{ Out & About }

This week Holly and I, along with seven others from the Citta head office, spent the day volunteering for Habitat for Humanity — an organization that supports people and families in need of a home, which is both affordable and well built. Habitat’s vision is simple: a world where everyone has a decent place to live.

With hammer in hand, we headed to Newmarket to assist the builders in cladding the exterior of the house — a house which, once complete, will be transported to Kaikohe, where a family of seven will soon be able to call it home.

We all enjoyed being outside and using our hands to make and build something. We met some incredible people, learnt new skills and — best of all — helped a family on their journey to soon making their dream become a reality.

{ Work in Progress }

Today’s design of the day is the beautiful Cholitas. This hand painted design is a celebration of the traditional Andean women of Bolivia, locally known as ‘Cholitas’. Their traditional dress is one of the most unique in the world due to their eclectic combination of styles — perhaps the most distinctive of which must be the 19^th century bowler hats worn high on the head above long plaits that fall down the back.

Our Hola design, featuring a face only, has been derived from the Cholitas print. 'Hola' is an everyday greeting in Spanish.

{ Downloadable Designs }

Hi folks! Here we are with May's downloadable designs for your desktop, tablet and phone. This design is called Diamanté, and was inspired by traditional Bolivian textile designs. Super simplified and drawn using oil pastels, it plays on the basic zig zag and diamond type shapes typically used in weaving. Enjoy!

Happy April everybody! Here's our next downloadable design for Winter 2017, a collection inspired by Bolivia and its stunning natural beauty. This design is called Morales, after the president of Bolivia! This hand painted design references the plaid scarves and shawls typically worn by many of the locals.

Click on the links to download for destop, tablet and phone.

{ Work in Progress }

As we get closer and closer to really settling into some art creation for our new winter 2018 collection, I have been reflecting on something I heard recently on a documentary: to design anything, to get into a real creative space of ideas and productivity, you need to be in a state of play. So true. Any creative person knows that magic feeling of being 'in the zone', or 'in the flow', when the world around you quiets and the space inside you gets bigger and deeper and fuller. That's when the magic happens, and there's no better feeling!

Carina snapped this pic of me playing around with ideas for our winter 2017 collection, inspired by Bolivia. It's probably my favourite phase in our seasonal process; you never know what will come out of it. I'm so looking forward to getting stuck into winter 2018!

~ Amy