I have not been able to stop looking at these lovely photographs of “camouflaged” birds, ever since I saw them on Honestly WTF. They are part of a series called “Birds of a Feather” by artist Claire Rosen and each of the birds – some of them common and others exotic – has been posed in front of vintage wallpaper. I think the idea of ‘wild’ birds in such a domestic setting and so consciously posed is incredibly fun and playful. It’s like a children’s storybook. Like the Big Bad Wolf all dressed up in Grandma’s bonnet.

Browsing through the rest of Claire’s portfolio is like taking a tumble down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass all at once. I asked her where she found inspiration, and she pointed me to a beautiful, interactive board she created on “A Creative Life.” What you see below is just a screen-shot of a small portion of the board. Take a look at the entire board here (tip: I couldn’t open this in Firefox. If you are having trouble, try with a different browser) and click on the various boxes to uncover the inspiration behind them.

Claire says, “Everyone has the capacity to be creative and it starts by creating a safe space to be creative in. Creativity is a muscle that needs to be exercised and fed with inspiration.” Would you agree with her?

Credits:

As mentioned, the image above is a screen-grab of a much larger board created by Claire Rosen. The original is found on fusings.com. All Birds of a Feather images are used here with kind permission from Claire Rosen. Credits are as follows.

WEBSITE : www.clairerosenphoto.com
INSTAGRAM : @clairerosenphoto
BOOK: http://www.blurb.com/b/4708660-birds-of-a-feather

LIMITED EDITION ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINTS on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper
signed and numbered on front
40 x 60 inches    (edition of 05)     
25.5 x 17 inches (edition of 10)            
11 x 16.5 inches (edition of 15)             
6 x  4 inches (edition of 150)    

The Birds of a Feather series will be in an exhibit in September at the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery (http://www.hfgallery.org) in Atlanta, GA with an artist reception on Thursday Oct. 16th.

Little things in my home…

This pensive cowboy sits outside his restaurant and on my kitchen bench. I found his photograph in a bric-a-brac shop in Aspen, Colorado, when I was staying up there for a fiction writer’s course (called Aspen Summer Words – if you ever get the opportunity take it – it was amazing!).

I almost didn’t share the cowboy today because the whole purpose of this series is to tell the stories behind the little things in my home. Like this. Or this. Or this. And I don’t know the story of this cowboy. Nor have I created a story for him since bringing him home. But I am so deeply drawn to this picture, and I don’t even know why. I never tire of looking at it, or thinking about it, and wondering what is his story? What is the story of this new town?

“Little Things” is an occasional series about the stories behind some of the little things you’ll find around my home. Are there stories behind the little things in your home? I’d love you to tell me about them! Or if you’d like to join in and write a post like this of your own, don’t forget to share a link to it so I can read it.

The journey of the days and weeks deep and then deeper again into the winter season feels like a deliberate grinding down. A forcible slowing, as primal as hibernation. It starts on the first morning you realise you’re getting up in the dark, and that night blankets the streets outside before the kitchen fires up for dinner. It gains momentum when the garden turns sparse and soil shows, black and hard, under the fallen leaves. When you pull your knitted hats and gloves and scarves out of storage. When your words float in visible clouds around your face as you leave the house in the morning.

Winter is a lesson in slowing down. In taking stock, in being more aware of the present. And I don’t know about you but when I finally dial things back a bit, that’s when the creative ideas tend to appear. It’s as though my creative mojo is shy, waiting until most of the crowd in my mind has gone home and bunkered down where it’s warm. Then, in the cold quiet of a winter’s morning, ideas tip-toe back in.

So if your ideas have been shy of late too, or if they’re just not being heard over all the stuff you’ve got going on, here are 13 ways to use the winter downtime to reignite your creative mojo.

