Designalogue

Had to share these great BEFORE shots on a project I am working on!

Clearly its a fun project to be involved in!

Its about time to share another before & after dont you think! Well I do, & I think I’ve established Im the boss of this Blog!

Moving on… This project was a classic case of good house gone bad!

The house is a beautiful art deco house found in a Melbourne beach side suburb & was a victim of a 1980′s renovation resulting in a weird cramped, ugly & dark kitchen.

You know the pictures above are before shots right? right?!

As the house was in need of structural work (it very clearly leaned to one corner – great for indoor skateboarding & Tonka truck playing, but not so much for general living!) we were able to make bigger changes than just cosmetic. The architect on the project had the genius idea of swapping the kitchen over from one side of the room to the other which allowed an entrance to be opened up & a line of sight right through the house (also letting more light in) rather than sticking with the weird rabbit burrow as it was.

True to form – this site shot does include a shot of my hand bag!

I was quite excited to see the kitchen go in & I was not disappointed. I had designed it to be more like a fixture in the house rather thadiving n a feature. My client was determined to have dark timber floors (so SO beautiful, but a b*#ch to keep clean – stock up on swiffers if you want dark floors!) so we chose a dark timber veneer for the kitchen cabinetry so it was quite seamless.

To bring a little sumpin sumpin & personality to the kitchen design I added a copper kicker.

The contrast of the copper with the dark floor & cabinetry looks quite WOW! (no, I will not say WOW factor! - I ban that saying on my projects!- true story!)

The copper just adds a ‘little special’ & brings such life to the space without overpowering the simplicity.

I loves it. I loves it hard.

Oh & when I say I added – I mean very literally I -being ME! I was the one down on that floor installing it! I can not ever be accused of not being ‘hands on’ on my projects!

And so here is the finished kitchen result:

The picture above is a shot I took – as you can see my hands in the mirrored splash back above!

The following pictures were taken by the builders to showcase their clever handy work!  (Once a few more furniture pieces are in, I will get my own pretty pictures taken with non builder eye styling done!!)

And from this angle

Due to one of those real life annoying things – budgets! we are yet to replace the furniture, but will over time.

See the carpet there on the stairs – its Alpaca wool. Ah, so divine! Its hard to resist a little roll around on it! (oh but i did…)

The window furnishings have all been installed & they also made my heart skip a beat! We have put Roman blinds through out & then two large windows in the living room have been dressed with a linen sheer with a simple S Fold heading & block out blinds hiding underneath. The black rod pics up the dark floor & once we have replaced the furniture with gorgeous big linen sofas & gorgeous things – the space will look stunning!

To quote my clients message to me once she saw the window furnishings installed ” I F*****g  love them SO much! Thank you, now my house looks like a home!” I think its safe to say she is happy!

Do you think I should use that message as a testimonial on my website?!

And just a snippet of the laundry. Perhaps the prettiest laundry I’ve ever seen!

Still a fair bit to happen on this project, but it is coming together beautifully- it makes me happy!

And home. Ok, I have been back a week now, but Ive been busy!

I had an excellent time, despite Darwin trying its best to keep me from leaving & making me go to the emergency hospital room twice – TWICE in 5 days! But we will get to that!

This post will probably be a wordy one, but its kind of a diary for me of my trip – so strap in, or dont!

Flying to Darwin (Btw – for my international blog vistors – Darwin is a city at the very top of Australia – where the Baz Luhrman film ‘Australia’ was set! – that helps doesn’t it?!) I was lucky enough to get a window seat in the plane. I havent done any travel to the centre of Australia (yet) so looking out the window & seeing such beauty really blew my tiny mind! And so,  I became that person on the plane who takes lots of photos out the window!

But they turned out pretty cool!

How awesome is this salt lake that is shaped very similarly to Australia!

& look at these colours

Now I hadn’t intentionally made this connection – but these are the colours I used in a project  in Darwin that I did a while back. The red of the woven lights against the blue walls  - looks just gorgeous!

As it really was ‘the wedding of the year’ guests flew in from all over the world & it was pretty special to have so many of my friends in ONE place at the same time! It just doesn’t happen so easily anymore! And naturally being an event with people from all over it was celebrated over days – many dinners & events where had!

