Paula Mills Art

I love finding a new theme to get obsessed about! At the moment it is all 'natural history museum'. Loving the look of little delicate glass test tubes with flowers, collections of natural objects and making everything look to precious to touch, slightly out of bounds - encased in glass or beautifully displayed in cabinets. Here are some images that are making me feel the need to go hunting for some lovely finds again, which I am hoping to be doing with my sister in Wellington this week! YAY! One more sleep! From the top: Moth's Ball Art Print ; Antique Squid Print ; fish skeleton and vintage botanical print from Evolution ; the wire shoe and old bottles are mine; flowers in test tubes via Pia Bijerk's beautiful blog; last three images from a very pretty shop called pale and interesting . Ok I am off to pack my bags now and hopefully you will all hear from Shelley and I together sometimes over the next few days, so excited!!

I am very grateful for being able to work from home. I have three gorgeous girls, two at school and one in 3 year old kindergarden. I have a some help from a nanny but mostly I fit my creative work in around my kids and their activities. It all bumps along smoothly most of the time but sometimes it all goes a little crazy. Last week I had to spend 3 days in hospital with my youngest, who struggles with asthma, which was obviously my priority and thankfully has now fully recovered. I also happened to have my end of year art show at the VCA , so after hardly any sleep over 72 hours, off I went to the opening, barley able to stand up and hold my glass of dry white wine. I then had to catch up with a few freelance illustration jobs that were a little over due for clients, respond to on line orders and whole sale inquiry's .... While I really enjoy what I do I am constantly juggling things and feel desperately time poor most of time. Are there other mum's out there who feel the sam

Before the big world wide web days, or even before blogland days, to get some creative inspiration, to see who was doing what in the world of design and illustration, I had to spend a lot of time and money on beautiful but expensive books and magazines. Now it is so easy to find new inspiration -just by a swish of my wacom pen, I am taken in to a whole world of lovely fresh images to drool over. The images I found today belong to Clare owen . I love her 'make do and mend' poster (that was in a Frankie mag a while ago) and have it up in my studio, so it was lovely to find her web site, blog and shop today. What a talented young lady.

Hello all, Shelley here. wish I could show you my WIP's for the upcoming Craft 2.0 market in Wellington on the 30th, but the progress is really poor (can see myself doing last minute, panic making until small hours). Anyhoo, I have been browsing through the list of sellers for the market, found here , an was so happy to see that Heleen from ruby in the Dust was going to be there - she's such a lovely gal! I skipped over to her blog and found this great tutorial for a drawstring bag - simple and pretty!

I saw these lovely lined paper pillow cases on etsy and they inspired me to create a treasury - you can view all the links to it here .

Well I have been pretty flat out busy lately and so today I took a break. I made myself a cup of tea, tucked my feet under me on my pink sofa in a sunny part of the house with my youngest daughter. I had my magazines, she had her comics and we flipped through the pages looking at pretty things together. Here a few things that caught my eye in the UK Elle Decoration. 1) a graphic print poster from Ikea uk (amazingly!) 2) gorgeous mugs from John Lewis made in collaboration with Elle and designers, raising funds for a charity called Shelter 3) Amy Butler Wall paper from Graham and Brown . Ahhh so nice to stop rushing and enjoy the moment, for a moment. Need to rush off for school run now!

Beautiful work by Madeleine Stamer Lovely cards by Sandra of Bluberry Paper One of the few down sides of working from home is that you do miss out on interacting with colleagues and networking with people in the same profession as you - and so one of the many things I like about doing markets is meeting up with like minded people. I met some really awesome and inspirational people this weekend at Finders Keepers , amongst them were these two lovely ladies who are both wonderful illustrators and run their own creative businesses. Sandra Krummins from Bluberry Paper and Madeleine Stamer of little circus designs . I have been following them both for a while on line and it was nice to put a face to a web address. They were both so supportive and I really appreciated their generosity in sharing some industry knowledge. It would be so lovely to have a freelance illustrators catch up every now and then so that we could all swop notes and help each other out. Ps. here is a great review of the

Well I am super excited and most flattered to have my home featured in a 'get the look' post by Christine on the etsy blog. Wahoo! Christine has done such a great job of matching up things from my home with etsy items - I was amazed! Have a squizz here .

We heart markets! I am having so much fun at Finders Keepers, had a crazy day yesterday, the sun came out, the people came out and it was heaving down at Docklands in Melbourne. I then had to rush home and re stock for the another day today. My husband took some shots of my stall, which I must say I was quite pleased with - wanted to share them with you all. I had some help from my eldest daughter, Lia, she did nice things like find little sweets to spell out our names. : ) I will hopefully get a chance to look around the market myself today and be able to blog about all my lovely finds over the next few days. So much eye candy! Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend. P xxx

Paula has been so productive with her illustrations that it has put me to shame! I have a new job and its been a bit hard to find the balance lately - but a recent break gave me the time to get the creative juices flowing and I decided I wanted to work on a Madonna and Child doll. It has been ages and ages since I made one and I had forgotten how much I love making her. First choosing all the fabrics, cutting them out, embroidering the face and appliquéd all the pieces together - it has lots of steps but they create a lovely rhythm that I enjoy, it puts me into an idyllic peaceful state - not a bad place to be when life gets a bit crazy. She will be on sale at the next Craft 2.0 which is coming up in October here in New Zealand. I super excited because Paula is coming over to help me out and also join me in celebrating my 40th! x Shelley

I have been busy doodling away with my pens. These illustrations are now for sale in our etsy shop. Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend. P x