Tend to your word garden. Or perhaps visiting a word gallery is more your speed, or sitting down to a word craft-table, or sweating it out at a word gym. It doesn’t matter. The lesson is to do that thing that teaches your mind to unwind, relax, and let creativity grow. Failing that, just read this piece about “the word garden” anyway. It is beautiful

Notice the good. This tip for parents to “catch them doing the right thing” is actually a wonderful reminder for everyone. Try to look for the good in people, actively notice their better selves

Search for pockets of light. You might just find beauty

Solve an urban mystery. Like this cute story about “the dudes”

Be in the present. This beautiful neon clock, called ThePresent, completes just one revolution in 365 days. It inspires thoughts like this: “It’s a reminder to stop everyday. It helps me find some grounding or a moment of reflection, a good thought, a deep breath…”

Unleash your creative soul, by signing up for one of these workshops

Make stuff out of cardboard. It doesn’t have to be this fancy (but it could be)

Put down that phone. Step awayyyyy from the computer

And related to the above, start “single-tasking.” This video is so funny, but true

Steal time for you. Whether you can grab five minutes or several hours, make the most of “me time”

Let others help you overcome your creative block. Danielle Krysa of The Jealous Curator has just published a book called “Creative Block” in which 50 international artists share their insights and exercises on how to get new ideas flowing

Show your joy. Don’t be cool, celebrate it like a toddler

Write a love letter to a stranger

How about you? Do you have any tips for reigniting that creative spark?

These gorgeous geometric colour explosions are the works of Western Australian artist and landscape artist Emma Lipscombe. It’s hard to tell from the photographs but they are actually made with oil-paint on individually-cut pieces of wood, fitted together into intricate and beautifully tactile patterns.

I love finding out how artists and other creative people come up with their ideas. I almost always find I have something to learn from them.

“Inspiration comes from all over the place and before I start working I’ll pour over my books, magazines, blogs and imagery on Instagram,” Emma told me, when I asked her how she came up with her ideas. “I also think of people that I find inspiring and interesting, ones that I know first hand and some I don’t, like the creatives you find on the likes of FVF. I am drawn to a certain aesthetic more and more these days, one that is clean and simple and not too much fuss.

“Creative Block (and the Doubt Monsters) are regular visitors of mine and they come knocking at least once a week! I think they can be fended away with some good immersion in these three things; books, internet and discussing your work with a ready listener (over a glass of wine).”

When it comes to finding that elusive balance between our home, social, work and creative lives, it seems Emma struggles just as much as the rest of us. “I do projects as a Landscape Architect, have a family, and a bit of a life,” she says, “but most evenings I will paint. If I don’t manage to find the time, I’ll be feeling a bit miffed!”

All images here are used with Emma Lipscombe’s kind permission. If you’d like to see more of her work, or stay in touch to find out when and where she might be exhibiting, Emma’s website is www.emmalipscombe.com, and you can follow her on Instagram at @emmalipscombe_.

Little things in my home…

Inside this snow globe is a sculpture of my old house. If you look closely, you can see the No. 10 number-plate gleaming proudly beside the door.

This was the first home that I ever owned and lived in, and it was glorious. Old carved-oak staircases winding up and dividing in two and winding some more. Hallways with stairs that go up two and down two again for no apparent reason. A Harry Potter-esque cupboard under the stairs. French doors, stained glass windows and a rickety upstairs balcony. There were tatty Persian carpets over the floorboards, left behind by the previous owner, and a truly hideous Medieval-style painting in vomit-tinted hues hanging over the fireplace in the dining room, that we kept up because it made us laugh.

The house was also icy and draughty in winter, and oppressively hot and prone to letting bugs inside in summer. It was dusty all the time, no matter how often you cleaned and vacuumed. The downstairs bathroom was too frightening to use (unless you were really desperate), and whenever planes took off or landed in nearby Sydney Airport, all the windows rattled and all conversations had to be put on pause.

Outside, we turned the little back courtyard into a garden with winding pathways and vegetables and flowering plants and vines. There was space for a table and chairs, and we would sit out there together on warm summer nights with a glass of wine to hand, and listen to the live music wafting across from the Warren View pub, just down the road. Until a plane flew over, blocking out all other sounds. Then, we would wave because, seriously, those planes were so close we were sure the passengers could see us.