It was at one of the dinners where I had my first ouch that resulted in a visit to the emergency room! A stupid, idiotic, der waitress (Im an over thanker of wait staff – so I dont say that too lightly!) handed me a plate that was straight out of the oven. She had a cloth on protecting her, but failed to warn me of its HOTNESS & so I got a nasty ouchy burn on my hand. To be honest a hospital visit was totally over kill, but a friend who was there is a super nurse & totally got in my head about infections I could contract as I was going to a third world country…. better to be safe & all that.

& so the wedding came around, was excellent fun & great party! (the bride & groom left the wedding at 7am the next day!)  I was really enjoying myself & dancing the night away with no plans for leaving the party until….until I stepped on a broken wine glass STEM in bare feet.

I dare you not to shudder in discomfort at even reading that!

Ouch, ouch OUCH!

So off to the hospital again I went. Luckily it wasnt too deep a wound, but it was deep enough to make walking – um really hurt! The lovely hospital peeps did their special thing & as I was flying off the next night to Vietnam I was given hard core infection be gone drugs AND brand spanking new crutches.

I went to Vietnam on crutches!

Vietnam is a beautiful country. I loved it &  will definitely  go back to explore more of it.

Here are a few random pictures of pretties that sums up my stay!

This picture was taken at a river side bar that we stopped at after riding bikes through rice paddies. (yeah – I did that!) this bar is over the water & the $1 beers went down way too easily!

And of course I had to include this! 

Having now experienced the heat of a Vietnamese Summer, these hats now make total design sense to me & I think they are genius!

My mother thinks I look ‘glowing’ in this picture. No, I was just melting! It was SO HOT. SO HOT and humid. But totally awesome & Im so glad that I finally made it to Vietnam!

Oh – my crutches were only needed for a couple of days & I was able to donate them to someone who was totally & absolutely in need in Vietnam.

And now I am back & have lots of great project sneak peaks to share very soon! Some recent installations have had clients use very colourful language to express their delight! Im sure you know what I mean!!

And just like that - its June. JUNE people! This year is going by in a flash.

Its been a huge year & Im a bit buggered & need a rest.

So, Ive packed my bags, got the house/cat sitter organised & Im hoping on a jet plane & going here:

Vietnam. Its somewhere I have always wanted to go to & so I am!

Im stopping off in Darwin on the way for a few days &  to attend a friends wedding which will be quite an event. Friends are jetting in from all over the world for this one, and its going to be HUGE! So I will definately be needing a bit of R&R afterwards!

I’ll see you on the other side!

Remember these?:

& these:

Quite possibly thats why you are here in the first place! (the traffic I get to this blog still from when I posted about these back in June 2010 is huge!)

Well the UK-ian hottie responsible for such clever up-cycling has just launched his new of lighting which includes these crystal globes.

So pretty.

And these too

And this

I predict a Pintrest Melt down!

And before you ask:

No, I dont know how to get the bottoms off or how to get the globes in. I leave it to the people who do!

Lee Broom is the dude in the know!

Enjoy!

A few months back Modern Home Magazine asked my tips on working with art in interiors.

This is the outcome of that chat:

Thanks Modern Home for featuring my work!

Say WHAT?!

Thats right!

That IS my project on the COVER of the new House & Garden Bathroom lookbook! and then some more on the inside!

and in case you thought I was fibbing, thats my name just there. SEE!!

Photography by Armelle Habib who did an amazing job!

Look see here if you would like to see some more of that project – before & afters.

A lovely person over on my facebook page (ahem… go like me, um it!!) commented that she was glad she didnt have to do the layout of the tiles! It was a bit fiddly & different than a usual tile layout, so I thought I would share some of the pictures I took while working it out!

Originally the plan was to place these tiles in an organised random pattern. I admit, there was some procrastination on my part when it came to working out this organised chaos! I’m sure a computer program would’ve been simpler, but I am a bit old school and like to draw things out, so I made a life sized template on my living room floor & started to play! (cant accuse me of not being hands on!!)

Starting to get a feel for the layout… this picture shows half most of layout as random, and starting to play with graduating colour stripe layout.

I feel hard in love with the graduated stripe. It meant we had to order a few more tiles & delay the install a week while they were hand made! But I think it was well worth waiting on.

See, it HAD to be striped.

I had the easy part! Bruce the tiler had a very difficult job but did it beautifully! These tiles are hard enough to keep straight just placed on the floor. I dont want to think about hard it would’ve been adding gravity to the mix!

Anyway, its not quite mid day, but the champagne is cooling ready to celebrate my first ever magazine cover! CHEERS!

