A Perfect Day

Hello! I wanted to share with you the news that I have just enjoyed my version of a divinely perfect day. The only improvement I could have made was to have had NP with me, but someone has to bring in the bacon!

Actually, my perfect day started yesterday night at my yoga class - I've finally restarted my classes and it was just beautiful. One little thing stuck in my head - our teacher talked about trees offering their fruit to everyone and anyone, absolute generosity with no questions asked. 

I've been lucky enough to have had 2 beautiful weeks with my favourite people in the world. The generosity of my friends reminds me of this tree... their time and compassion and laughter are given so freely... a beautiful thing.

I will tell you more about my day over the next week!

xEmma

Image by Kup Kup Land.

Sydney Long - Pan

I've been thinking about this artwork all weekend. It hangs in the Art Gallery of NSW and  I remember seeing it for the first time while at school. Reminds me of a forest not to far from my mum's place in the Southern Highlands, all gnarly and elongated.

The print (shown at the Prints and Printmaking site) shows the shapely  Art Nouveau-inspired trunks in even more detail...

La La Laurie

I can't quite decide if this lovely lady is some one I completely admire or down right detest with sickening jealousy for all her amazing talent. Hmmm... for peace of mind I'll go with the former...

Please note that there are some tree themed pics included!

Tree Print by Bryan Nash Gill

Ooooo, this is quite a lovely print doing the rounds of the blog-0-sphere, and thought it fits quite well with this months theme...

When I was 15 I was definite I wanted to be either

A. An architect

B. A graphic designer

C. A forensic scientist

As the old song goes... "One of these things is not like the other..."

I think Option C had something to do with watching a lot of Murder Mysteries where things like dating a suspicious crime could be deduced with a quick count of the tree rings.

This little memory has made me smile, and actually involves Yumi... We were both into art at school and we completed 'work experience' together for a week at a design company that did the Australian packaging for Nutella. Not that we got to do anything as exciting as design for a chocolate brand (which reminds me I still haven't ticked that off the 'to do' list). 

The first day there was a bit of confusion about how we were getting to the studio (ending in me being quite late) and somehow Yumi and I wore exactly the same thing (white Country Road oversized button up shirt & jeans). The creative director thought this was quite funny much to our dismay. We desperately wanted to fit into this uber-cool designer lifestyle (well... I did, not sure about Yumi).

The week passed with us spending 7 hours a day perforating piles of itty-bitty stamps while listening to a very boring radio station (Simply Red was on repeat on the hour every hour).

BUT! At the end of the week we were able to design our own plastic boxes with sticky label logo! I'm sure I still have my box somewhere in the garage which I'll try to dig out and take a photo of. It was totally worth while.

Thank you to Cup of Jo & Oh So Beautiful Paper for posting this image and the trip down memory lane!

Turning over a new leaf

Welcome to Chapter 2 of Souzou!

Yumi and I are very excited to announce that Souzou has become something new in the last couple of hours.

We have been feeling a little drained, disheartened and down about our project. All the good intentions and energy that we began with have been lost along the way.

After a good chat at our favourite meeting place (Berkalouw Books in Newtown) we've decided to make sure that Souzou is never a chore and is always a place for us to create with joy, dedication and verve. It's all about the journey rather than the destination!

Inspired by how Bill Henson & Richard Tognetti collaborated we have chosen a theme for this month to be our inspiration. After gathering a collection of second hand books available we came back to the couch and found that there was a strong sense of trees running through all our choices. 

So here we are with our very first theme which we will be working with for the next couple of weeks... My first 'tree' creation was a new Souzou banner... what do you think?