Printing in Circles

My Latest Hand Printed Fabrics are inspired by circles and simple geometric shapes.

For Some of the Prints I first printed white as a Base and then Printed over that. So that it became a double print.

I started playing around with the Lino’s and came up with interesting patterns

Recycling Glass Jars

By collecting Glass Jars one can find innovative ways to recycle and reuse them. By becoming vases, candle holders to decorative objects.

I played around and this is what I came up with

10 things I love about Africa

I saw this blog by @SafariEditor2 (twitter)  and I thought what an awesome idea. So I compiled a gratitude list of what I love most, it made me realise what I have seen, done, and what an amazing continent we are all fortunate to live on!

Going to the Bush. Hoedspruit, South Africa. A group of mates, a coolie with ice-cold drinks,  and 15 hour game drives. If you spot a big cat you have diplomatic immunity and everyone is your slave.

The Sound of a lion. Choebe national park, Botswana. You camp in the open and not having booked, we were in the “reserve camp” which does not mean you are VIP but 2km from the bathroom. Needless to say I squatted with one foot in the tent and one foot out. And thank goodness because Lions walked right through our camp. We could not believe the size of the spoor and were convinced someone somewhere is walking around with a spoor stamp tricking campers.

Attack of the Hyena’s. Mana Pools,  Zimbabwe. Again camping in the open. When everyone missions to bed the Hyena’s come out to play and hundreds surround the camp. Safely in roof top tents we stared into the night with excitement… and fear!

Dustbin Bags Elephant. Charara,  Zimbabwe. Our camp was attacked by an extremely large and sexually frustrated elephant with one tusk. We were later to learn that he had a name and was a regular in the camp. He trashed our trommel and ate all our groceries managing to untwist the gherkin jar and dip them in mayo. He also ate whole cans of tuna …who would have thought!

Bandit country. The infamous Marsabit road, Northern Kenya. While crossing the border from Ethiopia we ventured into a land that is so arid people dig large holes to find water. They warn you “NOT TO STOP” no mater what! Yikes! We past a Landy with South African plates, they were going up and we were going down. We cheered each other on as if we were old friends, a very proudly South African moment!

Star Gazing and Electrical Storms. Augrabie Falls, South Africa. One of the hottest places I’ve ever been to besides  the Richtersveld. The stunning falls have lovely look out points where we stared up onto a galaxy that never ended and made the Jozi sky look sissy and probably very polluted! We were then treated to a thrilling electrical storm!

Lake Kariba Sunsets,  Zimbabwe. These are the best in the world. A cold beer, surrounded by game and a rod in the water.

Butterflies and a single garage. Solitaire, Namibia. A fork is all that Solitaire is, nothing more nothing less. All that exists is a garage, a little restaurant (famous for its apple pie)  a camp spot and millions of white butterflies.

Getting Stuck in mud. Hwange National park, Zimbabwe. We arrived late in the afternoon and wanted to go to a private camp. They warned us not to,  that much I do remember. But young and arrogant we did a sneaky depart. It was about 28Km and we believed we would make it before the inevitable darkness. After we saw a sign saying “Welcome to Bumbusi” we started to celebrate with beers. A case,  or more down, night had fallen and we were building dongas to cross rivers and treacherous roads.  We somehow managed to find the camp, meet a ranger, teach him poker and lose all our money. When leaving we left early (having learnt our lesson, or so we thought) only to get stuck in the heat of the day. Knee deep and mud wasps stinging you, we were left with no choice but to saw a small tree down (sorry tree)  with a steak knife. After four hours we were on our way celebrating with more beers!

Directions in Africa. Everywhere in Africa. It always amazes me how you can ask at least six different people along the road for directions and you are always pointed a different direction. One has to wonder if everybody is playing a nasty trick on you

Newsprint, Rhino printed on canvas

Rhino Newsprint

Interesting Facts about the Rhino:

