Bell jar

I was browsing through Pinterest this morning and came upon a few photos of tablescapes containing bell jars filled with all kinds of pretty things. I always loved those jars and when I found them on sale a few years ago, back in  Dubai, I bought two. They came without the wooden base I saw in most photos. Once I had them, I didn't really know what to do with them. Our house does not have little knick-knacks all over the place. We like open spaces and clean lines. So the jars sat on the buffet, with nothing in.

Inspired by my early morning Pinterest browsing, I decided to play with them this morning. I took one item from every room of the house and put it in one of the jars. This is the result. I still have a few things to learn about photographing reflective surfaces, and styling, but apart from that it was fun.

Entrance hall

Dining room*

Kitchen

Pantry

Laundry

Living room

Jandre's room

Stefan's room

Kid's bathroom

Anika's room

  

Main bedroom

Main bathroom

My studio/office

 Garage

* art by my friend Natasja de Wet

Adelaide in Pictures 1: Dolphin Sanctuary

We spent a beautiful, cloudy morning at the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary, exploring the mangroves and the shipwrecks. The sanctuary is in the Port River and Barker inlet, and although it is very close to the city and harbour, once you are on the water, you feel miles away from all civilization.

The water was perfectly still, with only the waterbirds and dolphins breaking the surface.

The sanctuary is also home to a 'shipwreck graveyard' which provides good habitat for fish and water birds. 

This shipwreck lies in very shallow water and provides a great photo opportunity. 

I paddled around the wreck and photographed it from all sides, but I think I still have a few things to learn about photographing from a kayak...

The bottle-nose dolphins came quite close, and although they didn't pay too much attention to us they were very aware of our presence. A few times they swam underneath the kayaks and came up right next to the one where my husband and daughter sat and watched her closely. It seemed like they knew she was only a small child.

Guest Post from Australia

Seeing that we are off wandering around Australia, I thought it would be good idea to ask one of my favourite Aussie bloggers to do a guest post about... Australia.

I asked her to share with us how being Australian and/or living in Australia has influenced her creative thinking and design process.

She told me " I am not influenced by being Australian, I just AM Australian!" 

 So, without further ado, here she is:  

Kathreen Ricketson is a mother, maker and blogger. She blogs at Whipup.net and lives in Australia with her husband Rob and two children. Kathreen has published six books (two on quilting and four on crafting with kids).

I am happy to be here to today guest posting about my country Australia and how the light and colour inspires me in my creativity and craft. Before settling down with children and work and mortgage I was lucky enough to have travelled to many different countries. I love to experience different cultures, foods, traditions and landscapes, but I think what I love most about traveling is experiencing peoples different sense of design and colour, from how they paint their houses, decorate their markets to their clothing and fabric designs. Every country and culture has a different way with colour that is influenced by their surroundings. 

In Australia we have the most wonderful light, blue skies, purple sunsets, yellow beaches, and red desert sands. The colours we are drawn to for our houses tend to be earth reds and browns, ochre yellows and eucalyptus greens and greys. But we also like to let the startlingly vivid colours of our flowers and birds shine amongst the earthy tones of our country. But we also like to let the startlingly vivid colours of our flowers and birds shine amongst the earthy tones of our country. 

My family and I love to go camping and recently we traveled inland to desert country to experience the amazing sunsets and red earth of our country. I have prepared some colour palettes based on images I took on our trip. Enjoy!  

Thank you Kathreen!

Playing with Colour

Just playing with a reflection...

Tutorial: Turning a photo into an embroidery pattern

Here is how I turned a photo into a pattern:

Pick a photo of your choice.

School photos work very well as the lighting is good and the face is usually without shadows

Use any photo editing software of your choice.  There are lots of free software available online.  I use Picnik.  Use the posterize function to get this effect.  Play around with the colours until you are happy.  I settled on 10 colours.

Save the posterized picture and go to the Pencil Sketch function.  Without any further editing I got this result.  Play around until you are happy with the amount of lines and the clarity of the picture.

You can use the picture as is, or further simplify it by hand.  I printed the previous picture and traced it against the window (you can use a light table if you are more sophisticated than me!).  Here you can make it as simple or as complicated as you wish.

I scanned this version into my computer and printed it on to a wash-away stabilizer.

And Voila!  A perfect embroidery pattern.

A friendly request:  

This is a picture of my son.  I used it to demonstrate the process.  

Please feel free to link to this tutorial, but please do not re-post this whole post with pictures to your blog.  If you need one picture to illustrate the post, use one of the sketches.

Thank you.  

I'm on Flickr!

After six years in Dubai, I am finally able to use Flickr! The site has always been blocked (yes, we are being sensored) but has now misteriously been unblocked... I don't want to ask to many questions in case someone decides to block it again.



I have loaded a few images but it is still a work in progress...


I tried to join a couple of groups, but alas the group option is still blocked



Maybe in another six years...