Sheri's Pink & Yellow Contribution

This is Sheri's contribution to Pink & Yellow Week. Beautiful pink and yellow tulips!! Thanks for sending this one in Sheri!!

xo
Anna

Yellow & Pink

In my search for pink and yellow I stumbled across this gorgeous book by William Steig called Yellow & Pink. It looks adorable. It's about a yellow and pink puppet lying in the sun waiting for their paint to dry pondering their origin. They speculate, they debate and then finally a strange man walks into their lives. The book is available on Amazon. Click HERE to be directed straight there.

Jo's Pink & Yellow Inspirations

Kate French

Kate French

Kate French

Kate French Stylist

James Merrell Photographer

WOW, what a response I've had to Pink & Yellow Week!! Thank you so much everyone who has emailed me so far and for all the wonderful images. I am going to post them all so please bear with me!! I thought I would start with Jo's wonderful collection of pink & yellow images which she emailed me today. Jo is one of the writers behind the very inspiring blog Desire to Inspire and she is also another Brisbane based design obsessed person. I recently had the pleasure of meeting Jo face to face in my shop, Black & Spiro. It was a wonderful experience to meet one of my blogging friends!

My favourite 2 images which Jo sent me through today are the top 2 images - so vibrant. However, I do love all of the images above. They are stunning.

Thanks so much Jo for the beautiful pink & yellow inspirations!

I will be posting alot of wonderful pink & yellow inspirations tomorrow so please stay tuned!!

xo

Anna

Pink & Yellow Week

Hi Everyone,

I have decided that this week is Pink & Yellow Week at Absolutely Beautiful Things. Over the next week my posts will be featuring all things pink & yellow. I would love some help with some beautiful pink & yellow images so if anyone out there has some images they would like to share please send them in.

I love the images above. It could have been that the room in the bottom picture was created using the top image as inspiration. I love using photographs from nature and the world around us when I create sample boards for clients as it shows where I have drawn my inspiration from and it also makes a scheme more defined and from my point of view, more interesting.

I hope you all enjoy pink & yellow week.

xo

Anna

Images above from Domino Magazine & Flickr.

My French Life Further Update

Hi Everyone,

It was just brought to my attention that My French Life isn't available on Amazon until January 2008. I apologise for misleading you all. But, there is some good news, an Australian online bookshop Booktopia is selling the book online and ships internationally. Click Here and you will be directed straight there. If anyone else has any more problems trying to purchase the book just let me know and I will research it further for you.

xo
Anna

My French Life Update

Vicki Archer, the author of My French Life emailed me last night to let me know that the reprint of her beautiful book has just been released and the best news of all is that the book is now available internationally on Amazon. This is very exciting news. Take my word and order a copy of this delightful book. Oh and I would hurry as it has been a huge success here in Australia with bookshops having been sold out now for months.


NB. I reviewed this book in an earlier post dated Monday 8th January, 2007.

Thank you for the mention...

A very big thank you to Holly at Decor8 for listing Absolutely Beautiful Things as Blog of the week this week at Decor8. Holly is one of the big stars in the blogging world and it certainly is a great honour to be mentioned on her fantastic site. Her continual support and encouragement to young designers, new bloggers, retailers and artists is very inspiring and I think that I speak for many people when I say thank you for caring to mention us on Decor8. Thank you again Holly, very much!!

xo

Anna

Simply Beautiful

A nice arrangement of "Beautiful Things" in the image above which I found on Suzy Hoodless' website. I love the things collected on the table and the gorgeous crystal lamp but most of all I love the cluster of mismatched mirrors hung on the wall. Personally I would add to the table some fresh flowers loosely arranged in a beautiful vase and possibly a pile of my favourite books and maybe some family photographs. I love arranging tables with collections of things - it's one of my favourite pastimes.

Happy Weekend!!

I'm signing off for this week and I'm going to close my laptop and then I am going to ask my husband to hide it from me until Sunday night. Hope you all have a lovely weekend and I look forward to signing on again when my husband gives my laptop back to me!! (I promise I'll be back on Sunday night!!)

xo

Anna

Blue

I have been collecting some "blue" images in my "I Love" file lately so I thought I would post some of my favourites. Thanks to Kim at Desire to Inspire I found some more last night at the beautiful site Ditte Isager. Blue is one of my favourite colours and can look classical and striking when mixed with white but I also adore blue and pink together as well. Other great blue combinations are blue and brown, blue and orange, blue, red & white and even blue, orange, chartreuse and pink all mixed together. What is your favourite blue colour combination?

Images courtesy of Domino Magazine & Ditte Isager.

White

This image via Dreamhouse Cammy caught my attention today. I adore White rooms as you all know and I just can't help but add every single all White room I see to my "I Love" file images!! I particularly love the sheer White tablecloth and frilled chair covers and of course my favourite White painted wooden floor boards!!

