Colour + Design Archives - Page 15 of 60

Happy Keyboard

January 11, 2012 By Paola 2 Comments

This gorgeous craft project by MiniFanFan popped up in my Twitter stream last week courtesy of Nicole from Making It Lovely – guaranteed to appeal both to my love of washi tape and my love of pretty keyboards.

I think it’s gorgeous and I would love to emulate it, if only I had a cool small white keyboard and and not an ugly black ergonomic monstrosity. But I dunno, this might even be worth suffering the RSI.

Fortunately I can continue to indulge my love of pretty tape. This bowl of lovelies comes from Lotta Jansdotter’s new shop. And yes it is an Instagram photo.

Instagram – My New Obsession

January 10, 2012 By Paola 2 Comments

Over the last few months a lot of people have asked me whether I was on Instagram or not.

I wasn’t because I couldn’t really see the point – I was already taking plenty of iPhone photos and sharing them on Twitter and Facebook and I didn’t really need to be on another social media time-sucking platform, did I?

How wrong I was. As I mentioned before, one of this year’s resolutions was to try out Instagram, mostly because I thought it would be an easy way to do a ‘365 project’ and post a photo a day. On January 1st I posted one solitary photo from our New Year’s Day walk in Gasworks Park and thenceforth I have become gently obsessed. Instagram is like Twitter for photos. Follow some great photographers and you’ll have a constant stream of scrumptious eyecandy delivered direct to your phone. Take a photo with your phone (iPhones only at the moment unfortunately), or a upload a picture you took earlier, apply a suitably retro filter and then have it delivered to the Instagram network and also to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flick.

It’s been a great way to reconnect with blogger friends away from the noise of Twitter and Facebook and of finding new creative and imaginative people online as they go about their beautiful business.

And it’s easy to produce lovely images. The camera on the new iPhone 4s is crazy good and the various photography apps and filters available (I’m using Camera+ and Picfx as well as the Instagram filters) make it fun to create all sorts of effects.

I’m enjoying the challenge of working within the iPhone’s limitations – wide-angle lens, tiny aperture, rubbish in low light, square format, not many pixels – and love the fact that the phone is usually to hand, when you see pretty lightshades at the opticians or a pile of soggy, but colourful leaves on a rainy trip to the dentist. It’s not a substitute for a fancy camera, but a very fabulous adjunct.

Already my Instagram feed is proving to be a cool visual journal of January 2012, and seeing all the photos grouped together has shown me that I do in fact have photographic style – colourful and graphic yet dreamy – which has never leapt out at me before.

Rest assured you’ll be seeing more Instagram photos on the blog in the days and weeks ahead (I’ll format them as Polaroids here so you can spot them).

And of course the whole network is riddled with cute pictures of cats.

Are you on Instagram? What do you like about it? Which apps do you use? What’s your username so I can follow you? I am mirrormirrorxx.

Things I Am Loving – Wooden Christmas Trees

December 8, 2011 By Paola 1 Comment

We’ll be putting up our Christmas decorations this weekend and I would love to be able to justify buying this utterly fabulous ‘Superstar’ Christmas tree by Modernica, available in either a full-sized floor-standing version or for the table top.

In the absence of a significant lottery win between now and Christmas I’m going to have to content myself with my much-loved and much cheaper Muji mantelpiece version. For some reason these never seem to be available on the US Muji site, though they do have them online in the UK.

The one on the left is the version we have, I’ll snap a picture of it in situ when we get it out this weekend. The one on the right is the current version, which is maybe a nicer shape, but has far less charming decorations.

Picture the Holidays – All You Need is Love

December 5, 2011 By Paola 1 Comment

I think this one’s pretty much self-explanatory. Not exactly creative, but I couldn’t pass this one up.

Picture the Holidays – Holding on to Gratitude

December 2, 2011 By Paola Leave a Comment

This December I’ve decided to try my hand at putting together a ‘Picture the Holidays’ photo prompt book put together by Tracey Clark of Shutter Sisters via Paper Coterie.

Every day I am emailed a photo prompt to inspire me to take a photo, which I then upload into a photobook on the Paper Coterie site, which I can then have printed if I wish. I know I’m crap at following through on these sorts of projects, but a month of photos seems just about manageable.

Yesterday’s prompt was entitled ‘Holding On To Gratitude’, encouraging us to think about what we’re grateful for. Funnily enough the night before I had gone to sleep thinking particularly grateful thoughts as I’d been reading a thread on Ravelry where people had been asking for good wishes and prayers because they were going through some particularly horrible things in their lives. I know I am insanely lucky in so many ways.

Unfortunately, the things I am most truly grateful for – my health; my bright, beautiful, healthy daughter; my lovely husband and his lovely job; my wonderful friends; even my fabulous blog friends, were either too abstract, or too absent at school or work to be photographed yesterday.

