Quick fix

Before

After

Ah, much better.

That was Saturday

A blustery picnic, a strong coffee, a seaside wander, a sneaky eel. That was Saturday.

Fast food

I must admit that sometimes cooking isn't my favourite household task. And sometimes before grocery shopping day there's no food in the house apart from some manky old veges and some aged baking products. On those days, it's good to have a little fast food. Like beer pizza.

If you have these three things in your house you can make beer pizza:
You need 4 cups self-raising flour, 1 teaspoon of salt and a bottle of beer (or a can - just add as much as you need until it goes doughy) .

Mix the dry ingredients, then add the beer. Mix, then give it a bit of a knead.

Roll it out (it can make one giant pizza or a couple of smaller ones).
Add the toppings of your choice (or whatever you have left over in the fridge) and bake at 180 degrees celsius for 20 minutes.
Too easy! You might even have some leftovers for tomorrow's lunch!

Paper trail

A4 to A3? A5 to A3? I've been playing around with enlarging and reducing some of my drawings today, as you can see from this giant pile of paper full of tails and feathers and owls and huias. Soon, hopefully very soon, I'm going to get them made up into a silkscreen with lots of different images on it, so that I can print things onto fabric at the drop of a hat.
Hopefully the finished layout will look something like this:
but without the giant rip in the screen!

Victoria & Albert

Have you read White Teeth by Zadie Smith? In it, there's this bit where she talks about how whenever there's a street called Victoria St near a street called Albert St, people always say "oh Albert, she loved him so." I chuckled when I read that bit, because that's what I always say when I find a Victoria St and an Albert St!

So here are some pictures of the recently revamped Victoria Theatre in Devonport...

Scrubs up nicely, doesn't she?

...and Albert Park:

...which are not really anywhere near each other.

Speaking of royals, look at the two latest additions to my royal memorabilia collection!


Might just have to get a Wills & Kate souvenir spoon next!

My funny valentine

Oh my ears and whiskers! It's far too hot to think about wearing one right now, but isn't this Valentine's Day fox just fabulous? It's made by Etsy seller Celapiu. A heart-shaped nose...a "subtle and nostalgic" face...aww!

I just might have to get myself one of these when winter rolls around!

Image from: http://www.etsy.com/shop/celapiu?ref=top_trail

Owlcatraz*

I was mucking around the other night drawing an owl in the back of the scrapbook where I keep my inspiration pictures and I came up with this fellow:
I didn't really want to cut up my scrapbook cover to transfer him to a gocco screen, so I tried to redraw him on white paper, but it didn't work out, so I sacrificed the back of my scrapbook and cut it up.

Then I printed him in silver on some cream-coloured cards:

And some nubbly-textured red ones:

And I still had some ink left over so I made myself some owl envelopes for posting the prints I sell in my shop.

*Yes Owlcatraz is a real place! It's a bird sancturary in Shannon where they have owls with really bad pun names. Like Owl Capone. And Owlfalfa. And Owlvis Presley. I really want to go there, it'd be a hoot!