Inspiration - pretty package

Look what I got - a sweety tin full of vintage goodies from Fancy Linda - and I couldn't be more thrilled. What a brilliant selection of ephemera in the form of, match box labels, kids games, ribbon, buttons, cigar labels, tiny drinks umbrellas and a fabulous vintage red flower(which is perfect because I'm wearing fabric flowers on everything this summer - aren't you?) Thanks Linda!

Sorry the pictures are a bit yellow - I shot these without enough light - silly me!

Found - Ghost Furniture

Di Overton from Designer's Block has a new website for her furniture line - Ghost Furniture. Here are a few of my favourite things from her site. I love her tag line - Bringing Quality Furniture back from the dead and making it hauntingly beautiful.

Inspiration - creative paper products

All these wonderful paper products are from this website - Pulp Creative in Sydney Australia. Beautiful die cut items for your walls and a wonderful diy globe that your kids can colour. Lots of great ideas and a very sweet website. If you'd like to see what this wonderful store looks like inside checkout this fab collection of photographs.

Inspiration - paper lanters

Pretty paper lanterns from Jurianne Matter - how fun!

Cartolina at the Calgary Folk Festival

We're excited that, once again this year, Tracy and Cathy will be offering our Cartolina goods in Nelson's own, super cool Very Hush Hush travelling Airstream gallery at The Calgary Folk Fest July 22nd to 25th at Princes Island Park in Calgary. So if you're heading down to the festival be sure and stop by and say hi!

Inspiration - pressed copper

Can you be inspired by these tiny pressed copper treasures - I surely can! I'm certain that these are repros but there sure are a lot to choose from at this website. I don't know what I would do with these but I love the rhythm of the designs - the perfectly lyrical lines that prove that they are repros from originals that were probably produced between 1900 and 1925. For instance check out the mane on this flying seahorse - it's so wonderful in it's simplicity - it reminds me to calm down and introduce simple shapes into complex designs to ground them and solidify the form.

Kate Gray's jewelry reminds me a bit of my work. She carefully blends vintage pieces from different eras and styles to create something current and gorgeous. It's like jewelry collage. I love the giant scale of her pieces - that's also something I like to do in my work. The details are wonderful. Yo can see more of her work here.

Cartolina online sales

Just wanted to remind you that if you are looking to buy a few individual Cartolina cards, notebooks, pocket mirrors etc online you can do that at Modern Paper Goods website. They are our exclusive online retailer in the US and we work closely with them to make sure they are always up to date with all the new product. They have wonderful customer service - they'll even hand write a card for you, stick a stamp on it and march it down to the mail box for you! No excuses for missing another birthday!

Found - pattern

I'm really taken with these wallets by Happy Kathy. The fabric is fabulous - i think it's all by Joel Dewberry but I'm not certain. Really nice - very inspiring colour combinations.

Inspiration - cake wrappers

I spotted these wonderful custom paper wrappers at the Superfine Bakery and thought what a good idea they were. There are so many fancy die cut cupcake wrappers these days but I love these simple, french/chinoise inspired, squares of paper.

Inspiration - bisque stamps

Check these out - these are bisque stamps for pressing patterns into - well, whatever you like. The producer suggests that you could use them on your crafts and also on fondant for cake decorating, pastry for pie tops etc. I think there would be endless possibilities. Just scanning all those potential pattern makers gets me excited. They would be great fun for kids too. From Charity Elise.

Found - shipping crate side tables

I think these are fun. Shipping crate side tables from Modern Ark. Each one is a one of a kind piece. I love the 'explosives' one!

The Makeover - progress

As you know my goal is to brighten up the main floor of the house with all white walls and trim and more colour in the furnishings and accessories. Right now we have various boring shades of beige, grey and taupe throughout the house. Our sofa, chair and ottoman are dull sage green corduroy.

So this weekend(when I was visiting my folks in Kelowna) we stumbled on a leather set that we really like. Here it is. It's the colour that caught my eye(and apparently the reason that the set is discounted to half price!) It's quite orange brown(almost an Hermes orange) - I love it. It's also quite big(sofa is more than 7' long) I wasn't particularly looking for leather but all other upholstered sofas were very boxy, modern and covered with very masculine, grey, suiting type fabric - not my style at all.

I think that this set will be a great start to our new space. I also found a large 6 x 9 ft white shag rug to go with it - perfect. Note the black cupboards in this picture? I'm thinking that our big TV armoire may end up with a distressed black finish with very bright coloured framed art on either side.

So orange sofas, white shag rug, black armoire + bright coloured art .

A good start I'd say!

New sofas above at the showroom. Here's what I'm thinking of for the armoire - below.

White shag rug on our medium brown teak floors - mmmmmmm!

I've always really liked this Feist poster - might be the perfect spot for it next to the black armoire - lots of orange and black in it.

Found - room dividers

This is sort of an interesting idea - relates to the crocheted inspiration from last week. I've seen a lot of ideas like this recently - sheets of molded plastic that can be trimmed and assembled to make a variety of accessories from lampshades to room dividers - the negative spaces are very eye catching - these are from Biaugust.