• The Word Rhinoceros is Greek.  Rhino (NOSE) and Cerous(HORN)
• The Rhino has a bad rep for being grumpy and bad-tempered but he is actually quite a chilled guy he only charges when he gets startled as they have very poor eyesight but good hearing.
• There is a symbolic relationship between the Ox-bird and Rhino where you always see them together. “Askari wa Kifaru” is what the ox-bird is called in Swahili which means “Rhino’s guard” they peck the ticks off and alert the rhino when they sense danger. Maybe the poachers are just too fast for the little ox-bird!
• Each Rhino has a unique poo where they have their own smell so that other Rhino’s know where they have been. Mmm.
• A group of Rhino’s are called a ‘crash’.
• The white Rhino is not White. The mix up happened many years ago with the first white settles. The Afrikaners called them the “wit Rhino” which actually meant wide Rhino as the white Rhino’s mouth is wide (the black Rhino has a pointed lip and is much smaller). The Silly Englishmen interpreted it as “White Rhino” and so the name stuck.
• Rhino moms carry their little ones for 15-16 months so no more bitching human moms! They only reproduce every two and a half years and a single calf will stay with his mom for up to three years.
• Every Rhino likes a good wallow. This is not just  for fun even though it looks so GOOD, it is in fact to lather themselves in a natural mud sun-block and protect their skin from insects.
• Even though every Rhino looks like he is packed with steroids and pure muscle you would think he was a slow coach where really they are super fast for the weight they carry and can run up to 48-64km per hour.
• The black Rhino is a browser and eats trees and bushes with his pointed lip and the white Rhino is a grazer feeding on grass with his square lip.
• The horn of the Rhino which is sought after is made up of keratin which is the very same material that makes up your hair and fingernails.
• In China the horn is valued for traditional medicines from curing a fever as well as an aphrodisiac and in Yemen it is used for a symbolic dagger.
• They first thought of cutting the horn off, but this failed as the poachers would still kill the Rhino. Who would want to follow tracks of a Rhino with no horn so he would rather eliminate him.
• A Rhino is supposed to live for 35-50 years. I doubt that is happening in today’s world.

Lastly the scariest fact: Rhino’s have been roaming the Earth for 50 million years they even roamed North America and Europe at one stage. Funny to think that we are able to wipe them out in just a few years. Rhino’s only threat in the wild and earth is the HUMAN.

Rhino printed on Canvas

Information sourced from: My mind as well as http://www.rhinoink.ca/rhinos/stats.html, http://www.thejunglestore.com/Rhinoceri, http://www.rhinos-irf.org/25-things/, http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/black-rhinoceros/

In The Beginning

I am a designer but I have this starved passion for the African bush and animals. My heart bleeds when I hear that round about 400 Rhino’s have been poached this year. That is already double from last year. My head spins when I see litter everywhere and all I want to do is pick it up, and I shed tears for our oceans and poor fishies. So I have had enough and with a bit of some serious brain storming I think I have a solution. Well maybe not solution but a start. A start to a solution.  If I’m good at designing and I’m good at caring… why not combine the two? Together they make “ PRINTING FOR A CAUSE” where I come up with a clever design incorporating conservation maybe a bit of wording like “RHINO LOVE” and print it onto fabric and broadcast it to the world in pretty little things that the people of this earth would want to buy and say things like “isn’t this a pretty little thing”. Now many have seen the Woollies Rhino bag I know and yes that is partly where the idea came from.  However I did some market research and earthlings don’t really like the design on the bag. I do have to agree it ain’t that good. So I would even give my deigns for free to woollies that is how much I love my Rhino, Fishes and Earth.

The beauty the idea is that you hope it gets stolen or used, you can’t be mad because the more Earth people who copy it the more the world is made aware, and that is never ever a bad thing.

So my background is in textiles so I have a lot to offer, though I have been out of the swing of things for a while I’m climbing back in and my head is swimming with ideas. So the first thing I did is I got an A4 book, and I made it all pretty because we Art people have to beautify everything.

Every designer should have one of these and write down ideas and inspirations. I even have a smaller one that sits in my handbag for when I’m out and about. I started researching printing from home and found a few people doing lino prints onto fabric so I decided to give it a bash.  As this is a fairly easy way to print from home and it is actually the closest form to printing as the original and beautiful wood block prints- Back to Basics. So I got started and I drew my little Rhino guys onto the medium and got cutting.

I ‘m very blessed as I have a father that can make anything (well in my mind). I draw my design on paper and he makes it. He once made me a ping-pong machine, and yes it actually worked but I still failed the assignment at varsity, I still don’t know why but I have let it go. As a father of three girls he loves making things for us (well we tell ourselves that,  poor dad) back to the main story I asked my father to make me a mobile printing table, mobile so that in the future when I travel Africa I can print where ever I am. Mobile and small so that I can work anywhere and everywhere in the whole of awesome Africa and maybe even share my knowledge with the people as I go.

Once I had this table I was ready to print. So I found some old 100% cotton from my varsity days (re-using) and pinned it to my mobile table, mounted my Rhino guys onto wood, got fabric paint and went to work.

So fortunate was I to have thought of this mobile table that I’m able to work outside. The day I decided to do this it was a scorcher in sunny Johannesburg, but at least I have a beautiful setting and my buddies Addy B and Toodles to keep me company.

I had much to learn and still do. The print did not come out exactly and I had to hand paint in some areas (a lot of areas, and I did a stupid thing and did it at night, with a head torch). Needless to say in the morning light my print looked a bit pre-school than the classy neat print it should be. I couldn’t start again so I went with the look, after printing I needed to fill the gaps so I thought wording would do just fine. So I chopped the words out of cardboard and stencilled them in. RHINO HEART!!!!

Now when I looked at the overall fabric it looks good, good from far, and not so good from close. Or maybe as the designer we always strive for perfection and are never actually happy…

As this was my first attempt and humans always do better with practice hopefully the next print will be more of a success.