Sydney Indesign 2011 Review

In August this year I was lucky enough to make it down to Sydney for the 2011 Saturday Indesign to scout out Australia's finest suppliers and showrooms of quality interior furniture, lighting and finishes. Brisbane's Woods Bagot Interior design team and I were well prepared for the day, armed with a map of the particular places we wanted to visit as we kick-started our design-packed day at the trendy Jardan showroom in Surry Hills.

jardan :: beautiful and bright retro-styled pieces with lovely attention to detail.

great dane furniture :: sophisticated danish + scandinavian furniture and lighting. The highlight was the unique and stylish cork pendants.

spence and lyda :: more rounded peices with a retro feel

zenith :: a focus on real-time working with bright, bold colours.

schiavello :: Blurring the line between public and private spaces with the clever use of screenings and alternatives to traditional partitions

tait outdoor :: I loved Tait's outdoor furniture as they provide fun feature peices that compliment Australia's outdoor lifestyle with a modern and chic style.

euroluce :: Plenty of fabulous lighting options with the showroom cleverly styled using neon lighting installations to present their designs.

And finally, we celebrated that night in style at Stylecraft's fantastic showroom party...

Live by the sun - Love by the moon

I love the beautiful and clever moon photography above. Taken over a series of evenings, I'm reminded of lazy nights on the dunes at Mermaid Beach watching the moon come up... and inspired to escape the city lights more often to moon gaze.

(a friend forwarded them to me in an email which I later found here)

Hippie Love

Image credits :: 1. Girl playing guitar 2. Beach picnic 3. B&W 4. John&Yoko 5. Carrington daisies

Crafty + Bright

Today I wanted to share some brightness... I recently came across a gorgeous little book by freelance writer and designer, Kelly Doust, called 'The Crafty Minx'. Kelly's knack for creating hand made crafts from flea markets and vintage finds is very inspiring and as I was reading her book with a cup of hot tea, it dawned on me that I was really needing to make time to unleash my creativity. Here is the sentence in Kelly's book that really resonated with me.


"Things made by hand are special and hold a little bit of you in them...Spending even a small amount of time doing this actually restores the spirit and is much more rewarding than sitting down in front of the television after a hard day's work." Kelly Doust

Kelly's blog, The Crafty Minx, is a sweet mix of craft ideas to warm the heart. I'm also looking forward to grabbing a copy of her new book, Minxy Vintage, due for release in October 2011, which is all about customising vintage clothing.

Beautiful bright accessories
(image found at theBerry)

All it takes to reawaken your inner-creative is to clear away the clutter and surround yourself with positive inspiration. One way to do this is write down your new aspirations and add them to a fun vision board of ideas, quotes and images! I'm planning on getting myself a little sewing machine soon and have already started a collection of treasures such as ribbons, fabric pieces and buttons I can use to make my own original items. I'm also very interested in furniture restoration and plan on dabbling in restoring an antique wardrobe soon.

Have a great weekend and happy creating!

Buttons! (image found here)

A cute sewing table
(image from the dainty squid)