The Daily Dress

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Seattle Daily Candy came up trumps last week by spotlighting these gorgeous paintings of vintage dresses by Seattle-based artist Liz Tran, which she displays on her blog The Daily Dress.  

I love the idea of using them in a kid’s room as in this photo from Seattle Homes & Lifestyles.

Actually I’m rather taken by her other paintings as well. The Husband and I are thinking of buying a piece of art as a 10th anniversary present for us to share, so I might just drag him along to her Open Studio, which I see from her blog is happening at the beginning of November.

I suspect the dresses though are a bit too girly even for the Husband, who prides himself on his ‘metrosexuality’.

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Fireplace Tales

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I’ve been feeling like a bit of a fraud recently. 

My post on the miraculous Soy Gel paint stripper had been picked up by various people, most notably Apartment Therapy and Not Martha, while all the while my fireplace was still looking like this.

So much for walking the talk.  Please note that this is not because of any problems with said miraculous paint stripper but because of sheer laziness on behalf of the fireplace’s new owners.

So, shamed into action, said owners spent last weekend slathering the fireplace with what remained of the miraculous paint stripper.

We again left it overnight, to be greeted by this the following morning.    I have to say that this time, because we used a lot more gloop, the smell was rather unpleasant, but not unbearable and certainly not like it might be causing you a nasty chemical-induced death.

Here’s close up of how the paint bubbles up and falls off of its own accord.

After a lot of peeling and a bit of scraping, this is what we ended up with.

As you can see, a 1 quart bottle got rid of most of the red, most of the white layer underneath and quite a lot of the greyish (primer?) under that. We’ve deliberately kept the upside-down brick pyramid thingies underneath mantel red, as we were thinking of painting them white, and likewise keeping the bricks at the bottom white (thought the Husband did mistakenly put paint stripper on the righthand upside-down brick pyramid thingy, so the paint has bubbled and needs to be sanded).

A new bottle of SoyGel has just arrived from Amazon, so this weekend it’s onwards and upwards.  Tune in for another gripping instalment (hopefully) next week.

Online ordering is now back on the site!  It just remains to be seen whether Lynx Internet has indeed lost the entire customer database (thank goodness most of it was uploaded into our separate email database) and the historic order database. It also remains to be seen whether I can sue them for all the additional grey hairs they helped create at the weekend.  

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Grrrrr

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And there I was, just feeling that doing our own PR was one of the best decisions I’d made in a long time (check out another fab mention on Di Overton’s awesome Designer’s Block) when the mirrormirror website just disappeared from the Internet…

Cue a Sunday of panic as we tried in vain to contact the hosting company to find out what on earth was happening.  They finally deigned to let us know late on Monday morning that they’d had a major outage and that various servers required reconfiguration. 

The site is now back online, but online ordering still isn’t working (36 hours later), so if you’re thinking of buying something may I suggest that you call us on 0845 257 3079.

And if you’re foolish enough to be thinking of setting up a online e-commerce site, may I suggest that you avoid Lynx Internet’s hosting like the plague.

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Purple and orange and blue

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The clouds have started rolling in again over the Sound and while Seattle is usually covered in its customary grey pall, occasionally the clouds part, the sun shines through and the sky does extraordinary and mesmerising things. 

Silver linings

Purple rain (the light really was this colour) 

Sunrise over the I-5 (thanks to the Minx for waking us up this early)

Sunrise over Seattle (again courtesy of the Minx) 

This sunrise was so spectacular we all had to head up to the deck in our pyjamas and watch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original photos on Flickr
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When I Was One-and-Twenty

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She is quite small, only 6″x8″

XIII. “When I was one-and-twenty…”
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
‘Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

I’ve fnally treated myself to one of Michelle Caplan’s little collages. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am with her.  I have no idea yet where to put her, but she is currently propped up against one of the little speakers on my desk and her eyes follow me round the room.

Michelle somewhat prosaically named her Sally3 but I think I will call her Melissa, because she looks like Melissa from ‘thirtysomething’  (she says, dating herself quite a lot).

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Atelier LZC

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And a couple more nice bits of recent coverage.  

The Matryoschka tea towels were mentioned in Ideal Home magazine as well as on the House to Home website .  The coverage has been generating a few orders, though not as many as we usually get from that magazine. It’s strange how sometimes a bit of coverage can get stuff flying off the shelves, whereas sometimes it doesn’t have much of an effect.

I was amused to see that the Russian doll effect noted by sfgirlbybay is also alive and well in the UK.  Is it wrong of me to really like those boxes by Asda (!) in the bottom right corner?