Before we moved into this house, I lived out of our car for three months. Which is to say I didn’t sleep in the car (there wasn’t room – after a while I couldn’t even drive the car because there was so much stuff in it), I just kept my things (and Mr B’s things, and Emily’s and Meg’s things) in it while moving from place to place: hotels, hostels, short-term accommodations, while working every day an hour away in Sydney’s west, and waiting. Waiting to buy a house, waiting for settlement so we could move into the house, waiting for Mr B to finally move down from Queensland, where he was still working. Waiting because I had crossed the world – again – and moved from New York to Australia to start a proper life with the man I loved and here I was with all my belongings in plastic bags (suitcases had long since stopped fitting in the car), alone, treading emotional water, and searching for home.

We only lived in that house for nine months. But in that time we hosted birthday parties and BBQs, my book was published, we got engaged, we planted vegetables (we harvested the vegetables, we ate the vegetables), we got married (in the back yard, witnessed by 40 of our closest friends and about 400 air passengers en route to some holiday or another), the house overflowed with summer house-guests, we rescued a cat. We loved we argued we laughed we planned we painted we explored we wove stories of us. I started to learn how to cook.

So much has changed since we lived at No. 10 (three more interstate moves! two babies!), and often I feel like the me that lived inside that house was somebody else, somebody I read about inside a book. Could all this really have happened only three years ago?

Just before we moved, I had this snow globe made so that we could take it with us. It sits on the bookshelf of our family room now, where more often than not mess and chaos and all things children reign. And that seems fitting, because No. 10 was the first house I lived in that felt like a family home, since leaving the one I grew up in. It was while living in this house and spending so much time with Emily that I first began to think that maybe, just maybe, I might like to be a mother after all…

“Little Things” is an occasional series about the stories behind some of the little things you’ll find around my home. Are there stories behind the little things in your home? I’d love you to tell me about them! Or if you’d like to join in and write a post like this of your own, don’t forget to share a link to it so I can read it.

As you probably know, I like to draw pictures on my mail to make them pretty. But did you know there was a whole movement called “mail art”? I only just discovered this! It’s when people take the time to decorate the envelopes, so you get a wonderful treat before you even open the letter (and the postie gets something lovely to look at, too).

I’ve taken a wander around the Internet and collated 19 lovely letterly folk who – surely – make the posties and pen-pals of the world very happy indeed!

1 // Sender: Kaitlyn Patience from isavirtue. Last Christmas, Kaitlyn came up with the idea of a snail-mail advent: she posted one beautiful letter a day to various friends, in the lead-up to Christmas

2 // Sender: Dean Grey from Exploding Doughnut, who sent this ‘leaf mail’ to cheer up a friend who was going through tough times

3 // Sender: Katherine from Wishbone Blog. Katherine has two younger sisters who are the “golden threads” in her life, but they live far away. So she sent this lovely mail to them for their birthdays

4 // Sender: Fabrizia from Wreck this Girl. Fab is a pen pal extraordinaire, although she’s put new pen pals on hiatus while she focuses on uni. Take a look through her blog for some beautiful mail

5 // Sender: Marian from That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles. I love the way she makes collages on her mail from pop culture clippings

6 // Sender: Giova from One Bunting Away. There are lovely themes to these mail packages. Take a look at the Alice in Wonderland-themed package. I must do that for a friend one day!

7 // Sender: Illustrator Axel Sheffler, to children’s book publisher Klaus Flugge. Take a look through this gallery in The Guardian to see some amazing snail mail Flugge received from other illustrators

8 //Sender: Bianca from Good Night Little Spoon. Bianca is so generous she not only made this beautiful envelope for a mail-swap, she created a free printable so we can make our own letters look this pretty too!

9 // Sender: Magdalena from The Craft Revival. I love these envelopes: they are like a colour explosion! Magdalena gives the rest of us five tips to make our mail look this great

10 // Sender: Rin from Papered Thoughts. Rin sends and receives all kinds of beautiful mail. Take a look through some of the incoming and outgoing mail on her blog

11 // Sender: Meghan from And Here We Are. Meghan must truly be the typography queen. You don’t need to draw pictures or use colours to create stunningly beautiful letters

12 // Sender: Rin from Papered Thoughts. Again. Because, how adorable are those washi tape flags!

