Weekly inspiration

I LOVE making things and I'm sure you do too!
I have seen some really inspiring DIY tutorials lately. I thought I would share some of my latest faves with you... rainy days always make me feel like getting out the craft supplies!
Look at these great ideas for using plastic toys...

 You can see this 'party animal' (I love a good pun!) cupcake topper tutorial on 'The Sweetest Occasion'.

 These mounted toy heads on 'Please Note' would be awesome for hanging my jewellery from!
 It's no secret I have a mega business-crush on the Red Velvet girls, and their blog 'A Beautiful Mess' has no shortage of inspiration and great tutorials. How cute are these shoes? I check in with them every day and there's always something new... those gals are the hardest working crafty chicks!

x Steph

Rugging up

Ask anyone in Ballarat and they will tell you how unpredictable the weather in this town can be. this time last week we were sweltering, several days later we almost got flooded and today, on the 3rd day of Autumn, we are still at a steady drizzle.
It looks like I was just in time to re-vamp the street furniture outside our little shop. Over the summer we have been loving this piece of street-art, but after a bit of... ahem... unsavoury defacing I thought it was time for a tidy up!

 

Remember last winter, I had a blast wrapping the city in some snuggly blankets? Well this tree stayed wrapped up warm until it was time for the council to put up Christmas decorations and became known as the 'Ballarat Banket Tree'! How cool is that?

 With Autumn making it's self so clearly felt I thought I would show you how we go about getting cozy over here at Red Brick.
What you will need....
Some cozy blankets. It's a big ask to knit or crochet on this kind of scale so I keep my eye open in our local op-shops, often these colourful handmade blankets can end up in the dog-blanket boxes! I love giving these bright rugs a new lease of life. Unlike my own crochet, acrylic is best in this case, retaining it's vibrancy and shape well.

 If you have plenty of time on your hands you can sew or crochet the blankets on but I find cable ties to be seriously handy! They are really tough so withstand attempts to remove them but can also be cut with scissors so aren't permanent and can be removed if said 'rugging' offends!

Here is me in cable-tie action on our main street!

Looks like I was just in time as look at the lake that grew around it a few days later!
Have a really awesome weekend!
x Steph

Flower love.

I adore flowers. As well as enjoying nurturing our pretty garden here at Red Brick I love having fresh flowers in the gallery so you can imagine how delighted I was when a talented lady we know asked if she could provide a floral display for us!
Rachael is an accomplished artist who as well as exhibiting has made a beautiful picture book. Recently Rachael began working at a local florist and has fallen in love with flora... I, in turn, have fallen in love with her floral creations which, just like her drawing style are beautifully classic and elegantly simple.

 Over cups of tea and candle-light (very romantic I know!) Rachel and I had a really fun consultation session where we discussed colours, textures and light. Knowing our passion for window displays Rachael suggested building a window installation.

Taking the brief of  'feminine, ephemeral and un-fussy' I couldn't be happier with how well Rachel used simple elements to create strong shapes alongside pretty blooms and textures.

 I LOVE what she created for us! Rachael is working at Stems florist in Ballarat... tell her we said hi!

DIY - Instagram Print

I'm so excited about the up-coming 'Click @Red Brick' exhibition, I love group shows for their diversity of work and fun opening celebrations. This show combines another passion of mine and that's photography. I snap away at every opportunity and love sharing my images too. We are still accepting entries for this show so hop onto our website for an application form. 

We are embracing all forms of photography, lomo, polaroid, iphonography, you name it... we want it! Recently we acquired two large light-boxes and I have a vision of a whole grid of small un-framed images would look amazing on them.
This reminded me of a fun project I did to pretty up my hallway recently. I received a few questions about them so here is a little tutorial. It's pretty simple and is a great way to display those cute family pics.

I used my Instagram photos for this project, I love the size and scale of Polaroid prints so decided to print my images to this size. Using Adobe Photoshop I made a new image 10 x 15cm (the size of my photo-paper). I regularly back-up my photos from my iphone onto my laptop so I then opened the image file, dragged it onto the blank canvas. Using 'free transform' I adjusted the image to Polaroid dimensions (7 x 7.9 cm).

 

I then printed the image on my ink-jet printer... it's nothing flash but does a pretty good job if I print at high quality. I could trim the paper at this point but I actually like how the image is framed with space to write a caption underneath!

 I am constantly adding to this little grid in my hallway with images of friends, my lovely Mr and reminders of great adventures. I can't wait until it fills the whole space!

X Steph