BOON!!

Yes BOON...not BOOM!

BOON Chocolates at 251 Victoria Street Darlinghurst, right here in beautiful Sydney.

Gorgeous chocolates, beautiful store, fabulous philosophy and lovely welcoming people.

Alex and Fanny Chan, the brother and sister powerhouse behind BOON have been in their business for about 4 years now. They have built a reputation in the chocolate world for their attention to detail, mouth watering flavours and their freshness.

BOON philosophy is simply...'to produce in small batches so that the chocolates are consumed within four weeks of being made. Freshness is key to appreciating the individual flavour characteristic to each praline. Freshness combined with the best natural ingredients and flavours is the key.'

I was lucky enough to visit yesterday with a group from work and have Alex talk to us about their business and their product. Not only do they sell to the public, they have some large corporate contracts as well.

Cartier, Ferrari!!!

I can't wait to make a hot chocolate with one of my purchases!

 

My first foray into the world of Spoonflower contests...

I took the plunge...and entered my first design in one of the weekly fabric design contests run by Spoonflower. Retro Kitchen design with a restricted palette.

Entries closed on May 9 and voting is open now. The winner will be announced on Thursday May 17.

I'm very nervous as this is the first time I've ever had one of my fabric designs out there in the 'public eye'. My design was uploaded about a week before the due date, I was that happy with it.

Now I have to just sit and wait to see if I made the top 10...mmm. With the MOST entries Spoonflower has ever had for a palette restricted contest, not sure how I'll go! 282 entries were received! Wish me luck!

Are you feeling creative...

Well...I really haven't kept my blog up to date lately, as I've been concentrating on building my portfolio of fabric designs. Also sourcing printers and doing some of my own screen printing took up more time than I expected.


Having been a Blogging Your Way student last year, what better way to get back on track with my blog posts than selecting some of my earlier posts that were well received. In one of the lessons, it was suggested to look at posts that had high counts of views and list them in a post. A reconnection, I suppose, to the writer and their blog. These posts tend to get lost in the 'archives' and new blog viewers wouldn't know they were there.

So...based on the amount of views some of these posts received, let me invite you to take another look, or perhaps your first look.

For your viewing and maybe some practical application: 

1. My Creative Space - A gift for Sophia
2. Creative Collective - New Year = New Craft
3. Favourite Things - Week 12
4. Project: Felt Necklace
5. Project: Ikea Draws

I'm a doer, I love making things, getting in and putting a design on paper then executing it. There's nothing like the feeling of making things, and decorating, especially with something I've made.

My background is sewing and fabrics but as the years have gone by I've picked up many extra skills. I even have my own power tools! Insert 'Tim the Toolman-like' laugh here, for those of us who remember good ol' Tim. I have to say, my projects fare a bit better than Tim's!

I've selected some of my project posts for you to review, and maybe even give them a go yourself. Here's a link to my projects page for any of the others I've made over the last few years. There are still a few I haven't finished the detailed instructions for.

Do you know, sometimes this is more difficult than the actual project. I have the words and step by step instructions in my head, but you need to get them SO right for other people to be able to follow them clearly and make the item. I will be getting back to writing these soon.

I hope you've enjoyed taking a look at these projects and perhaps are thinking about trying one or two yourself. If you'd like some help, please feel free to email me.

Enjoy!

PS My 'Followers' gadget is still AWOL and I don't know how to fix it. If anyone has any ideas, please email me on designed.to.a.t@optusnet.com.au
 

Daytrippin'...

Canberra, the uniquely designed capital of Australia, is fast approaching it's Centennial year

The birth of Canberra as the national capital was marked by the laying of the foundation stones for a ‘Commencement Column’ on 12 March 1913, and the naming announcement by Lady Denman, wife of the then Governor-General.

From where I live in Sydney, it's just a quick 2hr 15-30min trip, approximately, as I am close to a motorway that takes you up to freeway speeds within minutes of leaving home. No trying to get through city traffic to get on my way, it's just a few blocks to the motorway and off I go.

