Beautiful woodstacks

I do love a beautiful woodstack, I am always in awe of an interiors showing a fireplace with a beautifully built stack, and imagine how nice it would be to have all that nice dry wood  chopped and ready to stick on the fire.  We don't have enough room in our house for this, one winter I did manage to squeeze in a small one, it was great but I did use so much more wood, 'cause it was so easy (no trudging down to the garage to chop once a day) but a beautiful stack in the garden would do, just have to find the right place.  I haven't quite mastered the asthetics of stacking  but have the potential to be quite fussy about the whole thing.  Here are some pictures of woodstacks, and rooms, to envy/admire/dream of. 

 Brent Darby

 adirondack holiday Deep Woods cabin

This is not fire wood, but I thought as an idea it would be really cool to make the woodstack in furniture, or gaps in furniture.

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1. teepee woodstacks  2. lovely distressed blue wall more photos on flikr link  3. Woodstack walls, all so neat and tidy.
These photos are off flikr, and I'm sure there is a way to get the full sized picture up, but at the moment it eludes me, click on the links to see the pictures in bigger size.

jordyfu makes these amazing paper-cut lamp-shades, there are many more on her web-site.  She has also created bigger scale ideas.  Such fantastic detail and intricacy.  What lovely shadows and different shades of light there would be.   

woodyness

I am off to the garden to chop up the logs left over from tree felling last week.  My friendly neighbour came round with a marvellous sharp axe for me to use this morning so I have no excuse.  Just procrastinating with a cup of tea and last nights left-overs, yum! and then I'm on to it.  So feeling a bit wood like I thought I would put in some recent photos taken of trees of one description and another.  I loved the spottyness of these wood wormy trunks, they looked almost animal skin-like.  Some great natural textures and patterns.

New Wallpaper book and some new small stash

Me and the girls have been walking on another hill today in the sunshine, sitting on logs and collecting sheeps wool off fences, mainly for leaving around the house in untidy lumps.  A bit of sewing, bath, dinner and bed.

 A little pile of small pieces of fabric we collected at the garage sale on Sunday.  Mostly offcuts and left-overs so good for dolly clothes and patchwork and small things.

 I also bought this book which has lots of cool wallpaper and some weird and wacky wallpaper and some pretty stuff too. 

 above, interesting deer on the shirt.

 These were in big scale, wall height, would be very dramatic but a bit nerve racking in the bathroom. 

 I love the pattern idea on these by Johanna Basford who I blogged about yesterday.

 This is so beautiful and dreamy and summery.  My photos never turn out like this!

 I'm not sure where I would put this, nowhere in my house is cool enough for, neither am I mind you.

 I have not taken a very good  picture which is a shame as the paper was very pretty old style.

 This was so sweet, I love the coloured flowers which look a bit like stick-ons

 beautiful and probably v. exspensive.

Would brighten up your room, this would go anywhere in my house, might disguise the bumpy walls too.

johanna Basford

Today on the way back from netball,  me and the girls stopped off at a garage sale.  I do love garage sales and this one proved to be very worthwhile, we got small pieces of fabric, interior books, gardening magazines, pencils and a bulldog clip.  One of the books was a wallpaper one with lots of beautiful prints and some wild modern graphic ones.  One of the designs that stood out for me was Johanna Basfords wallpaper, so I took a Google of her, and this is what I found.

The captions are all rather small type for some reason, you might need your glasses on to read it.

soap packaging

beer labels

fabric designs for some cool frocks

converse decoration

couture doodling

 She has been a busy girl and has a prolific amount of work that she has produced, all so detailed with little secret hidden pictures to find amongst the lines. I feel all inspired myself now give some black line drawing a try, and I do like to be inspired.

goodbye to the trees

Tomorrow we are having two big old trees cut down.  It is quite sad and I always feel awful when this happens, but unfortunately one has been sick for a few years now, its leaves are crinkly and sad looking(below), when it has leaves that is.

the  other tree, above is beautiful and soon it would have amazing purple flowers that smell utterly divine, but as you can see its trunk is developing a rather jaunty angle with the ground, and for the sake of next doors fence, sewerage pipes and inter-neighbourly relations  I think it is time to do something about it before its too late, so to speak.  ( luckily the light is bad in this photo so you can't see the dreadful state of the driveway.  It makes me feel quite weak whenever I drive in.  The magic driveway pixies have yet to do anything about it) 

Click this link to find a rather pretty japanese garden with lop-sided tree 

and I found a lopsided pine tree too to keep it company.

heart-shaped biscuits and eco outfit

I made some biscuits today as my poor children have had none in their lunch boxes yet this week.  My oldest child has to hide biscuits  from me  and my husband as we have no self-control and  tend to eat them all very quickly.  I made pretty heart-shaped ones half chocolate, half plain with a little icing sugar heart in the middle.  It all got less tidy when I had to squish up the left-over pieces to cut out again, they are more marble effect.  The table-cloth is my daughters from a Sunday market jaunt a couple of years ago.  I need to buy it off her to make cushion covers as it is so pretty, it has roses, big pink and big blue spots and little black spots!  

the motley selection of items you see before you is my raw materiels for a little outfit I want to make for a fashion show at our local eco-fest.  I am meant to have something to show the lady organiser tomorow, so I better get cracking.  I am making it for my little girl to wear hence her duct-tape dummy (see below from previous post) in the picture.

the idea is that you put on old well fitting clothes,

cover them in duct tape,

cut yourself out down the back,

stick up the cuts and then stuff your little body double with something. We used newspaper, but old clothes or proper stuffing could be used. I'm sure with a bit of practice they could look quite smart.

I have found mine very useful already, taking in some jeans that were always too loose around the waist at the back and starting on a skirt made from an old top. so much easier pinning things neatly on a dummie shaped like me. 

A junk to funk fashion show, I think this is made from chopped up Vogue magazines

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And all these other amazing designs were created by  Polish fashion students.  Pretty clever stuff.  My design will not be as clever as this, but I will try my best and show the results when I have finished.

Sunday Market bargains

Me and the girls and one of their friends went to the Sunday Market yesterday,  we haven't been for a while and I forget how marvellous it is.  It's like an English car boot/flea market cross and we always come away with something, for not very much which at the moment is a good thing.  So this is what I got.

 I thought this t-shirt would make a nice colourful cushion cover, I like these old fashion style tattoo designs, I don't think I would wear the T-shirt though.  The lady was selling so many hippy clothes that I would have worn in the late 80's early 90's it made me feel a little nostalgic, but also a little queasy.  Especially the purple tassle top.  We live and learn (sometimes) (hopefully).

 This is a childs top and the perfect size for my little girl.  I had to bribe her to try it on for me with the offer of chocolate cake, she looked adorable and tres cool in it, but I fear she will never wear it,  but it was only $1nz so it was worth the risk.

 A little strappy black top with nice embroidery was bought to make dolls dresses or maybe something else.  It made a very cool little dress with very little effort as I used the strap already in place and just had to sew a back seam  attach other end of the strap at the back, and some poppers.  Voila!

It has nice colours and I am hoping that I can do something with it to make it more wearable. its quite short already so may have to add some other materiels I obviously thought I was thinner than I am.  Or the dress was bigger.

So there we go, I probably spent $6nz in all so not bad, but I did resist the fresh donuts and hot chips. Don't anyone tell my husband there is a fresh donut stall at the Sunday Market please.