Alternate Ikea couch covers

Did you know that there's a maker of Ikea couch slipcovers here in Melbourne? Their name is Comfort Works and they make covers for thirteen different Ikea seating collections in 59 different fabrics. I admit I find the options a little conservative - mostly solid, conventional colours; little that would make the front cover of Real Living - but it's a hell of a lot more choice than Ikea offers!

I wasn't really sold on any of their colours until I revisited this favourite spread from Home Beautiful mag:



Now that is one hell of a couch. The mag credits it to Vampt Vintage Design in Sydney.

I had another search through Comfort Works and found an option in a very similar shade, albeit without the amazing white stripes:



Perhaps I could paint some white stripes on it down the track? Anyways, can I put this shade of green in my lovely room, against the cream and gold curtains?


Black & White boudoir chair for sale at Reissued Studios, rear 159 Sydney Rd Brunswick.

(Here's the dark grey option for comparison)


Bemz in the US do a wiiide range of options for Ikea sofa slipcovers, but nothing so amazing that I'm willing to pay postage. Even they lack any amazing geometric or MCM-inspired prints. A wide range of shades of grey, though, and even my ideal blue. I can't link to it but it's Teal Blue Tegnér Melange Textured Cotton if you absolutely must see!

Making curtains together

You don't know what being a parent means until you get there.

Oh yeah, it's Blogtoberfest!

Yes, I have severely fallen by the wayside on my first Blogtoberfest attempt. Life is very interesting* at the moment, and it's not ideal blog post material. I can't fool myself that anyone wants to read about my curtain fabric choices every day for a month!

I'm going to follow Punky Vic's example and share a favourite quotation. This isn't wise advice or a polished piece of wit; simply a favourite few lines from a novel.

Emily did not look up from her paper. She was reading about how to peel whole oranges and stew them in caramelized sauce. Emily hated cooking, and she always read recipes, to enrage herself. She could get quite emotional about recipes. She took them as personal affronts.

from 'The Needle's Eye' by Margaret Drabble


Caramelized Orange Cheesecake from Serious Eats

* Yep, like the ancient curse.

Op Shop Trivia

Did you know:

The St Vincent de Paul Society opened their first Victorian op shop in Ascot Vale in 1926, and it was named "The Waste Product Bureau".

They didn't open a second one until 1962 - perhaps the name didn't lend itself to vast patronage.

Our modern-day Vinnies aren't officially called op shops, but "Vinnies Centres of Charity".

Vinnies has one employee whose full-time job is to drive around all of 102 Vinnies in the state, checking the volunteers are happy, do a spot of shopping, and eat her body weight in home-made scones every week. Nope, that's not me.

I've just had an induction day at work. The community housing agency I work for reports to the St Vincent de Paul Society, and the induction is run for community service employees, home visitations coordinators, op shop managers (sorry, "Vinnies Centres of Charity managers") and everyone in between. I met the manager of my soon-to-be-local Vinnies, and she knows the people who live across the street from our new house! Small world! My local also happens to be the second largest Vinnies in the state, and the largest in metro Melbourne.

The highlight of the day, even better than the history of Vinnies op shops, was a coach trip to Vinnies Ringwood. As well as finding a bunch of hardware for the curtains I'm sewing I also picked up these little indulgences.


A lovely coffee pot which I think I'll keep on my work desk
A swish pair of pink knitting needles


And the cutest little scotty dog embroidery which I think I'll sew onto a dress for Amy or something

And that's what it takes to get me back on the Blogtoberfest wagon - a paid afternoon of op shopping.

Flying Ducks and Floating Shelves

Today I visited Gleaners Inc, the wonderful new store run by Liz of Betty Jo Designs and Lino Forest fame. If you're into handmade and vintage thingamabobs and fancy something truly unique, head straight to Gleaners Inc in Brunswick. Liz has curated a very special range of vintage items and goodies made from vintage materials and I can't wait to see it grow.

While I was there I ordered a custom set of flying ducks, made from vintage linoleum, buttons and doilies. Mine will look something like this:



A beaut addition to my bird-themed loungeroom wall!

Speaking of that loungeroom wall... I have decided I hate picture rails. Writing a whole blog entry about them really turned me off.

Now it's all about floating box shelves, like these ones in the home of designer Mariana Garcia-Katz (via The Design Files:



These ones were made by the homeowner's dad from plywood. I reckon I can make them myself. But how to combine them with wallpaper?









Tell me which arrangement looks best if you like, but I'll probably have a thoroughly different concept in two days.

The digitally printed wallpaper by Funky Wombat Textiles is a whopping 138cm wide, compared to the measly 52cm or so offered by most commercial wallpaper companies. This means a lot less matching up prints and wasting paper. It also happens to be exactly one third of the width of that wall, up to the doorframe. I've played with a lot of arrangements, including three box shelves with three widths of wallpaper, but most of them look overcrowded. Perhaps only having paper on two thirds of the wall is a good thing. I'd need to play with the proportional heights of the shelving to try to achieve golden ratios and so forth.

