'Cloth Fabric' new Wallpaper range/Porter's paints

Cloth Fabric in collaboration with Porter's Paints have a beautiful range of new wallpapers.

See this style, 'Looking for Water' , in the June issue of Home beautiful, page 36. My subscription just arrived this week, and it was great to see this in the Style Files.

Cloth was one of my picks from Designex 2010. They've been around for quite a while and I've loved reading about what Julie Paterson and her team are currently doing.

Porter's Paints sponsors quite a few categories in the icsd (International School of Colour & Design) Industry Awards each year. Towards the end of 2009, my Colour Design diploma year, Porters put forward a task to come up with a new colour palette for their French Wash range.

Congratulations to Sarah Wood for her winning palette.

My palette was selected as one of the 10 finalists. It was titled 'Tuscany' and I used a play on words - 'A House in Tuscany' and 'A Garden in Tuscany'.

Megan Morton - Home Love

An opportunity to see and listen to the fabulously talented and lovely Megan Morton - stylist extraordinare - at one of Coco Republic's Lifestyle Seminar Series was an event I couldn't pass up.

Megan is so passionate about what she does and is happy to part with some styling jems. My little design notebook is filling up fast and has the latest addition of Megan's list of 7 blogs and 7 places to find that perfect piece.

Waiting, waiting, waiting....for my copy of Home Love to arrrive on my doorstep from Booktopia. Luckily for me, also, their warehouse is in the area I work. So I suppose I could've gone and collected my coveted possession. Unfortunately, I just haven't had time. So door to door delivery it had to be.

I know it's been out for a while now...no excuse for ordering it earlier.

I, like, Megan, love Booktopia. In general I love books !!! Their packaging is great, so you can be assured of your book/s arriving with minimal or no damage to them.

Maeve Magazine Launch 1st May 12 noon

Maeve Magazine launched yesterday at midday with a fantastic self portrait of Elle Moss on the cover.

The magazine will be featuring a new self portrait on the cover each quarter. You can submit yours for consideration to submission@maevemagazine.com

Some cool stuff in there but haven't had a chance to read it all. Looking forward to some me time to trawl through the stories.

From the Maeve blog.....
Who is MAEVE ?

MAEVE Magazine is a quarterly online publication aimed at the conscious consumer. MAEVE targets 30- 40 something’s… women… grown ups… parents… people who want more from their media. MAEVE is an observatory on human kind, incorporating a plethora of ideas and inspiration to bring life to your life and your family.

Read on at.... 'About Maeve' Maeve Magazine

Designex 2010

Designex 2010 was held in Sydney this week.

I had the opportunity to visit yesterday and attend a workshop/seminar for Student Designers. Professionals took time out of their busy schedules to take us on a tour of the exhibits then impart their knowledge about their businesses and the industry.

All the speakers scheduled for the workshop were great to listen to.

My picks from the Exhibits

(Keep in mind not all of these businesses sell directly to the public, their websites should tell you who their stockists are, others deal directly with designers/specifiers.)

bleux

Because I'm still trying to work out which direction I want to go in, it was a treat to hear Skye Molyneux from bleux speak about design for interiors. bleux produces designs on different mediums - canvas, glass, fabric, wallpaper and have a collaboration with Designer Rugs. Skye was previously a partner in Blue and Brown, a company I have followed for quite a while. Their designs are my kind of stuff.

bleux - Familia colour Rosa

Ferm Living

Ferm Living's exhibit also had some 'nice to haves'. Why couldn't all these fantastic products have been around when my boys were growing up ?? Although......if they were, I wouldn't have had much money left.

Don't know about Ferm Living, haven't heard of them....have a look.

Ferm Living - 'Leaf in Colours' wallpaper

Kif & Katast

Wow, some great stuff here too. Could be I've found a way to do that garden screen I've been thinking about.

Kif & Katast - Ginko bench & Brazilion Orchard screen

Axolotl

Hmmm... which way to go, Kif & Katast OR Axolotl. These products are amaaaazing!!! I love what both companies are doing.

One of my fellow students used an Axolotl product for an assignment last year. It's metal finish on timber/mdf. It looks like metal and is in a way. They are a specialist metal finishing company. So if you want that front door or screen that looks like it's rusting, but not...see these guys. Fantastic finishes !!!!

Axolotyl Designex 2008 exhibit

Cloth

Julie Paterson is Cloth. She has just launched a wallpaper range in collaboration with Porters Paints. She works with Hemp, Linen and Organic Cotton.

Cloth Fabric products

Eurowalls

Eurowalls - Importer and retailer of European designer wallcoverings manfactured in Germany. Surely we all know how pedantic Germans are with their products, Mercedes Benz for example...hint hint.

Eurowalls - Mural 'Iris'

Designa Print & Living Studio

Designer Wallpapers, Vinyl Wall Art and Glass Etching. Noosa based family business. Designa Print has an online store for home decorators.

Designaprint StickerArt

Sicis

Super sensational tiles!!!! Mosaics you have to see to believe. The Sicis exhibit was absolute luxe.

