One of my main resolutions for next year is to really work on my photography and sell some of it through the shop.
I really like the simplicity and ethereal quality of these photos by Kitty Rogers, available to purchase through her Etsy shop.
And most particularly I love her teeny tiny calendar – 12 little (business card sized) calendar photo cards on a tiny easel. In fact, I love it so much that I’ve just ordered one for daily photography inspiration.
{found via Lobster and Swan}
Design bloggeuse extraordinaire Holly Becker over at Decor8 is running an e-course in January called Blogging Your Way which will talk about becoming a more successful blogger and include tips on photography and styling. And I’ve signed up!
I really want to take this blog to the next level in the new year and work on my photography/product styling, so it seemed like a great way to do this in a focused way and kickstart the year. And get to meet other bloggers online.
There are apparently a handful of places left if you want to sign up – all you need is a blog, a camera and $119 for the seven week course. All deets and registration here. I’ll keep you updated with how it’s going in January and maybe share some of the assignments on here, if they’re shareable.
{image via Decor8}
Our favourite jewellista Abigail Percy and her beau Ryan Bell of Chick Stud Earrings fame have been working day and night (at least according to their Facebook status updates) on their new range of home textiles, based on Abigail’s stunning botanical drawings.
Their beautiful and unusual teatowels and scatter cushions are made from 100% cotton or 100% Pure Irish Linen, hand printed in the UK and hand-sewn in the duo’s Belfast design studio.
I love the colours they’ve used and they’ve done a fantastic job with the styling the images as well. Definitely thinking about getting some of these in the shop after Christmas. In the meantime they’re available online from Abigail*Ryan.
Or, food styling is INCREDIBLY hard.
Remember these? I got some for the store, but then needed to photograph them in all their glory, so I became a food stylist for the weekend.
In order to keep more control over colours and styling etc. I decided to make my own cupcakes (this was quite probably a mistake). So I baked a batch of these (my go to cupcake recipe) and mixed up several batches of standard buttercream in vanilla, chocolate, pink and extremely pink.
I realised that I would have to improve on my usual rather haphazard cupcake icing methods and decided to get some proper equipment. An online search took me here – I can highly recommend this kit although it’s just a nice piping bag with four large nozzles.
Finally I needed a plain cupcake stand that wouldn’t detract from the cupcake wrappers themselves. Martha Stewart and Macy’s came to the rescue with the perfect stand which was even on sale.
Then followed several hours of icing and re-icing cupcakes, arranging them and rearranging them on the plate, cursing profusely when I got icing over everything and taking a million photos.
And then several more hours with Photoshop, cropping and brightening and lightening and blurring the background and eliminating icing smudges from everything.
Here are the results of literally hours of work. It always looks so easy when you see it in the magazines.
You can buy the cupcake wrappers here. To get free shipping anywhere in the world on any order that includes cupcake wrappers, choose the ‘Free Shipping (with Offer Code)’ option and enter the code ‘MIRRORMIRROR BLOG’ in the ‘how did you hear about us’ box at checkout. Please buy loads and make all the time and effort worthwhile.
Can you believe it’s been three years since we first got our visas for the US?
When we first came out to Seattle we assumed that definitely be back in the UK before our visas ran out. But here we are three years later, happily settled and with no return to Europe in prospect, needing new visas. You have to leave the country to get them renewed so we’ve driven 150 miles up the freeway to spend a few days in Vancouver.
Here are a few pics from a gorgeous autumnal walk we went on yesterday in Stanley Park.
And here are a couple of links which might be of interest until I’m back properly in front of a computer (on Friday).
First up Alexandra from A Bit Late is not impressed with Kelly Wearstler’s beach house. While I don’t think I hate it as much as her previous effort (she appears to have given up raiding the British Museum) I’m not sure it has a huge amount to commend it. I haven’t yet seen the Metropolitan Home feature though.
Also our friend Marcel Wanders has apparently designed a range of Christmas decorations for Target here in the US. I had high hopes for these as he’s done good stuff before for Habitat in the UK but really, with the exception of the big red, white and silver column candles which I may have to acquire, he was phoning this in without even bothering to switch on the phone. BO-RING.
Or fences that grow apples.
Look what we’ve been picking recently! Small, perfectly formed, and just the right size for the Minx’s lunchbox.
I first got the idea to use espaliered apple trees as fences when we visited the tulip festival back in 2007 and they’d used them to fence in the car park.
Here are our two just planted espaliers to the left of the picture below back when the garden was new in August 2007.
That first year they sure did look pretty but the one apple they produced was eaten by our garden squirrel.
This year, however, look what we got.
The extremely cool thing about these espaliers – as you can just about see from the picture above - is that each of the four branches has a different variety of apple on it. The Gala and Granny Smith apples in the top picture both came off the same tree.
