instagratification...succulents with black glass

I am loving succulents and black glass right now.  I cut back the gorgeous blue chalk sticks in our garden and they are all over the house.  Perfect is early morning sun in the spare room(at top) and by candlelight in the living room (bottom).  The vintage black glass vase was a lucky bargain find in the Coledale markets, the fan another market find from Cape Town.

For more instagram moments follow here.

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inspirational styling at home with The Broken Heart Repair Shop

Some spaces are just inspirational!  Today I am sharing the home of my talented cousin Justine, proprietress  of The Broken Heart Repair Shop.  Justine has the gift of spotting a great buy at 100 paces, and the even greater one of styling spaces effortlessly and originally.  "Curating the lost and found" is how she describes her style and her shop.  Watch this space, Justine is going to be working with amazing artists to create a new home wares line soon.

Have a wonderful weekend

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Around the house...

Love fresh flowers around the home.  One of the lovely things about winter is that it's tulip time.  My long legged horses agree.

Have a lovely weekend

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how to arrange flowers in a wide vase

A neat little trick a picked up off Pinterest a few years ago.  I often want to use low wide vases for flowers, this one is actually a glass salad bowl.  So how do you prevent the flowers all flopping towards the edges and create height in the centre.  Easy, magic tape to the rescue.
Scroll down to see how

Use strips of magic tape to create a rough web across the vase.  

The flowers will hang over the edges and hide the end of the tape.

Now simply arrange the flowers as if they were in a normal vase, using the tape as a support to make flowers in the centre stand up.

Enjoy your gorgeous arrangement.

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how to style a coffee table vignette

This year I am moving things around, trying to do more with what I already have.  I created this tablescape for my outdoor coffee table and thought I would share how it developed.  

I have had the marble tray for years and have never managed to style it up quite how it looked in the store.  This vignette is working much better than the tray on its own, and it was quick and inexpensive to achieve.  I already had the small glass vase and marble flower plate, I only added a larger size glass vase (a steal at $16) and bought the succulent at a street market.   You can see below how it started out and how I built it up.

Two vases, one taller and wider (both from my favourite variety store), and the gorgeous succulent to add colour and texture.  The flower plate has been in my bathroom with a candle on it, but is far prettier here. 

It's still evolving, I think the candle is to pale, perhaps another succulent?  But overall I am really enjoying the effect.  Especially like that the succulent will be happy in the winter sunlight and won't need to be replaced for months.

So pleased that I moved all these things around and tried something new.  Turns out that a change was all that tray needed to go from flat to fantastic.  

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9 reasons you should follow Kara Rosenlund

I am obsessed with Kara Rosenlund's work and determined to do one of her vignette styling classes one day.
Missed them the last time Kara was in town.  Her blog and instagram is a sure fire way to find inspiration and generally have your hair blown back by incredible photography and styling.

And another nine just to make sure you go and have a look at Kara's site.

{All photographs by Kara Rosenlund}  Pretty amazing....have a fab inspired weekend!

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the trouble with vignettes

Spent a very frustrating morning trying to style and photograph vignettes in Miss J's bedroom.  
What looks pretty to the eye doesn't always work on camera I am discovering, I need more practice.  Went out in  huff, but had a lovely reviving visit with my cousins new little baby girl.  How inspiring new life is.  
In the end I liked this one of my coffee table , so I think I will leave it there for the day.

Have a lovely week...
And if you have been having a frustrating day, take a deep breath, go for a walk, and let it all go.

Stag tea light,  Geometric gold,  Lsa International silver,  Platinum tea light,  Marakkech tea light tray        

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Black walls and styling perfection

This is the kind of space I wish I could pull off, its so retrained and has such great impact.  I would never be to edit to this pared back level.  But perhaps I can take some notes from the styling of the altar table against the black wall which I think is just perfection.

See the full house which is from Real Living here, and more of photographer Sharyn Cairns work here.

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vignettes and other changes at home

Have been enjoying moving things around, having a bit of a tidy and declutter as I go along.  Its amazing how bits and pieces start collecting around the home.  I resorted into colour and packed quite a few things away for a while.  Its made me think of so many projects I want to do, a little hard with a busy 2 year old at your feet, but we will get there bit by bit.  

Moved the candles from inside to outside for a while.  They melt in the summer heat so winter is a good time to enjoy them outside for a while.  I am really enjoying how this area looks at the moment with the new black covers and mix of cushions.  These couches get a lot of winter sun so we use them a lot.

It is the perfect place to enjoy a cup of coffee on a sunny winters morning, and fabulous for midday snoozes.

Now the cushions are all fixed I am planning a low hanging solar powered lantern for the corner between the day beds.  Its in my head but we will have to see if it works out.  So many projects I want to try!  Watch this space.