Dulux Colour Awards 2010 - Winners announced 31 March 2010

If you ever get the chance to be involved in something prestigious related to your profession, DO IT!

Commercial Interior and Grand Prix Winner
'Fitzroy High School' by McBride Charles Ryan Architecture + Interior Design

The experience of being in a room of Design professionals was inspiring. Just to see works from Architects, Interior Designers, Colour Stylists and of course the other Student finalists! Being amongst the entries in that one room was validation of a job well done - and a nudge closer to what is a passion for me.

No luck this year, however with a very big possibility of an interior renovation sometime this year, could be that I'll have an entry for 2011 as a Stylist.

'Rose Bay Exterior' by Terese Grove

All the very best to Joyce Pang who won the Student category, a fellow student from iscd Colour Design Diploma 2009. Her prize, a glass Trophy from Dulux and $1000.

'Savaterre' Vineyard by Joyce Pang

Congratulations also to Lisa Nolan (Askew), Sharon Elliott, Liz Maher, Heather Meade, and Beverley Duncan. The seven of us, all students of iscd - past and present - were the majority of the finalists for the category - Student Years 1 -6. Apologies to Beverley, I don't seem to have a photo of your entry.

'Daemon Group' by Sharon Elliott
'Scullery Maid' by Liz Maher

'Rumble Tumble' by Lisa Nolan (Askew)

I'm on the lookout for other design competitions to enter. I know Designer Rugs has 'Evolve'. An entry for that will employ the experience I gained from the Surface Design Diploma I completed in 2008.

Up to 2007, creativity had taken a backseat for a while and I have only started doing larger projects as I now have some room to do them. Sewing is my first love I suppose you could say, always wanting to be in the fashion industry from a young age, but I only bring the sewing machine out once in a blue moon now.

Must...do...more!!

Magazines are a drug. With subscriptions to quite a few, ideas endlessly flow now. Finding the time to fulfil the 'need' to work in the industry while working fulltime is a juggling act.

Thought I might see if there is a way to get some 'work experience' with a stylist, somewhere, somehow!!

Some more pics from the night:Student Category Heather Meade, Liz Maher, Sharon Elliott and me
Guildford Lane Gallery interior Commercial entries More entries

The interior of the gallery was fantastic with each wall being covered by entries. The wait staff were all dressed in painters overalls with a different colour bandana and the serving trays were the shape of an artist's paint palette. Each tray had a small foam roller with a splotch of colour as if painted by the roller. Very 'arty' for the occassion.

Looking forward to next year.

Thanks also to Liz for showing Sharon and me a great Restaurant in Melbourne where we dined and congratulated each other many times over great food and wine to end the night.

Project: Canvas Art

It took a while to decide what to do for this blank space in the lounge room. I'd always thought I would do some sort of 'artwork'.

Now I'm definitely not an artist, so I tried to play with paints and textures.

All I did here was buy a couple of canvases, large enough to cover the area. It needed to be about 1 mtr - 1.5 mtr wide and about 1 mtr deep.

My collection of paints (see 'Helpful Tools') includes a box full of sample pots from the times I've tested possible colours for various projects over the last 6 years. Some are quite bright, so I've used them in another canvas art project I'll feature soon.

For this project, I found a sample pot of a fairly neutral background colour. This is Dulux 'Espirit', a light green grey colour.

Next, rummaged through my artist's acrylic paint to find a suitable red - Vermilion Red, the brown is Burnt Ochre, and I mixed the green using Matisse Flow 'Australian Yellow Green' as the base.

The technique - acrylic paints are 'wiped' or 'scraped' on using a wide plastic scraper (see 'Helpful Tools').

The tubes of paint were easy to work with. I squeezed a line of paint along the canvas where I wanted the block of colour, then scraped the paint down as far as I thought looked OK. I kept doing this until I had a reasonably thick layer of paint, leaving ridges where the scraper had run over the wet paint, to give some depth to the 'artwork'. In some lights this effect also throws shadows along the ridges of paint.

I repeated this with the other two colours, and painted the sides of the canvases where the green match up.

This was great fun and hardly took me any time at all.

Dulux Colour Awards 2010 - update

In my last post about the awards, I had received confirmation that my entry had been received.

When I came home from work on Tuesday night there was a 'Dulux' letter waiting for me. Knowing that the competition was so good last year, as I started to open the letter, my comment was that this would be the notification of my entry not making it to the shortlist.

You know how it is with a letter like this, you don't really read it, and you scan it as quickly as you can to see what the bad news is!!!

I couldn't find any bad news.

MY ENTRY WAS SELECTED FOR THE SHORTLIST OF STUDENT FINALISTS!!!!

So, I'm off to Melbourne at the end of the month to go to the Awards night being held at the Guildford Lane Gallery. The awards are finalized March 30 2010, with the winners being announced March 31 2010 at the Gallery.

My formal invitation arrived in the mail yesterday.

My whole philosophy for this was to enter to gain and, I suppose, enjoy the experience.

Let the experience continue!! Will let you know how I go and I'll post some photos of the night.

As a postscript, 10 iscd students entered the competition this year. 6 of us were shortlisted; the best result the school has had with entries in the competition.