Perle

Love this Perle pendant from habitat. It has that Alice in Wonderland feel when you look at it - is the room upside down or am I standing on the ceiling ?

Image: habitat

Great Outdoors

I recently ordered a few samples of these fabrics from the big range at Fab Outdoor Fabrics. Unlike their interior cousins these fabrics do have a serviceable feel but the patterns and colours are great.

Images: Fab Outdoor Fabrics

Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta

This is a scheme I designed for the son of a friend of mine, he is just six but the brief was to choose furnishings that he would grow in to rather than outgrow. The print is a perfect artwork for a boys room - it has both the NATO and nautical flag alphabets and is very reasonably priced from my long time favourite Keep Calm Gallery in London (who will mail prints to Australia)

Click to enlarge

Images: Keep Calm Gallery, La Maison, Sheridan

Sixhands Passionflower

I have now finished my interior design studies and am thoroughly enjoying having no projects and deadlines. A downside is that I am missing the ideas 15 other design fans brought to class each week. The credit for this fabric find goes to my friend Jo. This is passionflower by Sydney based studio Sixhands. I love the Sixhands website - it is Versace-esque with intense colours and patterns making you want to buy it all !!

Penny for your thoughts . .

Old chairs and shades of blue - two of my favourite things. These refurbished chairs are available through Penny Farthing Design House. You can read their story here. Love this little gem of a chair and the styling below.

Images: Penny Farthing Design House

Northern lights

My most recent assignment was a living dining room in a small terrace - we could choose the style so I decided to go nordic and choose things that are either designed in Scandinavia or (in my view) reflect the style and quality of the region's designs. My main inspiration was the stunning Coco Pendant from Coco Flip, fabrics are from Funkis and the accessories are from Ferm Living. The chairs are from the Family chairs designed by Lina Nordqvist.

Images: Funkis, Coco Flip, Ferm Living

Tres Tintas Nimbus

I spent a serene half hour looking at fabrics in Funkis store Miljo in Bondi this morning and flicked through the latest book of wallpapers from Tres Tintas - stunning patterns and colours. Nimbus has loads of movement and is really elegant in the petrol blue colourway.

Image: Tres Tintas

Colours of The High Line

These shots are from The High Line in NYC the relatively new urban park constructed on a disused railway. The colours used in this glass installation in this old rail building are so subtly varied and effective and hard to photograph ! You can get an idea of the size from the little man in the second photo.

Images: Folder of Ideas

Bright lights

I have been travelling since I was here last. My husband and I were in Washington DC and New York for a while in September and had such a blast and (for me) inspiring time. So the massive gaps in the posting schedule are mostly due the fact that the only part of the globe I have not traversed in an aircraft in the last two months is the ( relatively if you live in Australia ) short hop from NYC to Dublin. Many firsts - saw the Hollywood sign from the sky as I took off from LA for the first time, visited Anthropologie, first heard of Restoration Hardware ( where had I been ? ) and had the best stay at the Bowery Hotel in NYC. Some serious firsts too - visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC which was incredibly powerful and the person to person tour of Ground Zero which was unforgettable also. Happy to be home and hoping to get blogging.

Image: Raven & Lamb

Fancy footwork

Love a bit of detail or a point of difference in an interior. I have zoomed in on the object of my interest here - the little leg and detailing on the big kitchen bench. The little turned foot on this island bench lets it touch the floor lightly which offsets its massive proportion in the room. Like the wooden floor and the lights also.

Image: Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles via Greige

Man Cave

In the spirit of Father's Day (today in Australia) I have trawled my image library for something suitably male and this wine cellar is the best I have. I have explained before I think that much of Sydney is built on sandstone so in older areas houses have beautiful foundations. In most cases under the house is pretty dark and damp and you need to watch out for dangerous spiders so this wine cellar is fairly exceptional. Love the clever lighting around the floor and the wine bottle pendant. If I had this in my house I would put a big glass door on the cellar so that you could see in and enjoy the sandstone all the time.

