Oh my! Dalton M. Ghetti's 'sharpened' pencils

I absolutely adore miniature things and you know that I am quite obsessed with up-cycling mundane and every day objects.  Well I think I may have found my favourite sculptor EVER!

Dalton M. Ghetti must have the steadiest, most brain surgeony exact hands - he carves the most exquisite miniature sculptures out of the ends of lead pencils.  They are amazingly worn and battered pencils at that, so happy they are not new :)  I am still finding it so hard to get my head around the scale of it all - they are tiny!  How on earth does he get them so perfect and so exact - it is completely mind bending for someone who breaks my pencils just about every time I go to sharpen one!

Here are some of my favourites but you absolutely must go and check out his page here to read all about this guy. 
 

............and the entire alphabet is just simply amazing!

oooh doesn't it just make you happy looking at them - love artwork that does that!

these are a few of my favourite things.....

I just love accidental artwork.  The kind of things that weren't originally intended to be art but 'discovered' and displayed as art anyway.  We have had this piece for about 6 years now, we always get lots of comments on it.   You definitely can't miss it in our house - it's pretty huge and so heavy we have always just displayed it sitting on the floor or on a sideboard leaning against the wall.  To me it looks like a really intentional and planned piece of artwork but I love that it actually started off life as something pretty mundane and practical.

The Mr and I bought this when he joined me on a work trip to Paris.  Although I was working most days we had some time together just wandering the streets, getting lost frequently but stumbling across so many lovely little shops and courtyards.  

We found this little place somewhere in the back streets of St Germain. it was definitely a junky kind of junk shop not carefully selected pieces at all.  But in that ramshakle French way it looked so perfect - junk piled high to the roof, spilling out of cane baskets and wooden cabinets.  Wheelbarrows full of jars, piles and piles of linen.  The shop was full to the brim and stock spilled out into the footpath and even the street!  Of course we had to go in - and we found amongst other things, this set of old number stencils.  

We have some of the smaller sets already but what I loved about these is that they were so huge and that they had been used and had a really cool patina.  We even managed to bargain the price down with the little old shopkeeper in my broken French - which was a bit of a woohoo moment in itself!

So back home we mounted the numbers on a piece of MDF and voila instant artwork.  I love the patina of the metal and the way most of the numbers are white but just a couple are red - perfect.  Now this is my kind of souvenir.  It reminds me of Paris everytime I look at it and I love thinking of the amazing doors around that city and how maybe my stencils painted some of those house numbers long ago.

My Vintage Week (by Mr Odd One Out)

I haven't been having much luck at all with my vintage shopping this year, although to be fair I've not been looking that much - with it being Kindy holidays a vintage shop is not really the best place to take an almost 3 year old.  I am so feeling withdrawals though, it really must be an addiction!

Mr Odd One Out however has done quite well for himself this week so I thought I would show you what he's been up to!

- A super cute (and just a little mad) cross stitch clock.  I love that it has been kept in the embroidery hoop and I double love that it says chicken feed.  Random words on things is something I just adore!

- A collection of little glass bottles that came complete with their little black Bakelite caps.  They are all identical and are now sitting in my entryway - I try to remember to pick roses for them most days.

- One super cool vintage biscuit tin.  With just the perfect amount of distress, I love the graphics on old food packaging!

- Some very old school intercoms - there is actually 3 of them.  Maybe it's just a guy thing but the Mr is so addicted to buying old technology stuff and tinkering away trying to get them to work.  These ones I don't actually mind though - I love the industrial styling of them and the wee atomic emblem at the bottom.  I can totally picture having one in the house and one in my garden studio (which doesn't actually exist by the way - but a girl can dream right!) We can communicate vintage styles.... "excuse me - could I please have a cuppa and some biscuits in here stat!"

So he does quite well Mr Odd One Out - don't you think?  He is also expert in hunting out vintage plates for me - I just love that he is totally comfortable buying a cross stitch clock or some lovely flowery plates and not think it's some kind of threat to his manhood :)  Unlike some other guys I know......

I see a red door and I want to paint it....Orange!

Well I think I have accidentally stumbled across a new, New Year tradition.  Right at the very start of this year we decided to repaint our front door.  We were in the middle of repainting our whole house but suddenly it seemed important to get this done first - and what a difference it makes!  Now I smile EVERY time I get home, it's more of a grin actually accompanied by an excited little shiver.  I think this is definitely having a flow on effect in my happiness level this year - smiling as I enter my home, having that warm "love where I am right now" feeling - all from a door!  I kid you not.

