This awesome box has moved in with us today:
Purchased from Urban Retro, it’s a cornucopia of vintage buttons.
Quite a lot more than I’ll ever need, I’m sure.
Quite a lot of them are still on cards, actually. I’ll probably put some up for sale at some point, if I ever get around to stocking my Epla-shop, for example. But I’m keeping the box. Mine, all mine!
I’ve pinned this as well, but just have to repeat it here. I love, love, love this interior:
I’d change the artwork (not a big fan of non-figurative art, on the whole) and though I think the zebra skin rug looks stunning I wouldn’t actually want a real one on the floor, but a BIG yes to those laquered walls and the frankly gorgeous sofa.
More detail in the article in Architectural Digest.
(via)
I seem to remember promising to post something about the Gambia photobook once I’d received the finished product. Which I did a couple of weeks ago. And I finally got around to taking pictures of it in daylight last week. So. Here goes, prepare for rather a lot of images:
I sort of forgot that I needed a cover. So I ended up just pulling out four random images that I’d not had occasion to use inside the book and plopping them into the spots suggested by the default layout. With hindsight I should have spent a bit more time investigating the options, I’d probably have preferred another base colour than white, for example, but it works, and I guess that’s the important thing.
I ended up with close on 80 pages, and it’s printed on photo paper which makes it even thicker. However, it’s slimmer than I feared, I was a bit worried that it would be so thick as to be unmanageable, but it’s not. Far from it. It feels hefty and lovely, but is not so heavy that you need a reading table.
Another benefit of the photo paper version: The two facing pages are actually printed on one large sheet, and the sheets are glued back to back to create the book. This means that the book opens completely and no part of the page is lost “in the crease”.
It also lies flat on the table (or floor in this case). No need to hold it open.
I’m normally more of a maximalist than a minimalist, but just when it comes to photos I find I like as little noise as possible around them. I considered serveral design options for this album, and was planning, at the very least, to choose a colour scheme that I’d use for a few frames, titles and brush swirls. But once I started pulling together the pictures, I realised they worked so well on their own that embellishment would distract rather than add, so I discarded the idea.
The one digital scrapbboking supply I used was a set of templates called “Off to Press” by Paislee Press, available at Oscraps. The templates are for an 8×10 album, so I’ve gone through them and resized them to 12×12. I’ve also moved photo and text spots around a bit on quite a few of the pages, as well as resizing or even duplicating photo spots as needed. I really love this template set, as it helped me keep the look reasonably consistent and encouraging copious amounts of white space while being simple enough to be exceedingly flexible.
I’m really glad that I went for the photo paper option and didn’t fall for the temptation to save a few kroner by choosing a less expensive format. The clarity is really outstanding, any blur in the images is my fault entirely.
The other supply I used was a couple of actions from Pioneer Woman’s free action sets. Every image has had either “Boost” or “Define and sharpen” run on it, though on some I’ve reduced the opacity of the action layer(s) to avoid an overly processed look. In a few cases I’ve also used “Slight lighten”. Actions are a great way to get quick results for us lazy people, and I don’t think I’d have been able to finish the album on time without them.
I normally date all my digital pages (with the date of the photos/subject, not date of creation), but since this is a cohesive album of one week’s trip, I only kept the date on the first page for each day.
All in all, I’m really thrilled with how this turned out. I had a serious attack of “Squee!” when I unwrapped this. The book, by the way, is printed at Japan Photo, who use a system called CEWE, which I suspect is available through other chains in Europe also, though I don’t know for certain.
Now all I have to do is get all my other photos into proper photo books. Yup. Well, one step at a time…
I had a bit of time this morning while the lass was playing happily on her own, so I tore down some panelling along the wall running from the kitchen to the living room. We’re planning to put up the “magic” wall-smoothening wallpaper here, and paint it white, before hiding the whole thing with shallow bookshelves. I wonder, of course, whether we shoud dispense with the wallpaper and the paint and just put the shelves up, but figure we might as well do the job properly.
