Tattoo talk

Poor man's Photobooth.

Feline Friday

Here are some semi-recent pictures of vampire-toothed Wallace, just being a dude. Lying down watching TV (he's SO weird!), having a little snooze, modelling his black bowtie and looking creepy, and another snooze. Also there's a mirror photo of me looking excessively happy and blurry. No, that definitely wasn't taken this week. And finally, one that was taken today but is only of a red bow in my hair, which I wore with a black tshirt "for" the earthquake (red and black are Canterbury Crusaders colours). It's finally the weekend.

Weekend away.

Last night (Saturday) after Charlie finished work, we caught a train to Paekakariki to stay a night at Charlie's Dad's house. He lives only a five minute walk from the beach with a tiered backyard that great views from up the top. We had a barbeque for dinner and nice cold apple cider. The weather was insanely good today, so Charlie and I went to the beach in the morning, and then did lots of eating and admiring the view this afternoon.

How was your weekend?

Portraits

These are probably my favourite two portraits of myself and Charlie that I have done. They are just pencil on crappy sketchbook paper, but I really like them. They are a bit beat up from moving house, and are currently taped on the wall above my art desk. They were both done in 2009, but I haven't posted them on here before.

Wellington Summer (today, anyway)

Macro Me

Wallace Wednesday

Artwork and Updates

Check out these TradeMe listings of artwork done by a 16 year old girl from Wellington named Gemma. She's created the images using mostly song lyrics, and I particularly like this one of Frank Sinatra. Auctions will only be available to New Zealanders, but go have a look anyway. She was apparently featured in Hot Auctions earlier which has generated some pretty decent bids. Good on her parent for listing them.

As you non-Reader visitors will notice, I've changed the layout of my blog a bit. Navigation buttons are now across the top- please feel free to give me your feedback on that. I've added a mouse rollover effect, but let me know if you don't think it's clear that they're buttons... I don't want first time visitors to be missing out on my content. Speaking of which, I've updated the actual Artwork and Contact pages as well. Not huge changes, but a new photo of me and a tidier arrangement of my artwork.

The other Internet "news of note" (for me) is that my Facebook artist fan page currently has 110 fans! As promised, now that I have 100+ fans, I will be arranging some sort of giveaway of my work- probably an unframed watercolour, so I can open it to international fans and readers. Will keep you posted on this blog, but if you haven't "liked" my page, and you would like to be in to win, please head over there now so you don't miss out!

I've been in my hometown on and off for the past couple of weeks now. It's been really nice to spend time with my family, but it has really sucked not having the holidays in Wellington with Charlie as I'd planned. It's also frustrating not being able to dive into the ideas I have for new artwork straight away! I don't have any of my supplies and it's been crazy hot (31°C yesterday) almost every day anyway. But I'll be heading back to the city tomorrow, so will have three and a half days of freedom before I start my new job on Monday! Really excited about that. I'm so glad I had the courage to go along to their Christmas function late last year when I knew no one, as I think that will lessen the nerves considerably on Monday morning.

So yeah, a fairly average start to 2011, having not even seen Charlie yet! But despite that I think it's going to be a great year.

2010 in photographs

Queensland- the photo post

The ~6am flight from Wellington to Brisbane was annoyingly smooth- I love flying and I (unlike everyone else probably) was excited for a turbulent flight. But sadly it was completely smooth, and I even got a little bored...! Luckily I got my dose of turbulence on the flight back to NZ... a kid was screaming at one point, and I was just sitting there grinning.

We spent a couple of hours at Brisbane airport due to a rental car mix up. Charlie and I were just excited to be there, so we didn't mind too much. We stepped out of the air conditioned airport a few times for cigarettes (seventeen freaking Aussie dollars a pack by the way), so I got to feel the humidity. It was pretty hot, but luckily overcast, so not as bad as I was dreading.

Once we got our rental car, we spent the rest of the morning shopping and doing a little exploring. By the early afternoon we were totally shattered, and I even slept in the car on the drive to Broadbeach on the Gold Coast. I woke up in time to see some themeparks (sadly underwhelming from afar) and was awake as we drove off the motorway towards the coast and saw the skyscrapers in the distance (surprisingly impressive).

We'd been told not to expect too much from our accommodation, but it turned out Charlie's Mum got a great bargain at the Mantra Phoenician. It was a bit cruddy in places, but fancier than anything I'd ever stayed in (well, bar the Museum Hotel), and the apartment was good and spacious.
We spent three days in Broadbeach, exploring, relaxing, and eating delicious food.

