​We love to fill our home with art, craft, and decorations made by local makers.
We continue our tour of the house, which started with the art and craft chez Copper Catkin part 1, and continued in part 2.

We step through from the kitchen into the dining room, where we have a mixture of 1970s Etruscan prints from the Tomb of the Augurs, hand-painted Greek musuem copies, Persian prints in hand-enamelled frames, sculptures from our wedding, and the other set of whio from our laser cut designs.

​We have handmade goodness throughout the house, particularly where we spend the most time. The cushions on the couches are an assortment of handmade and custom-printed, with some souvenirs and some old memories, too. It faces my plant shelf, with my succulents in test-tubes and flasks from What The Fox.

​And here we have a clock featuring a design I did to celebrate and thank our wedding attendees, showing the wedding party and our close families in costume as paper dolls, and a moody photo of 15-year-old me that actually won a prize.

The photographer stopped us in Cuba Mall and asked us to pose, which we did with all the teenage angst we could muster. Years later, we were both working on King John, that year's Summer Shakespeare, when he recognised me and gifted me a print.

​Under the photo are two out-of-date calendars, one of Samoan birds, and one with an actual piece of hand-woven rug from the lady who repaired my Persian carpet.

​In the other living space, which we are mainly using for sorting, we also have our wedding centrepiece. Click on the photos to read about how we made it.

​On the walls behind the crafting nook are the two parts of my Sir Peter Blake mixed media artwork painted in 2009, chronicling his career via the types of craft he sailed.

In the hallway, we have our laser-cut and hand-painted kererū, and an exciting new calendar by Melissa Boardman.

When it has finished doing duty at markets as a thread-painting example, we will also have my kererū​ embroidery on the wall in here.

​In my office, I have a Zamm Lights lamp and a souvenir plate from Samoa, and in the spare room, we have a cute leaf cushion from Knack craft market, and a crocheted blanket for guests (because I always feel colder at other people's houses, don't you?).

​I absolutely love to have my garden full of art and solar lighting, but as we are moving, we have been very restrained and only decorated with this lovely kererū pair by Metalbird New Zealand. It's so very beautiful.

​We spent some considerable time in consultation with LisaSarah Steel Designs to get our custom numbers made (the delays were all at our end), and then we had to wait even longer for the wall to be painted so that we could put them up, but we finally got there.

​The wall is curved, and the sun was going down by the time we had finished, but no way was I missing out on a photo to commemorate it on the day, lol. 

Thanks for joining us for a little tour - we have so much good stuff that we bought from so many talented people over years of collecting. It's been really lovely to go through photos and walk around the house, really looking at what we have. I am very grateful for the opportunity to make my home feel beautiful and support local makers, and I look forward to adding to our collection in the next home, too!

We love to fill our home with art, craft, and decorations made by local makers. We invite you to join us for a walk around our place, having a look at the pieces that aren't currently packed away.

​After we finished the bathrooms, we moved on to remodel the kitchen. One thing that we added was a set of shelves so that we can get some things off the benchtop, and also add some more character to the room.

​We have gradually colonised the shelves, as I make things and as we buy more art and craft creations.

As well as my laser cut designs, we have doughnuts by Retro Tonic, a crocheted cactus by Goblin Market, and bowls by Aimee McLeod - Potter.

We really enjoy visiting markets when we don't have stalls, too - nothing like being able to actually relax, rather than sprint around in the hope that you don't lose any sales while you have a quick shop, yourself!

​We also have other little incidental artworks, like this woven bowl by Niche Textile Studio, or this adorable little bird by Amy Cherie Art, purchased as a karma seed from the Petone Indoor Markets.

​We love to get custom-printed Copper Catkin fabrics made into practical things - so we have teatowels from Roostery, below. You can also spot a plastic-bag holder by O Sew Crafty, repurposed to hold our soft plastic recycling now.

​Used as a placemat, they also make my little work table into a fancy side-table.

​These are the three designs that we have ordered. You can click on the image to shop on Roostery for that design, or click the button to shop for all our teatowel designs.

​We also have bowl and tin covers from Snaxpax, and we ordered custom food pouches as gifts for the whole family last year.

​The New Zealand dotterel is a familiar bird of sandy east coast beaches in the northern North Island, but is sparsely distributed around much of the rest of the country. There are two widely separated subspecies: the northern New Zealand dotterel is more numerous, and breeds around the North Island; the southern New Zealand dotterel was formerly widespread in the South Island, and now breeds only on Stewart Island. Southern New Zealand dotterels are larger, heavier, and darker than northern New Zealand dotterels.
Source:
NZ birds online

While both DOC and NZ birds online refer to the South Georgian diving petrel, Wikipedia differentiates between the South Georgian species and a new species, the Whenua Hou diving petrel.

The former range of shore plover is poorly known. They were first sighted in Dusky and Queen Charlotte Sounds on Cook’s second voyage, and at mudflats and sandspits around the North Island in the early 1800s. 

By the 1870s. cats and Norways rats caused the shore plover to vanish from mainland coasts.

For more than 100 years, Rangatira in the Chatham Islands had the only known population of around 120 birds. The current (2017) wild population is around 240 birds, more than half of which are in the Chatham Islands.

Today, Auckland’s Motutapu Island is the easiest place to see shore plover.

They are also found on Rangatira and Mangere Islands in the Chatham Islands, and Waikawa Island in Hawke’s Bay – all of which have restricted access.
Source:
DOC

​I have already drawn two other birds referred to as "toroa" in this series. So, how do we differentiate between them?

Rock wren are our only true alpine bird. It is unknown how they survive the harsh climate above the tree line all year round, but it is likely they continue to forage on rocky bluffs where snow has not collected and amongst large boulder fields. Some have suggested they may have a period of semi-hibernation.
Source:
DOC

​Pitt Island is the second largest island in the Chatham Archipelago, New Zealand. It is called Rangiauria in Māori and Rangiaotea in Moriori.
Source:
Wikipedia

At first glance, the Pacific white tern looks a great deal like the New Zealand fairy tern or tara iti, so the first step is to establish the differences between them.

In the best possible way, it feels like my whole life has been about encouraging other people to find their creative outlets.
Ever since I started drawing, as far back as I can remember, people would ask me to draw things for them. Just like the narrator in Le Petit Prince, when asked to draw a sheep, at first I did exactly what I thought they wanted, but gradually learnt that what people really need is a prompt for their imagination.