Pretty Rain Clouds for Your Wall

Sometimes the simplest idea can be the most striking like this little wall decor rain cloud sold on Etsy.

More lovely rain clouds to hang on your wall from French Interior and Product Designer Leptitpapillon based in Canada. Doesn't she make it all look so deceptively simple and make you want to take up some craft?


I love her particularly striking black cloud as well.



The paper cutting mobile is so pretty too.

How to Decorate A Room With Pink Walls

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I absolutely adore the shade of blue those two armchairs come in. I also like how blue and yellow work so well in a pink room. It sort of prevents the room from becoming sickly sweet which can be a problem with too much pink. Usually I see it offset with black or chocolate, but I like what they've done here.



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I like the use of red and is that khaki?


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I'm no expert but I think the browns and creams really work with this gorgeous shade of pink.

Catherine Hammerton: Vintage Asthetic

I absolutely love tiny floral prints and I am swooning over these interiors by UK designer Catherine Hammerton as seen on Design Sponge.  These are of her own home.







Her kitchen has got to be the prettiest I have ever laid my eyes on! I love the lightness of the rooms and the splashes of that gorgeous red.

Beautiful Illustrations by Michelle Maule

These lovely creations are being sold on her Etsy shop. The first two are original works. How I wish I could draw and paint like that. What a gift!







The super talented, pretty artist blogs on How to Draw a Cup of Coffee.  Don't you just love her glasses?:

Inspiration from Sex and the City and More

I love gazing at beautiful photos. Decor photos that impress me the most are the affordable, simple clean scandinavian influenced rooms with a burst of color that gives it warmth. Also I like rooms that look cosy and lived in. A high end model show room can be visually beautiful, but feel uncomfortable and hard in reality. I get a lot of inspiration from Apartment Therapy which features cosy and chic homes.  Wish my home could be that pretty, airy and neat as well (I am also trying to get inspiration to do a major spring cleaning).


I love the splash of fushia and green in this room.


Pretty wall vases. What a nice idea.


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There's that gorgeous pale pink vintage rotary telephone again. I really like the two stacked vintage suitcases as a bedside table. That would be great for storage too.


I just had to add the picture of Carrie and Big's New York apartment from Sex and the City 2, just so I could quote the fabulous line "I've been cheating on fashion with furniture". I love the shade of blue of those armchairs too.

Design Inspiration

I was browsing a lovely blog called Decorology.  I fell in love with the deep purplish navy, almost black armchair with the ornate French vintage legs.  The vermillion lamp acts as a great accent.


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I think this cup might be available at Style Nordic at Ann Siang Road. I know it's bad to covet, but I covet it deeply, especially the one in midnight blue.

Klaus Haapaniemi’s new Taika (Finnish for fantasy or magic) collection for Iittala merges folklore and architecture to create a modern world on ceramic dinnerware. Produced in two colour schemes, Haapaniemi unveils a world of mythical creatures, animal hybrids with some human features, living within a floral and fauna based forest.

Each Taika piece is hand crafted by applying silk screen print design to basic white porcelain before being glazed and fired. Modern style comes to life in this dinnerware collection, maintaining Iittala’s ability to mix and match pieces while adding a touch of magic to your home and everyday life. Iittala products are built for life and oven, microwave and freezer safe.

Dimensions:
Cup 200 ml, saucer 15 cm
Price:
£19.00

Dimensions:

Cup 100 ml, Saucer 11 cm
Price:
£15.00

And more from Cloudberry. Imagine a treetrunk vase.



Or a Living Tiny Train Wall Sticker


And what a gorgeous pale pink rotary phone. I wish we could have kept our old phones but the telephone company then which was Telecoms Singapore took our beautiful old ones away and replaced then with the ugly push button ones. These days with Singtel you have to buy your own phone. I can see why Vintage is back in vogue.


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Pretty Breakfast Nook and Wish Wall

I love the breakfast nook created in this small space.  Being slightly OCD, I immediately thought of chalk dust in the food, but another free spirit part of me loves the giant chalkboard the couple endearingly call their wish wall.  When I first looked at this space, the vermillion lamp caught my eye.  I think I am particularly attracted by tiny accents of colour in a white space.  The pictures are all from Ikea Live, a site I love browsing.




The couple behind the fresh ideas are Prime and Luis from Berlin. Prime tells the story behind their space:

I like having the time to let things grow When I moved here with my girlfriend Luise I only had a rail of clothes and a chair. We let the space dictate what we needed rather than rushing to furnish it. The home I had before this was white and minimal – I wanted it to be perfect. I don’t feel that pressure anymore.

I love how the city can see into our home I was a baby when I moved to Berlin from Laos. I have come to understand the city by learning its history and I love that everything here is a big melting pot of ideas. By having no curtains I invite those possibilities inside.

Your environment can help you improve your life I like to be able to see the things that inspire me. My books are placed so you can see the covers, my kitchen has open shelves, I have lights and lamps everywhere and in the bedroom I have a wish wall filled with images of things Luise and I hope for.

