Keeping a journal enrichs your life.

Beauty in the back of a wardrobe
Wednesday 15 November

Observe. We are having our wardrobe renovated. "Ah!" I exclaimed to Ivan the carpenter after he'd stripped back to this layer. "Look at that wallpaper! Maybe I could tear off some strips for collage!"

Then I looked down and spied the vintage linoleum. "And the lino- have a look at that!" I said with admiration. "Don't throw it away!"

Ivan the carpenter smiled and we exchanged a few words about art, and after I'd left he probably shook his head at how kooky I was.

Then my friend Roby came around. I pulled her into the bedroom to show her the work being done and introduced her to Ivan. "Hello," she said politely, until the wallpaper caught her eye. "Ohmygawd, just look at that wallpaper!" she exclaimed. Ivan and I burst out laughing. "What?" said Roby. But before we could explain she had looked down at the floor. "And that linoleum! It's gorgeous!"

A History of Swaps
Monday 6 November
As I was storing the Paperific Expo signage and paraphenalia in the garage Saturday I unearthed a box of swaps I've collected from Stamping Down Under shows and Paperific Expos. It was interesting to spread them out and see a definite history of swap styles emerge.

click any picture below to open a pop-up window with a larger image

Some of the swap pins above date back to 1998. Most are hand- stamped and just about all are laminated with a safety pin taped to the back. Most artwork falls in the category of cute and cartoony, often with a joke about being addicted to stamping.	Tag art came into vogue around the same time as the first Paperific Expo - then called Melbourne Paper Arts - in 2000. We see lots of montage stamping with some collage creeping in. Stamp images are far more sophisticated and arty.

In the last couple of years, Artist Trading Cards have well and truly established themselves as the swap of choice. These always measure two and a half by three and a half inches. Though stamping often figures into the background, collaged images and embellishments are more prominent than seen in swaps of the past.	These are some of the more unusual items I've received as swaps - jointed art dolls, mini-books, origami models, elaborate mixed media brooches, altered matchboxes filled with surprises . . . They take more time to create and are often reserved as "special swaps" not given out en masse. Many of these live on a bulletin board in my studio because I love 'em so much!

Melbourne Paperific
Wednesday 1 November

This is me with Darren Scott, one of Australia's great origami artists, at the recent Melbourne Paperific Expo. I'm holding a sphere he gave me as a swap at the expo. It is made of 30 modular paper shapes linked together - what patience! Darren always has great swaps at Paperific. Check his blog - "the peace of paper".

WHEW! What a wonderful expo. I met multitudes of happy customers again this year and there were a lot of smiles from the exhibitors saying goodbye on Sunday afternoon. It is indeed Australia's "friendly show" still. Biggest hiccup: Trying to get all the people into the room Friday morning. The queue first thing in the morning was mind blowing! I followed it out the door and around the building . . . I found I was getting palpitations. I knew if I was standing in that queue I'd be feeling very impatient indeed. I kept wandering up and down, thanking people for coming and assuring them we were trying our best to get them in quickly. 'Thought we'd learned our lesson from last year's opening hour rush, but this one topped it by a long shot.

I'm filling the Paperific homepage with photos if you care to take a look but here's one of the Studio Astarte stand:

You can see plenty of unmounted stamps on the wall in this photo but by the end of the show we were quite depleted. My dream was to sell it all.'Didn't quite get there but we gave it a good shot. Special thanks to my wonderful team on the stand: Roby, Liz, Sharon and Lyn.

The response to Astarte's Mega-zine has been great and the membership list is growing rapidly. Woo-hoo! Thanks for getting behind me everyone.

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