arthur's circus

game artwork one

2008-10-03T14:48:00.003+10:00

Not much to report on the blogging front, so I thought that I would share a few photos (over the next few days) of some of the gameboard artwork we have on display for our exhibition.
First up is J'Apprends Tout. I am not certain of the exact date of this piece. I'm placing it around the late 1890 to early 1900's. It is an original lithograph print of a game cover / box art. My French is non existant beyond year 7 bonjours, so I'll leave any attempt at translation alone. I can tell you that it was discovered in an old French printers shop and we have imported it from a dealer in the USA. We have quite a few different French game lithographs that were never used or glued to board. They are really quite amazing. Oh and yes it is for sale.

a wee shop update

2008-09-28T13:27:00.003+10:00

I have just uploaded a few more items to our bigcartel site, so go on, take a peek, go wild and buy something.

a lovely day

2008-09-26T14:25:00.003+10:00

It's a bright and sunny day outside here in Melbourne and I wish I was out and about instead of being in the shop. Yesterday we had a new visitor to the shop who also happened to make lovely cushions from vintage fabric. One thing led to another and here are two of her cushions in our shop now for sale. They're big and colourful and I want to keep them for me. Fashioned from a fantastic Australiana tablecloth, which means they're one of a kind... well four of a kind I guess. On the wall above is an old board game called Robinson Crusoe. I find these old games fascinating and my how games have changed.

we like red dots

2008-09-25T16:54:00.002+10:00

Phew what a busy few days, but we did it. Our re-opening celebrations happened last night, launching our new space and exhibition for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. There are more pics over at our flickr site. I'm ready for a snooze. Oh and a big thanks to a few friend/s who helped out.

closed for renovations

2008-09-14T16:42:00.002+10:00

If you visit our shop over the next 10 days or so, this is what you'll be greeted with. So apologies in advance if you find us closed, but it will be worth it. We are expanding the shop (as I'm sure you've heard me mention) and organising an exhibition.
If you happen to be visiting Melbourne from afar during this time please contact us and we can try to arrange a time for you to visit the shop, it may be a little chaotic but we're happy to oblige. Opening September 24 at 6-8pm and then normal hours again.

feeling hungry?

2008-09-14T13:41:00.003+10:00

I made these last week for Father's day: a set of four magnets featuring dodgy food photos from old recipe books that were my Nana's. mmmmm gelatine, what a checkered and stylish history you have. I actually can't stand the stuff, even jelly gives me the creeps. It's a textural thing. But whoa adding meat and peas is kind of wrong in my books, may as well be a can of dog food. Which brings me to tongue in a can. My dad used to make tongue sandwiches when my sister and I were little and I used to actually eat them. White bread, butter and lamb's tongue from a can. Eeeek. So anyone feeling hungry? Nope I didn't think so. But you can buy the magnets from here.

and we thought we had lots of stuff

2008-09-12T15:24:00.003+10:00

I stumbled upon a magazine that I wouldn't normally buy, but for some reason I decided to flick through Romantic Homes and this picture alone made me buy the magazine. I love this image and all it's vintage goodness. So I thought that I would share it here. The home belongs to Adrienne and Ron Caldwell and my favourite quote in the accompanying story re: some of her favourite finds.... came from hunting through her uncle's basement in a 250 year old barn in Pennsylvania. "He was using a prized cookie jar to drain oil from his car".

more prints than you can poke a stick at

2008-09-10T16:27:00.007+10:00

We've been framing up a storm, thanks to the new arrival of these great screen prints from the keep calm folks out of the UK. A slight diversion from our exhibition organisation, but we're slowly getting there. As we're expanding our shop and a bit of re-arranging will be going on, we will be closed from Thursday 18 September until our grand (well pretty darn good) unveiling on Wednesday 24 September. Oh and regarding the above prints, they are all priced at $225 each, framed. Please contact us if you fancy one.

would you buy a used car from this guy?

