Inspiration Anywhere

So I'm drinking Sat morn coffee and set the mug on a cheapie wicker stool from Target. That simple action led to some photo play. I love the chevron/herringbone texture of the stool. This image is modified in iPhone Photoshop app to look like a drawing. And to hide the low res of iPhone photos.

I was wishing it were a fabric. Well it could be! Experiment! Print your photos & designs on fabric. You can print any image on fabric. Make a collage of abstract images. See what happens. Design your own fabric and print it at Spoonflower.

YouTube video showing how to print on fabric.

Video showing how to print Photoshop photo onto fabric. This is a quilting demo but think about this for T-shirts, tote bags, etc.

A photo of the entire top of my stool could make an interesting tote bag fabric, with thick rope and leather handles. But I'm on my own today. My sewing assistants don't look prepared to help. Here's what they're doing right now:

"Leaning Kitty" like any adolescent guy, he's real proud of his hot rod car:




"Shelf Kitty" spends all winter in this spot where warm baseboards are running under her. Smart kitty:



Maybe Hot Rod Boy likes blog attention. As I post, he comes over next to me which he rarely does. I like his handsome attention too:


- Posted from my iPhone

Sorry So Selfish

I've been holding out on giving back to the online community that I've learned so much from. I've taken what I've learned and had fun making things but kept it all to myself! Actually I've been busy living life. Although the internet can do so much for us, it can also completely take over us. That's my belief. Stickin' to it. Learned from experience. So I've needed to put the internet back in its rightful place in life. I never did nor never will do Facebook or Twitter (and I'm comfortable enough to violate "never say never") -- keeping up with email, web sites, blogs and discussion boards is enough. I just don't understand how people can have enough to talk about, without having time to live offline enough to have something to talk about online. ??? Am I missing something? Or am I just lame? Can't juggle it all? Whatever, we all make our choices. I live online here, in some discussion boards, and I share trips my husband and I take in our plane on another blog. That's enough for me.

What ignited instant obsession and drove me back here is this chair from Anthropologie:

One of these would sit by my marble table, the one that was once my single woman's tiny apartment dining table, but is now a perfect garden table, tucked among plants that tower over both table and chair, hidden.

Only one chair, though. Two would lessen the uniqueness.

I'm growing more gardens. Since spring, been building a raised bed behind our sunroom that will someday cradle a patio in its own outdoor room between walls of foliage and flowers and the windows of our sunroom. Where our cats will probably be sitting, inside but longing to be out, meowing and whining. Thus marring the peaceful gardeny ambiance. Of course I will get up from the Anthropologie flower chair and let them out, but they must roam, and as I follow them, I'll soon be out of sight of the flower chair and my coffee on the marble table will go cold. But I love my cats and I'm happy when they're happy, and I can always return to the flower chair which will sit waiting for me, surrounded by a garden of brilliant color in the summer, but really designed to glow in waves of burnished red, orange, yellow, purple, and brown in the fall, and stay standing all winter. I love autumn gardens.

Beautiful autumn gardens don't just happen, they have to be planned that way. My shade beds look barren after the hosta leaves go mushy. They're not so wonderful to look at then. But the garden outside the sunroom must be beautiful over four seasons. It will be unavoidable to see from the sunroom, close to the house. So someday we can drink morning coffee out there in December and see snow sitting on little brown puffballs and fluffs of grasses swaying. I love the strong shapes of plants like millet. I might install witch hazel, so in January and February we get the promises of spring even before the daffodils.

Wall Jewelry

Just when you think you have an obsession beat, you go to the mailbox. I didn't find a ticket to the funny farm in there, but a stroll down Grandin Road, thus renewing a recurring obsession. A big wall in our living room needs art. There is art that I love on it right now -- long rectangular silk Lao textiles hanging from old wooden looms. We found these in Chiang Mai, Thailand years ago and so there is a story to them. As with many things in our home, looking at them reminds us of travels and people we met and places we've been. But our little b&w cat, Chaai, doesn't like the navy textile. He rips it down. I hang it up. He rips it down. It sits for awhile on the coffeetable, folded into submission. Until I figure Chaai guy has forgotten that he hates this textile. So I hang it up. He rips it down. Before the day is out. I won't win this war. It's a good textile too -- the back is almost as fine as the front, much better quality than most textiles in the Chiang Mai Night Market. And it cost accordingly. Each time Chaai pulls it, his nails and the wooden loom snag it. (and no, I will not declaw him for that)

So I may soon put the Lao textiles in a protection program, and now searching for something more indestructible. Our living room has dark chocolate brown leather, deep orange, golds and greens. Smidgens of deep red. Not like a 70s style, more like Indian-Thai-Japan-Burma-Laos-China style.

These collections from Grandin Road would work well:

I've obsessed previously over many similar pieces by Patricia:

Check out the links. Check out the prices. A year ago one of these may have been on the wall as fast as the Brown Truck could get there. But in these days and times, we must challenge ourselves.