13 // Sender: Paper pastries. This blog is full of hand-crafted and designed mail, and lovely calligraphy, as well as stories of personal mail shared between pen pals

14 // Sender: Le Blog de Liberty. So my French isn’t great, but as far as I can tell, this post title says “Spring mail-art.” And those colours are tres jolie, oui?

15 // Sender: London illustrator Chetan, who goes by the name Cheism. How amazing is the line-drawn city behind the address on this mail!!

16 //  Sender: Emily from Thimble Cat. Do you know any fans of the Grand Budapest Hotel? If you do, how about sending them a little letter that looks like this?

17 // Sender: Lindsay Ostrom. Lindsay heard a story about a post-mistress who was trying to save her little post office, one postcard at a time. So she sent her this stunning record postcard

18// Sender: Moi! I’m not exactly in the league of these other guys but I do love to send mail, and if you subscribe to this blog, I’d be happy to send you a free copy of my book Airmail to say thank you. I’ll try to make the mail look pretty, too. Here’s some other mail I’ve sent. (Fair warning: I put the snail in snail mail, but I will write!) Just go here to send me your details.

19 // And finally, anyone who contributes to the Mail Me Art project. About eight years ago, smarty pants Darren Di Lieto came up with the genius idea of inviting artists and illustrators from all over the world to send him decorated mail. They didn’t even have to include anything inside the mail: “the medium is the message,” he said. You can buy the books from this project here and, if you’re feeling creative, you can contribute to the latest project (and book) here.

Now it’s over to you. Who would you add to this list? Do you like to send pretty mail? Share a link to your mail project in the comments if you do so we can all admire it!

UPDATE 5 July 2014: as of today I have run out of copies of Airmail to send you. However I would still love to send you something nice by snail-mail to say thank you for reading this blog, and I will still do my best to make it look pretty. If you have subscribed to this blog (or you want to), simply fill in your postal details on this page. And if you’re still keen to read Airmail, there’s a list of stockists here.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2.1.255-60)

Have you ever wondered what the inside of a rainbow smells like? Me neither, until recently.

A few weeks ago I saw some photographs of Rebecca Louise Law‘s floral installations online, and they took my breath away. The extravagance and generosity of these canopies of flowers are just extraordinary! I can barely fathom the vision, and the attention to detail, that it must make to create these all-too-fleeting interactive works of art.

Rebecca is a London-based installation artist who mainly works with natural elements, like wood, fruit and flowers. Her work is exhibited in galleries and museums, but she has also been commissioned to create high-end fashion displays. It always makes me happy when artists give me a “why didn’t I think of that?” moment. Like, WHY do we always display flowers facing up? Because JUST LOOK at how beautiful they are when seen from underneath! To my mind, it’s this kind of creative, out-of-the-box thinking – alongside talent and hard-won skill, of course – that sets a true artist apart from a clever copy-cat.

I am trying to imagine what it must be like to stand inside one of her amazing works. The best I can come up with is that it would be a sensory overload of the most beautiful, colourful kind. And perhaps provide the answer to what it smells like inside a rainbow.

All images and permissions generously provided by Rebecca Louise Law

This stunning photographic suite of a little Russian girl at play with her cat is my new happy place. I could say more but really I think the photographs speak for themselves. Watch these two grow up together, so lovely!

The photographer, Andy Prokh, was born in Siberia. He is a former economist who switched careers after more than 10 years, and turned to photography instead. Take a look through the gallery of his works. I find it a little bit Alice in Wonderland-esque: one minute dark, the next funny, now I’m confused, now I’m in love.

All images used with Andy’s Prokh’s kind permission

(A little secret: there is an awesome, not-sponsored giveaway at the end of this post)

What does “family” mean to you?

