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Collect & create
What I like
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07 Februari 2010 | 18:56:19
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Lately I've been preparing for -let's call it mysteriously- an event in the near future, and preparing in this case involves making lots of things, struggling with color profiles in photoshop (I like to use this opportunity to officially declare war to CMYK colors... ;)), but it also means making sure I have enough supplies to keep making ceramics. So lately I've been hunting and gathering as often as I could, and I found lots of new stuff: a lot for the shop, a bit for me and a lot for an exciting interior decorating project for a museum that I'm currently working on as well... So I have absolutely no reason to be bored, but in fact I do have reason to feel utterly tired!
Oh by the way I keep listening to this on repeat, the guy is pretty popular in the Netherlands but big chance readers from all other countries have never heard this before, so enjoy!
A set of really nice vintage fondue plates
A set of cup & saucers with little ducks
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Mid-century modern galore
About me
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04 Februari 2010 | 20:41:58
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I recently found these images of a place called Barton's Bonbonniere in the wonderful flickr photostream of Sandi Vincent. Barton's used to be a chocolate brand with a chain of chocolate shops in the USA. Wow, do you know any shops looking this fabulous today?
By the way the rest of Sandi's photostream filled with mid-century modern goodness is well worth a visit too. She also has this set dedicated to the amazing illustrations of that era, and browsing through it will keep you happily busy for a while...
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Matching image and reality
Things I make
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02 Februari 2010 | 20:01:31
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It's one of the fascinating things of whatever you do online: how to match image and reality, the representation of what you make or are and what it really is? And how matching and 'real' do you want it to be?
I regularly stumble upon this subject, both when it comes to blogging and when it comes to offering your art and products online. It's often said that people use the internet to present a created image of themselves and their lives: they lead this online 'second life', like when they're chatting and dating while pretending they're a thin 18-year-old girl when instead they're a fat and bold middle-aged man or something like that. Though not this extreme, blogs also are a little bit like that: people show a certain representation of themselves on their blogs -the über-stylish person, the very funny one, the couple with the perfect marriage, the super social one- and leave behind the parts that don't fit into that image. Then there are also the -often anonymous- personal blogs that just throw anything about their lives on the table, which can sometimes be fascinating to read, but in the end you never really know who's behind them.
I often find myself a bit confused about what my online 'representation' should be. I've always been annoyed with people who pretend to be something they don't really are, so I try to be as real and honest here as I am in real life (which by the way doesn't mean I'm always honest about everything in real life... I keep that for my boyfriend, something he isn't always that happy with!). Craft and design blogs can quickly become so picture perfect, with people happily designing and crafting in perfectly tidy homes, which can be very inspiring but it doesn't always feel real. So I like my blog to be a 'real person's blog'. But then what's that? Does it mean sharing everything about yourself with your largely invisible online audience? What would you do that for? And does 'real' then mean imperfect? Or doesn't something like 'being real' exist at all?
So when it comes to blogging, I sometimes feel this dilemma. I like reading blogs that aren't just superficial chitchat. But on the other hand I'm not convinced it's a good idea to use the internet as some sort of diary or online confession. Not so much because I worry about the consequences, but because I can't seem to figure out if it serves any good purposes. So I guess this continues to be a bit of a balancing act. Maybe it all has to do with the attraction of blogging: it's so nice to create your own little universe, and then it's tempting to keep expanding that universe by putting more of yourself into it.
On a whole different level, this image-reality thing also plays it's part when you're selling things online. How to show your handmade products the way they really are? When you're a king or queen of styling or photography, you may be able to create an image of your product that's so beautiful that the actual product someone receives in the end may be a bit of a disappointment. Or you may have a beautiful product, but you just can't seem to picture it as good as it really is... Personally I'm always fond of pictures of nice things in large amounts, displayed as a beautiful collection. I've often found myself buying one thing from such a collection, only to discover at home that it was the whole of the collection that tempted me, and that just that one thing cut loose from the context it was pictured in is something completely different. So your image shouldn't be bad, but not too good either: once again it's about finding a good match between image and reality...
Which in fact is why I started writing this post in the first place: lately I've been really frustrated with how some of my product pictures appear in my etsy shop. Especially when it comes to the art prints, the pictures seem to get so blurry and all the shades in color and nice detailing sort of disappear. I see beautifully printed images with bright colors in real life, but when I see them in my shop, I often think: I definitely wouldn't buy that! So today I embarked on this in dark Dutch weather rather mission impossible journey to create more coherence between the image and reality of my product pictures. I hope these pictures do a better job! (and that they appear on etsy without changes... does anyone know if etsy does some sort of photo conversion that explains poor image quality? Or is it just my own image quality that's to blame?)