Colour is something I take quite seriously,  I have pretty strong opinions on it and I know Mr Odd One Out finds it extremely painful to watch me with piles of paint charts and test pots (of what he considers to be the same colour!) trying to get it just right.  I just had a feeling that a dark tangerine / orange was where we should go with the door and what do you know, it turns out to be Pantone colour of the year too - awesome!  I couldn't leave gorgeous blank canvas like that alone so a couple of days later I painted on a little design from my sketchbook - it was supposed to go on a plate but I think it looks pretty cute on the door too!

After it was all finished I thought I would have a little research into the symbolism of all of this - I think we pretty much hit the nail on head.  Now I am really loving the idea that you can change your front door each year to attract your goals and dreams for the year ahead.  What do you think?

Here's what I found out............

In Feng Shui they believe that your front door is where you set intention about yourself and about what you want; your entrance is a message to the world about who you are.  It is thought to be the mouth of the home, the entry point where energy, abundance and opportunities may find us.

ORANGE......... 

Our door faces south west and apparently Orange is the perfect colour being a fire colour.  Wicked!  In Feng Shui the colour orange promotes lively conversation and good times.  It is also the colour associated with fertility... hmmm not sure on that one!

Universally Orange is a colour that symbolises hope and a new start.   It holds that energy and warmth from the sun, nice!  It is a spiritual and often sacred colour, connected to creativity and overcoming depression.  So far so good!  Orange brings about creative energy, playfulness, exploration on a practical level, relief from boredom and equilibrium.  I'm sold :)

I love this quote from Wassily Kandinsky........  "Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow"

HOT AIR BALLOONS........

I wanted to have a little picture on the door that would make people smile, with a little hello to make them feel welcome.

The symbolism of these is interesting too.  They also signify overcoming depression and are associated with the rising sun that starts the new day.  They can represent the process of  individuation and a quest to fulfill spiritual needs.

An ascending balloon signifies frustrating conditions in your life in which you are seeking to rise above. It expresses a desire to escape and the need to acknowledge your inner child.

So it sounds like by joining the two elements of Orange and my hot air balloon I was in fact subconsciously reaching for the same symbolism they bring. 

Already thinking about next years door!

Stunning New Penguin Book Covers

These new Penguin book covers are just stunning!  Using illustrations hand embroidered by Rachell Sumpter they are works of art and so deserve to be on display.  I want the lot!

HAND embroidered, seriously!  That is a . lot . of . work .  right there.

and possibly my favourite (if I had to pick)

So Inspiring!

Pics from her Flickr photostream here

I'm so in love with...... felissimo’s 500 pencils!

This may be hard to understand for those not completely obsessed with colour and pencils and storage like me.  But I really NEED this......... it is an illustrators dream!!!! I am just beyond excited about this amazing wall of pencils - 500 to be exact.  Actually so far beyond excited I was seriously jumping around in my seat grinning like an idiot when I first saw it.

This set was designed by felissimo for social designer .  The complete set of 500 coloured pencils consists
of 20 units with each pencil telling its own story with a unique name - lemon drop, Norwegian sky, drizzly afternoon and tragedy - the names themselves are as interesting as a story book and the colours as beautiful as a piece of art.  If you buy the Aurora display case, the impact of all the colours together is just stunning.

25 colors x 20 months
"It's about enjoying an unhurried creative process.  As you build your collection, the pencils become your story and your experience.  Each month for 20 months, 25 colors arrive by mail from Japan - packaged in like tones and hues.  The collection gradually takes shape as each colored pencil set arrives, expanding the possibility of all that has yet to be dreamed."  Eeek! how exciting - this is totally the way to build up a collection - I know I would be sooo excited waiting for each new package to arrive.

hmmm, now how to justify this as a must have expense (especially difficult when most of my illustration is with porcelain paint on plates)  Perhaps I could just call it a piece of investment art?

I'm so in love with.... Plates on walls! (yes still ;)

I know you know that I'm so in love with plates on walls, and yes I am still collecting images of displays I like.

Even though I am surrounded by plates and paint them every day - my walls sadly do not look quite as cool as these ones in the pictures.  I just haven't got around to hanging all my plates and it doesn't help that I keep selling them or giving them away!  One day I will show you how my walls are looking  - promise.

Here are some pictures from my travels around the internet - I love each and every one of these displays.  I love the ordered collections just as much as the randomly placed ones.  I adore the colourful groups but am equally in love with the monotone ones.  Perhaps this is why it is taking me so long to put my own collection together.  I would love to know what your favourites are.

 I have really tried to keep the sources of the pics this time - so top to bottom and left to right are......

eeek sorry! somewhere on Flickr, down and out chic, down and out chic, apartment therapy, design sponge, trulynaturallyme, design attractor, piterest, pinterest, down and out chic, design sponge, pinterest