Roulé and I decided to do a little illustration for Andrew’s new blog. Andrew is a carpenter and joiner and he is great at making small spaces work. He designs and builds storage spaces like cabinets, shelving and book cases. The concept for the illustration is the idea of sorting and organising chaos: from books to sleeping cats. We love his floating bookshelves from recycled books. Have a look!
Lovely floating book shelves
I am helping a good friend from Scotland organise her wedding in October. It will be a small intimate celebration with mostly family and close friends. I wanted to do something special for her invitations and since I have been itching to do something with screenprinting, it just seemed like the perfect opportunity.
The theme for the wedding is romantic vintage: mismatched lace; ornate plates and cups and all things beautiful, textured and old. So instead of printing on paper, I made a one colour print onto washed cotton, found a retired needlework teacher in Struisbaai to do the sewing and made ladies handkerchiefs as invitations.
It took some measuring to get the design on the right place on the hanky. The screen was exposed at Screen Image. Hopefully I will have my own darkroom one day.
Printing with waterbased ink. One colour for now. Andrew made me a board with a right angle to print on. Like a portable screenprint table.
Many test prints were made...
50 invites: half in English and half in Afrikaans.
The finished invitation. This is how guests received the invite: folded and protected with tissue paper.
The finished hanky.
As you might know, we have been collecting books for school libraries to hand over to Equal Education and their 1 School, 1 Library, 1 Librarian campaign. So far we have collected 290 books and R900 in pledges. After meeting Xanele, from Write on Africa, we realised that there is also a huge need for books in pre-schools and crèches around Cape Town.
We need your help, please donate your old books or make a pledge of R100 to buy a new book for a school. If you want to set up a collection box at your work/shop/school let us know, and we will send you a poster explaining the initiative.
We can collect your books, anywhere in Cape Town. Just email us: info@d4d.co.za
You can also drop books off at Book World in Sea Point at the Adelphi Centre. Look for the poster below on a box in the shop!
Please donate your books
Have a look at this amazing project by Write-on-Africa organised by Xanele van Rensburg. Xanele designed a new look for Siyakhula crèche, based on a song about birds that the children sing each morning. With the help of volunteers she managed to repaint the crèche in one weekend!
You may know about our Freedom to read initiative, where we have set ourselves a goal of collecting 3000 books for Equal Education’s School Libraries campaign. Many of the books we collected are for toddlers and not really appropriate for school libraries. So we have decided to give these books to crèches in need. When we spoke to Xanele at Write-on-Africa, she mentioned that some of the crèches have no books at all! If you have any books to donate, please email us at info@d4d.co.za and we will collect it from you.
All photos from Write-on-Africa.
The new Siyakhula crèche
Side view of Siyakhula crèche
The completed Siyakhula crèche
I love spending time in secondhand furniture shops and buying bits and pieces to redo. I got this little piano chair for R95 and it was really looking very sad. The wood was bone dry and very grey and the seat was covered with light brown fake leather.
I sanded it, which probably took me 8 hours, and then oiled it using Linseed oil. Oiling it really made a huge difference. As soon as the oil went on lovely warm hues appeared. At first I did not realize that the pipe detail is solid copper, finding this was such a bonus!
A few months before I found a few meters of unused Vintage material printed by Vasco material printers for OK. Bazaars ( I am guessing during the 1970s) and it really was an obvious choice for this little project.
This is the almost finished chair, just a few hinges to be done.
Piano Chair
Re-upholstered chair
Piano chair redone
The Tin House opened in April in Port Elizabeth. It houses a delicious restaurant, art gallery, and craft shop – run by Sarah Stevens and Heather Rijs, and assisted by my most fantastic mother, Anne Campbell.
Two interesting facts about The Tin House are that the craft shop is filled with 90% South African made and crafted goodies, and promotes environmentally friendly materials, and secondly that it is a tin structure that was brought out on boats from England in the 1883 and constructed on South African soil. It’s a beautiful place to visit and feast your eyes or your tummy! I thought, how wonderful to promote local business and support the economy in this way!’
I especially like the calligraphy plate project where ISonke worked with Port Elizabeth calligraphers and artists to create plates with the theme ‘Hope in Africa’. The bowls were exhibited at the Tin House and proceeds went to a feeding scheme in the Walmer township. Its similar to a project also happening with Cape Town calligraphers.
Tin House on Cuyler.
Beautiful ceramic plates
Locally made and marketed crafts.
Bead sheep.
Birds in a cage.
Calligraphy plate project.
We designed these posters for Medicines Sans Frontieres Khayelitsha. 5 Young HIV-positive people from Khayelitsha agreed to be photographed and appear as positive role-models for the youth. The beautiful photographs were taken by Sydelle Willow Smith. There is still a lot of stigma around HIV and for treatment and prevention to work, we need to change peoples perception of what it means to be HIV positive. With treatment it is now possible to lead a healthy, full life. We feel that the photos bring the message across in a very powerful way. We were reminded again of the difference a good image can make in clearly explaining ideas that might be very hard to communicate otherwise.
There is some very exciting news from the AIDS 2010 conference that is currently on in Vienna. Go check their daily blog and also the promising findings on the CAPRISA Microbicide: a gel that might reduce the chances of contracting HIV. This is good news for women who have little power to negotiate condom use.
Nomafu Booi
Lumkile Sizila
Nonqaba Jacobs
Medical male circumsision and HIV prevention
Medicines control council and access to treatment
Comic about encouraging condom use
The Bin show opened on 10 July 2010 and will be going until 14 August 2010 (Thursday to Saturday 10:30 to 16:30). 37 Artists submitted some beautiful works. A few illustrators who’s work we recognised are Jade Klara, Lauren Fowler, Xanele van Rensburg, Bison and Bruce Mackay and there are many more! Go have a look, there might be something for your wall.
112 pieces were sold on the opening night and there are 300 pieces still up for sale.
If you recognise an artist’s work below, please send us a link to their work and we will update the post.
Taxi print on canvas
Artwork at the Bin show
Strange sewing rat
Illustration by Jade Klara
Embroidery by Lauren Fowler
Ink drawings
Selection of artworks
More from the Bin show
Ever since we saw Stefan G. Bucher’s at the Design Indaba, we have been following his Daily Monster blog. Last week he created a soccer monster for the World cup, and invited anyone to dress him in their team colours. Of course, we had to dress up our version as a Bafana Bafana supporter. Just for fun. Have a look at how he draws the monsters! They are great.
Bafana Bafana monster - Drawn by Stefan G. Bucher, dressed by Roulé and Melissa.