2008-09-06T15:25:00.002+10:00

If you answered yes then head on over here. Sad but true, we're selling our 1950 chev on ebay. She's a beauty and needs lots of lovin' and restoration and we unfortunately don't have the space or time.

real living

2008-09-05T11:59:00.005+10:00

We have a couple of items from our shop featured in this months real living magazine. As seen in the above magazine pages a duck egg blue keep calm screenprint custom framed by us and the yellow standard planet lamp. Also featured inside is some fabrics by one miss aunty cookie woo hoo.
We've had a few enquiries about the keep calm prints, so I'll write my little spiel here. The ones we sell are from the UK. Unfortunately the duck egg blue is currently sold out and we're waiting on a new print run, which should arrive by the end of the month. Currently we have red and as of next week, there will be yellow and a grey / velvety colour. We can custom frame to your liking, but we try to have one or two on the walls already framed and ready to go. Nick and I do the framing ourselves using quality timber frames and that's reflected in the price. I have no doubt that you can do it cheaper by heading to ikea etc, but we choose not to. Oh and we sell them unframed too and can post. Please contact us for details.

a little elephant eye candy

2008-09-04T16:49:00.001+10:00

oh blog how I neglect thee

2008-08-29T11:55:00.005+10:00

dear blog, it's been 1 week since my last posting. I've been busy and haven't had any good photos or stories to tell. I'll try and be more regular, well maybe....

So this will hopefully be of interest, especially to our Melbourne friends.
We are having a wee exhibition beginning september 24 of old toys and games etc. It is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival and these are our invites fresh from the printers. Please let me know if you'd like to come and (if you're in melbourne) I can send you an invite or two. Please leave a comment or email with your postal details. And sorry to overseas folk I'm not that generous in the postage department. I'll no doubt be reminding you all of this in the coming weeks on this here blog. And maybe a sneaky preview.

oh etsy how I neglect thee

2008-08-21T16:47:00.004+10:00

our wee etsy shop has been a little barren of late. I hadn't checked and all of a sudden some things were out of date and poof (as in a puff of magic smoke) they had disappeared. So to make amends I have uploaded this collection of three cards made by me.
They're a digital collage / print sewn onto cards, packaged with an envelope and in a cello bag. The graph paper used in the background came from my Grandad's shed. He once worked at a stationary shop and me being the hoarder that takes after him, I now have a pile of old exercise books, out of date calendars etc. Oh well Grandad at least someone is now using them. One diary is from the year I was born. 1972. Jeepers we hold on to ridiculous stuff.

not so nice...

2008-08-20T12:55:00.003+10:00

Yesterday (being our weekend), the three of us trammed it into the city to see the Art Deco exhibition on at the NGV. Of course things didn't quite go to plan. No sooner had we made it to the city, Arthur was hungry and needed the toilet. So a quick detour for coffee (for us) and vegemite on toast for Arthur and we walked to the NGV. As with most 3.5 year olds, walking long distances can be slow going and tiring for all involved. A lot of the time Arthur ends up on my or Nick's shoulders to fasten the pace. We had maybe taken 5 steps in the door of the gallery, with Arthur on my shoulders and not even making it to the counter to buy our tickets, when the cloakroomm attendant told us off. ..."it's gallery policy that you can't have children on your shoulders"... I looked at her dumbfoundedly and instead of asking what the ***? I took Arthur off my shoulders, looked at Nick and we both decided to forget the Art Deco exhibition. Since when do galleries make such policies and for what reason? Maybe someone out there can enlighten my obvious naivety. I would've thought that tired children on shoulders was a better alternative to running around, screaming ones trying to touch artwork. But hey what do I know. Life seems to be made of a load of stupid rules at time. Last week Nick got told off in our local park by a council officer for having our dog off the lead. There's no signs saying that it's not allowed anywhere. But I'm guessing that a dog playing ball with it's owner is a bit better than junkies and alcoholics in our innercity parks
I promise I'll be in a better mood for my next post.

calling Dr Feelgood..

