hello.chelsart

hello.chelsart Nature Inspired Designer
🇦🇺 Australia Toowoomba 👋🏼
🍃 Collecting natures treasure for my art 🍂
👩🏽 Mum, Wife, Graphic Designer & Cat lady 🐱

This one was special. Huge thank you to these amazing women who made it all possible: Alex Stalling from tinker who coor...
08/10/2026

This one was special. Huge thank you to these amazing women who made it all possible: Alex Stalling from tinker who coordinated the whole program, and Jeanette Wedmaier and Maddison Proud from the Empire Theatres team, who handed me their beautiful window and trusted me to fill it with seedpods. I’m so grateful for the support, the problem solving and the cheerleading along the way.

Before it all came down I asked my talented friend Morgan Smith to photograph the installation properly, and she absolutely delivered. Excuse the spam in the next few images, I’m not sorry.

Funded by Toowoomba Region Art Galleries as part of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers.

Toowoomba Region Art Galleries The Empire tinker Alex Stalling


📷 Morgan Schwenderling Smith

I gather seedpods on walks, from friends, from growers who know I’ll love them, from my followers, and everyone in betwe...
24/09/2026

I gather seedpods on walks, from friends, from growers who know I’ll love them, from my followers, and everyone in between. But my favourite part of this practice isn’t just the gathering, and it isn’t even always the painting. It’s the workshops.

There’s a quiet that settles over a table when people start really looking at a pod. The ridges, the split, the way the light sits in it. For an hour, everyone slows down and notices. Kids do it instantly, adults take about ten minutes to remember how.

That’s what I love… Not teaching art, just making room for people to co-create with nature and find a little mindfulness at their feet. Every pod leaves the table with a second bloom, and so does everyone who painted one. ☺️🌸

Final thank-you to UQ Alumni for facilitating this 🥹❤️

22/09/2026

What a morning at Boyce Gardens! Thank you to everyone who came along and painted seedpods with me for the Carnival of Flowers, from the littlest artists at 8.30am to the grown ups who finally got a turn at 10:30.

Watching a table of people slow down, notice the little details in a pod, and turn it into something entirely their own never gets old. Every single one went home different, which is exactly the point.

Huge thanks to Carla and the team from UQ Alumni for having me, and to Boyce Gardens for being the prettiest classroom in Toowoomba. Until next time 🌿

Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers Toowoomba Region

18/09/2026

Happy Floral Friday! 🌸🌹💐🌺🌷🌻

Today’s the day, and my windows at the Empire Theatre are ready for you. On one side, seedpods exactly as nature made them: raw, sculptural, and quietly extraordinary. On the other, the maximalist painted transformations I’m known for, every pod bursting with colour and pattern in its second bloom.

Two windows, one story: nature makes the form, colour tells the rest.

Come wander Neil Street today and see them up close, that’s where the detail lives.

Funded by Toowoomba Region Art Galleries as part of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers.

tinker Alex Stalling The Empire

17/09/2026

It's ready!! 🌸

Three days of installing, and the Empire Theatre windows are now home to my Floral Friday display. On one side, Australian seedpods exactly as nature made them. On the other, their second bloom: hand-painted, vivid, and impossible to walk past without a second look. Woven through it all, paper daisies grown right here in Toowoomba.

This one has been a joy from the first meeting to the last basket. Come see it in person on Neil Street, the windows are best up close.

Thank you to the wonderful team at the Empire and everyone behind Floral Friday for making this happen.

Funded by Toowoomba Region Art Galleries as part of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers.

tinker Alex Stalling Empire Theatres

16/09/2026

I could watch daisies open in timelapse all day. These ones became flower balls for my Floral Friday window at the Empire Theatre, officially starting on friday for the Carnival of Flowers.

Funded by Toowoomba Region Art Galleries as part of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers.

The Empire tinker Alex Stalling

12/09/2026

This morning’s haul, and I am beside myself.

A sea of paper daisies from Tiff and Megan, two local Toowoomba growers who have generously shared their blooms with me for my Floral Friday windows at the Empire Theatre. Everlastings are the perfect companions for my seedpods: papery, sculptural, and grown right here on our doorstep.

These beauties will be woven into the window fit-out over the coming days, so keep an eye on the Empire’s windows from the 15th. Nature grows the treasure, this community shares it.

Thank you Tiff and Megan for trusting me with your flowers.

Funded by Toowoomba Region Art Galleries as part of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers.

tinker Alex Stalling Empire Theatres

02/09/2026

One of my favourite mornings of the year. Toowoomba Grammar School Prep and I spent it slowing down, turning seedpods over in small hands, noticing what nature leaves at our feet.

There is something about seeing the faces of discovery that a pod is not just a pod. It is a whole world, waiting for colour. Co-creating with nature, one curious question at a time. ☺️🌸

Earlier this year, a teacher I had never met sent me an email.She told me that her class of three-year-olds had been col...
19/05/2026

Earlier this year, a teacher I had never met sent me an email.

She told me that her class of three-year-olds had been collecting gum nuts from their playground, bringing in banksia pods from home, and asking big questions about nature. To extend their curiosity, she went looking for

Australian artists who paint seedpods, and somehow, she found me.🥺

She told me one child looked up from her work and said, "I'm doing like Chelsea."

I was deep in recovery from surgery when that email arrived.... so I read it four times.

I painted a Crow's Ash seedpod and posted it to Melbourne. The children named their whole inquiry "The 100 Languages of Children." They painted their own seedpods. They arranged them into a circle, but I saw a loose heart.

This is what art is for, not the galleries or the accolades.

Just this...

Little hands holding something they found on the ground, seeing it differently, making it their own.

Thank you to Eva and the beautiful humans of Junior School for letting me be a small part of your world... YOU are all real artists.

Seedpods are hiding in plain sight, waiting patiently and excitedly for someone just like you to find them.❤️

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