Found

Before I bore you with my half baked decorating schemes I thought I would entice you with these super pretty, twiggy bracelets and necklace - aren't they lovely? You can get yours right here :-)

White anyone?

Except for this first image, much of this pretty house below is painted white. I am fairly serious about painting our house all white inside this spring. Right now it is a very non descript beige with white trim. The ceiling needs painted anyway so it's a good time to just move everything into the centre of the living room and paint the whole place. I really like the all over white look with dark and wood accents - and then I can add a feature wall in an interesting colour - like this grey one. Any great tips for a bright, but not cold, white for a very sunny living space - preferably BM ?

I really don't want to end up with a shabby chic look when I'm finished painting the place white - I think you have to resist victorian furniture(and resist painting it all white!)

Inspiration

Maybe I'm actually living in the wrong house. The house we own right now is 18 years old. All our previous houses were well over a hundred years old. I love all the old features of a heritage home but I don't like the leaky taps and the draughty windows and the lack of electrical outlets. In a perfect world I would love to live in a fully updated victorian house with high ceilings and wood floors and a cleaning lady - not really, but I do like this house . . . .

I absolutely love this weird faded blue rug on the floor

Decorating ADD

So one half of me wants to paint the house all white and the other half wants to add texture and colour and nic nacs and collections - I have decorating ADD - probably because it's really too early in the year to be predicting my big makeover plan for the house - I remember an old fella from around here telling me to "never make important decisions in February." So, forgive me if I come up with 25 wacky ideas by easter - I'm going to do something - I'm just not going to make plans until we are into March - at the earliest!

Fantastic inspiration to fuel your decorating plans from Brabourne Farm

Mash up!

Good morning - firstly I just wanted to say thanks for all the nice comments yesterday - I love reading your comments - it makes my day!

So, I have been invited to take part in the "Blog it Forward" blogger mash-up being organized by the fabulous Victoria over at sfgirlbybay. Very exciting! This is the first time this has been done and it's going to be a great opportunity to get to know some new blogs and some new bloggers. So everyday for the next month or so you will be able to read about what inspires 10 different bloggers every day - though I have sneaky suspicion that you already know what inspires me - it's definitely not a secret! So I hope you will follow along - my big day is on the 25th.

And it all starts tomorrow at creature comforts, design for mankind, heart fish, hula seventy, ink on my fingers, oh, hello friend, paper pony, poppytalk, sfgirlbybay and smile and wave

All these images are from Victoria's Flickr collection - she's got a great eye!

Inspiration

These are great - Welsh pillows from Etsy seller Horse by POB. I really like a quirky novelty pillow thrown into the cushion collection now and then - how 'bout you?

Collections

After my little rant about mini collections yesterday Lori alerted me to this site where you can see lots of tiny collections, in fact one a day - sounds like the correct dosage to me. Thanks Lori!

Inspiration

Here is the perfect start to your new collection - of vintage cotton spools - I love these - I have far too many.

Show & Tell.

Good morning - it's great to be back, hope you missed me! We had a great trip to the shows. I met lots of wonderful people - thanks to everyone for coming out to say hello! It was exciting to see what's new in the paper and gift industry and to meet some of our new sales reps and distributors. Most of all, for me, it was great to take a break, step away from the studio for a week and see things from a buyer's perspective. I was really proud to see all our Cartolina product on display in the booths and talk to some of our retail buyers. I learned a few things - buyers really do want beautiful, eco-friendly product - hooray! They really do want recycled paper goods and environmentally friendly printing processes(the time and research it took to set up our eco printing credentials was really worth it after all.) I learned that spending our production dollars here in Canada and the US pays off. The option to produce overseas has been presented to us time and time again but now I know that buyers really do care that we are a domestically produced stationery line. Most of all, I learned that we really can do big business from our little design studio at the lake in Nelson BC - a place I was very happy to come home to :-)

Isn't this fun? Doug took this picture in Kensington Market, Toronto.

FAQs

I joined Formspring this weekend. I really like the concept of this site. Basically, Formspring is a site where you can send and receive questions, and learn more about people you find interesting by following their answers. There are lots of people out there, especially in the blogosphere, who I know slightly but would love to get to know better. Formspring allows you to search for and follow your favourite people, to ask them questions, anonymously or not, and to read their answers to all the questions they have been asked. I encourage you to sign up - it's one of the most simple sign ups on a social networking site that I have come across - I think you will find it really interesting. I have asked lots of questions already of all sorts of people you might know . . . .

Go ahead, ask me a question !

Inspiration

Here's some random fabulocity from my 'inspiring type' file. The first one, believe it or not, is a free hand, preliminary sketch done by a steel engraver before he engraves the plate for printing - amazing!

Inspiration

If you are a colour junky like me then you will be so inspired by the wonderful, rainbow of crazily saturated hues from Papermode. I can't remember where I first saw these clever little pieces but their simple, brightly coloured, paper forms would cheer me up even on the gloomiest February morning.

Regular feature?