The Atelier LZC hanging peacocks also had a very nice mention yesterday on the wonderful UK-based design blog Print & Pattern.  If you haven’t seen this blog before, go check it out, it really is a daily dose of inspiration.

I’ve got the new Atelier LZC catalogue in front of me today and am just about to place a new order, including some new products, so watch this space.

Diane and I have been spending a LOT of time this summer putting together our own in-house press list.  It’s been a huge amount of work, but we’re hoping that we’ll still get some press coverage without having to pay a PR company a big retainer. 

So far it seems to be working.  We’ve had some good Christmas call-outs (doesn’t guarantee they’ll be used mind you) and hopefully have some other bits of coverage lined up. If you’re a journalist or design blogger and would like to be added to our list then please email to get in touch.

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With thee

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Ten years ago yesterday I went to church, took a walk in a graveyard, travelled across London on top of a double decker bus, held a cocktail party in a bijou London hotel and went for dinner at the Ivy in a corset.

Here’s one of the readings we had during the service.

With thee conversing I forget all time,  
All seasons and thir change, all please alike.  
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,  
With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun  
When first on this delightful Land he spreads  
His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour,  
Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth  
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on  
Of grateful Eevning milde, then silent Night  
With this her solemn Bird and this fair Moon,  
And these the Gemms of Heav’n, her starrie train:  
But neither breath of Morn when she ascends  
With charm of earliest Birds, nor rising Sun  
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, floure,  
Glistring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,  
Nor grateful Evening mild, nor silent Night  
With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon,  
Or glittering Starr-light without thee is sweet.

              From Paradise Lost by John Milton

I would still have the same reading today.  Thank you for all the love and laughter.

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Gorgeous New Gift Ideas

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Before we went to London I was manically photographing some new stuff to get on the site, but realise I forgot to show them to you. 

Click to enlarge. More photos on my Flickr

I photograph everything in natural light (I have no idea what to do with lights and lightmeters etc.) so I was pleased to catch the last of the summer sunshine (goodness the weather has been awful here this week).

I decided to ring the changes and get some different things from Karin Eriksson – one of her ceramic mobiles, her set of three little dishes and some porcelain tealight holders. The only problem with photographing these is showing  how utterly gorgeous they are.  Believe me when I say they’re a hundred times more beautiful than I’ve managed to show.

We’re also thrilled to have two new designers in the collection. We love the delicate Hummingbird design on these bone china ‘breakfast for ones’ and mugs from Lillibulle Ceramics and the graphic black and white prints on these tea towels from Grace & Go.

Last but not least we have the most wearable pair of earrings ever from Abigail Percy.  I snuck a pair for myself in when I ordered them and I don’t think I’ve stopped wearing them since I got them.

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Coffee Break

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We welcomed a new member of the family at the weekend. His name is francisfrancis! and we already love him to bits and stroke him lots.

Please ignore yellow wall 

Since moving to Seattle the Husband has developed a serious coffee addiction, and it was such a pleasure to get him a birthday present that didn’t involve X-Boxes. 

I, on the other hand, am *this* close to developing a serious Illy coffee cup addiction. I’ve always loved using Illy coffee cups on my trips to Italy – my cousin has several Illy Collection boxed sets which are brought out on special occasions – but without a machine had no excuse to buy them.  But now…

For our everyday cups I found some Biennale di Venezia 2005 cups.  These aren’t a signed and numbered Illy Collection set and were just made for use in bars all over Italy.  I think they’re gorgeous and they have that very satisfying Illy heaviness and feel in the hand. There are lots on eBay if you want to indulge as they’re not particularly rare.

For our special occasion cups (see what I mean about an addiction?) I’m in the process of acquiring a signed and numbered Illy Collection set of the Tazzine Ballerine.  These ones aren’t particularly rare either as they only came out in 1999 but I do like the design.

Now I need to start working on cappucino cups. If anyone fancies selling me a complete set of Dream cappucino cups you know where to find me.  I’m indebted (in every sense of the word) to this site for feeding my growing fascination. Look on eBay and specialist sites for the cups themselves.  Some of the rarer editions are already fetching crazy money, since they’re no longer just cups, but signed and numbered art works by top artists.

I’m sort of wishing that we’d got it in one of the more iconic francisfrancis! colours, such as red, orange or sky blue, but we want to keep him for life and I’m not sure I’m going to be wanting an orange kitchen when I’m ninety.  And this way he matches my KitchenAid and we get to paint the kitchen any colour we want.

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