Abigail Percy Earrings

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I’ve finally got round to photographing some new earrings from Abigail Percy.  Both feature her signature leaves – sweet horse chestnut leaves above and aquilegia leaves below.  I thought they looked great photographed with a couple of Karin Eriksson pieces as both artists like to play with outlines of leaves in their own different ways.

The sweet horse chestnut earrings are hand-pierced in sterling silver and I can’t imagine how much work goes into creating each one. 

The deliberately mis-matched aquilegia leaves are gold plated and then beautifully textured with linen. That girl is quite ridiculously clever and is also writing a great guest blog this week over on Design*Sponge.

I’m so pleased with these pictures as they are the first I’ve taken with my new daylight light, which meant I could take them in comparatively dull light. A new age of mirrormirror photography is dawning. Why did I never use proper photography lighting before?

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Shades of Grey and A Farewell

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The Minx and I (the Husband went skiing instead) set off for Victoria, BC this weekend to say farewell to my great friend Lisa who is off backpacking in India for a year at the beginning of March.

Living comparatively close to her has been one of the highlights of living in Seattle and the Minx and I will really miss her.  I doubt we’ll popping over to Victoria so often either and will miss its reassuring Englishness and its fabulous bookshop full of English authors and childrens’ books (I’m finding a lot of American childrens’ books unbearably sanctimonious and twee).

This time we flew out on one of tiny six seater seaplanes which we watch all day landing in and taking off from Lake Union (why is it terribly romantic to be in the flight path of floatplanes whereas we’d be complaining like mad if we had the same number of jets flying overhead?)

Flying past the Space Needle in black and white

The Sound was blanketed with cloud as we flew (must do this again in summer) but you can just make out all the islands below the clouds).  This is a colour photo.

A grey day is still good for the beach.

Though we did see some blue sky

 

Girls on tour.  A tremendously unflattering picture of the Minx and I messing about with the camera while waiting to get the boat home. You really wouldn’t want to mess with us, would you? 
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Atonement

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I finally got to see Atonement last week.

A great film, which stayed with me for days afterwards – always a good sign.  A wonderful performance by the girl playing the young Briony Tallis and even Keira Knightley managed not to set my teeth on edge too much.  And James McAvoy is of course very easy on the eye. In fact the whole film is ravishingly shot – it must win Oscars for cinematography if nothing else.

It was also a very faithful adaptation of Ian McEwan’s book and managed to conjure up the same atmosphere with images and sound that he does with words.

The evocation of a hot, humid, sticky, oppressive English summer’s day is particularly well done in the film. This article is well worth reading as it explains how the set designers went about creating the atmosphere of an overblown, high summer day, just tipping into decay, by adding lots of green to the set (including, obviously, Keira’s iconic green dress).

Stokesay Court was the house used, unusually, for filming both interior and outside shots, and it appears to be a fabulous example of Victorian nouveau riche excess and lack of taste. 

Every single surface is overloaded with pseudo-Elizabethan, Jacobean, Gothic, you name it ornamentation and really serves to heighten the sense of brooding oppression and of a rigid class system which the war is about to tear apart.

This article from the Daily Mail gives a really interesting history of the house and also tells how production designer Sarah Greenwood chose the house for its dark, stolid wooden inner hallway – the dark heart of the house and evocative of the story’s dark heart.  (Cue lots of scenes of Cecilia and Briony swishing up and down the staircase).

It also explains how one whole (ugly) wing of the house was photoshopped (or whatever the movie equivalent is) out in the film.

All photos from the Stokesay Court website.

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Colour Lovers

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Funnily enough, after finishing the previous post, I popped over to Decor8 and Holly was talking about getting interiors inspiration from fashion photography.

Amongst other great ideas, she suggests creating a palette on Colour Lovers, which I had never come across before, but which is quite fab.

Unfortunately the palette I put together from the images below is waaaay too sickly sweet. I think the images themselves only work because of the minimalist lines, the planes and the edges – note how everything is kept very spare and clean, even the model’s sleek hair and pale skin.  The fierce shoes (just loving those shoes) and bright, bright light help too.

I think you’d feel quite nauseous quite quickly from sugar overload if you translated this palette into an interior scheme.

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Sugar Almond Colours

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The winter sky is grey as per flippin’ usual here in Seattle, but this fashion shoot from the February edition of BritishVogue just reeks of summer.

I love everything about it – the minimalist lines juxtaposed with the frothy, girly fashions; the sugar candy colours; the playful purple shadows and that bright, bright white summery light.  And that sea. It sure beats the steel grey of Lake Union that I can see through my bedroom window as I work at my desk.

Apropos of pretty much nothing at all, I remembered at the weekend that about fifteen years ago I visited a clairvoyant in a gipsy caravan on the seafront at Weymouth and he told me that he saw me living in ‘a country beginning with A, with a view over the water’.  Spooky eh?