Image: via Desire to Inspire

Zenith

I was at a fun session last night on styling living and dining rooms at Freedom. One of our teachers is an interior designer for Freedom and has a lot of experience in merchandising. Although I was listening in class my eyes were wandering and spotted this little desk lamp which has very pleasing proportions and is reasonably priced at $99. There is also a standard lamp in a similar design.

Image: Freedom

Etoile

In the thick of my interior design course I spent an hour in the Mokum showroom - truly beautiful fabrics. Many are designed upstairs and the design development drawings and paintings are framed underneath the work tables which is a gorgeous idea. This is a gem of a fabric. I am working on a bedroom assignment channeling art deco and the dusky pink colourway of Etoile by Mokum was exactly what I was looking for.

Images: Mokum

Pretty pendants

These Egyptian pendants are available from Tokens of Living - purveyors of a beautifully curated collection of high end European furniture, antiques and lighting. Their shop in Sydney's northern beaches area is always a joy to visit. Clusters of light fittings - especially spherical ones - are so much more generous and opulent looking than one lonley little sphere I find. The Tokens website says these lights are now much reduced in price - must call to see how much.

Image: Tokens of Living

Back to my desk

I started back to school yesterday - first day of my Interior Styling course and the last six months of my two year project to get myself some qualifications in interior design. Seems like we have a great group in the class and lots of young talent so I am excited to see the designs everyone will come up with through the course.

I thought this was an interesting take on the home office / library. I love the shining black floor and the detail in the library glazing. Our study at home is still in 'keep the door closed to hide the mess' mode - a bit of transparency might be just the thing to get me organised !

Image: Douglas Friedman

The one large cushion idea

This New York apartment was the subject of an interesting post on Little Green Notebook about how much a decorator should be paid. I think the designer did a good job - you can see the before and after shots here. I'm clipping it in to Folder of Ideas because I really like the one big cushion idea. Especially in small spaces and if you have a compact elegant piece of furniture like that little cream sofa less is definitely more. Here is an earlier version of the one big cushion idea in a bedroom.

Image: via LGN

Not such a parfait day

I smashed one of my large Le Parfait storage jars today - I have had it for years and stored coffee in it which ended up all over me. My tights are now infused with espresso. Tiled floors are so unforgiving. Keeping perspective, it was only a jar, but real Le Parfait jars are quite hard to come by in Sydney. I thought this pantry was inspiring. It is in the home of Emerson of US based emersonmade - a lovely cheery shop for fashion, flowers and homewares.

Image: Emersonmade

Benito

Clothes don't always maketh the man in my opinion but when it comes to chairs fabric choices count for a lot. This is the Benito chair from Temperature Design who custom upholster many of their products - but why would you want to change this ?

Image: Temperature Design

Perpetual Motion

So I am now back home in Sydney and have just about stopped nodding off in corners - must be my advancing years - have not been quite so jet lagged in some time. I am so lucky to be able to call two countries home and I had a truly fantastic few weeks in Ireland.

I have a massive volume of material to get on the blog and the usual time limitations but here goes. This sculpture 'Perpetual Motion' is by one of my favourite public artists in Ireland - Rachel Joynt. As you know when you are visiting family one is in perpetual motion and I sped past this milestone on the motorway west of Dublin many times during my trip.


It also got me thinking about black, white and yellow - a colour scheme that has been around for a while with Mimosa yellow being last year's colour of the year. This fetching apartment was featured in The Gloss - an Irish newspaper magazine. Love the fact that the accent colour comes from the National Geographic magazine and the original shelving for the china collection.

Images: Rachel Joynt, The Gloss

Colour in Dublin

So we are over the jet lag and enjoying some great weather in Dublin and this is where I go for my morning run ( or run - walk - look at the view - run - walk, would be a more truthful representation ). I have walked this pier many many times and it has been fully refurbished since my last visit. I have now finished my colour design diploma but the obsession with colour schemes remains. The bandstand has been painted in a gorgeous cream and blue colour scheme which I had to try to replicate and record. I'm sure all the other runners and walkers were wondering what I was doing - I am going to take my Resene colour matching app with me tomorrow to see what the iphone comes up with.