Instead I hit up on something rather random. When you’re doing the Dukan diet you do become incredibly grateful for that morning cup of joe, which is permitted – oh joy! – if made with non-fat milk. This photo for me sums up the warmth and comfort of home; reminds me how lucky I am to be able to afford a fancy coffee machine to make fancy coffee in a fancy mug; makes me think of my husband, and of Seattle, where I’m so lucky to be able to live. And in a literal interpretation of ‘hold on’ I like that this pictures is full of handles. Oh well, it made sense to me.

What would you photograph given that prompt?

In a spectacular photography fail yesterday, I took my camera out last night to see the Christmas Ships without its SD card. So you’ll just have to image the fabulous pictures I would have taken of my daughter’s shining face as she gazed at the lit-up boats, next to blazing bonfires, against the sparkling backdrop of downtown and the Space Needle. They might have been a little more appropriate for the above challenge too. Grrrrrr.

Oh and Dine & Dish is doing this too, go to her blog for a different perspective on things.

Advent Calendars

December 2, 2011 By Paola 1 Comment

It’s the first of December so we’re allowed to start talking Christmas (or ‘the holidays’ if you prefer).

The Minx’s advent tree, which is yearly supplied with small treats by one of the Minx’s godmothers, will go up tonight and I thought it might be fun to round up some other advent type things I’ve come across in the last few days.

One of the Minx’s other godmothers (yep, we did a good job picking those) has sent her a link to this gorgeous-looking online advent calendar by Jacquie Lawson featuring Christmassy London scenes. I don’t seem to be able to share the demo, but do click on it, it’s really charming. I don’t care about the Minx, I’m excited enough to start open the first link when she comes home from school tonight.

Also tonight, we’re off to see the Christmas Ships as they set off on their nightly December odyssey round Seattle’s waterways. Rain has always conspired to stop us seeing them before, but it looks like it will be OK tonight. Hopefully pictures tomorrow.

The Daily Suze found two beautiful, more grown-up, advent calendars.

This from the White Company (how I miss that shop). I love this idea of having a tasteful tree decoration for every day and transferring them one by one from the calendar to the tree. Maybe when we get back to having tasteful trees again we’ll do this.

This calendar is also minimalist and lovely, and even I wouldn’t have trouble making it. It could be made to fit into any décor too, if you changed the colour of the boxes. I still don’t quite see the Minx appreciating it yet though.

If you want an advent calendar for yourself go along to Paper Coterie where they are doing a project called ‘Picture the Holidays’. Every day you will be emailed a prompt to take a photograph and at the end you will get the chance to put all your gorgeous images together into a photo book. Facebook friends who have done one Paper Coteries’s Prompt Me projects before have said that it’s very fun, so I’ve decided to sign up. Let’s see how it goes. I’ll put more details up in dedicated posts as the month progresses.

Finally, if you’re into shopping rather than photography, Abigail*Ryan, purveyors of beautiful homewares, are doing a 12 Days of Christmas Sale. Search for the snowflakes on one of their gorgeous handprinted teatowels or cushions and get it on sale for one day only. And if anyone wants to buy me one of their teatowel gift boxes, please feel free.

Can You Tell What It Is Yet?

December 1, 2011 By Paola 1 Comment

After last year’s tiny little needles and tiny little stitches for Carmen Banana, I am treating myself to chunky size 15 needles and chunky weight yarn to make the Minx’s knitted Christmas present.

I’ll post regular updates before the big day and the first person to guess what it is wins my undying admiration.

Things I Am Loving–Cross Stitch iPhone Cover

November 17, 2011 By Paola 3 Comments

I’ve only ever done cross-stitch once before, when I decided to make a sampler from a kit for a friend’s baby, because it looked like it would be quicker than knitting a sweater. Yeah right. I just hope that the cross stitch fabric wasn’t somehow imbued with all the cursing that occurred in its presence.

And yet, and yet. These fabulous iPhone covers from fabulous NYC yarn shop Purl Soho are enough to make me want to pick up the cross-stitch needle again. Only the thought of having to buy lots of different expensive packs of embroidery thread is preventing me.

If you’re braver than I am, full instructions are on the Purl Bee blog here. The iPhone covers themselves are available to buy in the PurlSoho shop here. The only problem is choosing what colour to get.

Autumn Leaves

November 10, 2011 By Paola 3 Comments

Today I went out for a stroll to grab a coffee.

I really must admit that Seattle does trees extraordinarily well.

Desperate Housewife

October 20, 2011 By Paola Leave a Comment

As an often frustrated stay at home mum who loves colourful things, this gorgeous editorial from Vogue Italia spoke to me at a visceral level. After all I do spend an awful lot of my time hiding under the sink wearing killer stilettos and a cocktail dress.

Welcome to my world.