Weylandts

A recent visit to Knysna with visitors from The Netherlands took us on a trip to Thesen Island and in particular checking out the Weylandts shop on the island. If you're into contemporary furniture and design for the home, this is the place to go. Weylandts stock a wide variety of furniture and décor items that will leave your pocket a bit emptier but your home looking fabulous.

As the sole distributor in South Africa of designers such as Kenneth Cobonpue and Ethnicraft it is not surprising that Weylandts is such a favourite shopping destination for home decorators.

I took some pictures in the Thesen Island store, but if you want to see their whole range of products, check out their website here.

Do you like? I love, love, LOVE!

Happy day!

Decorative Oil Lamp

The Captain's favourite on-line shop is Lee Valley, for their fantastic tools for all the woodworking projects he does at home.  One of his recent purchases was a handful of oil lamp inserts which he found a rather curious project to do just for fun.

This is what got him interested...

pic source

and this is what he did with it....

He used a beautiful piece of rosewood and turned it as a trial, since we haven't had much practice on the lathe yet. It turned out (turned....haha...) very nicely and with a little bit of citronella oil it burns beautifully and smells divine too.

Happy day!

Love Milo

Beautiful ceramics, wooden tableware, fabric and lighting from South African designer Nicki Ellis who calls her brand Love Milo. With stockists of her work in Europe, UK, Australia, Dubai and of course South Africa, you won't miss out on this opportunity to shop for the beautiful, functional items she creates, drawing her inspiration from nature and black/white photography.  She's featured in Elle Decoration, Sarie, Garden and Home, Top Billing to name just a few local magazines. 

As seen @ Kamersvol Geskenke

The following four images were borrowed from her Facebook photo album:

Now this is what I call functional art, no? I adore it! Please visit her website here and her Facebook page here, to see more of her beautiful work. My personal favourites are the wooden items, featured here and here and linked here.

Happy day!

Wood Art

Wood Art/Word Art as seen at Kamersvol Geskenke . I have absolutely NO idea who this exhibitor is; if anyone can let me know so I can credit them, it would be great. Tx!

Happy day!

Office desk

Since we moved here four years ago, we've not had a proper desk. What served it's purpose until now, was a couple of sets of trestles with a plank on top of it. Not very nice, I know, and we never realised how bad it looked until The Captain finished making our desk(s) and we could see the huge difference. The blue desk top is made of laminated glass and I think it looks just fabulous.  We have raised stands for the computer screens and when not in use, the keyboards can be stored underneath, where kitty kats can't get to it. (Our Tofi likes to sleep on top of the keyboards, for some reason known to only her, hehehe.) 

 Sleek no? And pretty awesome too!

Happy day!

PS
in case you were wondering why the blue cover sits higher over the screen than the red one, there's a webcam attached to the top of the screen; that's why.... (wink, wink!)

Green Grass Design

I paged through a magazine at the doctor's the other day and saw some beautiful design items that gave me that typical kind of...... "I Want That!" feeling. With my little lime-coloured moleskin notebook always handy, I jotted down some names and URL's.. 

Green Grass Design is a proudly South African venture involved in graphic design, laser cutting and engraving, like the Nando's Toolkit Boxes ,  snowflakes, intricate cutting for wedding stationery and much more. 

gift pendants

stencils

laser cut doily made from recycled wood

Xmas tree decorations

bad apple

All these items are very reasonably priced, especially if you consider the amount of time and effort that goes into creating it.

Happy day!!

Fire lighters

With all the woodworking The Captain does in his spare time, he's  forever looking for a way to get rid of use all the sawdust that he gathers from him projects. He read somewhere about making fire-lighters with sawdust, candle wax and egg cartons and since we're still having cold evenings and making a fire every night to keep warm, I decided to give it a try. Glad to finally have another use for my egg cartons (besides the seed bombs I wrote about here), and of course, all the little bits of wax left over from the candles that I love to burn so much, this is what I did; 

You will need:

 a few handfuls of sawdust

 egg cartons

 leftover bits of candle

 Method:

1. Put the wax in a heat proof dish and melt it over a pan of boiling water
2. Stir in enough sawdust to absorb the melted wax
3. Immediately scoop the mixture into the hollows of the egg cartons and press down firmly
4. Allow to set and ................

 ready for use

 I break them up and use two at a time...

they burn so well, and you don't have that nasty smell that one can get with store bought fire-lighters

Band-saw Taxidermy

I would love to have  a scroll-saw and play around with wood cut-outs, just for fun. Then, I saw this tutorial on instructables and decided it would be a fun project for me to try. A band-saw is easy enough to use and the lines are relatively straight with not too many curves to have to manipulate the wood at uncomfortable angles....  

source

source 

See the instructables website for full tutorial/instructions if you want to make one of your own. I hope you have a LOT fun with this project, I know I will....

Happy day!!

Up-cycle window frames

I picked up a couple of old window frames at a builders yard the other day; this will be my project for the next day or so....


I'm quite excited to get that old paint off (well, most of it anyway) and transform it into something truly lovely. I will keep you posted....

Funky design

I saw a beautifully designed cabinet posted on this website and decided to investigate a bit further. I was pointed in this direction and was indeed very pleased with what I found. Below are some pictures of what these very talented Canadian artists from Straight Line Designs are getting up to.







Can furniture design get any better than this? I love the cupboard all up in flames, but the natural wood pieces appeal to me too....hmmmm!!!

Paint effects

My husband is a keen woodworker, and a brilliant (self-taught) one at that, too! We have some lovely pieces of furniture in the house, made by him, which I am very proud to show off to everyone who walks through our door. Everything he knows about woodworking, he learned from reading books and watching videos.

Most of the time, I'm a natural wood kind-of-girl; but just sometimes the look of painted wood takes my fancy. To give me something to "play" with, my Captain made a simple long-legged wooden table.

Here is the result of my "fooling around" with paint and brushes.....