Wednesday - Final Touches to your home.

So when I think of finishing touches to my home, I like to think I'm adding something visually impressive but also something that will get practical use. Pillows embedded with jagged stones or crystals need not apply! I like to think of the atmosphere and there is nothing quite as atmospheric as lighting, more specifically a favourite of mine - Candles. In my opinion there's nothing that quite creates a magical atmosphere like a grouping of candles flickering away.

So I introduce to you, images for your lighting inspiration....
a candle extravaganza:

Tuesday - Colour Combination Day!

Tuesday shall hereon be referred to as colour combination day, Hurray! Each week we'll look at a different colour combination, colour theory (sometimes backing up why the combination works) and different approaches to painting your walls or furniture:

This weeks colour combination as you may have guessed I have a soft spot for: Grey and Blue
There's just something calming and beautiful about the combination. Also in the UK in particular it's considered an unusual mix in terms of decorating. This weeks focus is more on decorating than on furniture but I think an electric blue piece could really pop out from some really nice charcoal or silver walls.

Just check below to see how beautiful the results can be:


I just love the way the graphic electric blue artwork pops, and makes a huge statement without being particularly big! When going for this look remember to limit your palette, Grey, Blue, black and silvery white, or even pure white. This will stop the pallet being muddied and looking misguided.




This room uses grey/charcoal furniture and focuses on using blue as the backdrop for the beautiful pieces of furniture. Once again though you can see the use of the limited pallet, Blues, Greys, Blacks and Whites or creams.




Once again we see the limited palette above, notice the use of different blues in each room but they always go nicely with the grey. My suggestion would be the darker one of the colours are the lighter the other colour should be, i.e. here we have a navy blue so this is then paired with a silvery grey. Although in my opinion, electric blue works with charcoal as well as silver, this is due to electric blue being a vibrant middle ground colour.


Below we have an example that in my opinion does not work as well as the others, can you guess why?


Yep, muddied Palette, whilst yellow and blue are complimentary on the colour wheel for this look to work you need to keep the palette as simple as humanly possible. Here the yellow and inconsistent wood tones remove the impact of the blue against the grey.

Quick Note on Colour Theory for Blue and Grey

The simple truth is that whilst blue appears on the colour wheel, grey is considered to be in the centre, meaning that most colours if paired with grey alone should look good. This is due to grey being a faded version of black which lets face it goes with anything!

However the way we perceive colour means that brighter colours will usually look 10x better than a darker colour.

This is always dependant on shade and percentage of that colour in the room

Monday - Design Theory Day: The Designers Pyramid

So today is Design Theory Day!
What exactly is design theory? you may ask

Design theory is the stuff interior designers, architects and decorators use in order to achieve the best look possible, using 'rules' and ideas that nearly always work. My goal for each Monday is to teach you how to use some of the design tricks for StrongerDesign in your own home!

Todays piece of Theory is something slightly mysterious sounding:
The Designers Pyramid

The Designers pyramid is a 'typical' arrangement of anything from furniture to accessories in a specific formation that is both interesting to the eye but displays the items effectively and cohesively.

Different examples of the pyramid:

Above you can see the far more unusual Designers Pyramid (excuse my quick photoshopping) Rather than using accessories, the furniture itself forms the pyramid shape. Creating a far more interesting composition than having them in a straight line, allowing the eyes to start from the floor and spiral upwards to the top of the tall floor lamp.

The above pyramid is displayed in a simple scaling method - we've all seen this one hundreds of times. Like this one most pyramids toy with scale.

Next Monday we will look at colour theory, the rules to live by and the rules to be broken!

Sunday - Feature Day!!

Ugh why Do computers never ever work the way you need them to? this post had meant to have been published yesterday. I certainly clicked the public post button but surprise! it did not publish.


so anyways, this is my first ever feature and I figured why save the best for last? why not feature the best first.

Ana over at Knock-off Wood, works amazingly hard uploading and sharing plans to make your own furniture, ranging from beds to side tables. She's an amazingly gifted and talented woman! Unfortunately a certain american company has decided to impact her amazing blog... but she has risen above it with grace and determination to keep delivering the same high quality information that she has done for the past four months!

Here are a few pieces made by the talented lady herself:

Amazingly cool table she made herself!! and shared the plans for it here!

other samples of her fantastic work include this amazing playhouse bed, that I WILL be making for my beautiful neice:
I'm thinking instead of the shutter windows, I'll use clear perspex and paint my own 'stained glass' windows. Maybe even make the windows arched!

Saturday Self indulgence with Art!!!

So this post comes more than a little late - i.e. 30mins past midnight so technically no longer a Saturday. As those across the pond may not know - Sunday is Mothers Day over here in England! So I spent a large chunk of my day hunting down a few extras for tomorrow.

Anyways to get to the point of todays post, I'm going to showcase a few of my photoshop pieces in honour of my rather unique and strange Mother who I frankly could not bare to be without in my life!

one of my first forrays into photoshop and picture manipulation:

and a more recent one - approximately a year ago:


Well rather than bombard you with my portfolio i'll leave it at this.
Remember people appreciate your Mothers all year round not just for one day of the year!

Friday - DIY-Day!!! Make yourself a modern Pendant Light !

Now im sure you've seen this popular yet surprisingly expensive light cover elsewhere:


Listed for a starting price of $587 (that's £387 to us brits!) for a small pendant cover upto a staggering $1,127 (£748) for a large one at DesignWithinReach - I don't know about you but that is certainly not Design Within Reach of my wallet. I'm pretty certain I could redo a large chunk of my house at that price.

however fear not, the lovely people over at: www.eHow.com have made this article HERE:

The basics are this really:

• Get an inflated balloon at the requied size.
• Get String, Yarn, Hemp (any of which you could dye for a more striking piece) and a whole lot of p.v.a glue
• attach the string in a criss-cross pattern making sure to leave plenty of gaps for light to escape and create interesting patterns across your room.
• allow to dry
• cut holes if there isn't enough useful light.

Interesting changes to it could be to dramatically alter the lamps sillhouete by maybe cutting a quarter of the shade off at a diagonal to allow my focused areas of light. Also you could cut different shapes (rather than the ubiquitous circle) to allow light to flood out.

so simple my little neice could help do it!

The first of many to come...

Rather than bore you with my life history (if you are actually interested in the man behind the blog - feel free to take a peak at the about me section).

I'm planning to break down each day of the week into its own 'theme' day so to speak. The plan is as follows:

Monday - Theory-day. General rules of Design Theory for that perfect look.

Tuesday - Colour-day Combination masterclass - the how to's and no no's of
design.

Wednesday - Finaltouches-dayFurnishing and adding the final touches.

Thursday - Help-day Dealing with less-desireably features in your home.

Friday - DIY-day project or two for inspiration and to do over the weekend.

Saturday - Art-day of self-indulgence featuring Art & Graphic Design by yours
truly.

Sunday - Feature-day, featuring another page/blog or design from someone else.


These days may change over time depending upon how useful and how enjoyable they are to read.

Ultimately I know initially I'll have a small readership but hopefully over time and with some good writing I'll have more than a handfull of readers interested in the knowledge I hope I can depart.