Oh look, here's one of those people we love who take pictures of their stuff all organized nicely. I am a total sucker for these images - I'd love to think they were completely random but, hmmmm, I'm not so sure. I'd like to take images around our place of all our little collections of trinkets - maybe that should become a regular feature here. Yes, I think this is a good idea - this is one I can commit to - so at some point this week I will take an image of a random collection of treasures and it will be featured here(feel free to send me yours!)

These lovely pictures that have now inspired me to get my camera out are from Vivi Hack - thanks Vivi!

Show time

Good morning! We are off to Vancouver this morning and then off to the gift show in Toronto for a few days next week. All our show information is available right here if you are planning on attending - hope to see you!

I have lots of great stuff lined up for you in the next few weeks - I've been collecting so many beautiful, inspiring things to show you. I'll be back here on the 8th - hopefully with some fresh new ideas and a report from the gift show so stay tuned and I'll see you in a week or so!

These pretty pictures are all from Sarah Kaye.

Grey but not gloomy

Love all the grey and white in these interior shots. Great wall paper throughout. I could definitely be happy in this little grey place. Check out the weird wall paper in the first image!

Freshly scrubbed

This lovely home is in Brixton Hill, London. I've always really liked the look of white walls and trim and wood accents and floors - I like the stark, freshly scrubbed look - how about you? I think the eclectic nature of this space is very appealing too.

Found

I only found 2 new things worth posting in the 'what's new' section of UO's web site - slipper chairs. I keep my eye on their furniture because they carry some really nice classics(fainting couches) at pretty good prices - and this is my year for getting new living room furniture(haven't told Doug that yet!)

found

And now for something completely silly, girly and not me at all - but how can one resist such girliness after a long day. From Soapy Chica!

Interiors

Its been very spring-like here in The Kootenays for the last few weeks. It's hard to believe that we don't have any snow. Normally at this time of the year there are snow banks on either side of the road, but not this year. In fact I saw pussy willows on my walk the other day. So I thought I would share the joy and bring you some spring-like decorating{check out the chairs in this first image} . . . . . . .

All images from Homes and Garden

Found

This image inside an old clock case really caught my eye yesterday. What a great find - now I am going to be obsessed with finding an old wooden clock case to put pictures in. If you would like this one you can have it for $200 from F2 Images.

Henry Rd

Paula from Henry Rd in Studio City CA wrote to me this week. She sent me some images including this cool display that she made for the store using chairs and tables. I love this idea. The grey is wonderful but I think that white on white would be great too. Perhaps for a trade show display(especially if you have very brightly coloured product)? Paula's store always looks fabulous - we featured lots of wonderful shots of her store last year - right here. And what's even better is that Henry Rd now has a blog!

Illustration

I'm designing this week. I get pretty focused when I'm in the studio. I find that when I am designing in the winter I have to be careful that I look for brightly coloured inspiration because the product I'm designing at the moment won't go to market until late spring. These caught my eye at Share Some Candy last week - if you know me at all you know I like elephants. These look like they are illustrated on brown wrapping paper - the bright colours and detailed drawings are fabulous on the drab background. Really inspired me to mix bright colours with dark neutrals this time 'round :-)

Inspiration

I like Dolan Geiman's work. It shows an honesty and sponteneity that I really appreciate. I also like the fact that he sells reproductions and originals in his Etsy shop. There's always something new and inspiring and lots of different mediums - he's a fearless one! If you'd like to see more you can go to Dolan's shop and browse!

Inspiration

I saw a link to this Folk Object Tumblr page on design Sponge yesterday. Very inspiring imagery - thought you would enjoy it too.

Inspiration

These are the everyday version of the Christmas paper flowers I featured a few weeks ago. I still think they are wonderful. From Tangle and Fold.

Inspiration

Good Monday morning to you! You know, one of the reasons that I really like the Canadian House and Home website is they have a great search tool on their site that allows you to search through their imagery and filter the results according to your needs. For designers and bloggers this is a great tool. Also the House and Home site uses images that are a great size for blogging. I wish all the online magazines did this. For these images I simply searched using the word 'bold' - and they are!

P.S Don't forget to always try and credit your source when you use images from magazines and web sites.

Inspiration

I seem to be on a very decorative kick this morning(what's new!) Feeling very inspired by this fabulous little Chinese tea caddy from Mod and Pop. Everything about it is very Cartolina! Love it!

Inspiration

I wish the photographs of this jacket were better. This Chinese art deco jacket is completely covered in embroidery. We had something very similar to this in the dress-up-box when we were kids that my grandfather had picked up on his travels and we would fight over who was going to wear it - even as kids we knew it was special. It is available for $365 from here!

Found

Here's a very pretty, little, authentic, bamboo birdcage. These are quite hard to find and would look adorable as a decorating prop - don't put a bird in it though! From here.

Window Shopping

Let's go to Chicago, to Greer - stationer extraordinaire. Now, we can't really go there(at least I can't) - but we can go to their awesome website. I follow Chandra Greer on Twitter - love her wit and enthusiasm for her industry but it was only yesterday that I clicked through to her fabulous website - this gal takes good pictures - and she must know that we have a mild obsession for card catalogs - here's a great one . . .

You must go to Greer - or go to their website and check out their wares - so much to see. And if you are a regular Greer customer leave us a comment below and tell us how fabulous it is