Also, note the use of floorboards to construct the wall. Interesting choice. Considering the price of floorboards vs. mdf I know what I’d have chosen, but whatever.
While we’re at it we should probably substitute those glass inserts with something else. Like, I dunno, wall? That seems slightly complicated, though. It’d be easy, of course, to just slot some pieces of mdf or something in over the glass and paper over that. It would look ok from the living room side, but probably quite nutty from the bedroom. On the other hand, who cares what it looks like from the bedroom?
I’ll think about it.
To start with, let me just say that though I’ve been craving a dedicated crafting space for years, I had no idea how ridiculously happy it would make me. I’ve been sewing today – in my new Dedicated Crafting Space – and every so often I would pause and just… savour the feeling. I’m either mad or just counting my blessings.
Anyway, this is what it looks like when I’m in the middle of something:
Furnishingwise I’ve mostly been working on details today, figuring out what goes where on the shelves, hanging another picture and so on. Some details, therefore:
The top print is from The Black Apple on Etsy, and was purchased about a year ago, I think. I’m thrilled to finally have it up on the wall. It’s been languishing in its shipping envelope since it arrived, as I really had no place to hang it, but I just had to have it anyway. The quote, by the way, is attributed to Morrisey. The bottom one is also from Etsy, from Industrial Fairytale, and arrived only last week – and it’s still available, so if you want one for yourself, go get it!
I’m liking the way this is working out so far, the plan is still to fill the wall with book-related prints and such. I’m expecting to stick to black frames to create some sense of order, and I’m also expecting to take my time filling the space, waiting to find pieces that I really love instead of falling for the temptation to buy things just to fill it. I also know I have several things in boxes and such that might work.
The frames are Ribba from IKEA, and the one problem I’ve discovered so far is that the passepartout in these are for A4, whereas the prints, naturally, are American letter size. If you click one the images to get a larger version you can probably see that there is a gap on either side of the print. I’m going to have to get new passepartouts done, in other words, but in the meantime this will have to do. Having them on the wall makes me happy, gap or not.
Another detail to note is the lovely little pillow, which is from Syko. I’ve been a faithful reader of her blog for quite some time, so I had to have one of her creations – I also bought her book, Scandinavian Stitches, which is quite wondeful.
The curtains, by the way, are moving into the lass’ room when we get a rod up in there, and I’m making new ones for this room. If she ever “grows out of them” though, they might well be moving back, since I’m still as much in love with them as I was when I bought them before she was born.
About a week ago I started putting up our old Ivar-shelves in the office, and found to my annoyance that we were about 1 centimetre short of fitting five widths in there. We considered several solutions, one of which was to shave 1/2 a centimetre off each end. However, I suddenly remembered that once we get around to redoing the bathroom we will want to take 40-50 centimetres out of this space anyway, so there was really no point in going for a perfect fit.
So we just put up one height using the narrower shelves. All was right with the world again.
Then I spent a few nights (well bits of a few nights) getting the Hemnes daybed together. And today we went to IKEA to get a mattress for it, and to look for useful bits in the “rejects” corner for the desk arrangement. I decided a while ago to go for kitchen tops instead of “desks”, as I suspect they’ll be more hardy and take kindlier to any messy crafting we might want to do in here.
So with that all in place we started constructing a desk. I got adjustable desk legs since I wanted something a tad higher than 70 centimetres, but wasn’t entirely sure what to do to get the kitchen cabinet to the right height. However, a search of the flat unearthed some shelves that we removed from the kitchen cabinets because they were not needed, and with those screwed on to the bottom (and edged with duct tape to avoid the raw edges becoming dust magnets) I had myself a hack:
Then it was a simple matter of connecting the desk legs to one end of the long countertop and the hacked cabinet to the other, and voilla, a desk:
Because I hadn’t quite worked out in my mind how this was going to work I only got two desk legs today. So the idea is to get two more and connect the shorter countertop to the other half of that cabinet to create one long desk. And, yes, the desk runs the length of the shelving – in front of it. It’s going to work pretty well, belive me. I’ve already started getting stuff onto the shelves, and it’s perfect.