So why don't I do regular trips to Canberra? I have no excuse, but when I have a reason to go, it's always a surprising and pleasant day. The latest reason, I'm very embarrassed to say, was to increase the 'mileage' on my car, as I am close to reporting it for the end of Fringe Benefits Tax year!

Despite having to ensure I meet my mileage requirements, I'm also always happy to do a day trip in my car. Driving is something that's in my blood. My Dad used to drive taxis in Sydney and has also done stints in trucks when I was small, in between his jobs as a qualified greens keeper. Driving trips were something we always did when I was a child. Heading off late on a Friday afternoon to drive the 4 or 5 hours to my Grandparent's home in Nambour QLD, then the drive back again on Sunday night.

I wasn't by myself, so the Canberra trip was even more pleasant with a companion, and we stopped to have a lovely lunch on the way.

Let me show you in pictures how lovely a day it was, with beautiful weather turned on and lots of activities and events happening. We ran out of time to visit the Bonsai exhibit/show and needing to get back on the road meant we weren't able to stay for the fireworks that were happening last weekend.

 Beautiful sunshine-y day on the way - the road beside Lake George 

or Weereewa in the area's indigenous language.

 

Top Left: A Bronze cast of parliamentarians and 2 Australian Prime Ministers, John Curtin and Ben Chifley. Ben Chifley was Treasurer at the time, later to be our 16th Prime Minister.

Top Right: Beautiful tree lined walkway through a park beside old Parliament House

Bottom: Plaque explaining the bronze statue of Curtin and Chifley.

 National Portrait Gallery

 Old Parliament House

 

 

Top Left: More tree lined footpaths

Top Right: The High Court of Australia

Bottom: Part of the refurbished Old Parliament House gardens

 

 Lake George - on the way home. Dark clouds forming giving an eerie back drop to the Lake.

 Heading home!

 

purebloggers.com...?

I've had a couple of emails from 'purebloggers.com' of late, luckily they've been relegated to my 'junk email' folder, so it gave me pause to think and investigate.

It looked legit but you know how wary you have to be, so I did a search and wasn't really able to find anything.

My stats show in the last week there has been 5 referrals under 'traffic sources' from this site, and 6 in the month. It appears to have ramped up in the last 7 days. 

The email comes from purebloggerss@gmail.com (with a double 's') and it looks like this: 

If anyone has any other information on this please let others know, just in case. You can never be too careful in this environment.

Blogging Your Way in Australia?? What do you think?

Were you a part of the 'Blogging Your Way' experience with Holly Becker from 'decor8'?

Would you be interested in Holly and Leslie Shewring ('a creative mint') coming to Australia?

If so, there's a couple of polls happening on the BYW Facebook Page. If you are interested, why not vote!

More fabric designs on Spoonflower

I've been slowly gaining momentum with my designs and have accumulated quite a library of fabrics now.

I'm still using Spoonflower, but have contacted a couple of businesses here in Australia, one in Sydney and one in Melbourne. Samples of my most recent Spoonflower upload, some 30+ designs, are currently winging their way to me via Fedex. Once I've had an opportunity to check the colours, they will be available for sale.

Spoonflower offer a good service, with a few shortfalls e.g. colour matching not always quite hitting the mark, and one great advantage - you can sell your own fabrics through them and don't have to have an amount of stock held on your own premises. They will print as required. Being in the US though, it means paying overseas postage costs and time frame for delivery depends on how much you are willing to pay for freight to bring the delivery time down. Hence looking for somewhere local.

My plan still is to have the designs under the 'designed to a T' name, with the home wares/soft furnishings being sold under the 'jane on jane st' name.

If I decide to go ahead with an Australian printer and on sell fabric lengths myself, this will mean having to find room to store bolts of fabric, but will offer lower freight costs to my customers. I would also miss out on a potentially bigger market by not having the Spoonflower marketplace offering my fabrics for sale. So there are still many things to think about in this fledgling venture.

Here's a sneak peek at some of the designs.

'Exclamation!' (above) - I'm still doing the rest of the complimentary fabric designs/story for this one. 'Candy Stripe' and 'Starry Night' are complimentary stories also.

Tulips and Diamonds (below) is already for sale along with some other designs from last year.