Mystery tour...

Mural at the "Melbourne Story" exhibition at Melbourne Museum

On Saturday I took a girlfriend on mystery tour of another collection of my 'favourite places'.  This time it was the Bellarine Peninsula.  My friend has just moved back to Geelong and so we took some time to catch up and explore...

We started with KYO at Ocean Grove... a HUGE warehouse full of furntiure, homewares, textiles and more from around the world.  For me it's like an Aladin's cave of interesting "stuff"!!

Then we wandered the main street of Queenscliffe... I love Queenscliffe... I love the boutique clothes shops, antiques, second hand books, galleries, homewares, gourmet foods and the cafe's... and of course the ice-cream shop (although we didn't indulge in ice-cream... we were full froma gorgeous lunch and afters of hand-made chocolates and hot-chocolate....).

Top Designs - Fashion students' work

On Sunday I took myself to the Melbourne Museum and was flooded with inspiration... the Top Designs 2010 exhibition (the works of VCE students) was impressive!! I would have love the opportunity to do works like that when I was at school - there was everything from fashion, furniture, film, photography, advertising and so much more. What was really impressive was the folio's that supported their work that included their research, inspirations, designs etc.

I was also impressed with the animal display - and the buzz coming from the kids and families as they viewed it... And the bugs in display boxes always amaze me... I've done this before when I was at Uni and really enjoyed it (I don't think I have any photos) but still love the 'en-masse' display.

My head is now swimming with ideas for my artwork! I'll have to write some down before they get lost because right now I'm still on the hunt for bridge images to satisfy last weeks inspiration...

Where we live

B and I went walking on the weekend - we decided we should start exploring the place where we live. This weekend we walked the Jarosite Waling track (near Torquay - Great Ocean Road, Victoria) Our walk took us from Ironbark Basin (named because the area is full of iron-bark trees) along the ridge to the top of a point from where we could see Southside Beach and Bells Beach and back to Point Addis.

Ironbark trees are Eucalypts with deeply furrowed bark as in the picture below.






This a picture that B took after our walk. He is on he beach at Point Addis looking back up towards where we've just walked (along the ridge at the top of the photo).

I love the texture of the rocks along the front. I can see textiles - couched treads, machine stitched down...

And lastly this is a picture hat I took - again I loved the texture and figured it'd be a good picture for the photo-bank - good for inspiration.

It is the remains of a Grasstree (Xanthorrhoea johnsonii) - all those little curls make up the trunk/stump. Here are some Grasstrees as they usually stand... (the one on the right has been burnt in a burshfire and the shows the bright green regrowth). I've wanted to stitch grasstrees but so far my attempts haven't been too successfull.