OSCAR DE LA RENTA EXHIBIT

My friends know I love fashion (although my day to day wardrobe doesn't necessarily scream fashion forward my instagram feed is full of haute couture) so it was such a pleasant surprise the Oscar de la Renta exhibit was in San Francisco! It was at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park and the park itself was beautiful. We went on our last day and I wish we had more time to explore the grounds (especially the Japanese Tea Garden).

On our vacations we almost always compromise by doing something the other person enjoys and then switching. For instance, in New York we went to a baseball game and then to the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). In San Francisco the baseball game was followed by the Oscar de la Renta exhibit. Fair's fair. Basically his favourite thing is baseball. My favourite thing is art.

I was so excited and the dresses were stunning. In particular I loved seeing older designs (from the 1960s) and the more recent Met Gala dresses - in particular the black and white design Sarah Jessica Parker wore a few years ago. I took about a thousand photos as inspiration for my cousin, the surface designer - see her blog here. She creates hand painted silk designs so of course I sent her photos of the same medium from the exhibit. Enjoy a very select few of my photos below!

SEVEN

I've posted here before about my cousin, Dee (Dara) Wilkie and some of her projects and she has had a very busy fall season! She has been working very hard with great results so I wanted to showcase her most recent work!

Dara studied surface design at New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and graduated in 2012. Since then she has been working full time while she also starts her own brand and I am a big fan of everything she has ever done! Her biggest fan maybe. :)

Last summer Dara conceptualized a new project inspired by the seven deadly sins (hence SEVEN). She designed and created seven fabrics, each inspired by one of the seven deadly sins, and four local fashion designers turned these fabrics into beautiful garments. A completely Fredericton based project, local models were then styled by Billy Peterson and Michael Drost and photographed by Lance Kenneth Blakney.

The dresses and photographs are currently displayed at the George Fry Gallery at NBCCD. Gallery hours: 9:00 am to 4:30 pm Monday to Friday. 457 Queen Street, Fredericton, NB.

They will be displayed until January 19th if you're in town! Please stop by and support local artists!

Fashion design:
Michelle Duncan
Adrienne Goodine
Alexandra Keely
Bronwen Robbins

Surface design:
Dee Wilkie

LOCAL TALENT

You might remember a few weeks ago I was going on about my cousin's local business - MairiRyan Textile Designs. (If you don't remember you can see it back here.) At the time I was promoting shopping local and mentioned the Fredericton Fall Craft Show.

I will gladly admit supporting local business has not normally been high on my priority list. However, after many discussions with my cousin about the frustrations of being a local artist, I realized I should be supporting people in my community! Colour me changed. So forgive me if in the future I'm a broken record about it.

When we went to the craft fair a couple of weekends ago I was determined to turn over a new leaf. Shopping local all the way. Here is a little showcase of the craft fair! And to be fair - I'm showing you products from three booths and two of them are a friend/family member. But I still think they're awesome.

1. Courtney's Creations - find the facebook page here.
My friend Courtney makes beautiful decorative eggs - yes, that's right - eggs. They are an art form called "Pysanky" or Ukrainian Easter Eggs. This is very similar to batik, using a wax and dye method. The eggs are beautiful and a great decoration to put on display or hang on your Christmas tree. If you like, she even makes custom orders. And if you're nearby, she will be at Rhoda's Christmas Festival in Saint John from Nov 14 - 16.

2. MairiRyan Textile Designs - find the facebook page here.
As I mentioned above, I wrote a post on my cousin Dara's largest project to date a few weeks ago - a collaboration with a fashion designer using MairiRyan fabrics. Dara also creates a variety of other products that she sells including Comfort Cathy dolls (microwaveable for aches and pains), hand-dyed silk scarves, headbands, and notebooks. If you are looking for Christmas or birthday presents I would highly recommend a hand dyed scarf! Or even a headband as a stocking stuffer! She makes baby sized headbands too, which would be adorable for a newborn photo shoot.

3. Megan Billings Pottery - find her website here.
I have to tell you - I have no bias here. I don't know Megan, but I have been admiring her work at the Saint John City Market (at The Butcher's Daughter, specifically) for the last four years! When we found her at the craft fair I was so excited to meet her! Her pottery is gorgeous - bright and happy. The colours she uses make me happy. Nothing feels too precious or fussy but there is beautiful attention to design and detail.

Hopefully this will also inspire you (at least a little) to shop locally! Keep it in mind when you're buying Christmas presents this year. I'm definitely trying to!

ART - IT'S WHAT YOU MAKE IT

Over the last four years of home ownership I've accumulated some items that we have used as artwork.  Some of these things are a bit nontraditional so I thought I would (hopefully) offer you some home inspiration!

