Posts filed under ‘inspiration’
A little Inspiration before the weekend: Faye Toogood
I’ve been meaning to post about stylist / creative director Faye Toogood for awhile now because I love her work so much. It seems like often when I’ve seen one of those magical photo editorials (in the World of Interiors for instance) it was Faye who helped create it. At any rate, these gorgeous images speak for themselves.
photographer: Bill Batten
photographer: Gregoire Alexandre
photographer: Tom Mannion
photographer: Tom Mannion
photographer: Tobias Harvey
Head over to her website for more deliciousness! This was only just a taste after all!
Bergdorfs brings new meaning to the phrase “window shop”
A Christmas visit to NYC isn’t complete without a trip to Bergdorf Goodman to see their annual holiday windows. I go just about every year and am always inspired by the beautiful, layered compositions they create. These photos were all taken by WallyG via flickr.
There are many more photos of the windows on flickr…and some of other years of course too. (Just do a flickr search on Bergdorf Christmas windows.) If you’ve never experienced them in person and get a chance to go to see them, I highly suggest it!!
In Progress: Guest Room
First, let me say that I dislike showing photos of my house looking disheveled and ripped apart. I realize that is part of the draw [for all of us] in reading a house blog, but it’s just that I find it somehow embarrassing as if I’m being caught picking my nose. You know? People gawk and stare…but not in that good way. At any rate, in spite of not feeling as if I have anything great to show, I also feel as if real pictures (meaning warts & all photos) of my house are overdue. So here you go.
I’ve been furiously trying to work on my guest room in time for my mother to come and visit, but the house seems to be fighting against me. It’s as if this room just doesn’t want a nice, beautiful paint job…and to be decorated. I present to you exhibit A.
The walls in this room are just all kinds of frustrating. First off, they’re plaster… underneath a layer of wallpaper… underneath two layers of paint. Sounds great, huh? However, it’s not the painted wallpaper that bothers me, as you might think. No, the wallpaper is actually the thin paper kind…so the fact that it’s been painted over isn’t that big of a deal. Besides a few seams that I’m having to cut out and sand over, it’s not that bad. It’s just that underneath this window I have a slight bit of dampness that has come in from the windowsill and it’s made the old stuff separate from the wall. Therefore I’ve been scraping and will have to spackle it, sand it smooth….etc etc. Oh, and did I mention that I’m also struggling to find the perfect shade to paint the walls? Why is choosing a paint color sometimes the hardest part of the job? For the record, I think Martha Stewart does a great job with her paint swatch program at Lowes. (And if you’ve got lots of expendable cash to throw around, I love Farrow & Ball’s paint colors.)
Did I mention that my mom arrives this Friday? Yeah….guess what is NOT getting done by then? I’ll probably end up doing as much work as I can this week after work, cleaning up the mess, putting clean sheets on the bed, and calling it a day. Not exactly how I’d like for her to spend her Thanksgiving in my guest room, but for now it’s going to have to do. On the bright side, the first time she came to visit I had no working bathroom.
Anyways…to give you an idea of what I hope for it to look like some day in the future, here’s my inspiration images ripped from the pages of various magazines:
Wish me luck as I keep plugging ahead.
Domino Magazine to stop publication?!
Apartment Therapy just posted about an article featured in the New York Observer talking about the dire straits that many home decorating magazines are finding themselves in these days. Obviously it was a shock to many that magazines like House & Garden and Blueprint shut down, however it was just announced the other day that O at Home is going to close as well. Now apparently rumor has it that Domino could be next.
WHAT?! I said…WHAT?! That’s one of my favorite magazines! I’d feel lost without it. Of course, lately I’ve been thinking a fair amount about the future of magazines. They’re one of the things that many home bloggers love to look at and talk about, but are we helping to contribute to their demise? Sites like Design*Sponge, Decor8 and Apartment Therapy deliver fresh content 5-7 days a week. Are we overloading ourselves with too much decorating?
At any rate, I love both magazines and decorating blogs. I mean, I have to look at them both for a living, and of course…have my own little home blog in this giant blogosphere. Anyways…The NY Observer actually refers to Architectural DIgest as the Vogue of shelter magazines….which I completely disagree with. I honestly wouldn’t mind that magazine disappearing forever. But that’s just my personal opinion. But with all these magazines potentially going under what is your favorite magazine that you couldn’t do without? Let me hear from you:
Note: I left out the overseas publications like Living, Etc. and World of Interiors. I love them too, but I’m thinking specifically about the American ones since they seem to be the ones that are closing their doors.
Obsessed with…Domino’s new web tool “My Deco”
Today sfgirlbybay posted about the new “My Deco” tool on the Domino website, and so I headed over there to have a peak. I have to say that I wasn’t optimistic about what I was going to find. Most of the online decorating “tools” are clunky DIY-style visualizers, but this is like an online folder to store all those great images you love. And what’s better, be able to search through other people’s deco files for great stuff that you may have missed. I spent several hours today messing around with it, and found lots of great stuff. Here’s a glimpse of what I’ve started so far.
If you haven’t already been toying with it (which I suspect many of you have since their website got REALLY slow later in the day), then you should go over and test it out. There’s lots of great photos to see!!
Dressing up your hardwood floors…
Okay, I realize what I’m about to say might not be everyone’s cup of tea… I mean, there are many people who love all hardwood floors the same. But in my opinion & past decorating experience, not all wooden floors are created equally. My very first kitchen years ago had heart pine floors (much like the ones I have now only more yellow/orange in color) and I decided to paint them. It took me 2 weeks of OCD precision taping to get it perfect. Many of my friends were scandalized at the time, but it was my favorite part of the whole house. I didn’t have much money to spend on furniture or rugs, but for the cost of a few cans of paint I was able to achieve a lot of look for very little.
Anyways…today while trying to catch up on my stack of magazines, I ran across these gorgeous images of a floor done with two-tone stained squares. Dear god, I’m having serious floor envy. I present to you, exhibit A:
from the April/May 2008 issue of Belle Magazine
They’re gorgeous, right? I like how they’re a very subtle pattern and how the owner of the house used what looks to be stain rather than paint to create his pattern. Anyways…these pics made me re-think how I’m using the hardwood floors in the rest of my house. (Who knows? Maybe one day…long down the road.)
Here’s some additional inspiration:
This first one is great because it creates the look of inlaid hardwood without having to spend very much money! I love simple details like this one.
from the April 2006 issue of House & Gardens
My first foray into floor painting. Sorry it’s such a grainy photo…this was back in 2000 with a 1.3 megapixel camera!
Do you any of you have any additional photos of floor painting or stencilling? I had a hard time finding any inspiration other than what I already had collected…
Rustic Cathedrals…who knew they even existed?!
When I think of beautiful architecture, I rarely think of rustic landscapes or log cabins. And when someone says the word cathedral, I certainly NEVER think of simplicity and beauty of the sort that architectural photographer Richard Davies captured in his travels through rural Russia. This month’s issue of World of Interiors features his stunning photography. These structures are like nothing I’ve ever seen. It seems almost as if someone made them out of old popsicle sticks..and for some reason I feel compelled to own a HUGE print of one of them. If only I could track him down…and afford it.
More photos after the jump (more…)
