Saturday, September 24, 2011

Designer Love

I am in a very long process of trying to decorate my house on my own and looking online for inspiration. One designer that caught my eye for her clever use of colour as well as ethnic pieces is Angela Hranowsky.  I am so inspired looking at her work and how I wish she was closer to me, I would love to hire her!

Look at this divine living room. I love everything about this room. From the colour on the wall to the beautiful bold Weinrib rug (which I covet), oh and the lighting. The brown couch is perfect for the space.

Here is another room - I love how you can seek a peek of purple on the back of the curtains.


And this dining room leaves me speechless. The only things I can say are "Wow" and "Oh my!" - yep, I am that eloquent when it comes to describing things. I love the fabric (David Hicks?) on the bamboo chairs, contrasting with the lovely wood of the table. I want to have a dining room like this.


 

Plum colour (look at the pendant light!)
 Drool...


Oh Ms Hranowsky, would you please come to MD for a visit??? :) 

***All pictures are from her website - please go visit it for a real feast for the eyes.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Union Jack Bed For Boy's Room

Since I am on a painting blitz, I bought these two maple twin beds at a garage sale in the spring. They sat in my garage for months, waiting to be transformed.


 I dismantled the bed, sanded all the parts. Here, I have only taken photos of the headboard, which is where most of the work is done.


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I found this really useful website teaching you how to draw a British flag accurately.


I placed it against the bed and marked out the lines. 




 It is almost finished, I just need to get some super fine brushes to paint in the lines where the bleeding from paint came through. Then I am off to sell it on Craiglist. I hope to do it before next week. Wish me luck.


Finding My Voice

I have enjoyed art as a subject in high school and we had very good teachers. I just never did it very much after high school and that was back in 1987!

With our empty walls, I thought I'd buy some art but I went to several places like West Elm. Nice art work in frames but I was shocked at the prices for merely prints. I decided that I would buy original art work there and then.

How naive I was. I contacted several artists and one whose work I loved but he lived in Australia and did not want the hassle with the shipping and insurance. I could not have afforded his art anyway, he wanted AUD$6,000 for his beautiful piece of work. Which is worth every penny, except that I didn't have those sort of pennies. :)

I thought of reproducing his work. I struggled with this for months because I was not sure of the legal implications so I talked to a lawyer who is also a friend and he said that if I did not pass on the work as the artist's or try to sell it, it was fine. Also, I trawled through websites and found that there were websites selling reproductions from masters of art - and selling them online! What is with that anyway, I cannot understand it. Is it ok to resell art from artists who are dead? If someone explained this to me, I would be grateful.


A few weeks later I bid for a piece of art on Ebay but bidding was fierce and as I was not watching it closely, at the very last moment, the art went to someone else. I was gutted. So I decided to reproduce this one. Not too happy with my version because it is too bright - the artist was Charles Levier and his colours are stark and empty but mine was a bit too pink.


Then I was inspired by Matisse. This took me 2 hours to do and it was completely FUN! It is now hanging in our powder room. Not a great picture, sorry - it is time to upgrade my iPhone!


I put them on my Facebook and I had so many positive comments that I am thinking seriously of finding my own voice so that I don't have to copy other people's work. I am planning on putting aside a time each day to paint, to find my style. Hopefully I won't have to charge so much money so that people can enjoy it and also I can get some happy returns from painting! It is something I totally enjoy, which took me by surprise.

Thanks for looking - I know copying people's work is a sensitive topic and please drop me a comment, I would be interested to hear what others think.


Friday, August 26, 2011

Back In Town!

We have been back a week, and experienced our second earthquake and facing the impending wrath of Hurricane Irene this weekend. We are gearing ourselves up for power outage, stocking up food, water, batteries and withdrawing cash. After that harrowing tremor on Tuesday, I am a little anxious about this hurricane. Maybe we should have delayed our return by two weeks! :)

We had such a blast with our summer vacation and I will post photos of them online soon. Our family is trying to adjust to the different time frame as we were living in a place which was 12 hours ahead of our time here.

One thing I missed for sure is thrifting. There are not many places in Malaysia where one can thrift and in Australia, the prices, plus the fall of the US dollar against most currencies has made the thrift stores (or Op Shops as they call it locally) too expensive to be considered an "opportunity" at all.


Monday, June 6, 2011

Revisiting Some Book Cases

Remember a month ago, I bought some ratty old laminated book cases? I was tired of building my own so I decided to just buy em and repaint them.



These go down to our basement. I spent nothing on the paint as I already had them on hand.

This might probably be my last post as I will be heading back to Asia and Australia for the whole of summer, unless I go thrifting there...which is very likely! :) Happy holidays, everyone!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

New Floors

I have been out of action for the last month due to the floors being redone. I can't believe that it has taken this long but it has been almost a month since we hired people to come do the floors. As such, we have been living with no furniture in most of the rooms and all our other furniture crammed in the kitchen and family room. It has not been that bad but it has hampered my desire to go out to thrift shop because I would come back with something and pile it into the family room, making it look messier. In short, the messy house put me off thrifting and I started to purge my old stuff!

I am glad to say that finally the floors are finished as of Friday 3 June. Below is the original floor and stairway with the dirty carpets.

Now here they are, darkened and painted. (the stairs were painted by a professional - I helped him because I was learning from him as I went along) Boy, I thought I was a perfectionist, but this man was bad. He kept saying to me, as I taped blue painter's tape on the steps, "No good, re- tape them again!" so many times! The tape would prevent the paint from going onto the floor. I have to order some stair carpets next because they are slippery when we wear socks around the house - something we would do in winter as it gets so freezing cold here. I can see accidents happening if we didn't. It's a shame because I love the wood floor so much and the steps that I don't want to hide them.

 

I am going to move the chandelier down so there is more lighting but I will post a picture of that when it is done. The baseboards (trim on the bottom of the walls) has been sanded and I have yet to paint them. Going to tackle that this week. I also painted the walls (which is why I have been missing for a few weeks) but I could not reach the top floor so I had to get a friend to help me.

In 2 weeks' time, I am heading back to Malaysia, Singapore and then Australia to see my family and I will be gone for the whole of summer. So excited to see everyone again. What will you all be doing this summer?

Friday, May 13, 2011

Chaos

Sorry, been so busy here. We had our floors refinished and had to stay at a hotel to escape all the dust. Just before the man started on the baseboards, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to paint the walls since all the rooms are devoid of furniture.

All thrifting activity has been postponed while I work on saving more money by painting our house! It's hard work, all that going up and down ladders is sure to make me lose a few kilos! :)


 All the furniture put in our family room...this is how we have been living the last 2 weeks.

Very dusty! Cough cough!