Big Toast online shop now open!

It's been awhile coming but I'm pretty excited to announce that my new online shop is now open! Yes, I have been talking about it for ages but finally managed to put my head down and get it done, just in time for Christmas. You can click on the link at the top right of this page to visit the new Big Toast shop (yay!) It is filled with Christmas cards and Christmas gift tags as well as canvas and paper prints of my illustrations. I’m also happy to post cards and goodies directly to your loved ones if you’d like to do that and can hand write a message for you (I have neat writing I promise). Just send me an email from the contact page when you place your order and we’ll take it from there. I’ll be adding the rest of my card range and other goodies as soon as I can, but I wanted to start with all the things that would make great Christmas treats first. I hope you like my little shop, feel free to share it with anyone else you think would like it! x

Christmas Gift Tags

I was photographing some of my cards over the weekend for a little something I'm working on and wanted to share these with you. They are my Christmas illustrations printed as cute little gift tags and I must say they are quite sweet. I will have them this weekend at Eveleigh Artisans' Market, along with my Christmas cards, framed and unframed prints on paper, canvas prints and handmade books. If you can't make it to the market I'll be letting you know how you can get your hands on some illustrated goodies very soon x

Christmas cards

Chaos in Cookie Land

Stuffed Animals

Relaxing Reindeers

Christmas Birdies

The Great Escape

Christmas is almost upon us once again and that means time for Christmas cards! It is usually such a busy time of year for me and having been up to my ears in Christmas cards for months I always run out of steam before I send any of my own. I know, it's a pretty poor effort seeing as I'm in the card business! This year I'm determined that I will send cards to my friends and family! I'll have my Christmas cards and gift tags at the market this weekend and at all markets for the rest of the year. If you're not in Sydney or you can't make the market and would like some cards, please send me an email and I'll be happy to post to you.

Wild Ones Art & Design Market at Hazelhurst

Happy weekend my friends! It is such a beautiful sunny day in Sydney today. I hope the good weather continues tomorrow as it is the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery's open day tomorrow and I'll be having a stall at the Wild Ones Art & Design Market. The market is inside but it's always so much more appealing to get out and about when the sun is shining. I've never been to Hazelhurst before so am looking forward to checking it out. There's lots of things going on for the open day as well as the market- exhibitions, art class demonstrations, film screenings, music, kids activities and more. There's also the Hazelhurst Cafe for coffee and yummy food :) More details here. Have a great weekend x

&company

Hello! I’ve been wanting to let you all know about something that is worth knowing about and now seems a good time. My friends at &company are embarking on a journey to create a workshop for Sydney’s creative community and they need some support to make it happen. &company is a Sydney based design studio that works with emerging designers to bring new and inspired products to market. More recently they’ve been running an amazing range of short courses from their pop-up space up in The Rocks, from jewellery, ceramics, and wood work to animation and documentary making. You can see more about &company and the fabulous things they do here.

&company was started by the very inspiring Anna Lise De Lorenzo who I’m happy to say is also my friend and it is so amazing to see her vision for &company that we discussed many years ago over a couple of beers grow and develop into what it has become today. My first range of Big Toast greeting cards was launched with &company at The Finders Keepers design and art market in 2010 and I’ll always be grateful that Anna Lise gave me a bit of a push when I was procrastinating about it! It gave me a deadline to make it happen and that was the start of a new direction for me. So some of us need encouragement and belief, and some of us need space, tools, equipment and some old fashioned know-how to turn our ideas into reality, or to just dabble in something new and have some fun, and this is where &company’s workshop comes in. Their vision is to set up a fully equipped workshop that anyone can access and they’ve launched a crowd funding campaign through Pozible to make it happen. You can click here to see what it’s all about and how you can help.

Have a read and if you like the sound of it you can pledge your support. Then if you are near The Rocks you can stop by their pop-up shop and get your photo taken like this extremely dorky one of me!  

Photo by Meng Koach and top image by &company 

New frames and my favourite polar bear

Well who agrees that this year is going too fast? The last month is gone and another Sunday at Eveleigh Market approaches, that means only three markets left for the year, wow! Time to get my act together and stock up for Christmas. Having finally found a local supplier who could custom make my frames for me I was super excited to go and pick them up on Friday. They look great and I've been busy cutting mat board and getting all my illustrations framed for Sunday's market. My little polar bear friend in the frame above has always been one of my favourite characters. This illustration was inspired by a poem written by a friend of mine and is about a lonely bear that lives in a freezer. His story has a happy ending though as he escapes his cold confines to seek the company of some other bears, fellow tea drinking bears one presumes :)

Happy Father's Day!

