I *heart* ebay

Dear Ebay,
You are always there for me when I need some obscure item. When Im pining for a brooch to wear in my hair, you have it. And you give it to me for only $7.63 including postage. You are the best friend a gal could ever have.

Love, your friend
Delaks xxxx

PS. This is the first accessory I have bought for the wedding! To be worn like this:

Or maybe even like this:

Funky Stationery

In Martha Blue and Red colour scheme

I am building quite a portfolio of invite designs atm, the more I do the more I want to experiment with new styles. This set is designed to be a more fun/casual design, and my first foray into floral motifs (Im not much of a flowery person, but I know there are plenty of brides out there that are). Im beginning to find a 'signature style' in these experiments that I hope is unique and interesting enough that I could sell these at some stage in the future (or at the rate of design Im going, send each of my 200 guests individually designed invites!! lol)

In Hot Pink and Pink colour scheme

Stripy Stationery

So I have done another set of wedding stationary just for the fun of it, but I think its actually something I might end up using for our own wedding. The more I muck around with the design of my invites (and I think this one is invite redesign number 7 or 8 at this stage...) the more I think I might like to do this as a bit of a hobby/small business. Tough industry though, I wonder how I would deal with my bridezilla self as a customer??

In other news: this website made me chuckle this week, although it makes me wonder if any of my family/friends/wedding suppliers would like to send me a "please shut up about your fucking wedding, bridezilla" postcard because quite frankly I do talk about my wedding A LOT ;P hehehe

I *heart* blogs

'Fluid' by Julie West

Doncha love it when things just turn out? I had been thinking lately that I would like to start a proper art collection, and in particular that I would like a cool, smallish, stylish print for our new place. Now where do you begin to try and find a cool, smallish, stylish print when you dont really mind who its by or what its of?? So Im doing my regular blog browsing, and lo and behold on the ever useful design*sponge blog is a link to a site called we*heart*prints... which is exactly what I was after!! we*heart*prints lists affordable and beautiful prints that are available online - perfect! Now the only thing left to do is pick one from this amazing selection...

Stylish Stationery

My sisters stationery set - click to see larger size

This is the set of stationery I designed for my sisters wedding which is coming up this weekend. I *think* they turned out quite well - stylish, cheap and simple, just what she asked for. This was a good experiment to see if wedding design is something I might like to do as a career move - I quite enjoyed it and I like the outcome, but I would still love any feedback from blog readers out there to develop my skills further :) Critique away!

Here are some of the geeky technical points:

• Everything can be printed on a normal home printer on A4 sheets - this whole set required one ream of thin white A4 cardboard
• The square invite is a standard square envelope size (she bought hers on ebay)
• The Thank You slip is DL sized, so they fit 3 to an A4 page and can be posted in a standard DL envelope
• The OOS is A5, so you just print it on cardboard and fold in half as the cover
• The only seperate part to stick on is the white box on the cover of the invite - this was stuck with glue to the left flap, but it could also be printed on a sticker sheet to seal the invite shut if desired
• The whole thing cost about $100 - $150 for approx 90 invites

I am yet to release my own invite design to the world, partly because I want it to be a bit special and secret, and partly because I have changed it so many times it might be different come next Feb! But as a bit of a sneak peak, heres my Save the Date card so far:

If youre a DIY Bride (or should that be DIBride?) like me, for inspiration check out Luxe Paperie for funky ideas and colour combos, and KenzieKate for gorgeous and stylish invitation designs

Friday Finds

Polka dot dish, just waiting for some hor'douvre

Each Friday I am going to post a couple of interesting ebay finds of things that take my fancy. Todays theme: black and white

Diana Polka Dot Dish
This dish is so hot right now, polka dots really float my boat

Faux Flocked Wallpaper
Its faux flocked and its wallpaper. What more can I say - this is H O T

Black Noguchi Coffee Table
Yes, I am officially obsessed, its on my Watch List.

Next weeks theme: Boudoir. Stay tuned!

Guerilla Gardening - Naughty But Nice

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

I am partial to a bit of gardening, and have grown lovely herbs quite sucessfully in the past. However my passion waned when I moved nearer to the beach and the salty air + searing sun on my balcony killed off everything I had carefully tended to, including the Unkillable Rosemary. Now I am in a south facing apartment, so I have the exact opposite problem where sunshine is scarce and we have no balcony (ironically though, we have a "sun room" that receives no natural sunlight). So I have swapped to succulents, and can I say they are very satisfying to grow - no fiddly feeding and only occasional watering, its great! Still, I would love to one day have a small yard where I can flex my green thumbs and bust out a vegie patch or a nice flowerbed. So the idea of Guerilla Gardening really appeals to me - random acts of illicit gardening in otherwise drab public places is the perfect combination of naughty-but-nice behaviour. I will be keeping my eyes peeled for possible GG sites around Pyrmont, so stay tuned for random planting!! And if youre in the area and want to participate in some GG with me, let me know!! (need to be careful though, what with all the terrorism training going on around here - be alert but not alarmed people!)

Gorgeous illustration from Loobylu which
perfectly sums up my new obsession with succulents

Its alive!!

I have finally resurrected my blog. The poor thing has languished, broken and pictureless, for far too long, so I am going to be a far more diligent blog owner and update it!! So lets see, my last post was November last year... what things have I been up to in the past 7 months? Hrm, lets see, well, for one... WE GOT ENGAGED in December!!! After 6 years, my gorgeous Lak finally did the deed so I will be becoming a Mrs in February next year! Lots of wedding planning has been going on, so many many posts of ideas to follow! Yay!!

mmmmm, scanned bling!! :)

In other lifechanging news, we have also made the move from Wollongong to Sydney, so I am now living in a fab apartment in the city which is great! We have painted the whole thing because suprisingly, electric blue feature walls and piss yellow everything else just didnt do it for me. So now the feature walls are a lovely normal shade of blue mixed up by our painter which I like to call 'Martha Stewart Blue' - as in Martha would paint her wall that colour, so of course its lovely! Everything else is a beautiful warm white, so the apartment looks so much better, its a really cool space now.

Those are the major things pretty briefly covered, so here are some smaller things that have been on my mind of late:

My slippers had a blow-out recently, and not a small one either: Im talking a few weeks leaving small bits of sole around the place, then Im just walking along one night and BAM - there was no sole at all. Its a bit of a disaster since its not exactly been toasty weather lately! So Im thinking of having a go at making some felt ones like Marthas and Notebooks, cos quite frankly my feet are cold!

Im becoming a little bit obsessed with the Noguchi Coffee Table. Oh how I want it, let me count the ways... its sexy, glassy and sculptural, plus its a timeless modern classic (this baby was designed in the 1940s!!) I want it on my white shag rug so bad, but alas even knockoffs are expensive *sigh*