You can use whatever you like as artwork.  Do you have a beautifully printed scarf that you love?  A pin or medal from a grandparent?  In hubby's case, a frisbee from an Ultimate Frisbee tournament?  There are no rules!  Frame them!

Here are some of my less conventional pieces.  (Some of these you may recognize from previous posts.)  I'll ease you into this with something not too wild and crazy.  This is a photo I took on our trip to New Orleans and I had it printed on a canvas on the Shutterfly website.

Again, from our trip to New Orleans, I bought three postcards at five dollars each and framed them.  They hang in our kitchen.

Don't make fun of me for this, but one time watching MTV Cribs (I know) we saw a collection of crosses hung over a fireplace.  Hubby and I both thought that was really neat so we pick up crosses on our travels (and by that I mean we have picked up exactly two).  Hopefully over the years we'll collect more!

I posted this little guy awhile ago.  Hubby and I used to say "Hey You" when we were dating.  I made this little sketch (took literally 2 minutes) and framed it.

This was another photo I took in Prague, Czech Republic, at the John Lennon wall.  I took tons of photos of the wall and then framed my fave.  She's in our bathroom.

And now my current favourite.  My grandparents collected tea towels over the years and there is a cupboard at their cottage that is full of them!  I snagged my favourite one (it must have been from a trip to western Canada due to the Rockies in the background) and had it framed with a vintage frame I found online.

There you go!  I hope this inspires you to frame something special to you that you have lying around your house!

NURSERY INSPIRATION: BABY BOY

It's no secret I love interior decorating.  When I was a pre-teen girl my favourite part of babysitting was getting to stay up at night and watch TLC's Trading Spaces (which we didn't get at home) after the kids went to bed.  My tastes have changed since then - that show doesn't even exist and even if it did I don't think the concept of makeover an entire room for $1000 is still my style...but it definitely sparked my love of design.

In another life I would totally be an interior designer.  However, in this life I'm in medical school and my schedule can be totally crazy (not to mention I don't have much disposable cash).  If at some point I could swing a little interior decorating business on the side, I would totally dig it.  (Call me.  Seriously.  This is like my dream.)

Which leads me to... my best friend is having a baby!  Her baby boy is due to arrive in the next six weeks or so and she wasn't super interested in decorating a nursery.  Enter me.  I have been sending her items from kijiji and etsy all week since she agreed to let me help her.  She says I'm not being annoying buuut... :)

We have completely different styles so I am trying very hard to pick out things that I think are to her taste and not my own faves.  She hasn't decided on anything yet, but I thought for a fun post I would include some of the inspiration I've found around the internet.  D didn't like any of these things, by the way, so you may not either, friends.

My thing is way more neutral schemes in a nursery.  I don't care for pink for girls and blue for boys.  It's predictable.  I am not.  Here are a few things I like in a little boy's nursery.

This mobile from Etsy.  I think it's retro and cute.

White cribs are my current fave.  This one from Ikea seems inexpensive but I've never looked into cribs before, so who knows?

And again, with the "neutrals".  This fitted crib sheet is sweet.  It's patterned and goes with the colour scheme.  Polka dots are just great, let's be honest.  And if I was doing a scheme like this, I would probably choose a white blanket for the crib so I won't bore you with posting one here, on the off chance you find white blankets boring.

 

 This pillow which has a really cool pattern without being overboard.

Sarah Jane has really sweet children's prints.  You can find this one here.

Well, this post was just too fun.  I definitely need to do more room inspiration posts.  Hope you enjoyed it even if (like me) you have no plans of decorating a nursery of your own!  Have a nice Monday!

MASTER BEDROOM: POST SIX

Our master bedroom is as good as it's going to get, folks.  I actually think it's looking pretty cute.  The most recent additions we made were: a "new" dresser and artwork.  Last winter I was surfing Kijiji (the East Coast version of Craig's List) regularly for a dresser and found this one.

Welcome to our spare room.  Stylish, no?  This room is a complete disaster but the dresser's cute, anyway.  So when we picked this guy up last winter, the previous owner was moving into a nursing home and hoped to take the high boy version of this dresser with her.  Her son told us if they decided to sell it too, we would be first on the call list.  Luckily, this summer we heard from him and decided to buy this dresser's brother.

     
                 

He's cute, right?  My favourite things are the brass pulls.  I just think they're the greatest.  And around here, the only way I know how to buy mid century modern stuff is on Kijiji.  I have yet to find a store in these parts that sells anything of the kind.

This is the side of the room I have never shared on the blog before.  It used to be a blank wall with a white particle board dresser (Wal Mart special lent to us by hubby's mom when we first got married).  Now we've updated to honest-to-goodness wood from the 1950s (1960s?) with awesome brass pulls!  To complete the look I had wedding photos framed for hubby for our five year anniversary.  Five years?  It's time to make it official - put up the photos.  My parents didn't have wedding photos until their 25 year anniversary and I could really see us heading in that direction...