2008-08-18T12:57:00.006+10:00

I'm quite sure I'm unable to relate these 2 photos to each other, but they were both part of yesterday, so it's kind of a start...
It was dreary weather in Melbourne yesterday morning when we headed to the market as Arthur decided he was up around 5.30am. It was fairly depressing and not too many second hand gems for us (or our shop either). Except Nick scored the Dr Feelgood album, by Motley Crue. So we've been channeling the big hair bogans in us from yesteryear, with Arthur jumping around on our bed to Kick start my heart. How ace is music, when you haven't listened to a song in years, it can instantly bring you back to a time your life that you had put aside in your brain somewhere.....much like the toys we used to play with when we were a child. I think I had mentioned that I was getting around to framing some photographs of squeak toys to sell in the shop. I've managed two so far.... Yeehaw I did it. Who would've thought you could segue from Motley Crue to squeaky toys. Nice. Maybe I should get a job at Today Tonight or a Current Affair. They're 2 current (ahem) affairs programs here in Australia who are notoriously bad for linking the unlinkable stories together.

dust, stuff & procrastination

2008-08-16T12:01:00.005+10:00

Or should that be stuff the dust, I'm procrastinating? The down side of collecting all sorts of things is the need to dust. Dust likes stuff. I like stuff, but I don't like dust. Although I think I'm good at procrastinating.
I spent around 2 hours dusting and cleaning our bedroom last night and I'm still not completely finished. Damn those big ikea shelving units. Oh well, now that I'm in the shop today I can dust here too, or not and upload photos to flickr and blog about dust and you can peek at our stuff.

hello cushions

2008-08-14T13:02:00.003+10:00

We have recently added some very ace cushions to the shop from bonjourmoncoussin. They've travelled to us all the way from Bordeaux, France. You may have seen their cushions around about many a blog of recent. I'm trying to remember where I saw them first....I know that I placed our order and then saw them here. Today I will be photographing and adding a few of their cushions to our bigcartel shop.

I wonder what happened?

2008-08-08T12:51:00.004+10:00

This photo was taken a few years back at bernie's car yard in Flemington. Nick and I used to go there and wander around and dream about cool old vintage cars pre Arthur. In somewhat interesting turn of events, Lombards ( paper / party supplies ) next door went up in smoke, so long car yard and hello urban development. Bernie used to (and maybe still does) hire vintage cars out to tv and movie production. Inside the yard he had a great collection of memorabilia. I printed this photo up for an exhibition a while back, but didn't end up exhibiting it, so it's been living under the stairs. Today I felt like putting it in the shop, because I can. Oh and by the way there still is a bernie's car yard, now in South Melbourne, but it's no where near as ace.

holy smoke batman

2008-08-03T12:03:00.003+10:00

Arthur has spent the last 24 hours dressed as Batman. This morning was no different with him jumping around the house in his batman suit on a bouncey ball hopper thingamy. Kids in costumes are pretty cute.
Yesterday I spent a wee bit of time dusting in the shop, which led to a bit of rearranging, pulling a small shelf off a wall out the back and utilising it for a card display. I love cards and have been making and buying more than a few for the shop. Running out of horizontal space I decided that it was time to go vertical without having to buy some fancy rotating card display.

camera gremlins

2008-08-01T14:44:00.003+10:00

My camera has been playing up. Sometimes working, sometimes not. Darn digital age. It wasn't exposing, which I can't really fathom given that it don't work with film. ie: the picture on the back of the camera was black. (And yes I had the lens cap off).Shutter was working etc. I rang the camera clinic, have to bring it in...hmmm the delay to even take a peek at it was around 10 days. Jeepers 10 whole days without my camera. I still have my film camera, but there would be no blog / flickr pics. So I took the lens on and off, battery in and out, blew on it (how very professional and hi-tech of me) fogged up the mirrors. And lo and behold, she's working again. So I've taken a pic of a new little arrangement. Liana's jewellery has been living in the glass counter ever since we opened so I thought it was time to break her out and how sweet it goes with our vintage stacking cups.

life in cool lands..

