Paula Mills Art

free range from Design Indaba country living HelloVictory.etsy.com At the moment we have been consumed with preparations for our biggest market to date. Its the three day long Magnolia square market to be held at the Malvern Town Hall Thursday 6Th to Sat the 8th. This is quite a big deal for Sweet William, we have got a few markets under our belt now, but we have never put ourselves in this position before! Getting ready is both exciting and daunting all at the same time. I'm sitting here in New Zealand wishing desperately that I could join the girls in their preparations. The skype phone is fritzing out it has been used so much with back and forth conversations. We are consumed with how to make our table look good and how to display our items. This flickr group is really helpful if you need some ideas: http://www.flickr.com/groups/stallstyle/ . It got me thinking of the good ol handy hanger, a really neat tool for display. Our next big stall set-up will have include som...

Jeanine and Paula have their heads down, gearing up for a three day makers market in Melbourne. (Magnolia Square) It should be good, hard to know how much stock we will need for a full three days - as everything is 100% handmade, it all takes a while to do, but it will all be worth it in the end!

We are gearing up once again to do some major markets, always loads of fun with a bit of hard work thrown in. Shelley will be at Craft 2.0 on Saturday 25th in Wellington from 10 am till 3pm. Jeanine and Paula will be at Magnolia Squar e on Thursday 6th, 7th and 8th of August. Pop in and say hello, we heart makers markets.

I am very flattered to have my home featured in apartment therapy today! Check it out here . Most who know me, will often hear me complain about the state of my little rental in Melbourne, so it does make me smile when I see my flicker photos up on a web site like apartment therapy. I manage to keep the place tidy enough to take a photo or two and then it resorts back to its usual chaos of three young children and a busy studio - it is pretty chaos though!

Sweet Willaim's vintage map, paper garland would make any corner of your home look a little more interesting and you could improve your geography! Available in our etsy store soon.

We love other bloggers. They are usually perfect strangers, yet, they take the time to connect and somehow become neighbours to each other. We have met some lovely new neighbours lately, Rebecca of edwardandlilly { a girl after my own heart since she seems to love embroidery as much as I do} , did a sweet quick interview. We also have a giveaway at this blog : City of Dionne , she has a lovely post about her Daily Sweets and the love she gets every morning.

Had a spare half an hour this morning and so I popped into my local charity shop - wow it was so worth it! Here are some of my finds - the best one was the bedspread as it reminds me so much of my Gran's guest room, which I used to stay in every now and again as a little girl. Ahhh nothing like a good find at the charity shop to make my day! I have loaded some more images onto my flicker page too.

IMG_5080 , originally uploaded by paulamills . Oh gosh what a day! So many things exploding in my head. Our lovely little craft business is taking off - which is a good thing - but some times, some where, some how one does wonder about all the time poured into some thing and the passion needed to keep it going...where to get more time to do all the things that the heart desires? As anyone who runs their own business knows, there is plenty of admin and mundane stuff involved - and who wants to do all that, when there is exciting creative work to be done?? Ahhh Ce la vie I supose! ***Melbournians - Sweet William will be at the Shirt and Skirt market on Sunday in Abottsford from 10am till 4pm, pop in and say hello.****

We had a flurry of orders in our etsy shop recently and we did a give away to our 100th customer - YIPEE! (Well done to Megan Kay in South Australia). The fun part was putting the packages together to send all over the world, we take great pride in our parcels - who doesn't love, in this modern tech-no world, receiving a great parcel in the post - hooray for snail mail! So here are some images from our studio in full packaging and post mode.

On Wednesday I had twenty minutes to spare, a little window of thrift shop time. So I hit Trash Palace with a purpose. Books, tins, glassware, games, fabrics, knick knacks - I knew exactly the route to take. My hands were numb (Trash Palace is unbelievably cold) and there was a strange rancid stench (not the usual old book smell), but the clock was ticking and I am proud of my power thrift. Found a lovely old tin with the cereal label on, a beat up old tray with snow white and her little men, a nice silver bon-bon platter which I will use for my stall and a bunny hutch. All for the bank breaking sum of 20 bucks. (image is from www.handmadefont.com )

We are thrilled with our little online shop over at etsy  - be our 100th customer and we will throw in a print of your choice for free! Yippeee! We love celebrating!

Paula and I went to the opening night of the ACMI Animators festival in Melbourne. We enjoyed some great pieces, some funny, some bizarre, some down right amazing. This link will show you a sample of one that's incredible to see on the big screen. It's a bit creepy - but one can't help but be inspired by the sheer vision and scale of it. We were immediately inspired to make these brooches later that night after the show. We're crazy crafty that way.