So in love with Olioboard – vote now

Oh I am so in love with Olioboard. I sometimes find moodboards a bit clumsy. They remind me of primary school. They are fun, but I never think they look particularly professional. Then I read about Olioboard on Apartment Therapy and wowzers – how cool! Glue and scissors no more!

Check out the below real life comparison and vote on which you prefer!

This is a client brief I have for a house in Sydney. The client has an classic heritage house at the front and is building a new wing out the back which is totally modern, concrete floors, high ceilings, clean lines. She wants to fuse the new with the old. She likes the house to be neat but not sterile, and wants to inject personality through her furnishings.

Exhibit A – the original mood board I created the old paper and scissors way…

Exhibit B – my new Olioboard version of the same client brief.

I’d love to hear your comments on which one you like better – the original or the olioboard version??

I’m Back!

I’ve been away a while, but now I am back, with lots of design inspiration from around the globe and some local projects too. Let’s start with a couple of my favourite designers currently in the USA:

Ghislaine Viñas - http://www.gvinteriors.com/

Check out interiordesign.net and cococozy for more.

And of course Kathryn Ireland for increadible bohemian, moroccan, mexican inspired textiles, prints and textures.

Take a tour of her home: http://www.housebeautiful.com/decorating/ireland-bold-bright-0308

Ideas for using blackboard paint at home

A friend of mine Adrian recently renovated his unit in Bondi and painted a blackboard wall in his kitchen. It is really effective and a great way to keep track of shopping lists, leave messages for the family etc. It really warms up the room and creates a feature of this corner of the kitchen.

I asked Adrian how he went about painting the wall and here are some of his tips – thanks Adrian!

Qu. How hard was it to paint the wall? [Adrian] At first I tried with a brush - big mistake, it was like working with glue. Because the wall is quite narrow I switched to a mini-roller with a short pile. This made the job more bearable and provided a much better finish.

Qu. Did you have to prepare the surface in any way?[Adrian] Not really, as it is a 'novelty' wall I'm not too concerned about the finish (plus it's matt black so imperfections are not reflected). I just painted directly over old acrylic paint that was washed down with sugar soap.

Qu. What brand of paint did you use? [Adrian] White Knight Paints

Qu. Any tips for others? [Adrian] The short piled roller, good ventilation and always allow to cover less than what the state of the coverage section of the directions.

Check out these other blackboard articles and blogposts:

Style-files – Netherlands:

Have a look at this post by Jennifer at madebygirl:

How about this dry erase writing surface from IdeaPaint

Other tips:

Make it magnetic – paint a magnetic primer underneath to make it a magnetic blackboard! http://www.abcstuff.com/magnetic_paint.php

What about a whiteboard? use IdeaPaint to create your own whiteboards – check out this article on notemaker’s blog: http://notemaker.com.au/products/idea-paint

Kids fun wall – read this article from real living to create a reversible activity board for kids: http://realliving.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=772405

Some suppliers in Australia:

• Resene Blackboard Paint
• White Knight Chalkboard Paint
• Resene Magnetic Paint
• Derivan Blackboard Paint
• Dulux Wonder Walls Magicote and Magicolor

Wallpaper from Bholu – thanks to Bondville!

Because this post looked so great, I copied the entire Wallpaper from Bholu post from Bondville (not sure it this is blog-etiquette, sorry if its not cool) – but plug plug check out Bondville for other interesting posts…

One of my all time favourite and inspirational interviews is from Bholu entrepreneur and designer Jodie Freid – and she is so creative and clever and now moving into wallpapers as well…


Welcome news for lovers of good Australian design with a conscience - uber-cool lifestyle brand Bholu has teamed up with Porter's Paints to release a divine range of wallpaper for littlies and grown-ups under the “Designers for Porter’s Paints” series.
Designed to mix and match with the label's homewares and children's range, the designs feature the signature bholu ‘Nimboo’ swirl and characters such as ‘Mavis the Monkey’, ‘Frederick the Elephant’ and ‘Marjorie the Duck’.
For those not in the know, Bholu is a fair trade company based in Australia that works with communities in India to produce gorgeous homewares. Part proceeds go back to these communities as well as funding for education facilities and other programs for underprivileged children.
Check out more images of the new collection on the Bholu Facebook page. Bholu wallpaper will be available at Porter's stockists from February 17th, 2010 (call your local stockist for more information) around the world.
Read more about Bholu on Bondville here.
Thanks again Steph!

IKEA for Christmas – fa la la la!!

Not sure where my brilliant idea of driving all the way to IKEA in Homebush just before Xmas came from, add one hangover and salt it with a torrential downpour and a smothering of mad Xmas!

After 5 hours (still not sure how that happened - wandering around and checking all the new items) and ended up with 3 trolleys worth of stuff I am not 100% sure I need plus some very cute Xmas pressies for kids (their kids section was brilliant) and generally a whole lot of funky homewares and home furnishings that I simply must have to have! But what really excited me was the Ikea Textiles section!

I don’t remember there being so much of it and for prices as low as $9.99 a metre (actually as low as $3.49) you can’t really beat that. Lots of bold designs, made from 100% cotton, Scandinavian designers many of them I have never heard of – very marimekko, bold colours, simplified motifs, animals, trees and nature prints, with a retro feel to them … Having my camera handy I whipped out a few pics:


I love them. I can see lots of inspirational home decorating with these fabrics. They even had a cutting station and lots of people around to help you. A huge range too. Check out the ikeafans website with lots of great ideas of things to make with Ikea fabric.
Will need to have a better look, but after the silly season once I have recovered from the last experience!!