In my world, it is so exciting seeing things come to life that have been rattling around in my head for a while!

I  liken it to having babies all over town and I’m the surrogate. (Is that weird?! Did I just gross you out?!)

Moooooving on….

These are some of my recent project happenings:

This morning I finally got to see these delicious Patricia Urquiloa tiles that I was so excited to use, laid on the bathroom floor of a project I am working on.

I love them so much. SO SO much.

Also this morning in the same house we installed some gorgeous Roman blinds.

This is the best picture I took with my crappy camera, so you will just have to imagine, or take my word for it on how good they look!

psst: The sconce on the wall in real life isn’t as tiny as it appears to be in this picture!

Still a fair bit to get done on this house when time & budgets allow! (real life ruins all the best laid plans!) but its all coming along so beautifully.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of town:   This renovation project is really starting to take shape.

The en-suite bathroom is being slowly installed.

The tiles are also in a dark grey, but very different from those above!  just in case you sensed a theme!

I cant wait to see this done, I’m really excited about this design!

The paint colour has been confirmed  & after lots of tests my original choice was given the go ahead – phew!!

So now you have an insight into some of my current ‘babies’!

One life lesson I had to learn early on in my career – patience is a virtue!

Here in my part of the world -Melbourne town, the foods & wine festival is a happening or, maybe just happened?!  Foodie peoples get very excited by this. Just to be clear, I am no foodie.  I can cook – and even make food both edible AND tasty! But I’m no fancy pants cook nor have a real desire to be. To be honest the only time I’m dine in linen clothed restaurants its on someone else’s dime! Its just not my thang to drop a few hundy & then some on a meal. Sure its tasty, but I’m not going to appreciate it enough to drop my precious coin on it. I’d rather spend it on my furniture fetish -something house pretty that I can love long time. (psst, I reserve the right to change my mind about this at any time!)

Geez I can ramble on… So to the point of this post!:

Local chef Matt Wilkinson has released a beauitful new cook book titled: Mr Wilkinson’s Favourite Vegetables. I think from the title you can guess its about cooking with vegetables!

Its been photographed by one of my favourite ladies Jacqui Melville & chock full of tasty eye candy & belly goodness!

The photographs & styling are amazing. Its truly beautiful so chops goes to Caroline Velik for an amazing styling job done!

Im sure its all tasty too!

YUM!

YUM!!  (think I need some lunch!)

Cute cover illustrated by Miso

Here is a pic of the fabulous Jacqui hard at work shooting my bathroom for my website!

Oh & re this bathroom project, I have some VERY exciting news to share about this very soon!!

Domestic goddess I am not.  I’ve only just come to terms with the fact that I dont have a fairy god mother who is going to clean up after me. (For an all too brief & fabulous time I did have a house cleaner who would clean those things you don’t even think about like light switches, door knobs  & ovens! (or is that just me?) But then I got de-facto divorced & couldnt keep her any more. I think her loss saddened me the most. I kid…but do I?!) So domestic products & wot nots were just not something I wouldn’t really spend much time thinking about. That was until on one of my exotic travels to the local IGA supermarket, I came accross something that made me really question ‘who am I?’

Until then I didn’t know I was the kinda girl to be excited -genuinely excited by something so domestic like a dish brush!

But I did. And after a lot of soul searching  it turns out I am!

In my defence, I think you would be too. You see its not a plastic dish thingy – it’s bamboo & kinda pretty as far as dish thingys go!

Maybe my love for this is more about the feel than the look. The bamboo handle feels so nice to hold & being a tactile lass, I just loves its feelin! Literally & figuratively (hmm…is that the right word?eh..) as it’s one of those feel good sustainable guilt free AND useful products!

The important sustainable credentials:

• The handle is made from bamboo which is uber sustainable product as it grows at the speed of light -Fact* & finished with natural oils. Not toxic nasties.
• The bristles & brush head are made of recycled plastic

Oh & it also works pretty well at cleaning stuff.  Fancy that – kinda pretty AND practical!

So my domestic goddess tip for you – spend the 7 ish bucks on a Full circle dish brush. When you have, get back to me & confirm your love of it- maybe we can form a club or something?!

Please note:

This is not a sponsored post. Bizarrely I do have a genuine love for these.

*Bamboo does not grow at the speed of light. But if you thought it did – even for a second, then I don’t think you can join my club.