The Perfect Bedroom Reading Chair

I wish chairs like these came with Ikea price-tags. I am searching for the perfect most comfy reading chair that won't give you a backache after hours of sitting, and costs less than $200 Singapore dollars. Oh yeah, it can't be too bulky either or it won't fit in my bedroom. Yup I know that's a tall order, but I will savour the search and I least I can blog about it for a while:

I love this bright vermillion orange Ikea Poang armchair and at least the cover is machine washable although I don't like cloth furniture. If I get sick of the colour I can always change it later. The cushion costs $70 Singapore dollars and the frame costs $89 and the footstool cushion costs $20 while the footstool frame costs $49. A total of 228 bucks.




And these are some other chairs I covet and I don't think are available on this tiny island:


This is the most beautiful shabby chic chair I have ever seen. I would love a restored version of it but I am betting this is probably French Vintage and like a one piece kind of thing.


From a house in Denmark on Ikea Live. This chair just looks for comfy and easy to wipe down.

Icelandic Sea Blanket

We've been hearing so much about Iceland and it's volcano, that I was delighted to come across this blanket by Icelandic designers in stunning cobalt blue.



It's even made of Icelandic wool from Icelandic sheep which have naturally bare faces and legs unlike other sheep.

Don't you just love the fun design of the anchors? Why are lovely things like these so expensive. I saw that it was being sold for almost USD$400 online - yikes. I wish something as enticing could be found at Ikea Singapore at Ikea prices.

The story behind the blanket is charming and reads like a fairytale:

The Seablanket
by Vik Prjonsdottir
Description:
The waters around Iceland serve as one of the best fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean. In the past, fishing boats from all over the European continent came up north to fish. Throughout the centuries, innumerable ships became stranded, men drowned and were engulfed by the ocean and the sea bed along the coast.

No wonder I am in love with everything Nordic. They must be born with creative genes or maybe the lack of sunlight helps? Scandinavian designs are inspired by nature and I just love their clean simple lines. I read somewhere that due to the shorter days designers use a lot of white and blonde wood to add light to a room. Colors also tend to pop when against a white background.

Prettiest Flowers at a Creative Mint

{Photo by Leslie from A Creative Mint}

I stumbled upon the prettiest little blog in all my history of blogging, that goes by the name Creative Mint. This lovely art blog is by Canadian, Leslie who stepped away from her hectic job that required too much travel and started this blog. The lost of her talent in the industry is a boon to the rest of us who yearn for a bit of beauty in the blogosphere.

One of my favourite posts is the one about her visit to Rosemary Farm in California. I thought it was England at first and I had no idea that California housed such an abundance of beautiful roses. Leslie inspires me to take up arts and crafts, my last attempt was when I painted with my friend E's little 3-year-old.



I wanted to share with you some of her prettiest photography including pictures of her floral arrangement, arts and crafts. She has such an amazing eye for color and taught me a new word - Chartreuse - green with a tinge of yellow. I wish my home looked like her photographs.  Her beautiful portraits of pretty flowers and colours seems almost spiritual and cleansing.  A world I would love to escape to, far away from all the violent and crude images around us in the media.





Here's an interview with Leslie extracted from Simply Hue:

Vicki: Tell us a little about yourself!

Leslie: I grew up on the idyllic Vancouver Island in British Columbia. My mother is an artist and avid gardener so our family home was always a laboratory for creative ventures. At any given time we were doing art projects like painting ceramics on the dining room table and having flowers pressing in books on the kitchen table. My mother and father had an eclectic group of friends, which also influenced more critical and creative ideas.

While working on my interior design degree in Northern California I decided I wanted to go further and study architecture. Even though I did not practice architecture, it was incredible design training. Immediately after finishing grad school I had the opportunity to team up with a manufacturing and distributing company. In collaboration with them I developed, designed and did packaging direction for lots of products sold in many of the major retailers in North America. However, the products were very masculine and utilitarian. I would not call much of what I designed through those years feminine or pretty in the least! I guess I am now trying to get back to what I love which is more female, color, and pattern driven. In the last three years I have only done a few projects and my main focus has been my two little children. My daughter is three and my son is almost one.

Ikea Does Pink Right

I adore all things from Ikea and it's no secret that I love pink, so I am enthused to do a blog post on a combination of both.  Who says an older woman can't love pink? The romantic color soothes my soul, reminiscent of all things lovely - pink sterling roses, the pink hue on youthful faces and powder pink, puff sleeved, vintage dresses. It's also a fun colour - think pink cotton candy!

Ikea has the just the right shade of pink that I love so much.  It's a little in between bubble gum pink and rose pink - just so feminine and pretty.  They have marvellous little chairs that would be perfect in a little girl's nursery.











I just need to add this disclaimer:

Even though I am thrilled by pink I can be also totally turned off when it appears in a garish metallic shade on cars, for instance.  In those cases pink can look absolutely revolting.  Pink has to come in absolutely the right shade and sometimes it works best with other shades like black, white, apple green, pale yellow or even blue.