It's Father's Day on Sunday and I've been looking at these photos of me and my Dad quite a lot lately as they are pinned on the board above my computer. This was taken recently at my cousin's wedding, which was really lovely. They had a photo booth in which all the guests proceeded to go photo crazy after having a few glasses of wine. It was very funny! I really love this sequence of photos of the two of us! I feel really lucky that I have such a good relationship with my Dad because so many people I know aren't so fortunate. If you've been to the market you'll probably recognise him because he and my mum are there quite often. He has always been so supportive of me and my work and never pressured me to get a "real job",  he has always just done whatever he can to help. I'll be giving him an extra big hug on Father's Day because he is just the best, and he makes a mean cup of tea! x

Eveleigh Artisans' Market and a Crafternoon Tea!

What a lovely way to spend your Sunday! Eveleigh Artisans' Market is on this Sunday from 10am and I'll be there with my full range of Big Toast greeting cards, prints, canvases and books.  If you're looking for something fun to do on a sunny winter's day come by the market and check out the great range of handmade goodies on offer, maybe grab a coffee and some brekky (the bacon and egg rolls there are the best!) and say hello. In the afternoon a couple of very lovely and talented ladies I know are holding a Crafternoon Tea at the Oxford Street Design Store in Darlinghurst where you can learn to crochet and have tea and freshly baked cake! Sounds like a great way to spend the afternoon to me! You can click here for more info. Have a great weekend x

Gingerbread cookies

Hello my friends. I'm sorry I have been neglecting you. The last few months have been a bit of a blur. I've just moved house and relocated my studio, which is exciting in that I have a new space to work in but the move itself was quite exhausting! I'm still unpacking bits and pieces and trying to get myself sorted. Alas, I have no new illustrations to show you so thought instead I would share some examples of my work in cookie form! Here are some new friends I designed and iced in my day job at Cookie Couture. I've been wanting to make bear cookies for ages as some of you will have noticed that I rather like drawing bears. With winter well and truly upon us I felt foxes and squirrels would be the best companions. These very yummy gingerbread cookies are available at Flour and Stone in Woolloomooloo, along with the most amazingly abundant selection of cakes, tarts, pastries and yumminess you can imagine.

This is a giant cookie we did recently for Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine and at roughly 40 x 60cm it was the biggest cookie I've ever seen! The cookie was used as the title page for the magazine's Hottest 100 of 2012 in the May 2012 issue. You can click here to see the article on their website. Photo by Will Horner for Australian Gourmet Traveller

Hippo Love

With Mother's Day coming up soon I wanted to share one of my favourite illustrations which was originally painted for my mum a few years back. She's always loved hippos, and I just knew that I had to paint this hippo in a pink dress. If her feet were showing she'd have dainty little feet with ballet slippers on and she'd definitely be on tiptoes as she skipped across the field picking her heart-flowers!

Prints on paper

I came home yesterday and my order of beautiful paper prints had arrived- a day early! Normally I'm stressing that they won't arrive on time because I always manage to leave it to the last minute to order them. It meant I could get started bright and early on cutting mounts and getting them ready for the market on Sunday. I'm going to start selling them unframed in addition to the framed prints I make. The illustrations are printed onto 310gsm BFK Rives fine art paper which is slightly textured and the colours are just perfect. They are so close to the original artworks so I'm really happy with them! I will eventually be selling them in my online shop when I get it up and running but until then, if you're in Sydney come by the market on Sunday and check them out!

Mr Tea loves Mrs Toast

I thought this an appropriate illustration to post today for Valentine's Day. Whilst not wholly supportive of this over commercialised day, I do support doing nice things for your beloved! And I do support the giving of greeting cards any day of the year, as long as they are well chosen and made with love so I guess I should get on board with it. I just think it should be about the little things, like a perfectly chosen card, a freshly baked cake, even a well needed cup of tea that you don't have to ask for, it just gets brought to you. That's where the idea for this illustration came about. For me what better way to show someone you love them than to make them breakfast! When I was drawing this, and deciding who was going to be gazing adoringly at who I started to feel like all the objects in the kitchen had little faces and were making eyes at each other! I think the knife and fork are particularly cute.

Let's Dance

Well hello 2012! I know I am just a little late in wishing you all a happy new year. I have been fairly well ensconced in holiday mode until being dragged out of it last Sunday for the first Eveleigh Artisans' Market of the year. Thanks to everyone who came by, it was lovely to see you all and great to be back at the market. It seems a lot of people had Valentine's Day on their mind and this illustration was a big hit in the card department. It's called 'Let's Dance' and was inspired by the M. Ward version of Bowie's song of the same name. The original version is of course very cool but M. Ward's take on the song is just so beautiful and I love the way he sings it. It's very romantic and the line "sway through the crowd to an empty space" is where this illustration began. I didn't always envisage a bear and a panda dancing, that just seemed to be an obvious progression as I worked on the idea!