That office chair, by the way? Also from the rejects corner, at half off. Purchased a couple of weeks ago. Have I mentioned I love IKEA?
I’ll snap some more pictures tomorrow, in daylight.
She is well and truly installed now, and seems to like it better than her old room, despite the fact that it is noticeably smaller. She’s still in love with the wall colour, which is good. The lamp is a temporary solution, the walls next to the bed are masonary and hell to drill in, so we haven’t quite figured out how to give her a permanent reading light. For the time being, this works.
Two Billy bookshelves, purchased a few years ago while you could still get them 60 cm wide. We have a lot of children’s books. This is most of the ones with pictures, there are boxes and boxes of books for reading aloud or for reading to oneself once she gets to that stage, as it is she “reads” anywhere between five and thirty books before going to sleep every evening. It’s best to instill good habits early, you know.
I meant to take some more detailed pictures, in order to tell you a little about some of the books, but it seems I forgot. I might get around to it later. In the meantime, let me show you a nice little piece of furniture, purchased long before I even met the husband.
Yes, it’s child size. Found at a flea market in Oslo for a mere 100 kroner in 2001. My only regret is not buying its twin, too. I can’t remember why I decided to buy only the one, I might have been short on cash, I suppose.
I finally got around to signing up at Ravelry. Want to be friends?
At the moment I’m about half way through crocheting a granny square blanket, which I discovered – to my delight – was a very simple thing to crochet. See, the problem with most crocheting patterns for my part – and with most knitting patterns too – is having to keep count and remember where I’d got to when I pick something up after a break. But with granny squares I don’t have to keep count, as it’s easy to tell at a glance where you are on a particular square. Lovely stuff.
Anyway, I’ve started collecting links for inspiration, and added a few blogs to my feed, too (most notably Bad Monkey and Kaptein Biff). For my next project I think I’ll try this pattern:
Unless I can find a good pattern for a square with a flower portrudin before then, as I’d like to make a blanket like that for a friend who expressed nostalgia for that particular type.
But I might consider another circle in square pattern that Bad Monkey linked to yesterday, namely this one:
Which is called Circle of Friends. Aren’t those colours delicious?
Talking about colour, what do you say to these houses?
So, two new blogs for the feed, obviously:
It should come as no surprise that I like reading. And books. And any art that involves either is immediately interesting to me.
For the hobby-/guestroom we had planned to get a Hemnes daybed from IKEA, furbish it with proper mattresses and quite a few pillows and a good reading light, so as to cater for guests (hence the essential “good mattress”) and reading (pillows and lamp, though the essentialness is a bit overlapping, obviously). The nice people of IKEA decided to have a 30 % sale on Hemnes this week, so we now have one Hemnes flatpacked on the floor, waiting for this weekend when we plan to move the lass into her new room, thus freeing up the space in the would-be guestroom.
Over the daybed, I’m planning to frame reading related “things”. I have som old (well, late 90’ies) ads from Waterstone’s (that I just LOVE), and I have one or two prints purchased off Etsy. I would like some more of the latter, though, so today I’ve been browsing, and tomorrow, once I’ve had time to consider which ones I really like the most, I’ll be putting in a few orders.
Here are some of the ones that immediately appealed to me:
“The reader” by Majalin
“Girl reading” by Belafonte (Emma Leonard)
“The boy who liked to read” by TheExtentofSilence
“One Story More” by trafalgarsquare
“Books can take you anywhere” by TheLittleFox
“Reading is rad”/”Girl in green socks” by Artisjustfrozenmusic ( Carla Thursday)
Since it’s expected that the lass will use the space as well as us “grown ups”, I quite like the idea of mixing the styles a bit, rather than sticking to a more coherent collection. Since they have a common theme, I think they’ll work together anyway.
Have you seen any reading-themed illustrations lately? Please let me know in the comments, I’d love to get some tips for more candidates.