On the last night in the resort, we had some drinks, dressed up nice, and caught the Monorail to Jupiter's Casino. We ate an amazing (and huge) dinner at an Italian restaurant in the complex, and then went into the Casino itself. I was way too broke to gamble, but still played $5 on the Pokies, just to say I had. I don't understand how people can get addicted to those machines- they're so incredibly boring! But regardless, it was really fun and exciting being there. The downstairs Poker Room was especially cool, but with a AU$100 buy in, out of our league.

The next day we went up Mount Tamborine, for Charlie's cousin's wedding. Everything was really beautiful, and the view was amazing (but unfortunately a bit difficult to photograph with my point-and-shoot digicam).

The day after that we drove back up the coast to Brisbane, where we spent one night with Charlie's Mum's friend. We spent the afternoon at the amazing Gallery of Modern Art, and walking along the South Bank of the river. We went on the 60m high Wheel of Brisbane, which was amazing, though a little scary. A bit of rocking in the wind every time we went over the top, but it lasted a good ten minutes so was well worth it. Unfortunately by that point, my camera batteries were starting to die! Useless, I know.

After staying that night in Brisbane, we drove three hours north to Dundowran, west of Hervey Bay, for the rest of our trip. There's quite a lot of houses in the little settlement, but the beach was almost deserted every time we walked from the house to the water. The bay is really sheltered by the massive Fraser Island, so there are little to none dangerous animals, and the water is super shallow for hundreds of meters off the shore, and amazingly warm! I've never swam in salt water so warm. I went kayaking twice, and especially loved it when the tide was coming in and I could practice my surfing hehe.

We didn't really see too much Aussie wildlife during our trip, a bit to my relief. Charlie and his Mum saw a dead kangaroo while I was asleep on the drive. On the first night we were sitting on lawn chairs listening to all the croaking and chirping and rustling in the bushes. Next thing I know, theres a little possum right next to my chair. Freaked me out quite a bit, but it was very cute. Possums are a pest that we kill here in NZ, but over in Australia they're a protected species which is weird!

Our time in Dundowran was definitely my favourite part of the trip. So relaxing and beautiful, with lots of amazing food, swimming, and weather.

I've been back a matter of days and I'm already desperate to go back! Always thought I would be a New Zealand girl for life, but I think I was just ignorant. I do love my country, but I can see huge benefits of going to Australia, at least for a few years. It's pretty tempting, when almost every person we talked to on our trip was an ex-NZer, and had done really well for themselves in Australia.

I guess we'll keep it on the backburner for a couple of years, because I have quite a lot lined up here for the foreseeable future. The biggest part is that I'm starting a new job in the new year, which I'm really excited about and will write about in a future post! Busy times indeed.

Alice is back

We got back from Australia at around 2am this morning. Pretty good flight, lots of turbulence which I adore. The trip was absolutely amazing. I have fallen for Queensland and can't wait to go back.

I was hoping to upload a bunch of photos, but Blogger is not being very co-operative. I'll just give you a brief run down instead, for now.

We spent the first couple of nights staying in a resort in Broachbeach on the Gold Coast. The weather was quite overcast a lot of the time, but still gorgeously hot. In those first few days we did a bit of exploring and shopping, went on the monorail and tiki tours in the rental car, and also went to Jupiter's casino which is pretty amazing (though it was my first time visiting one). Charlie's cousin's wedding was held at a winery up Mount Tamborine, so we spent one night up there. We then spent a night in Brisbane, and were fortunate enough to have clear skies for our trip on The Wheel of Brisbane. We spent some time at GoMA (art gallery) which had some stunning exhibitions. I definitely plan to return there in the future. After Brisbane we drove north to Dundawran, where Charlie's "second mother" lives in a beautiful house near the beach. There's quite a few houses in the area, but the beach itself was usually completely deserted. The bay is sheltered by the enormous Fraser Island, so the water is very calm and very, very warm. We did lots of swimming, and I had so much fun kayaking. I definitely think it's something I'll try to pick up here in Wellington over the summer.

Apologies for how brief this post it. There's just too much to write, and it's difficult without being able to include the photos.

I have a lot of commissions to get done before Christmas, but will do my best to update over the weekend.