@Cloudland Brisbane – I wanna go!

I whinge about getting older, but I wanna go to Cloudland! I’m in Brisbane for work, driving through ‘The Valley’ which is totally gentrified these days, and I spy a very impressive facade of concrete, steel and glass on Ann street.


There are crazy little round planter boxes reminiscent of a science fiction time machine film turning the exterior into a lush vertical garden.



As it says on their website, “if cloudland was to be given a tag “mad maximillion meets neo-decor’ – I’m not 100% sure I know what that means, but time machine springs to mind.
Created for the Katarzyna Group by Melbourne architect Nic Brunner, this three level, 1500-capacity venue boasts a fully retractable roof, an "organic" interior - including a central water feature and vertical "garden" wall - relaxed lounge areas, private function spaces, secluded basement and rooftop bar.

If that’s not enough, check out these photos:
 
Dazzle me with the amazing outdoor laser lights – with its rings that spin and 4900 lighting channels that create a show, I am impressed!!

I’m sorry, but this place is something you would find in Europe, not Brisbane – it ticks all my boxes, oozing art nouveau meets Antonio Gaudi, meets blade runner - this place looks unreal! Custom furniture, bespoke light fittings, ornate balustrades, hanging wall gardens (yum):




















Did I say this already – I wanna go? Hey Brisbanites – is it worth me putting on my frock and stilettos, not to mention the war paint?

Check out this post at Lushe on Cloudland vertical gardens.

Ode to Irresistible Fabrics

Don’t you just love textiles? Browsing in stores picking up odds and ends of pieces of hand printed fabric, a bolt here a scrap there. I love to touch them, look at them, stack them. Well, thanks to the internet and my visit to Life in Style, I have discovered so many talented designers making wonderful fabrics, so this post is dedicated to them.
Bird Textiles – thinks about the environment from her Byron Bay studio and creates stylish fabrics, homewares, stationery, umbrellas and more. Shibori in Chippendale – creates a range of handmade, Japanese inspired silk fabrics as well as screen printed and digitally created fabrics and homewares.

 

Stylish fabrics from Surface Art – produced into garments and homewares and all Australian made and printed. They sell fabric by the metre for up to $88 and even little packs of offcuts. What home is complete without some Scandinavian retro print from my Bondi neighbour Funkis. Their fabrics are quite expensive, anything from $90 - $250 per metre, but they are quite sturdy so can be used for many decorating purposes.

Of course my favourite most inspirational read ever was the story of Bholu designer Jodie Freid who not only designed her own fabrics and homewares which are hand emboidered by women in India, but she has also set up her own not for profit building pre-schools for disadvantaged children in India, called the Anganwadi Project. Read this article on Dynamic Business to see what a great entrepreneur she is and to be inspired.

A feature of fabric would be incomplete without a reference to Marimekko from Finland. I do love those northern Europeans, with their clean, crisp distinctive style that is both modern and retro at the same time.

I’ve found it hard to find their fabrics in Australia. If you are lucky enough to be in Finland, Sweden, Germany or the UK, you can visit a Marimekko shop. There are a whole bunch of suppliers of the products in Australia but I have not personally stumbled across a place to buy fabric by the metre. If you know where to buy fabrics in Australia, let me know. But check out their cool 2009 Christmas catalogue.
I could prattle on forever, but if you want to see a whole bunch of great fabrics in one place, checkout Funky Fabrix. They have a whole bunch of fabrics from designers all over. Check out some of my faves: Monaluna, Joel Dewberry, Saffron Craig, Michael Miller…
And they have a 10% discount right now on all orders over $100.
I could go on… but I will save it for some other time.
Drop me a note about your favourite textiles designer or fabric haunt.

Beresford Hotel - amazing what $30 million will buy!

Carolyn and I ventured out for a girlie chit chat dinner last night and we chose the Beresford Hotel because I'd heard it had a swanky facelift from the days that I remembered. Well, facelift is an understatement - this was a total reconstruction!!

On the outside it looks like any other Surry Hills pub and to be honest, the bar just looks like any other (though according to the indesignlive website, it is a one of a kind curved dovetail bar!!). All I know is that it was crowded and took ages to get a drink. However, its the little things that catch your eye (until you've had one glass of wine too many and it all just blurs into a noisy, dark hum). What I liked the most was the lamps in the restaurant over the dinner table that could be pulled and moved to point in different directions - like a pipe cleaner. You can kind of see them in the photo below:

We also scored a free bottle of wine from the drunken Beresford accountant who was friendly enough and chatted to us about the $30 million interior reconstruction that sent the original owners broke.

The food was pretty good - Italian fare. I was starving after my run and wolfed down my mulloway with record speed. Carolyn savored her twice cooked chicken maryland (go figure) which was absolutely delicious and falling off the bone - I couldn't resist poking her plate while she was talking.

All up I would recommend it - definitely from a design perspective as there are some really cool features like the bathrooms (communal sink area), beautiful break neck wooden staircase and huge outdoor courtyard, fabulous wooden floors, the lamps (which I have mentioned) and olive oil containers with this little lid with the salt on top.

Spend some time looking at the no expense spared detail as its first class, very cool and Thomas Jacobsen chic. Worth a night out venture. I can't believe its taken me so long to go there!