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found vignettes

I just discovered a new blog, Plateful of Love, and I am slightly obsessed with this image of their lounge.  Love the little knitted pillow!!  And the chairs too.

You know I can't resist skulls and horns, and I like the way this table is positioned in the center of the room and used for display.  Would love to see the rest of the space.

Plateful of Love |  Horn vignette | Table display by Steven Gambrel

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vignette practice...in my bedroom

My favourite thing in our bedroom is our cow hide headboard.  I bought it as a rug but it was far to small so it has ended up on the headboard.  I was a little worried it would be scratchy to lean on but it isn't.  Its still a work in progress, I want to finish it with a nail head trim, and I need a better solution for the edges, but I haven't quite figured out how to do it.

The little horse has migrated from the spare room to the bedroom, he does roam around the house but has to be kept away from Miss J's curious fingers. 

In this room I am aiming for a collection of textures in neutral shades and tones - soothing but not boring.  The linen curtains are every bit as lovely as I hoped, elegant, light and classic, but still polished.  The rest is a bit of a collectors hodge podge: bedside tables off ebay, lamp bases posted back from a Cape Town holiday, art bought online from KwaZulu Natal, aloes from the neighbourhood.

One day we will get or make a new bed, but its far far down the need to have list.  I also would like a console table for the far wall that I can put a pair of mirrors above, but sadly those too are far down my list.

The photo above was taken by the lovely Maite Robin for Prebuilt.  Our lovely home is fabulous prefab, preFAB to those who know it, and the builders, Prebuilt, asked if they could take some photos.  Enter Maite who took some amazing images which I will share with you in the next few weeks.  I want to pair her work with more intimate images of my own to give you a real sense of our home. 

All other photo's by Eva of BuildHouseHome

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vignette practice...at the front door

I stopped at a house on the school run and asked if I could cut some of the aloes tumbling onto the pavement for my garden.  The owner was happy to say yes.  I feel I should take him something back from my garden to say thank you - a gift of basil, rainbow chard and chillies perhaps.

Love the succulents shapes and forms with the cheap glass vases from the $2 shop.

Our local $2 shop is really fabulous for simple vases, candles and lanterns.  You can buy similar things at Country Road for four times the price - got to love bargain shopping!!

Cast bronze bracelets from Benin - bought many years ago at Greenmarket Square in Cape Town.

...

The best thing is since I created this vignette nobody dumps anything on the table anymore.  I plan to keep it full from now on!!

All images by Eva of Build House Home

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vignette practice...in the spare room

My vignette practice continues.  I have scoured the web, books & magazines for ideas, I am determined to do this better.  A good friend who is a fabulous stylist tells me its about looking at the textures of the objects and creating a textural story.  She believes in me.  I believe I need practice. 

I realise I need:
- several decorative trays in different sizes
- a flat silver bowl that can hold several candles
- some small low bowls 
- many many more vases
- flowers, flowers and more flowers
What worked no. 1 - my little horse
I recently put the little horse netsuke on this little wooden plinth, part of my 2013 drive to display what I have better.  He looks great, you are sure to see him popping up all over the house.
What worked no. 2 - matching the book covers to the painting
For this vignette I matched the book covers to the colours in the painting.  Yes I know its rather obsessive but its what the experts say to do and I like the harmonious look it gives.

The painting in the background is by my mum.  Lucky lucky to have an artist in the family.

All photographs by Eva of BuildHouseHome.

I also realise how you can edit the vignette with photography.  All these images are of the same space, some are zoomed in, or cropped, or taken at different times of day.  Even the colour looks totally different.   Cropping is excellent for removing noise, if I had swung the camera around you would have see the Voice of Reason's very untidy desk.

What do you think?  Constructive criticism welcome.

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don't you love...a little romance

I just had to include these pretties somewhere.  Not that romance has to be so pink, I like a dark masculine romantic style too.  These will keep me inspired as I tackle my mirror project this weekend.  

I love pink and green together, nature just does it best, so fresh and pretty.  A gorgeous photo of my favourite flower via A Rosy Note, on right a detail by Phoebe Howard. 

Isn't this the prettiest shoe storage you have ever seen?  Would be so pretty in a dressing room, of course you would need to have lots of pretty shoes and somewhere to hide the not so lovely ones.  Detail from Style Me Pretty.

A fabulous centrepiece with simple flowers and spray painted tins in bronzes and copper tones.  I am collecting tins for my own experiment. (This was via Shelterness but the link appears to have disappeared.)

This eclectic gallery (left) was pinned by my sister, it probably reminds us both of our mom who makes wonderful crazy arrangements like this all over her home.  Loving the mix of distressed mirror and that incredible geometric dresser (via Home Polish on right).  If you know where that dresser is from let me know, its incredible and I would love to know more about it.

Have a lovely weekend.

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