What I like about art is that sometimes it teaches you to look at things with a different perspective.
In my life I must have spent thousands upon thousands of hours commuting backwards and forwards on the Tube in London, but never once did I think to look for these surreal juxtapositions of Tube trains/passengers and the huge ad posters which are posted on the other side of tunnels from the platforms.
Genius stuff. By Yusuf Ozkizil.
And now these pictures have got me all nostalgic for the Tube. Who knew that I would think of those days of being crammed in like sardines with one’s nose stuck in someone’s smelly armpit with such fondness?
How on earth did I live before I had my iPhone? It seems impossible to even contemplate now, though I still find the touch screen infuriating at times.
Here’s one of my current favourite iPhone apps.
Developed by Seattle photographer Chase Jarvis, The Best Camera allows you to add some cool effects to your iPhone photos and also upload them easily to social networking sites such as Facebook etc.
Here’s an untweaked iPhone photo
and here is the same image tweaked using four different filters – Jewel, Paris, Slate and Candy (there are some more standard filters such as B&W and warm up filters as well). You can also combine several different filters together. Jarvis has set up a website www.thebestcamera.com where you can upload the images you’ve taken – loads of great pics up there already.
These cute (I have no idea why they’re cute and not scary or ugly, but they are) mama and baby owls come courtesy of a blog reader Bushra who – after our recent owl discussion – emailed me the link for these owls on Etsy. Which was splendidly timed to arrive just when the Husband was casting about for a birthday present that his baby could give to her mama…
It’s a busy month round here – both the Husband and I have birthdays and it’s also our wedding anniversary – so we decided to both take the day off work and go on ‘hot date’ instead.
Can anyone tell me why we haven’t done this before? It felt so deliciously naughty and decadent and we didn’t even need a babysitter, just friends who were kind enough to pick the Minx up from school.
Despite the fact that we live close to Seattle’s Lake Union and are constantly buzzed by the seaplanes flying overhead, the Husband had never been on one (I did here, but it’s not quite the same in February), so we decided to book a flight out to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island.
I do keep forgetting what a ridiculously beautiful corner of the world I accidentally ended up in.
It’s expensive, but on a beautiful day I can’t recommend this highly enough to anyone living in the Pacific Northwest. It truly was one of the most awesome things I’ve ever done in my life.
Or what makes this work?
Holly over on Decor8 put up a very thought-provoking post recently asking for styling tips and wondering how interiors stylists manage to achieve that sort of perfect lived-in dishevelment which just looks desirable and comfortable rather than messy and cluttered.
I thought it would be fun to take a look at rooms that ‘work’ and see if we could analyse what makes them look so good and try and pick up some styling tips of our own.
This room takes the city of Barcelona as its inspiration and comes from the Habitat-sponsored supplement in October’s Elle Decoration UK.
So, what makes this work?
Colour Editing
– The colour palette used is very limited – just splashes of red, orange and yellow against a white background. A few touches of blue and green are introduced in the kitchen and on the sunburst clock just to stop it all looking too ‘matchy matchy’ (and because I suspect the tiles were a permanent feature the stylist could do nothing about).
The colour values on the other hand are varied, from the dark red chair (and note that half-hidden but important black chair) to the medium values of the yellow and translucent orange and the lightness of the white.
Echoing Shapes
I love it when stylists do this. Look at how the orange rectangles in the windows are echoed by the orange fridge and how the straight lines of this quite boxy room are reflected in the large floor tiles. Then see how all those edges are softened by circles of the table and round chairs, which are again echoed by the lampshade. And how the rounded corners of the fridge are repeated in the rounded arms of the straight-legged chairs and the gentle curve of the fireplace.
Tchotchkes/Knick Knacks
The funny modern chess set on the table looks a bit incongruous I think, though I can see why something predominantly white, black and boxy was used for the scheme. I love the way they’ve used the beautiful tins that Spanish packaging is famous for but then mixed in some slightly less glamorous packaging with the salt and the teabags so that it looks like a real person might live there (though the salt pot echoes that little canister at the front and the colours of said salt and teabags match perfectly). Varying the heights and sizes of the canisters to the left also gives some visual interest.
I particularly like the artfulness of having front chair a little askew so that it looks like someone has just sipped their drink (note the perfect colour), got up from the chess game, and is lurking just out of shot. Though why this person needs sunglasses to play chess beats me.
Hidden Theme?
I think the theme here is ‘sun’. That’s certainly what this room makes me think of. The colours of course are part of it, but also the sunglasses and sunburst clock, the bright yellow daisy-like flowers in the tea cosy and wall art and the shape of the pendant shade say ‘sun’ to me.
What do you think? Does the room work for you? What other little pleasing tricks do you notice? What could the stylist have done better? Why has the enormous pepperpot shown in the main picture disappeared from the kitchen close-up?