I also really like this idea of old drawers and crates lined with wallpaper, but I think it'll be easier to convince the hubby to put newly made shelves on the walls of our brand new house than salvaged stuff I've prettied-up:

More Lyrebird Art

Here's a few more I found during my hunt for etched lyrebirds.


Art Deco-style window by Australia Street Stained Glass


Stained glass pattern from Chantal's Stained Glass


Plaque commemmorating the first sighting of lyrebirds by whitefellas, in Bargo NSW


Australian lyrebird stamp, circa the days of shillings


More lyrebird-inspired wallpaper, by Justine Missen

This short article about French artist Lucien Felix Henry discusses his use of lyrebirds and other Australian native animals in decorative arts. I'm very sad that the images discussed are not attached to the article, and I haven't been able to turn them up anywhere online. Anyone got a lead on this wonderfully-named fellow?

Hunting for lyrebirds

Here's what I found when I went hunting the web (like a spider?) for more glass lyrebirds.


A vintage mirror on eBay, sold for $62. It matches my sideboard! It's probably the same as the one inspiring the woman in the Castlemaine house.


Here's another eBay find, with the image etched at a more conservative angle. Sold for $96!


This round mirror with the same etching is still available - currently at $48.


A very impressive wheel-engraved lead-glass tumbler circa 1910, engraved by Frank P Webb, located in the Powerhouse Museum collection.


Its contemporary counterpart - a very clarsey etched latte mug on eBay.


And highest on the pricelist is another offering of pure clarse - an indoor water panel for $4590.

Perhaps the most beautiful is this non-etched glass piece - a stained glass window by Jeffrey Hamilton.

Canvas prints and postcards available via RedBubble.
Artist Jeffrey Hamilton writes:

This bathroom window is installed in a beautiful old mansion at Cremorne Point. It is a recreation of an early Australian stained glass window made around the time of Federation (1901) and published in “The Federation House” by Fraser and Joyce. The provenance of the window is not noted in the book.

So it seems that lyrebirds in glass have been popular for at least 110 years. More research on my part may occur.

Lyrebirds

I hope you noticed the Lyrebird wallpaper by Funky Wombat Textiles I mentioned the other day.




Here's a variation of the design as a teatowel


And as a lampshade!

Well, I've actually already got a piece of lyrebird-themed decor that would look quite gorgeous under a fraternal strip of wallpaper.


(And I know one other blogger who has the exact same piece of furniture! I got mine at a garage sale for $10 and my sister restored it as a birthday present. It lives under my cutting table, housing a portion of my fabric stash.)




(I've almost abandoned the picture rail concept after trying to write a whole blog post about it last night!)

Today in the paediatrician's waiting room I was flipping through an eco home design mag called Sanctuary. There was an article (read it via Scribd here) about a house in Castlemaine featuring many etched lyrebirds. A quote: "A vintage mirror etched with a lyrebird design was the catalyst for a hunt for similar pieces that eventually yielded three pairs of etched French doors." Wow! I'd had a long-term idea of finding a set of etched glass sliding doors and installing them to give our house a bit more personality, but I hadn't realised there might be some that match my sideboard.

I'm now hunting the internet for other glass lyrebirds. I won't include them in this post because it's plenty long enough, and I'm not interesting enough to find a unique topic for every day of Blogtoberfest!

Picture Rails

I found the idea for a picture rail in an old Real Living mag. A 'real home' (read: holiday home of a "design and trend expert") features picture rails at the height of the window sashes, wide enough for framed pictures to stand atop.


Real Living mag, Christmas 2010

This picture rail, made from an old cornice, doesn't actually have anything hanging off it. I'd like one that can have thing hanging from and standing on it.



My Real Living mag helpfullly directed me to their own website for instructions on installing a picture rail, but I found a better guide on HGTV.com which includes tips about the length of the nails determining how much weight the rail can support.

Picture rail moulding that you can hang proper picture hooks from can be found at porta.com.au. Cornices like the ones in the Real Living pic are made locally by local manufacturer Northern Plasterboard. But picture rails can also be made from other materials such as copper pipes:


Or an old branch:


Here's an idea for picture rails that don't go all the way along a wall:


Here's some classy picture rail hooks:


And here's how Martha Stewart does it:


I am thoroughly bored of thinking about picture rails.

My big loungeroom idea

The brilliant thing with computers is you can take a dodgy photo...


(Yep, the loungeroom is a bit of a fixer-upper. That's a lot of the attraction.)

Trace over it...

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And spend simply hours letting your imagination run wild!

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(Including pasting tiny framed photos of your kids and wedding on a picture rail!)

My dreamy wallpaper border is the Lyrebirds design by Funky Wombat Textiles, based in inner Melbourne. They can custom print any of their designs as wallpaper in any colourway you please, with orders starting at one tiny metre. I'm currently getting a quote, fingers crossed...

I have way too many wallpaper and fabric swatches saved on a dedicated Pinterest board. I have trashed Pinterest in the past, but I will now publicly confess that I was wrong, and it's an extremely useful tool. (For wasting hours online, imaginary shopping.)

I have one particular person in mind when I say this: if you have grand design ambitions, please download the outline of my future loungeroom and colour it in. I'd love to see what other misused minds can come up with. I've even done a version with badly proportioned floorboards:


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