The Modern Bohemian

If you are anything like me, your design styling can be a little eclectic and what I call slightly Gemini. Gemini, because that's my star sign and I know full well about my split personality (wait who said that)......

Seriously, Yes I have a love of many different design styles and can sometimes do my own head in deciding on what decor I am going to settle on purchasing. 

You could label me but I would only stick with your label for a day or even an hour so it wouldn't be worth it. I have found however over time I do keep calling myself contemporary. 

Then a little bit eclectic and I love a good bit of traveller.........

Not the Traveller who has been anywhere but the traveller who appreciates different cultures and the design that they have to support their surroundings.

Asian, Moroccan, American, African. If I could label myself this week it would be somewhere in the Contemporary Relaxed Traveller or maybe just......

The Modern Bohemian will suit for right now.

This week I might take you on a Bohemian design journey.

All Images can be Found here

PVC Pipe Decor

Here

We are all happy to try our hand at certain DIY activities and most of us at some stage have considered painting furniture or something created with pallets and even more of us have tried something with Maison jars. 

For me the next diy trial will be with PVC pipe? You know that long white plastic pipe you see on the top of a classic tradies car.

here

I had used it for my sons birthday party as one of his games (passing Lego from one friend to another and getting it in the cup) too much fun for a 5 year old but Mummy needs something to do with said left over pipe and of course I turned my hand to Pinterest to find out what.

Here is what I found.

Here

Here

So what do you think, could you come up with a project that included PVC pipe.

Ombre Decor. Its an Art.

This week I have started to branch out from my existing graffiti
art skills I am enjoying the art of spray painting  but I am trying to add some more feathers
to my bow (correct use of the phrase for once, bonus)
I decided Ombre was my next venture.......thinking with all my experience this would be a cinch but let me tell you gradiating paint colours with a 3 different spray cans sounds simpler than it is. is tricky.

Now that I have shared with you my need to practice this. I thought I would share how good it can look when its done well.......really well.

When all else fails maybe I will just do my hair this way.

Do you love it, or are you not sure its for you?

You can find these images and many more here

Top 10 White Paint Colours and How to add Colour to them for 2013

White Paint is not the easiest colour to decide on (I think I heard an echo of sighs) and we all know white on white is the current house colour trend. You may have
read my "how to choose your white paint" post at some point during your research and
wondered what else could she tell us about paint.
I thought the next part of your process is to know which colours to choose from by name. In no particular order here are my top 10  Whites. They are all Dulux except for the specified ones. I have also told you if they are cool or warm tones.

1. Antique White USA (Warm)

2. Whisper White (Warm)

3. White Watsonia (Warm)

4. Winter Sky (Wattyl Cool)

5. Lexicon (Cool)

6. White on White (Cool)

7. Vivid White (Cool)

8. China White (Warm)

9. Crisp White (Tubman's Cool)
10. Limed White (Warm)
Can I also add in Colorbond Surfmist. This is quite a popular colour as are all the colorbond colours. We will chat about these another time.

To help you further I am including some of my favourite Feature Paint colours for 2013/2014
These are colours that I think work well together. Either as your feature colour or accent colour. If you use these ideas in conjunction with the 60/30/10 rule you cant go wrong.
Please be sure to remember the colours on the screen are truly quite different to the colours in a sample pot on your wall. So this is purely what I have worked with and trust will work if you like the mix.

All these colours and Collages are put together by Elements at Home and I have used only Dulux colours to create these looks. I have personally viewed and tried these colours via sample pots on canvas boards in my home. Please be sure to try the mix of colours yourself on your own sample boards before making a decision.

If you would like any help with your feature colours I am more than happy to quote you an online design consultation. 

My Build has been a Journey

I have never told you exactly how we arrived at building  our house number 11
So how did we get here?.............Well You know when we first decided to build again, it was when we had just finished our previous build.
We just knew the house we had just finished would not look as good or be as appealing as while it was new. It was a huge decision but after only living in our brand new beautiful home for 6 months we knew, to be able to afford our next venture was to plan for it now.
So how did we do it?
We decided to purchase and move into an older, already established home with "everything we need" while we waited to search for our perfect land package to put our prefect home on.

We sold our new home (oh how I miss that kitchen) for almost what we were asking in about 9weeks from the listing date and we found the new home within the same area that was much cheaper.
It meant reducing our mortgage considerably so that when we had found exactly what we were looking for in a block,  that we could comfortably make our move and grab it.

So we are in our current home(above), the "everything we need" home and after 6 months we start getting itchy feet......Oh and I am now 6 months pregnant and have a 4 year old that has just started kindy.
I digress we have itchy feet and start working on our next "project" our first thought was to look on the Stockland website.

We have purchased land through them before and built (see above) and it was an easy process. It was a winner for us also in terms of profit when we sold it too. I have always found Stockland to develop the perfectly situated land and develop it with great community features.....you know parks, paths and landscaping. Anyway that was our first build and now, a few builds and a few reno's later we are at number 11.

We looked at a number of house and land packages in a nearby areas and were very close to purchasing when we found a great piece of land much closer to our 4 year olds school that will suit us beautifully while the 2 of them complete their primary school years.... (and it will fit my new 3m kitchen island bench too)
Friends and family just laugh at this notion "10 year plan...??" they say, but we feel we have made all the right moves to get to this point and so we will sit on this decision for a while.

Anyway you know once we are in our new home we will just go back and start researching more house and land packages to invest in and create ourselves a potential investment property but more than likely it will be to build our next dream home........again. Don't Laugh.

This article was written in collaboration with Stockland.