Wilkins & Kent

Here is where I indulge in some gratuitous showing-off of a new piece of 'designer' furniture in our apartment. In fact it's our first & only piece of designer furniture, and our first proper joint purchase:





We made the mistake of walking into Wilkins & Kent whilst looking for a coffee table and both fell for it instantly. The Wilkins & Kent boys make such beautiful furniture and their whole store on Brunswick Street is full of wonderful things.

This morning I was joking around making the pattern below, titled "I Can Be A Stylist Too". It's supposed to be in mock of current design trends (I'm not really a 'stylist' kind of designer), but I showed it to Pete who said "hey, that actually looks cool". So it stays :)

Poor Failed Craft Project

Sitting on the couch yesterday watching the movie Russian Dolls (with all those gorgeous cosy parisian homes) I felt inspired to make something for our apartment. We have those kind of ugly light fittings that sit on the ceiling covered by an oyster shell thingy (oh how i'd love to have hanging lightbulbs that I could put funky lampshades on) so I decided to make a sort of lampshade thing that sits flush on the roof and covers/pretties it up a bit.

I spent about 7 hours working on this project up till 1am, always thinking "once it all comes together it'll hold it's shape better... it'll be okay". Well, the only way you learn these things is to try and fail.

Lesson learnt: If you want to make a lampshade you need a solid frame that can hold it's own weight. A frame made out of polyprop doesn't cut it. Behold:





Okay it might look _okay_ in these photos but in real life, hanging from my ceiling with the light on it looks like a saggy, unrefined mess. Maybe it's rescuable if I line the inside with some stiff wire? What bugs me most is wasting that kimono fabric - I might have to cut this fella up and rescue the pieces.

uppercase

I've been dying to blog about this since Wednesday, but Pete's camera suddenly went 'blind'. It displays black, and takes pictures of black! So i'm back to my crappy old Ixus for now - 'scuse the poor quality. Anyway, I was roaming around Mailing Rd in Canterbury the other day which is known for its old worldly shops and antiquey stores, and at the back of one antiques store i found something i'd always wanted:


It's an old printers typecase drawer - yay! Just the sort of thing you hope to find when rummaging at the back of those places. And how cute it looks with little ornamenty stuff in the compartments! For any Melbourne peeps who want one too - there's about 6 left in the store, selling for $40 each. Not bad.

Hey I have a question to ask. Does anyone know who makes the beaker/mug thing drawn below? I found it on a blog somewhere and thought it was ingenious (so much easier to hold that a useless teacup handle!) but didn't bookmark it :(

Update: It was on Sia and Bloesem's blogs - thanks Sia!! The cups are by Mokkatanten. After all this effort I should go out get some :)



I had to laugh because their stockists were located in Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam ... and Brunswick. Yep, good old Sydney Road, Brunswick, 10 mins from my apartment.

Facts for the day:

If you're in Melbourne and looking for a filing cabinet, go past those outrageously priced office furniture stores and straight to Dallas Trading on Macaulay Rd, North Melb. We got an awesome solid metal ex-office one for only $80,and she aint half bad looking either. And she has wheels!

They have some other antiquey furniture numbers too, like these cute little nested tables we scored for $80 also!



Craft: magazine is awesome - arrived in the mail yesterday! I'm not sure if i'll actually make anything from this issue (although they do have a good screenprinting tute) ... but somehow just having it makes me feel more connected to this otherwise intangible online world.

Bad skin? Flaxseed oil! Well it's certainly working for me. I started taking it a few weeks ago and I can definately see differences. A smoother complexion and no little breakouts. I went through roaccutane crap-ness back in my teenage years so this. is. sooo. nice.

Meanwhile, keeping sane under work pressure with a bit more drawing practice. Nothing too speccy but it's fun to play around:

visitor :)

We had a visitor today - one of these fellas:


It was such a nice surprise. One of the few things I've missed from moving to the inner city is a bit of wildlife - especially of such a colourful variety. Anyway he didn't stick around long. I dashed up to grab him something to eat but he flew to a neighbouring tree. I thought I could tempt him back with some vita wheats (do birds even eat vita wheats? i don't know but it's all we had) but he and his little mate soon flew away. I hope he comes back.

Tempted to buy a hanging seed thingy to see what it brings.

Hope everyone's having a lovely (long?) weekend. I love the way that Melbourne + horse racing = public holiday :)

Unable to focus on my work (Friday) and taking advantage of beautiful morning sun in our living room (mmm, November), I've finally photographed and put a few more items in my Etsy shop!

Speaking of, I got an email from Etsy the other day saying V2 is about to be launched. Ooh how exciting. I hope they finally do the simple, intelligent thing of stipulating US dollars next to prices rather than assuming everyone knows. Or better yet let us choose currency! Then again, beggars can't be choosers.

Oh, and last night I had a go making my blue dot necklace with white wire instead of red. It worked well. I thought the white wouldn't show up enough on skin, but I tried it on and it looked fine - yay! Looks a bit more refined/mature than the bright red.


I take all my photos on the 30x40cm top of one of Pete's speakers, because they have nice wood. It's such a small space but you can't tell ;)

Aaanyway hope everyone has a great weekend!! I wonder what Melbourne weather has in store for us this time -_-