When I was a little girl not much older than Madeleine is now (almost two), one of my favourite books was a Little Golden Book called Happy Family. The book was written in the 1950s and it was oh so 1950s America. It starred two children Tony and Peggy, their parents, a dog named Skipper and a cat named Kiki. Over the years I have wondered why I loved that story so much. It was pretty boring really. Vanilla. From memory, they have a party or go to the beach or something. They get ice cream. It’s no The Monster at the End of this Book or The Tiger Who Came to Tea, both of which I also loved. (Still do.)

And even back when I was growing up, families were a lot more diverse than Tony and Peggy would have had us believe.

And now here we are in 2014 and a new magazine called Alphabet Family Journal is about to launch. It celebrates families in every iteration and in all the messy inconsistencies that make up what we call “home.” I don’t know if there will be any “Mum, Dad & 2.5 kids”-style families in the first issue of Alphabet. I guess there could be, since that’s one version of a family, and it’s as valid as the next. But I really like the way the people behind Alphabet Family Journal define “family” in the broadest possible sense: “people who make a home together.”

I feel like this magazine has been written for me in all the stages of my adult life. For the me that is a wife, a mother to two children under two, and a stepmother to two almost-grown-up girls who live here sometimes but not all times. But also for the me that was single and living alone (except for my dog) in an apartment in New York, with a “family” that was made up of my closest friends and neighbours. And for the me that lived in a dormitory on my university campus, emotionally lost and spiritually confused and longing, desperately, to be part of the kind family I thought would make me “legitimate” in the eyes of my peers.

It’s possible I’ve drawn a rather long bow from a simple definition, and that maybe Alphabet Family Journal won’t quite meet every expectation I’ve built up for it in my head. But I’m fairly confident it will come close. Each issue promises to present stories, ideas and curiosities about “family,” inspired by a letter of the alphabet. Starting, not exactly surprisingly, with A. So the first issue covers topics from living with Aspergers to the challenges of Attention in everyday life, an honest look at Adoption, a moving study of Audio in our homes and photo essays themed Africa, Autumn Nights, Abode, Alstonville and Anticipation.

In a Kickstarter campaign to launch the magazine, founder and creative director (Sydney-based photographer Luisa Brimble) said “It seemed like many parenting or family-related magazines were representations of a polished, perfect home that was, quite simply, not at all like our own homes. So we set out to create an alternative: a family journal that celebrates the personal foundations of our homes in their many different forms.” With the help of crowd-funding they also made a commitment to recognise and reward the work of their contributors, something too few independent publications do these days.

I can’t wait to read it! After all, as the creators say, “We’re what you read when you want to feel like you belong.”

And as for Happy Family? After probably way too much thought, I have come to realise that what I loved so much about it was the extended story-line. They get up, they have a party, they have some fun, they go to bed. In children’s book land, that should be the end of the story. But guess what? They wake up the next morning and have MORE VANILLA ADVENTURES. And what did that mean? Delayed lights-out time for toddler me! Shazam. Mystery solved.

>> Keep scrolling for the giveaway, after the pretty pictures >>

Photo credit above: Elize Strydom. All photographs courtesy of Alphabet Family Journal

A giveaway

When I decided to write this post I contacted Luisa Brimble to ask for her permission to use some photographs. She very kindly sent through all the photos you see here, and more, to give you a sneak peek of what’s inside Alphabet Family Journal. But even more generously, she also offered to give away a free copy of Issue 1 AND this gorgeous “Be Kind” poster by Bianca Cash (I am so jealous) to one of you! I figured you’d be pretty happy about that so I said a big YES, THANK YOU.

To be in the running, simply leave a comment below telling me what “family” means to you. It can be one word or a whole essay, anything you like. I just appreciate this chance to get to know you better. For an extra chance in the draw, share the love by going over to the Alphabet Family Journal Facebook Page and hitting “like” (then let me know you’ve done-so). I’ll draw the winner at random at 4.50pm on this Friday 13 (oooh!) June, Melbourne time. Good luck!

Sorry, the competition is only available within Australia.

UPDATE 13/06/14: This competition is now CLOSED. Thank you all for your interest and for all the amazing, beautiful and moving thoughts and feelings you shared about “family.” And a big, heartfelt congratulations to the winner, Zanni.