Author: jeremy

  • Lessons from camping gear

    Lessons from camping gear

    Why would anyone love camping gear, lool 🤣 Yeah well, hear me out.

    High-end camping gear brands are pushing the boundaries. There’s a lot of competition and the best brands are fighting hard.

    That’s great for us the consumer. It means we’re continually getting new and better gear. I have titanium coffee cups from mountain designs and some gear from sea to summit. If you spend more, there are of course brands that are a lot more serious and cost a great deal more. For me, I’m happy with the ones I’ve found.

    What’s great about innovation isn’t just the new gear, it’s also the honing in on better functionality of it’s purpose. With each improvement, the gear performs better at something. Whatever it’s designed for.

    Smaller, more compact, lighter more durable is a theme in my life. I like small and high quality. It allows me to reduce my footprint and also move closer to a mobile lifestyle. What I think I’ve found though is, camping gear is so far ahead in design compared to the standard items that we’d normally use at home, that its starting to make sense to swap them out.

    Out go the big ceramic mugs from k-mart, in come the titanium mugs. As an artist that also loves ceramics, it doesn’t mean I’m throwing out my beautiful square mugs from Kyoto anytime soon.

    I love my mountain design mugs. They have a lid!! 🩵✨

    One lesson for me has been, just because something is presented to us in the stores and everyone buys it, doesn’t mean it’s the best option. Consider the alternatives, do the research and find the best option for you. There’s so much out there.

    Smaller means things take up less space, pack away better and they hold less if it’s a container. By putting restrictions on ourselves like plate and cup size, we train ourselves to also consume less.

    When I eat out in restaurants in Perth, one meal is often enough for two and it’s sometimes enough for four people. Reducing waste at home and consuming less, means using smaller utensils and crockery. If there’s less room to plate food, we eat less.

    For everyday use, camping gear rocks. Small, functionally superior and sustainably produced things are hard to ignore. So when it comes to selecting what stays in my life, camping gear is winning more and more.

    And when you think about it, camping really is a funny word. We’re always camping on this earth really, no matter where we choose to live.

  • Boil the bay leaf

    Boil the bay leaf

    There was a thread I was following that someone posted with a throw away comment about, “what does one bay leaf add to anything anyway?!” 🤣 Valid.

    There’s a lot of recipes that have a bay leaf or two in the list of ingredients but they never really explain much what it’s for or what it adds to the dish.

    When you think about it, there’s a bunch of common ingredients like bay leaves. If we take an elimination approach, we’d cook the dish in halves one with, one without bay leaves. Who can be bothered doing that though! 🤣

    But someone had a clever response to this problem, and that is to cook it on its own.
    Yes, put the bay leaf into a small portion of water and boil (or distill it if you have the gear) it until the water is flavoured by the leaves.

    Smart. By understanding the building block, we can start to comprehend what it brings to the mix.

    So yeah, ima try that experiment on the weekend. I wanna know what the flavour is.

    Thanks internet stranger 🧡✨

  • Picking wild berries

    Picking wild berries

    Eating wild berries as a kid was a special treat.

    When I was little, I loved picking the wild berries that grew near our house.

    When the rain came in winter, wild blackberries grew big and juicy.

    I’d head out with my brothers and pick and eat so many. We were free to roam on our bmx bikes. Living in the hills in Perth was a special kind of lucky. Lots of space, bush and things to explore.

    The berries used to grow along the creeks up in Glen Forrest, near the shops.

    We knew where the best ones were, big and juicy and when to pick them. Sometimes I think back now and wonder who planted them. They’re not natives, so someone has planted seeds or seedlings along the creek bank.

    And we’d eat and eat and come home full as anything.

    Then not be able to eat our dinner, whoops 😅 Mum would be upset again. Sorry Mum 🤣

    I think if you have these memories too, of picking wild berries as a child, you’ll recall that special feeling of eating fruit out in the wild 🧡✨

  • Three years since returning to illustration

    Three years since returning to illustration

    Three years ago I restarted my illustration journey. I’d taken a break due to life and other things.

    It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learnt so much over that time. Sometimes it’s good to look back and see just how far we’ve come.

    Tonight I scrolled back to the first idea I had for illustrated tutorials. Recycling a single-use coffee cup. It’s ironic, because I’m still an offender of using these. Come on mate, be better 🤣✨

    I’m still enjoying it and have a plan to revamp it all into more of a story format. Things to come.

    Some of the lessons I’ve had along the way:

    ✨ Just start – you’re not going anywhere until you start. Just get moving and see what happens. You learn by doing.


    ✨Your style takes time – you’ll figure it out. As you create and try new things, you’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t.


    ✨Be clear on your purpose – if you don’t know why you’re creating, play around until you have some idea. When you find your purpose, you’re gonna speed right up because your direction is clear.


    ✨It’s not all gonna be great. You’re not gonna love everything you make. That’s life. But something made is better than not at all. You learn things by trying and creating what you’re not happy with.


    ✨Be brave. Publish some of those things you’re not happy with. People sometimes connect with the most unexpected things. Those surprises are also lessons.

    ✨Try the scary things.
    Experiment, sometimes in those tough moments, you find the direction you’ve been searching for.


    ✨Remake your stuff. One thing that’s so cool about the social platforms is, you can just recut your work. Remake it. If you’re not happy, or have a new idea, remake it and unpublished the old work.


    ✨Screw the like count. Sometimes just creating for you reveals some magic.

    For now, I’m enjoying what I’m doing and I get lots of great feedback so let’s keep going. Stories though, are my next exciting step forward. Can’t wait.

  • Plant a smile

    Plant a smile

    There’s a theory that if you smile at a certain location in the world, that the happiness you generate stays in that particular location.

    So one day, a lifetime later someone walks past that spot on the earth and feels the happiness you have left.

    And they smile in turn, and plant another one. It sort of feels like geolocating happiness on the earth’s surface.

    I’m not sure about the theory, I’d like to believe in it. I do know that a smile and a laugh can often influence those immediately around me.

    When lining up at the bar last night, I got talking with a guy who’s son was having his 18th party at another location in the city. His Dad was off partying at another dance event! lol. I firstly found that hilarious and inspiring.

    The people behind us were clearly listening into the chat while waiting for drinks. So I turned up the energy a bit and emphasised how he as a father must be so proud of his son having his 18th with mates, in a sensible way while he partied closeby.

    🥹 boom, a bunch of big smiles 😊✨ right behind us.

    We can use our energy to generate happiness. And I wonder sometimes, how far that happiness carries.

    Planting a smile on the earth, yeah it’s an interesting theory.