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Old school
What I like
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01 Februari 2010 | 21:18:51
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I love this school series by New York based prop stylist Stephanie Hanes that I found on her flickr page a while ago. These images bring back memories of primary school, though my 1980s classrooms never looked this fancy...
Oh, and now that we've taken this road to nostalgia anyway... Did you also have (or badly want) one of these dolls that you could put make up on as a kid? I was one from that category of 'badly wanters'...
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Possible future profession: vintage design detective
Ceramics
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31 Januari 2010 | 20:06:51
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Sometimes I ask myself what I'm really very good at in life, and though I usually can come up with a few things, let's say those aren't necessarily the things that are extremely valuable for being a productive member of modern society. But lately I realized I do have one skill that may be successfully transferable to other parts of life as well: I'm pretty good at playing online detective when it comes to finding out more about vintage designs that I like, but don't know anything about. Like with my cute breakfast set that didn't have any identification mark... I received some questions about that one, and Sarah told me about her similar set, and wondered if they could be from the same series. Seeing her similar but different set made me more curious about the origin of these sets, so I started doing some simple online research. What I know now is that there were at least a boy and a girl set (and maybe also a clown set? Cause my boy isn't wearing the same outfit as the boy below, but a polkadot suit similar to the one the clown on my other mug is wearing, so maybe my assumed set in fact is a mis-match) that they were made by a Korean firm called Interpur, and that one complete boy set like the one below is currently for sale on etsy!
 
So I'm pretty sure now that I have one of the sets made by Interpur, but that still leaves the origin of Sarah's (incomplete) similar but different set a mystery. And since even famous tv detectives always have smart helpers, your suggestions to resolve this rather stirring mystery are still very welcome!
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Light, bright, white #1
Interior decoration
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30 Januari 2010 | 20:48:50
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With the days that have been so short and dark and snowy and grey for months (though they're already getting longer, and now I already feel lucky when it feels like night starts at 5 in the afternoon instead of at 3.30!), I'm really yearning for all things light and white and bright. I'm feeling rather slow, uninspired and lazy myself, and I can't wait for this 'spring energy' to kick in again. So lately I found myself collecting lots of images of very light and bright interiors, and I thought I'd share some with you!
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Magazine love
Interior decoration
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27 Januari 2010 | 23:03:09
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Belgian interior decorating magazine Feeling Wonen recently did an article about interior design blogging, and they included my blog in their recommendations (see below). What a nice honor! And so nice to see a photo of this home on their cover...
And speaking of magazines: the new issue of 101 woonideeën magazine is such a treat! It features a few beautiful homes, of Fifi Mandirac and Sandra Jongedijk among others. This picture of textile designer Sandra Jongedijk's home is such a feast for the eye! I love the different levels with the little stairs... almost as though the living room is 'on stage'.
101 Woonideeën Magazine also had a very nice do it yourself post about creating (decorative) plates by using vintage plates. They used templates and spray paint (so the plates aren't meant for functional use, just for decoration) to create the beautiful plates below. Nice, aren't they? (and something you all can do at home)
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Isn't that peculiar?
Ceramics
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27 Januari 2010 | 12:11:10
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About two weeks after finding the last piece of this, in a whole different thrift shop in a whole different city, this is what I found yesterday:
Isn't that funny? Apparently it's some sort of style of making ceramics like this, creating figures of several seperate parts combined. This set has four cups that can all be part of the teapot, the faces have their eyes either open, half open or closed.
And look, it gets even more peculiar... I found this as well:
A large mug with a clown on it wearing exact the same outfit as the boy on the breakfast set I found earlier. Only the colors are a bit different, probably cause the clay that the cup and mug are made of seems a bit different. In general I'm not fond of clowns at all (usually I think they're scary), but this was so funny that I brought this one home as well. To be honest I really don't have room for these anymore, so I think I'm going to sell them in the little online vintage shop that I still hope to open someday. I'm not sure how to do that yet: maybe I'll just add a little vintage department to my current etsy shop, maybe I'll start something new... But till that time I just enjoy these!
By the way the teapot set obviously seems to be Asian (or at least Asian-inspired), and someone earlier told me that this type of ceramics is from Japan. Anyone who knows more? I'd love to hear! |
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On repeat?
