LOVE-ly Projects... x

Something for your Sweetheart, something for you, something for your home... why not keep a little bit of love all year 'round with these special LOVE-ly Valentine's inspired projects I found whilst looking through some of my fun e-newsletters...

Happy Valentines' Day!

Sarah x

 Modern Valentine's Day Artwork

These cute craft projects make great shelf decorations for Valentine's Day. To craft the collage, cut out repeating shapes from fabric (we used birds and hearts in various sizes) and use spray adhesive to mount on white cardstock; frame. For more advanced crafters, pencil a design on a store-bought canvas, and then sew over your drawing using a thick needle  (used a backstitch technique).

Valentine's Day Banner Bright colors make this Valentine's Day mantel pop -- traditional pink hearts mix with bright orange, yellow, green, and blue patterned fabric on the banner. To make, trace 16 hearts onto pink houndstooth fabric and cut them out. Use a stencil to paint letters onto the hearts to spell out a sweet phrase (like "Be Mine Valentine" shown). Sew the hearts onto colored fabric squares with fun patterns, attach the squares to red ribbon, and hang across a fireplace.

Love Pillow

Dress up a plain throw pillow for Valentine's Day by adding the word "love" with stencils and fabric paint. Cut out your own letters or buy a set of stencils, available at crafts stores, for a quick design.

Tip: Alternate colors for each letter or use a different word on the pillow to make the design your own.

Framed Love Quote Decoration

Decorate a side table or shelf for Valentine's Day with an inspiring love quote in a frame. Using a die-cutting tool, cut a quote (like "Love comforteth like the sunshine after the rain," shown, or one of our other quotes, below) and glue the letters to black cardstock. Tape the finished piece to a mirror with an intricate frame to finish the Valentine's Day-ready decoration. Check Esty.com for more inspirational quotes & printed pieces.

 Heart-to-Heart Garland

Make a garland of hearts cut from fabric scraps layered and attached with iron-on adhesive. Punch small holes in the sides of the hearts and tie them together with ribbon.

 Paper Hearts Wreath

Dozens of colorful hearts flutter on cardstock cut into the shape of a wreath. Use paper punches (about $5-$20 at scrapbook supply and crafts stores) or scissors to cut hearts from colored vellum and lightweight decorative paper. Curl the cutout hearts by scraping them between your thumb and a butter knife just as you would with curling ribbon. Then layer them on the round cardstock base and attach each with a dab of clear-drying glue, either in the center or near one edge. Hang the wreath with ribbon.

Public Display of Affection

Highlight those you love with snapshots and valentines in a three-dimensional display. Gather favorite photos and make black-and-white or sepia copies. Paste some of the copies onto decorative papers and cut into fun shapes. Tuck them in a photo tree from an import or stationery store.

 A Valentine Chandelier

Let Cupid strike your chandelier this Valentine's Day. Simply cut and fold paper hearts to hang from any light fixture whose structure accommodates knotted thread or wire. We've shown multiple hearts stitched together at the center fold, then fanned to create a 3D effect. Beads are added at the end of the thread for sparkle
Note that this particular chandelier is designed to use candles. We recommend that you keep the candles unlit when paper products are hanging below.

Valentine Votive

Fill plain glass votive candleholders with candy nonpareils for seasonal color. Small glass beads from the crafts store offer a similar look.

images & subtext via BHG, Country Living, Snset, Tubmlr, Ballard Design

Ever Get Stuck...

Makes sense....from one of my all time favourite

Cubist | Modern artists.

image via fairlight day

Happy Friday... the Weekend is Here x

I'm in love with all the gorgeous colour & print from
 this recent Hermes advertisement, and
of course just in love with anything Hermes!.

Happy Friday.... And so the weekend begins!

A BIG Thank You for joining me at Palatial Living this week and putting up with my bias towards my little baby girl Isabelle with posting her pics up for the Bonds Baby Search 2011! I will however be asking of you to please please please vote for us when the official polls open on 28 February [Monday week after next]!

Not only one of my favourite Fauves, figurative & modernist
 artist - Henri Matisse, especially his collage and blue series
his words also hark creative simplicity in their truth.
I'd like this to be one of my mantras....it is so true.

I have received an exciting email late yesterday afternoon and need to finish a design brief project for the request by Wednesday afternoon. So you can guess what I will be up to over the weekend...going through my bower bird collection of samples, fabrics, [trying] to draw up some ideas and put them into a cohesive manner! I need a combination of a magi wand with CS5 Illustrator & the massive interactive screen from the movie 'Minority Report' - to just put it all together! Hey not a big ask [we all have crazy invention ideas]...I'll try the traditional path of drawn floor plans, and moods boards with tactile samples.... hopefully the ideas & design will be interpreted well enough from that!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend planned ahead... something Palatially relaxing!

