bAck tO bLack

In fashion 'the little black dress' is considered as something "that always goes".
This fall there is a new trend in interior decoration to dress your home in a little black something.
There is a fine line between black looking elegant and imposing, depressing and/or gothic. Bright, light flood spaces are needed to create high contrast. And last but not least you need to be bold to paint a part of your home in black, because, although black always coming back into fashion it also means it it will be "out" for a while and in the meantime it has a hard time to mix with other colors.

Small nooks  can be wonderful black focal points.

 Just a beautiful, maybe less dominant, but maybe more expensive is furniture in black.

So I guess accessorizing is the easiest and cost sensible way to 'trend-up' a home.

I have been working on some designs that I want to transform into real projects... but I don't think I will get to it before 2014. But here a bit of a sneak peek:

>>> Find all links to the pictures shown on my Pinterest board "bAck tO bLack".

The melon diaries #3 - work space utopia

At the beginning of July I have been contacted by Etsy France to fill out an interview sheet which they sent to their 50 top Etsy stores based in France.
WOOHOO!!!!
The interview was the classic Etsy 'behind the scenes' questionnaire with the side note that they would love to have some pictures of me and my work space, if possible.

Pictures?
Yeah, sure!
.....no wait!

When I thought of that I instantly remembered the work space pics I usually see on Etsy, or on Pinterest. And I started a bit to panic, cause my work space looks nothing like them - see below:

YUCK!!!! Disgustingly perfect!
I mean "COME ON!" Where do you work in this space? It is all way too neat and tidy. Even those that have some full loaded ares, like a mood board, it is the neatest mess I have ever seen. I don't really believe that those are work spaces - those are showrooms projecting a work space utopia.

Don't get me wrong, surely some people can keep it together like this on a daily basis but they must be graphic designers, or similar. Having a work that takes really only place on the desktop of their computers.

Producing physical items like my ceramics, or paintings or clothing is a messy business no matter if you produce made-to-order or pre-produce in batches. And so I tried to find more realistic examples:

That looks much more like it, doesn't it?! I have these examples on my pinterest board, but soon there will be more - promise.

So here I was, annoyed that I was facing the dilemma between not sending in any photos and have a smaller chance of being interesting enough to be published by EtsyFR or having to have a big clean-up on short notice and show off my work space when there is actually no work in progress. I did the latter and here the results:

Oh, and it wouldn't be the melon diaries if I didn't give you an update, right?!
So sadly Melon No2 seems to be dying....; but No1 is doing fine, considering it is growing out of a flower pot.