Etsy options from thepaintedlily:

$14 -- find thrifty frames and you have the look for less. You can even put a collection together from thepaintedlily:

And what about scrapbooking papers? They're the perfect size to put a framed collection together, or decoupage them on canvas. For a buck or less each, you can't go wrong. Find square frames to get the complete look and you can always paint the frames if the color or finish isn't quite right. If you can't find square frames, scrapbook paper is infinitely croppable.

I'm eyeing these Italian Scrapbour papers, found in a New Zealand scrapbook store because they're hard to find in the U.S.:

Mix them with 7 gypsies papers, new 2009 releases:

I may likely go the scrapbook paper route, with some type of finish on them to make them look painted and slightly crackled and distressed. Like they were from a great aunt's travels -- you know, the eccentric one who never married, and no one was quite sure where she got all her money to travel so freely but she sure was charming with the men -- and then one day I found the art in a dusty box in her attic and she let me have them. And no, I don't have a great aunt like that. That's probably residual creativity spilling over from last night's bottle of sauvignon blanc.

Catwalk

Why was furball-mommy taking pictures of this box?

Talk About New Ideas Coming Into This World

After a lifetime of saying I didn't like cats, I reconsidered due to need to have something furry in a life that doesn't well accommodate a dog. A chance conversation at the eye doctor led me to a kitten, who started right out teaching me that much of what I thought about cats was wrong:

She was cute then, gorgeous now:

Two years later, a chance conversation led me to this darling little boy:

He is whiskey to her wine. He is frisky she is fine.

She so rarely lets him be so close for so long. He was relishing every moment of this.

Talk about visual obsessions, I love to watch them and see what they'll do each day. The fastest 15 minutes is to just study the two of them looking out a window together. Monkey see, monkey do.

Oh So Giddy About Style For A Good Deal

So I surfed around Antiques by Zaar for a bit after referring to them below. Someday I will be overcome with my Chinese furniture obsession and will purchase from them. That is inevitable! For now, this table caught my eye:

I love it, and I already have two under our living room windows. It's a perfect spot for plants, and of course for cats. But I wouldn't pay well over $1,000 for a real vintage or antique table and then expose it to cat claws. With the tables being under windows, cats are on them every day. Just the other day, I saw our newest little guy, Chaai, hanging by his claws on our Chinese writing table because he tried to jump on it and missed a bit. But I wasn't fazed. Why? Because we got our Chinese writing tables for $100 each! We took pictures of Chinese writing tables on our most recent trip to Thailand a few years ago, and we made a special side trip to Baan Tawai, just south of Chiang Mai. Years ago on our first trip to Thailand, we tread carefully through one of those very expensive shopping centers by The Oriental. We loved what we saw, but could not afford it. It's the kind of place where you watch your elbows and you look behind you before you back up. Can't afford to pay for anything inadvertently broken! A woman in one of the shops told us to go to Baan Tawai, where everything is "cheap cheap cheap." That year we spent much time in Chiang Mai (why we were there so long is another story, and a long one, for another time, let's just say it involved visiting the U.S. Embassy many times, and sitting under John Ashcroft's picture made me shudder) and we did a little shopping in Baan Tawai. Her words "cheap cheap cheap" were correct and we've never forgotten them.

So a few years ago we were in Chiang Mai again, and we were prepared with plans and pictures of furniture we wanted to make. I read the book The Treasures and Pleasures of Thailand -- I recommend this book for anyone shopping in Thailand. While the authors are higher-end shoppers, the tips and strategies they share are right-on and appropriate for shopping in any environment there. For example, during our first visit in Chiang Mai, our hotel arranged a minivan and shopping guide to take us to Baan Tawai. They kept speeding past places we wanted to visit, and stopping at crappy shops. We didn't understand at first. But after our last stop of the day when something overcame us and somehow we walked out of a shop with over $150 worth of gifty things we really didn't want (and that was a lot of Baht in 2001), and we saw the guide settling with the shop owner, we finally got it. The next day, we asked the tuk tuk driver who hung around outside our hotel to take us to Baan Celadon for our big dinnerware purchase. He played chess outside with his daughter while we loaded up on celadon plates and bowls, and I think all our boxes weighed more than the tuk tuk and the four people in it! It was a precarious ride back to the hotel.

The Treasures and Pleasures of Thailand book recommends you do your research, be prepared, and travel on your own. So in 2005 we decided to not be dependent on others and we rented a car. We had plans to make and purchase quite a bit, and ultimately the car rental saved us money because we could negotiate better. We had many things made for us, including reproduction Chinese writing desks just like the photo above. Each was $100, made of teak and finished with a very dark espresso stain. They have the slimmest drawers. We didn't bargain the business owner down much, instead we emphasized that we wanted old wood, well-seasoned wood, and we were willing to pay for quality. The shop did an excellent job. We took measurements and pictures with us, and they made the tables to the exact measurements we wanted. They included all the details in the photos. The tables have cracked just a little over the past few years in the adjustment from Thailand's humidity to our dryer Illinois air, especially in winter. But it just makes them look older, and that's OK.

Another great Thailand shopping resource are Nancy Chandler maps for Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Here is our gorgeous girl Seesa, a bluepoint Siamese Snowshoe, lounging on one of the tables.