Budget Bedroom Decorating Ideas

I do love this idea to paint a striped wall behind a bed as a low budget way of decorating a bedroom. I think this room looks beautiful and it has been very simply and most definately inexpensively put together. An alternative to painting stripes would be a striped wallpaper which would look equally as effective or even another type of patterned wallpaper. The fabric on the scatter cushions is a Designers Guild silk. I have actually used this silk before and it is devine. Crisp white with a few special touches makes for a beautiful look and the best thing of all is that when you tire of the colours all you have to do is change the scatter cushions and repaint or repaper the wall and you will have a completely new look.

Another fantastic idea is to cut a bedhead out of wallpaper as above. I love this concept, so much fun and another cost effective and innovative way to decorate a room.

Images courtesy of Living Etc. and Marie Claire Maison.

New Vogue Living

I just received in the mail today my copy of the May/June 2007 issue of Australian Vogue Living and on the cover is featured Antony Todd's New York apartment. I am so excited!! I am saving it to read tonight over a glass of wine!! It looks like it's going to be a fantastic issue!

A Country Visit

This very pretty terrace reminded me of the country house I visited today. There is something about the country that draws me in every time. Even though I love the beach I do love a visit to the country in Winter. I love the beautiful trees, the vast expanses of grass and the soft, clean air. A beautiful country retreat with a stone fireplace, home made soup, beautiful wine and great friends would be my idea of a great weekend!!


Photo Courtesy of Marie Claire Maison

Vintage Mercedes

My dream car is a Vintage Mercedes convertible, much to my husbands complete horror! Today when I visited some clients at their country house, parked in their driveway, in mint condition, was their STUNNING Vintage Mercedes convertible - cream with navy blue leather and hood. Oh my goodness I could have stood and looked at this car all day. It was so beautiful. Every time I see one (and it's not often as they are so rare here in Australia) my legs get wobbly and I can't control my excitement. It was a real treat to see this very beautiful car today and I can't wait to tell my husband all about it when he gets home!! I'm sure he'll do lots of mmm's!!

What's your dream car??

Inspirations

I am continually inspired by many things. One of the things that inspires me most is the array of beautiful fabrics I get to work with. I am also inspired by art and beautiful product packaging, stationery, flowers, fashion, vintage pieces and the list goes on and on!! I thought it may be interesting to show you every now and then a few of the things that currently inspire me. Above I adore the script cushion. I think it would be wonderful to cover a small Louis style chair in a hand written script canvas fabric like this. The bottom image is full of things I like and inspiration. I just adore the packaging of the soaps and then the gorgeous patterned tin boxes they are placed in. I also like the texture and pattern in the pile of throws. And also in looking at the bottom image I can see mostly the colours blue and pink emerge which I adore as a colour combination.

Bottom image courtesy of XT Decor Mag Blog.

More "I Love" File Images

I really loved this renovated Victorian house in Notting Hill which was featured in the November 06 issue of Living Etc. The top image of the silk buttoned bed head is divine! Another lot of images from my ever expanding "I Love" file!!

Have a great weekend!!

Snapper Lodge

This is Snapper Lodge located on the waters edge in Newport, NSW, Australia. With it's own jetty and sandy beach, this rustic house was originally styled by an artist and certainly has a very unique, bohemian look. Snapper Lodge is available for holiday rental and if you feel like you may have seen this house before, you probably have. It has long been a favourite of stylists as a location for fashion/design shoots and also has been featured in several leading design magazines over the years. I think it's gorgeous and it would certainly make for a wonderful party or dinner party venue!! The house is available for rent through Contemporary Hotels Australia.

Tea & Tea Sets

I love tea and I also love to collect tea cups and tea sets. I was given the most beautiful Herend tea set for two as an engagement present which I adore and treasure very much. I actually thought that the tea set above was very similar to my Herend tea set. I found this gorgeous tea set on the Plumo site via Gypsy Purple. They do have an online shop and guess what they are another wonderful company who ships to Australia and actually they ship worldwide. They have lots of wonderful things so go and have a look for yourself.

Photography

Bueller Designs emailed me today with a link to their Etsy shop which contains the most wonderful array of photographs which are available for purchase. These two above were my favourites. They seem to be able to capture some amazing street scenes and their beach photos are stunning as well.

Photo via Nate Berkus

Photo via Desire to Inspire

I do love photographs hung in clusters and even purchased photography pieces mixed with black and white family photographs can look wonderful. As usual there are no rules but sometimes people choose to frame all the photos in the same colour frame but mixed styles and sometimes people just group a complete mix of framed pieces. Whatever your choice is make sure you do it with impact so lots of pieces I think are best and even hung down to the floor or like the above picture just leaning against the wall.