Interior decoration
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27 Januari 2010 | 00:29:58
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Sometimes I wonder if I may have been hanging around in this craft & design community for too long... Like when I see something beautiful but can't remember if I see it for the very first time or already have seen it everywhere in magazines and on blogs. Or when I look at some beautiful images in my huge and ever-expanding image folder and have no idea if I've already posted them once or only have visualized posting them (yes, some sort of 'already posted' file would be practical in this case!). And then I wonder if when I, as the blog writer, already don't remember whether I've posted certain images or not, then who else will? Could I just start posting things from my archives without anyone noticing? And yes, then sometimes I get a little cynical about this huge image overload that we're pumping around the blogosphere on a daily basis, and about our search for new and original things while sometimes we don't even know anymore whether something is fresh and original to us or stuff that can already be found in our own archives... (and when I say 'we', of course in the first place I mean 'me')
But I guess I'm still more an enthusiast than a cynic, so I'll post these inspiring photos that caught my eye today in my inspiration folder anyway. Feel free to let me know if I've posted any of them already before! (and you get bonus points when you can tell me in which post exactly... ;))
I always love the look of those vintage brown leather sofa's like the one above in a further modern and minimalist home (I know this one is a well-known vintage design, but I forgot who made it), but I'm not sure I would feel very comfortable having a leather sofa like this in my home. Strange, cause I'm not a vegan and not even a vegetarian, but somehow this feels too much 'animal' to me, no matter how much I like the look. I never consciously decided to, but somehow so far I've always chosen fabric-covered sofas and chairs for my home. So though I'm absolutely not dogmatic when it comes to leather furniture (I think if you wear it you can also sit on it), somehow I often don't find myself drawn to it. Probably one of those subconscious things...
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Looking ladylike
About me
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25 Januari 2010 | 20:29:21
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Though in general I think it's a waste of time to wish for looks you love but never will have too often (like the desire for a huge afro haircut when you have heavy blond hair like mine), I can't help but sometimes dream about looking a bit like one of those petite dark-haired French or Italian ladies with their classic, delicate beauty. Well, at least as a not so very fragile and delicate tall Dutch blonde I have something to dream of!
And if I'd then look a bit like, say, Audrey Tautou, I'd so wear one of these gorgeous hats by Italian etsy shop RetroReproHandmade. Aren't they to die for? But I'm afraid that they will suit someone more ladylike much better than me and my messy hair...
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Cuteness in three steps (and silly old me)
Ceramics
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24 Januari 2010 | 13:23:57
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I think it was about half a year ago that I spotted a really cute cup in one of my favorite thrift shops. It was just a little cup, and to say I didn't need any more cups would be a bit of an understatement. But on the other hand: one small cup more or less wouldn't make all the difference, and since it wasn't too expensive, I quickly grabbed it and took it home.
About a month later I went to the same shop and saw a fun little plate, that seemed vaguely familiar. Hey, didn't I already have something in that style? I wasn't sure, but decided to take the plate with me, and at home I was happy to discover that the plate matched with the little cup that I had found weeks before. I didn't look that carefully though, and so I saw that the cup and plate matched, but I didn't really notice that they matched thàt good: it was only later that I learnt that the plate had little feet on it, that connected exactly with the polkadot dress on the cup...
Many months later. I'm in the same shop and see a cute bowl with a face on it. I remember I already once saw it there before, and then recognized it as one of those fun vintage bowls that were part of a breakfast set with a face on the bowl and a body on the matching cup. But since I didn't see the rest of the set that time, and already had lots of stuff to take home, I decided not to buy it back then. This time I was in a good mood and thought: well, it's such a sweet bowl, who cares I don't have the rest of the set, let's take it home...
And of course now you already have guessed what I honestly had no idea of: I already did have the rest of the set home! Only I hadn't realized... So when I came home with the bowl I finally learned that 1 + 1 = 2, and though the collecting of the individual parts had taken months, now I finally had one of those cute vintage breakfast sets!
By the way the beautiful table runner that you see on the table is from Dana's shop.
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The person behind the shop
What I like
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23 Januari 2010 | 01:06:31
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Etsy shops are often very personal shops, and that's one of the things I like so much about them. I'm a pretty curious person, so I love to see little bits of the person behind the product: seeing all members of a family modeling for a clothes designer, seeing some of the house of the artist in the back of the product photo, reading a bit of how and why the artist has made the product in the description... It all makes your 'shopping experience' (which I think is such an awful expression, by the way) so much more personal than when you buy a factory product. Which on the other hand can also be a disadvantage: finding the hair of the artist's cat or dog or the smell of the seller's perfume or cigarettes on your product may not be the kind of personal experience you're looking for... (which by the way has absolutely never happened to me when buying on etsy, but several times when purchasing through Ebay or similar auction websites)
One of the shops whose products and pictures make me really curious about the person behind them is vintage shop The Pigeon Chest. It's not just the fun vintage dresses that the shop sells: I'd especially love to peek around that house full of fun vintage finds a bit!
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An apple a day...
About me
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22 Januari 2010 | 00:02:48
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I'm working on a large update of the shop... With some apples, this time!
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