five gold rings, four calling birds, three french hens, two turtle doves and the show of the week

SHOW OF THE WEEK (grand opening tonight!)

Well of course it's ours... admittedly, the ladies of HML were a little doubtful about whether we would finish at times, and let's just say there was some very serious and bleary eyed embroidery still going on in the wee hours of monday morning, BUT...we are delighted (and somewhat surprised) to announce that it's great (if we do say so ourselves) and we're actually pretty happy with it.

santa's little helper

flying sooties

zoot and his pipers

the twelve days
three french hens, four calling birds and five golden rings...

The grand opening is tonight at Fourty five downstairs, Flinders Lane Melbourne between 5 & 6.30, just perfect for a quick pop in after work...
Of course, all our readers are welcome, so come along and have a drink on us!

hot potato hot potato

THEY MADE IT THEMSELVES

As you all know, we started our DIY Christmas course at the CAE last Saturday, and we really didnt know what to expect. We had all our potato prototypes prepared, ready to get the gaggle of students excited about the wonders of root vegetable printing and thought it would probably go OK...
What we hadn't counted on was how much this group of crafsters would get into it, by the end of the day each of them had created a complete co-ordinating range of printed fabric, and were even contemplating raiding the pantry once they got home to get more done. Champions!!

We sent them home with swathes of spotty, striped and flowered fabric with a list of washing and ironing instructions and cannot wait to see what they come up with next week...

hot for teacher

Given that our DIY Christmas class is well underway at the CAE, we thought it only proper that our website of the week should in fact be the official Centre of Adult Education Melbourne website...
Who knows you might even be enticed to take a class in Indian head massage or decide to pick up Portuguese as a second language...

baby the stars shine bright

CRAFT FIND OF THE WEEK

This weeks craft find goes to the humble paper mache christmas star found at Lincraft, which we are relying upon to give a certain celestial seasoning to our partridge in a pear tree show...
A measly $1.49 each they are a delight in their raw state (and you know what fans of buff kraft card we are) but we needed to prime these wee wonders with white acrylic paint in order for us to work a little hml embellishment magic later on.

At the moment we still have quite a few to get primed before their final decorative touches, but we're still enjoying looking at the all white work in progress, and currently using it as the default hml christmas tree until the real one arrives.
By the way, in case you think you've seen that tree before, you may recognise it from such fabulous Hammer and Daisy exhibitions as "A Parliament of Owls" .

is best

SHOW OF THE WEEK

As many of you know the HML staffers were on the selection panel for this years Fresh Exhibition at Craft Victoria. What you don't know is how proud we are to have been part of a process that promotes not just excellence but innovation, playfulness and the unique styles of graduate students around the State. It was an amazing process, sometimes a painful one and we felt a bit battle scarred by the end. But there were some pieces that were worth the argy bargy at 10pm at night (yes that Fresh meeting goes for a very very very looooong time). Up for grabs is a $5000 prize sponsored by Filippo Raphael and not even we know who the lucky recipient is just yet. We'll have to wait til Thursday night (6-8pm) at CV to find out. How exciting...!

And of course work continues on the hml Christmas show that opens Tuesday week - more details to follow...

seeing spots

THIS WEEK WAS ABOUT

getting ready...for everything. It's a funny thing December. You start thinking about in July when people throw those weird mid year christmas themed parties (wait is that just us?) and you don't really do much about it. Then September comes along and you think 'Spring has sprung! I better get a wriggle on' Then before you know it you are eagerly anticipating the Thanksgiving issue of Martha Stewart Living (wait is that just us?) and then you realise...

In the next four weeks we have - an exhibition, a teaching gig, cards to make (Ramona), a shop to manage (Rebecca), and that fateful day - yes we are talking about the 25th. No wonder we don't ever go out at New Years - we are in a coma by that stage. How are you all going? We know we aren't alone in this as there are quite a few panicky emails cancelling lunch date in our intray (or is that just us?)...

Despite the whine of panic in our voices we are in fact 'getting on top of things' and are quite looking forward to all of the above. Frocks have been bought and projects are nearly finished. Here are just a few more (with snaps to Holly Daze for the doorstopper inspiration).