Style Trail: Adore Home Magazine

http://www.adoremagazine.com/blog

Claudia Stephenson from Peep My Style blog together with Hannah Blackmore created a Style Trail feature in the Adore Home Magazine. If you missed it you can find it here. 

There were so many lovely images from the feature they have decided to add a few extra. They have really focused on the pastel trend and the gorgeous Spring light brings life to every image!

Here is a sneak peak! Enjoy!

L x

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. If you would like to make a small contribution you can do so here, a few friends and I are holding a Pink High Tea for the cause. 

http://nsw.cancercouncilfundraising.org.au/PinkHighT

via google, combined by me!

Cushions for Mumma W

A friend, let's call her Mumma W, is having another bub (yippe!) and is moving into a new apartment. She is looking to add some colour into their living room by purchasing new cushions. The family will have 2 young children so light colours are definitely out of the question.

What we have to work with:
1. Let's keep the budget low
2. Charcoal couch
3. Young children, no light colours & its longevity is important too
4. Bold colours that will work with the remainder of the space

So here are my suggestions on where to find the cushions you want;

ferm Living:
is an Australian company with a love of Danish design. They sell wallpapers, wall stickers, cushions, kitchen items and all sorts of lovely homewares. They even have a clearance section at the moment.


KAS:
their philosophy is to create fashion led lifestyle ranges for the home. KAS distinguishes their products from other homewares suppliers through their co-ordination of designs and colours across all their different products.


The Brown Trading Co.:
's focus is to create gorgeous, sophisticated home collections. It is run by a brother sister team, who's exuberant and stylish approach to life is evident in every aspect of their business. Their motto, 'it must be fun' is at the core of everything they do. How fun is that!?


If I had a brand new charcoal couch to dress I would probably choose a zig zag black and white cushion, something with lots of colour and then a couple of other cushions with a 'focus colour' to tie them together.

Yellow and grey are a great combination, like this throw:



crafty blossom

Here are my picks;


Delphine Ottoman (pink)
All cushions are designed to complement textures and colours in the KAS range.

Aviary Bird (multi)
Embroidery on printed cotton duck




Casablanca (berry)
Rayon satin stitch embroidery on faux linen

From Etsy store: Skinny laMinx
http://www.etsy.com/listing/84199372/cushion-cover-50x50cm-flower-field-in



The Brown Trading Co.

Knitted Floor Cushion Charcoal
I cannot go past this floor cushion!



Tips:

1. Think not only about the space as a whole, but also about the apartment/house. Purchases will become less of a craze when they can be moved throughout the house from room to room. i.e. Mumma W might end up using the cushions in to bring colour in the bedroom or in the nursery. (pink or blue....?)


2. Using bigger cushions on a couch tend to have a more expensive look.

You can also make a space more interesting by using cushions of different sizes and dimensions, there is no need to stay with the norm.


Any other hot cushion tips or decorating ideas for myself or Mumma W?

concrete + colour

I did a post earlier in the week on the use of concrete flooring as an internal residential finish and I haven't stopped thinking about it since then. So I thought I would expand on it a little further and talk about designing with it instead of around it. You can't find the post here.

I have always lusted over the combination of concrete and colour. If you think about concrete in it's initial purpose it is the foundation of the home. I find true essence in using the foundation of the home as the final finish. I know the first thing that comes to mind when speaking about concrete is the cold gray colour and that is absolutely accurate, so why not bright things up with a pop of colour to liven up the space. In fact, there are often many spaces around the home that are dull and no family member enjoys being in, is it one section of the garden, the space under the stairs or the spare bedroom? These spaces can be brought to life with a hint of colour and the whole room is transformed, even if the floor is a cool gray. 

Whether you choose a warm paste colour to soften the look of concrete or a screaming bold one to draw the focus to it, the result is sure to be phenomenal.

Once an outdoor-only application, concrete has been permeating interior design with good reason. The list concrete benefits is quite extensive;

• It’s easy to clean, extremely durable, and mimics more expensive materials wonderfully. 
• Custom concrete can be poured in a precast mold, giving it limitless shape and design options. 
• The weight and sturdiness of concrete make it an excellent structural element with a lot of trendy aesthetic qualities. 

The versatility of concrete designs make it a material that’s perfect in any room, with or without the cold, hard, industrial look of a basic concrete pour. Concrete solutions are becoming the creative answer to many interior and exterior home design dilemmas.

Moral of the story, don't be scared of a concrete finish.

Would you do concrete in your home? If so, would you go even further by adding an accent colour to the room with the concrete touch?

*images via here

Adore Home: New Issue

The newest issue of Adore Home Magazine is now out. I cannot wait to get into bed tonight with my ipad to read the new issue. I might have cheated already and had a quick look and trust me, it's worth it!

Adore Home Magazine is turning 2 this year, I cannot wait to see their special birthday issue. 

What other design inspired magazines do you enjoy? 

Leave a comment at the bottom or over on the facebook page here.

Click here to read the new issue.