Images: Around Ireland, Farrow & Ball Castle Grey, Dulux Lunar Falls

I'm off

I really love my own bed and am going to miss it a lot - especially tomorrow night when I am somewhere in the sky between Sydney and Abu Dhabi. I will be posting from Ireland - I'm looking forward to the trip enormously. One of my current fave songs by Angus and Julia Stone is appropriately named 'Big Jet Plane' and I thought you might enjoy it too.

Image: Dwell Studio via the Stamford Wife

Florence's apartment in Paris

This months Inside Out features the Paris home of designer Florence Baudoux, beautifully photographed by Richard Powers. My favourite room is the bathroom - old beaded cabinetry combined with modern fittings. In my quest for this picture I came across a French article about the same apartment with more great photographs by Jean-Marc Palisse but no joy on a decent shot of the bathroom - hence the scan below. It is hard to see but the drawers have tiny spherical carvings that are repeated in the modern black and white painting on the wall and I think it was a clever move to paint the large old fashioned radiator in a dark shade also. The whole apartment is very inspiring - well worth buying a copy of Inside Out or flicking through the CoteMaison gallery.

Click to enlarge

Images: Jean-Marc Palisse, Richard Powers via CoteMaison and Inside Out

Northern exposure

Three more sleeps are we are off to the northern hemisphere. Ask any Sydneysider who has lived in Europe what they miss ( apart from friends and family ) and they usually say the choice of shops, especially high street chains like Zara. I believe Zara and GAP are soon to start opening here in Australia, not sure if that will include Zara Home. LK Bennett here I come !!

Image: Zara Home

Alhambra

Warwick Fabrics have a new range called Adachi and I think this floral - Alhambra is going to be a big hit. The range is on panels in the window at the moment but the Warwick website does not yet have photos of all colourways. I didn't look at the stripe while I was there but it looks like a very versatile option to me. Back to Alhambra - if you are into Anna Spiro's style or the look of Manuel Canovas or Schumacher botanicals Alhambra is a very worthy contender.

Images: Warwick Fabrics

Morning dew

Jamie Durie has launched a new set of interior rug designs - following on from his outdoor rug collection. I really like this one - Dew Web available from The Rug Collection, so subtle and gentle. While it is pretty annoying when you walk into a big spiders web that has formed overnight in your front garden, they do look stunning on a dewy sunny morning. There are a few really lively rugs in the collection that also caught my eye but I felt they would over shadow Dew Web and the cracking view on location so I will have to feature them at a later date.

Images: The Rug Collection

Arizona

Always an easy target for a splash of hot pink I am immediately drawn to this wallpaper - Arizona by Suzy Hoodless. The whole Hothouse collection has fabulous patterns and colours.

While the one above is my favourite, these colours are also very elegant - I'm thinking The Great Gatsby and art deco.

Images: Suzy Hoodless

Distrito

This the bar of the Distrito Capital hotel in Mexico City. The hotel is mostly black, white and grey with splashes of yellow - including Acqua di Parma products in the bathrooms - well worth a browse around the hotel website. The stools are my main interest here - designed by Danish design company Mater Design they have won a number of awards already and are hailed as a new classic. Mater Design products are available in Australia via Corporate Culture.

Palm Beach Black

It is hard to convey a surface finish - especially wood finishes via this medium. I am now only weeks away from completing my diploma in Colour Design so my main interiors reading has been fandecks of paint chips and little pieces of Colorbond metal - not such great blog fodder. Anyway good old Porters have come to my rescue with a product I love - Palm Beach Black - a water based wood stain that you can use inside and out on any wood and - an inspiring image to match to break the blogging drought.

Image: Porters Paints