Thanks again & Enjoy,

images via tumblr - modern hepburn & a lady's findings

Weekend Away...with Degas

Dancer adjusting her slipper 1873 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / HO Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. HO Havemeyer, 1929 Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Over the Weekend we visited one of my most favourite places - the National Gallery of Australia [affectionately know as the NGA] in Canberra [Australia's National Capital - Territory] only 2.5 / 3 hrs drive south from Sydney. As a member of the gallery I try to visit several times a year and make a weekend of it.... and how could you not when the NGA brings some of the biggest and best exhibitions together from collections from all over the globe...here is a small taste of the exhibition 'Degas: Master of French Art'.

'The National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition Degas: master of French art spans the range of Edgar Degas’ work, from his early portraiture and historical subject matter, through his move to modern subject matter, and on to his late experimental paintings and photographs in the 1890s. It also examines the rich visual and literary sources that Degas drew upon in his early years.
A major exhibition theme is Degas’ transformation as an artist and his recurrent experimentation, leading to his mature and very distinctive style. It traces the development of his work from the finely crafted early paintings to those possessing a more brilliant palette and looser brushwork, and concludes with radical later works that include finger painting. This development made Degas an influential figure in the evolution of modern art — an artist whose work was admired and collected by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.'

For more about Degas and the exhibition of this phenomenal master of modern art click here.

'Degas: master of French art will also explore other relevant themes in Degas’ work, such as the influence of French caricature, japonisme, literature and the theatre. Through modelling wax figures of horses, ballet dancers and bathers (which were later cast in bronze), Degas was constantly searching for ways to depict movement and form. The relationship of his sculpture to his paintings and drawings is an aspect of this exhibition.
Degas was a consummate painter, draughtsman, print maker and sculptor, who in his later years also undertook experiments in the new medium of photography. Degas: master of French art will focus on all these arts and their interrelationships.'
Jane Kinsman - Senior Curator, International Art, and curator

DEGAS: the uncontested master by Jane Kinsman with Michael Pantazzi

Horses, ballerinas, laundresses are [Degas’] predilections and of all the things in the world which surround him seem to preoccupy him exclusively. But what truth there is in his draughtsmanship, and how astute is his understanding of colour. Jules-Antoine Castagnary, 1874

Born in Paris in 1834, Edgar Degas was considered a radical artist in his adoption of modern subject matter and he was to become a key figure in the evolution of modern art. Degas: the uncontested master covers the period from Degas’ early portraiture and historical subject matter of the 1870s through his move to modern subject matter, to his late experimental paintings and photographs from the 1890s until his death in 1917.

Bonjour Degas - a word book in English and French
This delightful book designed for children looks at details of paintings by famous 19th century French artist Edgar Degas. It includes his favourite subjects—ballerinas and dance classes, horses and riders, and people at work. You will discover the words for things in the paintings and for colours in English and French.

An fabulous extension of the Degas- Master of French Art exhibition was Degas' world: the rage for change

The exhibition Degas’ world: the rage for change is less specifically about Degas than the world he inhabited. It is about his fellow artists and friends—those who inspired him, and those he, in turn, inspired. As an exhibition it seeks to avoid the clichés of sweetness and light with which Impressionism has been interminably burdened. Instead, it is about the real world of nineteenth-century France.

International Art Collection-TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, Henri deFrance 1864 – 1901

La Clownesse assise: Mademoiselle Cha-u-ka-o [The seated clown: Mademoiseille Cha-u-ka-o] [La Clownesse assise. Mlle Cha-u-ka-o: from the album "Elles" [Ed 37/100]] 1896 from the album Elles [Womankind]Collection Title: EllesPrint, planographic Technique: lithograph, printed in colourImpression: 37/10052.8 h x 40.6 w cm Accn No: NGA 77.16.3

International Art Collection GRASSET, Eugene Switzerland 1845 – France 1917 La morphinomane [The morphine addict] 1897drawing pencil. Edition: uniqueimage 41.2 h x 31.2 w cm Purchased with the assistance of Orde Poynton Esq. CMG 1995Accn No: NGA 95.781
International Art Collection GRASSET, Eugene Switzerland 1845 – France 1917
France La vitrioleuse [The acid thrower] c.1896 Collection Title: L'estampe originale, Album VI, Arpil-June 1894Print, planographicTechnique: colour lithographImpression: 71/10040.0 h x 27.7 w cm 60.6 h x 44.0 w cm Gift of Orde Poynton Esq. CMG 1993Accn No: NGA 93.2045

Mark Henshaw who curated this particular exhibition I had the privilege of hearing him speak about some of the pieces in this exhibit and why he chose them...if you have the chance to stand in on any curator speak about their exhibited space I strongly recommend it - there are so many wonderful facets of the pieces and how they be brought together by the curator that you may never be able to understand on viewing alone. You can read Mark Henshaw's essay on the exhibit through this link . Mark Henshaw is the Curator of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books for the National Gallery of Australia.
All works in the exhibition Degas’ world: the rage for change are from the National Gallery of Australia’s International Print collection.

Also video trailers of the Degas exhibition - Master of French Art can be viewed here through this link.

Images from NGA