2008-07-27T15:08:00.002+10:00

We've been finding some ace books recently (totally un-shop related). I love lots of old illustrations such as these from an old scientific pictorial knowledge book.
I haven't felt like blogging, uploading to flickr etc much of late. Trying to find the time to do all house chores, running a small business and entertain our 3 and half year old has become a little tricky. He just seems to love getting into mischief whenever our backs are turned. Today whilst I thought he was playing in his room (and I was in the room next door), he was actually smearing half a tub of zinc cream on his toys and dresser. Trying to make dinner last night, whilst he was out of sight but in ear shot, instead of colouring / drawing on paper, he thought it was better to colour in his hands and I mean completely.
Waaaa..... so not sure how much time I have to blog at the moment. We'll see...

finally....

2008-07-25T16:05:00.004+10:00

Today I finished wiring up and hanging these lovely screenprinted postcards by Anke Weckmann. They're from a set of eleven. I had bought these for the shop quite a while ago, but there always seems something else to frame by the time Nick or I find the time to frame things. There's still another three to go with these ones....
And on another note, I have a question to pose. Recently I made a wholesale purchase from a company from overseas (who shall remain nameless) and their product didn't live up to my and my customer's expectations as they had noticeable 'imperfections' shall we say. My question is this, would you expect a full refund including postage costs? A partial refund for the product amount only? Offered to be sent a replacement item? Or just grumble to anyone who would listen?
You can probably guess that I am none to happy with the outcome and their response. I guess that with the internet you can never be guaranteed that what you see in a product (often photoshopped) photograph is what you shall receive.

soapy business

2008-07-19T15:54:00.002+10:00

These arrived yesterday in our shop. And they're oh so ace. Yes it's a moustache soap on a stick. Available in blonde, brunette, black and red. These are made from vegan glycerin and natural colours and flavours, perfect for them dirty children. A lovely lady called Kelly makes these in the USA. She makes loads of different soap designs (with 2 young boys in tow). So I've chosen the soapstaches, pickles and ice cream sandwhich soaps for our shop. I may even get a few more of her designs before Christmas. False teeth soap for Grandma anyone?

card making machine

2008-07-13T14:57:00.005+10:00

Making cards, making cards.....years ago when I decided that I wanted to go to university and study to be a photographer, one of my reasons was so I could take good pictures to put on cards. Simple really, no grand plans of where it would take me. 10 or so years later the thought came back to me. And lo and behold I have my own shop to do just that. That way I don't have to make those scary phonecalls (or emails these days), clutch product in sweaty fingers and nervously approach them scary shop keepers. And here they are a series of 6 photographs of five squeaky toys, and one roly poly bear missing a nose. He's my favourite and was my Mum's or Aunts from when they were little. I plan to print these up on either canvas or mount and frame them. No doubt I'll blog about it when that gets done. In the meantime I'm selling the set of cards over at our bigcartel shop.

new bag vs boxing gloves

2008-07-11T15:06:00.002+10:00

So what do boxing gloves have in common with my new bag from kara smith ? Nothing at all I tell you, except I will bop you on the nose if you try and pinch my bag. I spied it on Kara's blog last week, ummed, aaahed for all of 2 minutes and then hit that buy button. How ace is that fabric? I love Kara's bags, they're handmade with love and vintage fabrics up in the Blue Mountains. We stock a few of her bags in our shop, but you can peek at her website and see all the loveliness yourself in the comfort of your own home (being chilly and winter and all in Australia.) Now I just need to find the time, a long lost social life and a snazzy outfit to show off my bag.