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Resolutions

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The ‘January’ page from the beautiful letterpress calendar I got from Green Chair Press

I know, late again.  But I had a birthday party to organise.

Even though I didn’t do particularly well with last year’s, (I failed in all of them except the last one) here are my resolutions for this year since writing things down is supposed to make them happen (I may have to get this book).

Get thin – last year I resolved to lose 2 stone (28lbs).  I didn’t manage to do that but am thrilled to have lost 11lbs so far since starting WeightWatchers in November.  Finally something seems to be working and I’m actually finding it comparatively do-able, so now there’s no excuse.

Get dancing – I made that resolution last year too, but had to give up salsa dancing after two sessions because my left foot was in agonizing pain.  Lots of chiropractic over the past year has done a lot to sort out my foot and back problems (though spraining my ankle badly in the summer didn’t help). I’ve also just started a course of ten Rolfing sessions, which, although fairly excruciating while it’s happening, could turn out to be the best thing I’ve ever done. So ballroom dancing classes here I come!

Get organised – now that the Minx is going to school for one extra day a week I’ve got a bit more time to do all that deep-seated organisational stuff instead of chasing my tail all the time. I might even get round to unpacking all the stuff we brought from England. We even went to Ikea this weekend to buy storage and organisational things.  The first project is my workspace in our bedroom.

Get making – I’ve recently realised that I live round the corner from one of the most incredible bead shops I’ve ever come across and they run jewellery-making classes.  So I’ve signed up for Beginners’ Beading and Beginners’ Wire Wrapping.

Get going on the house – all the house remodelling stuff rather ground to a halt last year but now I’m full of ideas and raring to go now.  First up I’ve lined up a consultation with this lady (who comes highly recommended by Daily Candy -Seattle).  I’m hoping she will be able to help me cut through all the design overwhelm that is bogging me down at the moment and also help me source stuff in Seattle and the US in general. I need to tidy before she comes though.

Get photographing- this year I want to take my photography to a whole new level, both with my new table-top studio and also in general.  Maybe even open a little Etsy shop to sell prints and postcards of my work.  We’ll see.

Get blogging – Now I’ve got more time, I  also want to take this blog to another level.  Not a design blog per se, but include lots more design inspiration, lots more house stuff and lots more photography.

Get rich – last year I resolved to double mirrormirror’s revenues.  That didn’t happen, though when we do the annual accounts this year, I’m hoping that we’ll see it became a lot more profitable after ditching the PR company. But I feel like it’s in a great place currently.  I’m loving working with my friend Diane back in the UK, so hopefully things will be staying as they are for the foreseeable future, which gives us a fab platform to work off. And if I now have 50% more time to dedicate to the business then revenues must go up by at least 50%, no?

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This birthday party is brought to you by the number three..

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I have no idea how the Minx managed to turn three without me noticing.  Surely she was still my baby only last week?

So on Saturday we hosted an Elmo party – dress code ‘red’ – for more than twenty toddlers and attendant parents.  Thanks to the lovely people at Urban Monkeys (a beautiful light and bright ‘loft’ style venue in South Lake Union with enough room for a play gym and bouncy castle) we all had a wonderful time and I’ve never seen a happier or more excited Minx.

You will see that her taste in cakes hasn’t changed that much from last year.

I have come to the conclusion that having a child in mid-January really is monumentally bad planning. There’s absolutely no chance to recover from Christmas and trips to England – you just have to keep going with the planning and organising and baking.

Now that we’ve finally got Christmas and birthdays out of the way, MY year can finally begin. Yippee!!!

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Sale Time!

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The mirrormirror sale is now online, with lots of bargains to be had.

There are only one or two examples left of many of the items, so when they’re gone that’s it – we won’t be getting these things in again.

So now’s the time to treat yourselves to a gorgeous beaded silk evening bag by hot Australian designer Megan Park. These are utterly stunning, made of the softest silk and gently padded with exquisite jewel-like hand beading. 

Or embroidered and beaded silk cushion covers by Dishya. The workmanship that has gone into these is unbelievable.

Or treat yourself to a delicately beaded sterling silver necklace or earrings.  The designer of these is no longer making jewellery since having a baby, so when these are gone, they’re really, REALLY gone.

We also have one beautiful soft nubuck leather photo album left in pale lavender, which would be absolutely perfect for wedding photos.

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First the Good News

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It was good to start the New Year with a nice bit of coverage of the piggy bank in Grand Designs magazine – that TV show is one of the things I miss most about the UK. 

I just love Poppy Norton’s styling here, that perfect purple background really brings out the simple orange, red and white colour scheme and the strong shapes, which are emphasized by the deep shadows the photographer has created.

The bad news is that we’re completely out of piggies and designer Pamela Barsky has decided not to produce them any more, which is rather a shame since I never quite managed to nab one for myself.

I was thrilled to discover one of these in my Christmas stocking this year and one of my resolutions for this year is to do a lot more tabletop studio photography.

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