Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Happy Lunar New Year


Here is a red packet for your viewing pleasure with maneki neko for good blessings for the year of the sheep.

Gong hei fatt choy!






Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Average 45 Matches

Finally got some slightly larger but still thinnish magnets in the mail and what better way to try them out than to use them in a slightly unusual box.

Modelling it off the humble matchbox comes the next design.
Vintage safety match boxes always feature interesting artwork and have usually have absolutely nothing to do with matches.

Since the designs are fairly intricate for only 2-3 colour designs, painting it onto fabric would be pretty time consuming and require way too much concentration.
What a good time to test out the fabric markers from Sharpie.
Stained by Sharpie.


i had come up with my own three colour design based on the plethora of vintage matchbox artwork, and i only required red and black sharpies with the fabric itself providing the third colour.
The tips of these liquid ink markers are very fine and sharp. Good start. However they are not soft like a paint brush as the top left corner of the pack suggests. They are hard like normal textas.

I started off with the red on my canvas. Inks like a dream. Colour is saturated and the ink did not bleed.
Buoyed by the excellent start, went to complete the picture with the black marker.
And then disaster strikes!
The red pen was so sharp and smooth, but for whatever reason, i did not have the same luck with the black. Right away, pen on fabric, the ink bled like crazy. It probably doesnt look that bleedy from a short distance away but it felt like crazy considering the red was so sharp. Particularly obvious with the outlines.
*le sigh*

Soldiering on.
Matchbox style is alot more difficult to put together than i had anticipated. That's not to its not possible, just much trickier. Especially handling the outer casing.

Presenting my Three Ducks brand Safety Matches :)

Bang, bang

Push, push to slide out
Riveted loops for chain
I won't be putting this up on Etsy.
I love this design, but im not happy with the black ink and the overall wobbliness of the drawing. I will most probably come up with another way around the Sharpie issue and make some to put up for sale. You know what they say, where there's a will, there's a way.

Stay tuned!