a creative mint

Shades of Purple

 

Hello,

I am sorry I did not post last week! I had commitments leaving me very little time for anything. However, I did manage to visit a sweet lavender farm a week and a half ago with my children, which inspired this purple hued post. It was beautiful to walk around and see all the varieties of lavender. I do love purples in the garden like agapanthus, buddleja, salvia and hydrangeas to name only a few. I have not used purple inside my home but I admire it when I see it used in interiors.  If I was to use a shade of purple I would pair it with lots of white and maybe a touch of black or grey. This reminds me of Tine K Home's catalog which I enjoy browsing through again and again. I love Scandinavian design, maybe that could inspire another post!

I always like to leave you with a few links for some of the items that I use in my photographs. The vintage ribbons and threads came from the California Millinery Supply Co. The Penelope Hobhouse book in the first image is called Garden Designs, I bought this soft cover version a long time ago and could only find the hard copy online now. Some of the fresh flowers came from the LA Flower District. My delicious plums and the rest of the flowers came from the farmers market. 

Have a great week and thank you for stopping by.

   

Peach, Pink, Gold and Orange

I am back into another color investigation. I could not resist as this combination feels very much like summer. My weekend plans changed so I was able to shoot some more pictures for you. This post is long, there are 11 photos in total! Hope you enjoy.

That was a lot! Sorry if it seemed a little long winded -I could not stop! It seemed like everywhere I looked the same colors kept popping up.  

As for the items in the photographs, the fabrics and some of the flowers in the first image are from Michael Levine. The Moroccan teacups in the eighth image are from Kenza Imports located here in LA. The lace like paper in the tenth image are sold per sheet from Blick art store. In the same image the colored tape I bought from Ginko Papers who I heard about from Ez at Creature Comforts. Please let me know if there are any other items you are curious about.  

Since starting this blog I had not printed any of my images. It was fun to quickly print some out on my little printer and make the gridded board for the last image. I like how it shows all the colors that I have been obsessed with over the last few days. Thank you for stopping by and many thanks for all the encouraging comments -they really make my day. Have a great week.

p.s. Thank you for letting me know about not being able to see the images in this post.  I hope I have fixed the problem... please let me know if its still not working.  The images are also loaded into my Flickr.  I am new to this and still have much to learn about what formats are best for displaying my images...Sorry...hope you can enjoy now.

Ode to Shabby Chic

I have to admit I was sad when I heard about the demise of Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic chain. Since moving to LA I would often walk dreamily through the Santa Monica location. It was such a vision of sophisticated femininity. Even though I may not decorate my home in the entire "Shabby Chic" style, I always felt inspired after a visit.  After 20 years the store on Montana Avenue is no more, the doors closed May 30th. I created the following vignettes as my little farewell.

 

 

 

 

 

In the first image I made a simple rose bouquet wrapped in cellophane. This makes an unusual vase and a pretty way to take flowers to anyone. I know you can buy flowers in water like this but I got the idea from a fantastic little florist shop in Victoria, Canada called Ramsey and Ramsey. 

The pink cupcakes on the silver doilies was inspired by the book Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic Sumptuous Settings & Other Lovely Things. Its amazing what a mix, some frosting and flowers can become in no time. In this book Rachel also shows ideas for unusual flower vases which lead to me hunting through my pantry in search of something to put my farmer's market flowers into.  You can imagine how excited I was to find a tin of tea my husband brought back from Shanghai!

Playing with Avocado & Turquoise

I may be caught in a design rut. I cannot stop with these color investigation posts.  Next week I will find something new to explore for you so please humor me for one more week.

In the first image I arranged my collected objects on my daughter's little craft table in front of the window and clicked away.  Some of the items include the fabrics along the top by Michael Miller, Amy Butler, Kaffe Fassett and Kathy Hall.  A vintage cream and sugar set bought on a road trip through Oregon from Lafayette School House Antiques.  I also included a new necklace from Anthropologie that was given to me as a gift and a necklace from Forever 21.  Then I gave myself a few minutes to take some of the items from the first image to create new compositions for you, image two and three are from that study.  Image four is a detail of the Anthropologie necklace from the first image.  The last image contains a few cookbooks from my shelf that go a long with my avocado and turquoise theme.  Thank you for stopping by and have a good week.