the red thread

Only 79 days

09 October 2008

A friend emailed me yesterday and said it's "only 79 days" until Christmas. 78 now, if you're counting. In the spirit of my friend's countdown to Christmas I thought I'd show you these gorgeous DIY decorations by Prints Charming. I love the simplicity of the colour combination and the folk inspired designs. It reminds me a lot of Laikonik. You can buy the kit here. It might just be an idea with only 78 days left, and only 50 or so until it's tree decorating time, to get started on making these.

Image Source: Prints Charming

---------------------------------------------------------------

Book Spines as Narrative

Image Source: [BB-Blog]

I love this idea - from [BB-Blog].

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi I'm Lisa, I'm a Virgo... this is my storage

08 October 2008

If you're unfamiliar with the traits of Virgos, we are perfectionists and obsessive neat freaks. The phrase "a place for everything and everything in its place" must have been written by one of us. I thought I'd show you the shelves in my studio/office, and realised what an accurate reflection of me they are. Kind of sad really isn't it?

Of course my shelves are the ubiquitous Expidit shelves from Ikea... as seen in half the homes around the world. My aqua files are from KikkiK, the neutral coloured boxes are Ikea, and the patterned boxes and folders are cheap ones that I covered with paper. I'd had the boring Lever Arch files for maybe 10 years in my cupboard, and I covered the spines with paper to achieve a fast and cheap makeover. The patterned boxes are just any box that comes may way (like software boxes, gift boxes, etc), which I have covered. Too easy.

You will also see some of my etsy art purchases and various bits and pieces on display. And I've succumbed to the trend of organising my books in order of colour - I love the look, but it does make things harder to find. Which sort of creates a dilemma for my ordered Virgo sensibility: do I go for the beauty of the look, or the logic of order?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Rainy, grey, windy long weekend

07 October 2008

Here in Sydney it was a pretty dismal long weekend weather-wise. We did manage a couple of walks and I collected some lovely things as inspiration, like this beautiful open seed pod. The diameter of this tiny opened pod is less than 1.5cm.

On Saturday I also managed to paint some more eggs and some bowls which I'm making from ostrich eggs. The brightly coloured ostrich egg isn't really me in terms of colour, but I enjoyed experimenting with it.

On the subject of eggs, one day last week one of our hens could only manage to lay a half size egg... the egg in the back of the photo is a standard size chicken's egg. It can't be easy squeezing out a big egg every day!

I hope you had an enjoyable weekend.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The Red Thread in the blogosphere

06 October 2008

I was thrilled for my work to be included on 2 fabulous blogs in the last week: modamuse, a site that promotes Australian and New Zealand artisans and designers, and Bloesem Kids, which showcases beautiful things from around the world designed for children. You can read the posts here and here. Thank you Nancy and Jessica, and Irene for writing about The Red Thread!

----------------------------------------------------------------------