Funky Wombat Textiles

For a while now I have been following "Funky Wombat Textiles" on Facebook and thoroughly enjoying what I have been seeing. I went to look at their website and gather a little more information on the designer and her background and came across this article by Jen Bishops at Interior Addicts. Enjoy the read... I did!

As an aspiring textiles designer myself (amongst too many other aspirations) I always enjoy reading other designers' stories on how they managed to get to where they are now. I really enjoyed the 'behind the scenes' work Tamara Schneider puts on her facebook page every now and again. Here is just one of them... 

Screen printing is an artistic process we learnt at uni quite early on, and although it takes lots of patience it is clearly worth the effort.

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Meet Textile designer Tamara Schneider of Funky Wombat Textiles

I first came across textile designer Tamara Schneider when one of her lampshades caught my eye online. It was so beautiful I couldn’t stop looking at it. Seriously. Gorgeous.

She owns the amusingly named Funky Wombat Textiles and her designs are far more sophisticated, beautiful and grown up than the name might perhaps suggest.

Tamara started off studying fashion in the nineties. But as much as she loved Westwood and McQueen, it was the textile designs and processes that really excited her. When she moved to Melbourne in 2006, she finally enrolled in a textile design course at RMIT and so it began.

Through one of her lecturers she met Paul Simmons, one half of legendary Scottish design studioTimorous Beasties. “He was out here doing a trade show and we got invited to meet him for coffee. It was truly one of those geek groupie moments, especially for me as I had known about Timorous Beasties for so long. Eventually I got over the giggling schoolgirl thing and had a really nice chat.” A year later, when she was looking for a work project to finish her diploma, Tamara booked a ticket to Glasgow.

“I could try to downplay it a bit and be cool or something but the truth is it was brilliant. The energy that Paul and Alistair [McAuley] bring to the design process is amazing. It really helped me focus the things I had learned at school and gave me a bucket load of confidence as a designer. It really opened my mind to the many ways of combining old and new technology.”

She got back to Australia in August last year and soon started up Funky Wombat Textiles. “Now I’m doing my own designs for my own label with my own customers, so yeah, pretty much living the dream. Was it always my ambition? I’m really not sure, but I know that I’m enjoying working in my own business far more than any job I’ve ever had.”

There’s a lot of Aussie flora and fauna in her designs and this wasn’t intentional, although she admits to loving “wildlife and all associated bush junk,” adding: “My dad is a mad bushwalker who used to drag us out every chance he got when we were kids, so I was constantly exposed to the beauty of the Australian bush. I guess wildlife seemed a natural place to start when I began designing.”

Being environmentally friendly is important to Tamara. “I’m constantly looking at ways to improve the sustainability of not just us, but of all the other parts of our supply chain. To that end the majority of our production is digitally printed. It’s kind of counter-intuitive but it turns out that the machines are better environmentally as they can actually do things far more efficiently than we can with hand-printing so there’s much less waste. Also all of our inks are water-based so no harsh chemicals and we are always watching for new innovations that might help reduce our carbon footprint further.”

Funky Wombat Textiles turns one next month and it has grown steadily. “We recently started to work with some interior designers but the majority of the business is still with people looking for something to lift a room or a nice gift. The custom side has been the real surprise, not so much for what the jobs are but rather where the clients have come from. We recently completed a wallpaper job for an office in London, and have just been contracted to design more wallpaper for an apartment in Stockholm. One of the best things I did was integrating the supply chain early in the piece so we can be really responsive to our customers’ needs and turn most of the custom orders around in a couple of weeks.”

Tamara says it’s increasingly hard to predict interiors trends and she doesn’t care to. “There are no longer two or three oracles of wisdom for trends, there’s probably 3000, and while I find it good to get ideas I find it really hard to say that this year ‘polka dot flamingos with flaming red beaks carrying orange shoulder bags’ will be the trend. When I want to see what is happening now I’m more likely to come to a blog like Interiors Addict, where I feel some sort of connection with the author because I liked the things I’ve seen there, rather than try to make any kind of sense of the other 3000 articles out there.

“I’m not so much into trends but rather assisting people to create a style that they can relate to and want to live with. To me that’s what interiors is all about.”

sneak peak: taylor tomasi hill's new york apartment

"With her flaming red hair and affinity for some serious statement jewelry, Moda Operandi’s artistic director (and ex-Marie Claire style & accessories director) Taylor Tomasi Hill, is used to getting attention—especially, as of late, from street-style photographers. It’s easy to see why, and it’s with the same sense of ease that she dresses and carries herself that she decorated the New York apartment she shares with her high-school sweetheart turned husband, Chase. 

What is her philosophy when it comes to her personal space and style? “A little bit of everything,” she says. “Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s what makes it fun. I just try again.” 

- Click to see the original story on vogue.com.

I've always wondered if that firey skittles home resembled her fashion choices....

More inside Taylor Tomasi Hill's Chelsea abode this way.


Photos: Claiborne Swanson Frank for VOGUE

http://becauseimaddicted.net/2012/03/peek-inside-taylor-tomasi-hills-new.html