling in the gaps with the small filler flower groups. Voila!

I'm going to continue working on the entire alphabet... and then I shall have a good old tweak of each letter! Let's see what I do with it!