Colour Me Pretty

A very early memory for me is going through my Mum's handbag and coming across her little flip folder of 'colours' - the colour swatches she would use to go shopping with to ensure she bought the clothes and colours that suited her best.

I have always wanted to have a flip folder of my own, always been curious as to what colours work best on me. People have often said that if I am an interior designer I should have no problem knowing which colours I should wear, but it really is a whole science in itself, there is no link between interior colour knowledge and self styling what-so-ever!

Well my aunt gave me a voucher to get my colours done a few weeks ago, (it is definitely not a cheap excercise) and I was thrilled to bits, waiting anxiously to see whether I had anything in my wardrobe that hit the mark or not! The day finally rocked round yesterday, and my appointment took two hours for them to go through the four colour 'seasons' and determine the best colour set, make-up tones, jewellery colour and glasses frames for me, taking into consideration my skin tone and hair colour.

Turns out I am 'summer', and I must admit there are some colours that I should be wearing that I would NEVER have thought would suit me, ie. lavender, lemon yellow and baby pink.

There are some colours that I wear already which is a relief, like apple greens, navy and fucsia.

However apparantly I should never wear black or crisp white! Well I laughed at that one, there is no way I would give up wearing black. NO WAY.

So when I'm next heading off to buy new clothes, I think I will take my swatches with me and see if I can stick to my colour chart. Something tells me this little swatch book will be a handy guide in my handbag, but I don't think I'll ever take it as gospel. Sometimes when you love something you just gotta have it, doesn't bother me if it's on my colour chart or not.

Red Earth

The fact that nature is capable of producing colours this vivid and contrasting will forever blow me away. Australia you are beautiful, and I can honestly say this even though I'm a little biased towards your neighbour. Photos taken by my other half 'Cozza' near Broome, WA.

Weddings Weddings Weddings!

I'm not sure if it's in the water, or maybe I'm just getting to that age where it's the thing to do, but everyone seems to be either getting married, blogging about getting married, going to a wedding, designing for a wedding... and that's me included!

No I'm not getting married anytime soon, (I don't think), but a friend of ours asked me for help in coming up with some colour scheme suggestions for her wedding, so naturally, having never done anything like that before, I said 'SURE!', and I actually had heaps of fun doing it, even if I did just throw it all together in some photoshop collages so I could email them back to her in NZ.

her favourite scheme

I had a blast pulling things out of magazines, scanning, sketching and googling. She was super stoked with my ideas, so who knows, maybe it's a new business venture, just to add to all the other ones in the pipe lines... oh jeepers!

Ooh La La, Yellow!

For a long time I have had a soft spot for the colour yellow. Yes, that's right, the colour that many of my fellow interior designers screw their noses up at, and say, 'Ooh no, oh no yellow just won't work, eww no...' Frankly, I couldn't care less because though, of course, there are always situations where some colours will work better then others, I feel yellow gets a severely bad rap for just being a bit fun, and a bit cheeky. And jeepers, isn't it nice to break 'the rules' sometimes, (whatever those are) and just use yellow cos' it makes you happy!? So over the next wee while, I'm going to share images of 'yellow' in some form or another, used in an interior sense, to show everyone once and for all that to use yellow doesn't mean you have to slather all your walls in screaming sunflower hues. It can be your friend! So firstly, I want to share some images from Hawkes Bay based textile designer Leanne Culy. The fabrics featured here are designs from her range put out last year. These particular simple designs are printed in beautiful caramelly yellows, onto 100%cotton and hemp basecloths, available in drapery and upholstery weight finishes.

Check out all of the fabrics in this collection plus other work and info on NZ stockists, on her site Home Base Collections. Have a look at the stunning styling and photography used throughout her site too, it's super gorgeous and very effective!