extreme ironing

Whilst my ironing adventures may not be as extreme as this guy's (above), I am dangerously close to morphing into Bea from Prisoner-Cell Block H (you have to be over 30 and Australian to understand this)-that is to say if I iron one more little piece of fabric for a trimmings pack in the near future then I may become violent. (Don't worry there is enough love in one packet to negate any bad vibes from my hatred of ironing at the moment.)

Carly and I are working the night shift to prepare Umbrella Prints for Finders Keepers in Sydney THIS Friday night and Saturday yaah! We have little clue as to how much to take which means we are pretty much taking the lot. Exhausted and excited is what I am x

giveaway headsup

Umbrella Prints are giving a stack of presents to readers of the wonderful SouleMama today. All you have to do is leave a comment Amanda's way and you have the chance to win :-)

PS our new Modular Kit is available now albeit with slightly fuzzy pictures

UPDATE*** congratulations on your win from more than 1200 entrants...... Julie Rhodes from the UK!

Umbrella Prints new yum arriving soon

We have been having a great flipping time flipping colours around-and-about to create a mix that sings or a mix that makes us sing if that makes sense! As soon as I have the photos I will post details about Umbrella Prints new work :-)

handmade

G's handmade/my handmade.

Umbrella Print's bits

Our Remnants Packs have now arrived in our Etsy store they are $22 each. Each pack is different and hand picked by us and you can choose... a bit like our Trimmings packs but bigger! We are having a lot of fun mixing with all sorts of combinations of our patterns and colours like momo peach, storm boy blue and kimono red (above). We hope our photographs inspire people to get a-mixing!
We would love to hear your ideas if you have a dream combo that we havent put up yet; here are our colours:
starfruit, kimono red, storm boy blue, pink moon, olive, lilac wine, lily white, momo peach, smokey black, silky oak, sumi black, china berry, riverstone, turtledove, royal beige, persimmon, seaglass and bambi brown.

summer

poor hot roses

cozy coins

Chi Design's coin purses arrived last week thankyou Chi! Each clip purse is beautifully handmade by Chi with Umbrella Prints fabric (see above). A small number of these cuties are coming with us to the Sydney Finder's Keepers market; which is next week I cannot believe it; breathe, breathe. Chi makes beautiful purses and bags and has a shop with many beautiful purses and clutches on Etsy.

rainbows

Hey sis and hey Oliver of the Sky-you guys! YOu are cuute!
Photograph by John Harte for exhibition coming up in Osaka :-)

good morning

Good Morning! The week has been kind of frenetic.

We received notice from Finders Keeper's preparing us for lots of people at the show in two weeks.

Carly and I have been working on our own orders as well as packing for the market in Sydney. Our new colours are in- phew, the past few weeks has been a comedy of errors I don't wish to live through again. At least now we can get on with one of the new products we have in mind to take with us to Finder's Keepers but it requires some thought so hopefully we have enough time.

Danielle and her newly husband (congratulations!) came for a visit to Nest Studio; it was really nice to meet a textile designer from WA with similar interests and passion :-)

G had her first kindie performance; my car's muffler fell out WHILST driving, it was boiling hot all week and my garden is a desert but should live. x

dream in colour

Anyone familiar with Umbrella Print's fabric will know that Carly and I live, breathe and dream in colour! We spend too much of our time in the studio talking about, mixing up, dreaming up and mucking around with colour combinations and generally being colour NERDS.

My passion for colour merges with my love of words (and meanings) thus early on we both decided to name our colours with some thought for our own memories and interests. We have been known to introduce a new colour into our range not because it coordinates or because its popular but because we just love the name (not terribly wise as a business strategy but heaps of fun).

So if you love colour as much as we do then I hope you enjoy us banging on about it a bit more in the near future. Umbrella Prints will be bringing out a range of pure colour fabrics next year based on our current range of patterned fabric colours and just for those who can't get enough saturated colour love.

Our current range includes kimono red, sumi black, starfruit, seaglass, olive, lily white, momo peach, storm boy blue, lilac wine, turtledove, pink moon, bambi, nut brown (NEW), persimmon, silky oak, smoky black (NEW) and lady grey (NEW).

We would love to know your thoughts on which of these colours you would like to see more of in the form of block coloured fabric especially over here where Carly has listed them all.........or maybe you would just like to say hi x

purple rain

Jacaranda's kill me!; a combination of red eyes and sneezes but a colour so beautiful and irresistable carpets of blossoms covering my front garden like purple snow- I can do nothing but take a whole heap of hayfever tablets and sit under my tree for hours breathing in that purple.

3 favourites

Three of my favourite photos from this week- these all make me smile.

1) We all liked the weeny spider in the hakea flower which reminded us of the mini snail discovered back in March.

2) G in the Nest Studio window having a laugh

3) a sneek peak of a few of our new colours on organic hemp/cotton

FanFlower Friday

Friday is posting day for Umbrella Prints and also the only day without children running around so there is quite a bit of self inflicted pressure to do and achieve whilst we can!

An unexpected spike in Aussie orders for our fabric printed in FanFlower this week has left us running around like headless chooks trying to organise another print run before Sydney. We only have a little of the olive left. Someone nice must have written something about our fabric somewhere but we don't know who - so whoever you are thankyou!!!x!

Carly and I spent the rest of the day taking photos for a number of different postcards we are printing soon. Initially we had mixed results but the four images we finally chose we both love and feel they are representative of what we do and what we would like to do. So overall it was a good and productive Friday.

Hope you have a great weekend :-)

Mr Dean Manning

I lived a few doors down in Sydney, he was a friend of my sister's , we both liked the bookshop, his house was the cutest with little paintings on wood, circus, hawaiian lady, flower, text, tiny, guitar, funny. I love his paintings so!

large scale Fan Flower

Our Grand Fan Flower fabric panels are now available online in sumi black, olive and seaglass and are handprinted on beautiful latte coloured linen. I just thought I would let you know because this is one sexy piece of fabric!

Each panel is $65 and substantial enough to make a beautiful skirt right up to a curvy size 16.
If you aren't one to whip up a skirt then we are making them too- they are on the way.

Grand Hearts (you may have spotted a chair or two having been covered in this recently) are coming as panels and skirts too I will post when they are ready.

just

one of my favourite pictures from work at the moment. Hope you had a great weekend.

Finders Keepers

Sydney's Finders Keepers design market has just announced their amazing lineup and we are excited to be able to say Umbrella Prints will be there! Carly and I are now preparing for the one and only show/market of our year. Hope you can come its on 4th and 5th December at the CarriageWorks in Sydney's inner west it looks to be busy and beautiful.

refresh

Went for a long walk through Blackwood Forest along the track where the briar roses, quinces, plums, walnuts and grasses grow. Past Seedlings Gallery a single room space for artists in amongst oak trees peek through the window but no show on its a nice space anyway. Up to the forest, through the blackcurrant bushes, past the fruit trees. G and Granny and I are refreshed and inspired again.

shop update

New Umbrella Prints colours are in our Etsy store now :-)

Still to arrive to the shop are our Grand Fan Flower panels, Grand Hearts panels, remnants packs (we hear you!) and new resin jewellery.