And there they are with a little less glare.  I went to a custom framer with the idea in mind that I would get white boxy frames.  She had these pre-made gold ones in typical sizes and they were quite a lot cheaper than a custom frame.  With this option I still was able to have mattes (three!) so I was sold.  I think the gold is actually quite nice with the hay in the photos; it's better than white would have been, I think.  I had three photos done but this wall is too small for all three so one ended up in our living room for now, which is fine by me!

As far as I know that's the end of the "Master bedroom" posts.  I don't foresee any other changes in the near future!  Hope you enjoyed.  Thanks for stopping by.

A SIMPLE ART PROJECT: HEY YOU

I thought I'd share with you a super simple art project I made hubby a few months ago.  He was away for something (can't remember what) and I decided to surprise him with a little something for when he got home.  When we were first dating and we would talk on the phone or write letters, he would always start by saying, "Hey You".  Wouldn't it be nice for him to have a cute little daily reminder of that?

 
I always have some Mayfair Paper on hand for art projects.  It's a nice, thick paper best for drawings that you can buy at any art supplies store.  It comes in big pieces, basically the size of a piece of bristol board.  I used a fine tipped sharpie to write my message in messy writing, coloured in the heart with your run of the mill Crayola marker, and voila.  (I always make my quick little art projects a typical size like 4x6 or 5x7 so you can easily and inexpensively frame them.)  This frame came from Winners Homesense.

Hopefully this inspired you to be a little creative with one of your favourite sayings.  Right now this little doodle is sitting on our dresser so we see it every day.

MAKING A HOUSE A HOME

Do you ever have days when you're just tired of the way your house looks?  For example, we haven't changed our kitchen at all since we moved in and the cupboards have old, chipping, painted doors.  That is so far from the to do list it's not even funny, but still there are days when I feel annoyed by the rooms we haven't worked on.  The bedrooms have old dirty carpet that isn't pretty to look at or fun to vacuum.

A friend of mine recently moved into a new apartment and is in the process of making it homey and cozy (and it looks so great)!  She inspired me to put up some more artwork and make the few little changes I can that are inexpensive, easy, and not time consuming.  After visiting her new place, I printed off a photo I took last summer on vacation in Prague and hung it in our bathroom.  There was already a hook there from the previous owners and I just hadn't taken advantage of it.  Even something as small as a new photo on the wall can give you a new outlook on your home.  (I keep running into the bathroom just to look at it.)

This is the photo I took at the John Lennon wall in Prague.

There it is on the bathroom wall!  Making things look cozy and lived in.

THE ARMOUR OF GOD

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.  In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.  Ephesians 6:10-17.

The Armor of God. Ink and watercolour on paper, 2012.

ALOHOMORA

This summer a friend of mine thought she wanted a tattoo of Hermione's wand.  (Yes, you read that correctly - and she knows who she is.)

To prevent this from happening I made her a painting for her birthday to try to satisfy her tattoo craving.  It's water colour and pen on paper.



Hermione's wand.  Original watercolour.

ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID

I have known my best friend since grade five when she transferred to my school from a local private, Christian school.  Hers was the first (and thus far only) wedding I have attended as a bridesmaid.  When D and her husband moved into their first home two years ago I knew I wanted to give them a special housewarming gift.  When I want something like this to be extra special, I always default to handmade - in this case, a drawing.

I searched through all the photos I had taken the day of D's wedding (of which there were many) and found a head on photo of her bouquet.  After cropping the photo, I had it printed in I think a 5 x 7 size so the details of the flowers were easy to visualize.  Then I bought myself a set of pencil crayons from my local art supplies store and went to town.

My main piece of advice when you are creating a painting/drawing (or even if you are enlarging a photograph) is buy the frame first!!  It can get very pricey to have anything professionally framed.  One year when hubby and I were dating I made him a drawing for Christmas.  It was a fairly large drawing and the cost of framing was somewhere between $100 and $200.  My trick is to check out the prints section of Winners/Homesense and find the approximate size frame you would like.  These prints are fairly inexpensive and almost always come framed AND matted.  Therefore, if you custom design your artwork to fit in the frame you have a relatively inexpensive frame and matte!

IL NEIGE

It seems a little early for snow but Mother Nature's a stubborn lady.  In the spirit of winter here are a few prints from Sarah Jane Studios (a really cute etsy shop I found via Style at Home magazine).  Her vintage inspired prints are just lovely and she just illustrated a children's Christmas book this year.

Snow on Snow.

Winter Cheer.

Wellesley and Winslow, Christmas Post.