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Smile Works

Phone: +61 423 752 856

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25.01.2022 I spent yesterday looking back over this past year’s felt bits and tried, unsuccessfully, to produce a ‘this year’s nine’. So resolved to making two this year’s nines... one with colour, one without. And that’s still only a fraction .. It’s been a big year in the making department! Old and new teachers. Improving on known ways of doing things and learning very, very many new things. Community, kind cooperation and endlessly generous sharing are words that spring to mind w...hen casting back my mind. I love you guys and wish you all, again.. , a shiny and sparkly and fun New Year 2021!

24.01.2022 ISO 101 Ctnd. ... Bag making continues and is starting to take on epic proportions... I’ve been implementing my personal colour / art therapy as stage 4 lock down in Melbourne continues. Extended the range of walking bags from just-the-essentials, to include not-quite-so-small and a-little-bigger-than-not-quite-so-small bags, which fit a little more than just the essentials.... Thanking the universe for the existence of wool and colour!! Also found a new supplier for lovely leather straps and have been experimenting with photographing before different backgrounds.

23.01.2022 Wool and Paper! It really is a match made in heaven. Recycled IKEA lamp newly dressed and I am very happy with the outcome! The wool and paper combination makes for an entirely beautiful soft light when lit. ... Available

23.01.2022 Commission for an old friend of mine. I had very good fun playing with colours I don’t normally use. These are made from extra fine merino wool and various silks and very lightweight, soft and warm.

22.01.2022 One of my first tea cosy commissions (from about 7 years ago) turned into a magpie deterrent device! (It’s magpie swooping season here in Australia)

21.01.2022 My sander, courtesy of Aldi specials, and I spent the afternoon having fun sanding plinths for future artworks, producing enormous amounts of dust and happily wearing a mask for entirely COVID-unrelated reasons.

20.01.2022 I have been stitching, slightly obsessively as per usual when something grabs me, happy voluptuous ladies. This lot are brooches in the making. The ladies are printed on silk, free-motion stitched to felt and then painted. My sewing machine and I are having a grand old time!

17.01.2022 Thanks to the dust storm I whipped up over the weekend Plentiful Patootie No 1 (PP1 in short) finally has a plinth! Yay!! Her cheerful exuberance seems the perfect celebration for yesterday’s announcement of Melbourne’s lock down finally lifting!! She was made, with much excitement, in a technique learned form wonderful fibre artist Molly Williams in February and had been waiting to be adequately mounted ever since.

16.01.2022 3 prototypes later .. masked up. Superfine merino and silk. Doesn’t seem to fog up my spectacles too badly. So far so good. Let’s see how it goes. Also featuring DIY fringe trim.

16.01.2022 I am having such an inordinate amount of fun with these wee compositions, I’ve got a little production line going! Available

15.01.2022 Winter on this side of the globe! Making mitts Superfine merino and silk.

11.01.2022 Little series of Bird of Paradise brooches to herald in the New Year. Wishing y’all a sparkly, shiny, colourful year 2021 filled with newness, joy and much delight!

10.01.2022 It’s made its way to my doorstep, a real life exhibition catalog and a first for me! Beautiful it is and will be memorable in more than one way. Fiona Duthie, felt artist extraordinaire and fairy godmother of the felting community, lent her expertise and a not inconsiderable amount of time at the beginning of these extraordinary times in history, to bring us all together, to get us out of our heads and to make us remember, that we are the lucky ones. We have a means to keep our hands busy and create beauty no matter what is going on around us. Such a varied and amazing scope of work here and proud to be part of it

10.01.2022 Product of my daily ISO walks in stage 4 lock-down Melbourne: a little slip to protect my glasses when the mask fog gets out of hand and they need to be slipped into my jacket pocket. The second one is a commission for very dear friend who, despite my protests, MADE me use yellow. Now I think I like it even better than my black and white one.

10.01.2022 Playing with colour and texture, with silk and wool. I love colour. Colour makes me happy

09.01.2022 ISO 101 Continued: As I explore my immediate surroundings every day, the need arose for a little bag to fit essentials; phone, glasses, key. Colour is an essential also and, of course, I couldn’t make just one...... We are allowed out 1 hour per day in a 5 km radius around our homes. I now know every square centimetre of our local creek and every dog by name. Spring has sprung, the air is getting warmer and the days a little longer. We will emerge from this knowing that we are resilient and stronger than we thought we were, of that I am certain. These littelies are made from merino prefelt, nuno prefelt, Margilan silk and some have an inclusion made with a little pebble from the beaches of the Great Ocean Road

07.01.2022 Sewing machine doodles of a night of play with painted silks and felt scraps. Having the utmost fun learning new things from Ariane Mariane

07.01.2022 Recently re-plinthed little flock of dirigibles

06.01.2022 Way to stay sane during these peculiar times. Spring is in the air though in Melbourne and the sun is out. Makes all the difference Sooner or later I’ll run out of rocks and will have to be able to go beach combing again. Universe, I hope you are listening!

05.01.2022 The genesis of a workshop sample. The body of this lovely member of the felt cyclops family started out as a sample of a technique Pam de Groot teaches in one of her much recommended online workshops. Then it it sat around for quite some time, as samples tend to do. Then it acquired twirly bits, then, much later, an eyeball. Then some more time passed and it grew legs. Now it has a plinth and I think that’s it for this one. I am really rather fond of it.

02.01.2022 ‘Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?’ Rainer Maria Rilke I sailed through the first lock-down but this second one (I live in beautiful Melbourne) has been challenging. As I was finishing this little series yesterday, the rocks split in half, made me ponder impermanence, and I felt soothed by remembering, that even the most challenging times eventually pass and that the sun will shine on us again. We have the power to imagine our future into being. We just have to remember.

01.01.2022 Felt cuffs. Lovely little project from the last edition of Felt Magazine by Christianna Ferguson. Thanks Christianna for sharing! I had very good fun.