Claire Robertson

We’ve never met personally, alas, but in 2002, when my wife and I were planning our wedding, we decided to ask Claire to do an illustration of us for our invitations, since we were both huge fans of her work and her site.

We emailed back and forth and Claire was willing to do it for a very fair price. We sent her a couple of photos of us and she did an amazing job. We got lots and lots of compliments on our invitations.

I just can’t remember if I ever sent her a copy of the invitation or not.

If/when we ever get to Melbourne, I want to look her up and buy her a drink!

She is amazingly talented and such an inspiration to a wannabe crafter such as myself.

Claire won the bloggie for best australian blog in 2002 and I saw her blog and found she had a post office box nearby; after emailing her I realised I’d met her husband before but couldn’t place him. Apparently I’d interviewed him for a job a while back.

So Phil and I met for coffee and Claire dropped by to say hello. There was plenty in common among us all and now I count her as one of my best friends.

She has been my inspiration to jump in and create stuff again.

It was in the days of 21 Jump Street (1987? 88?) and Johnny came to Melbourne as part of an Australian press tour. He appeared on a rather tragic tv show (australian institution) called “Hey Hey it’s Saturday”. I waited outside the channel 10 studios with a bunch of school friends and he came out to meet us and sign autographs. He was very gracious even though we were rather overly enthusiastic and probably very annoying. Unfortunately I have no idea where I have the autograph.

We’ve been in two toy shows together (so far) and it is always inspiring to see how she lovingly crafts her toys. I just came back from the “Stuffed” show and had a great time speaking to other toys artists about their “process” (cheeky, I know) and would love to sit down with Claire and do the same.

Claire is fantastically talented and creative. She’s also beautiful and charming.