Dommie

Cute Bunting DIY

Before we know it we will be enjoying spring and summer days
sipping ice cold drinks and taking time out with friend and family

I thought that I would post a bunting DIY
as with these chilly windy days it is nice to keep busy in the cosy warm
and get some projects completed ready for fun times and sunshine

Such fun to make !!!!!
and while you are - make sure that you pop on some tunes

dommie

Vintage Door Dress Up

I wanted to share this idea for a wedding and summer party
of using a vintage door as a beautiful feature within a outdoor setting

dommie

2012 Plan

 

I have kept up my promise to myself to write notes and sketch every day
and I have to say that it suits me well

My brain has a million and one ideas - a day
some rubbish, some rather huge if they were to be created and alot very cute

I find that popping my ideas onto paper
makes room in my head for more thought
as I know that my other ideas are safely nestled between sheets of paper

dommie

Bottle Apron Gift Idea

With Mother's Day coming up
how about a sweet little idea for making a washing up liquid look mighty lovely

dommie

Bruce Mau . Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Why do I love the internet so ?

Well ..... just as I am about to put down my second cup of coffee of this early Sunday morning
go and pop on some tunes, open the windows, burn coconut incense (sickly but I am addicted) and have a shower
I stumbled upon this Incomplete Manifesto for Growth from Bruce Mau

 !!!!! WOW !!!!!

Read, absorb, enjoy .....

1. Allow events to change you. 
   You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
   
   
2. Forget about good. 
   Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
   
   
3. Process is more important than outcome. 
   When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
   
   
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). 
   Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
   
   
5. Go deep. 
   The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
   
   
6. Capture accidents. 
   The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
   
   
7. Study. 
   A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
   
   
8. Drift. 
   Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
   
   
9. Begin anywhere. 
   John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
   
   
10. Everyone is a leader. 
    Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
    
    
11. Harvest ideas. 
    Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
    
    
12. Keep moving. 
    The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
    
    
13. Slow down. 
    Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
    
    
14. Don’t be cool. 
    Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
    
    
15. Ask stupid questions. 
    Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
    
    
16. Collaborate. 
    The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
    
    
17. ____________________. 
    Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
    
    
18. Stay up late. 
    Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
    
    
19. Work the metaphor. 
    Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
    
    
20. Be careful to take risks. 
    Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
    
    
21. Repeat yourself. 
    If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
    
    
22. Make your own tools. 
    Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
    
    
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. 
    You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
    
    
24. Avoid software. 
    The problem with software is that everyone has it.
    
    
25. Don’t clean your desk. 
    You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
    
    
26. Don’t enter awards competitions. 
    Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
    
    
27. Read only left-hand pages. 
    Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
    
    
28. Make new words. 
    Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
    
    
29. Think with your mind. 
    Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
    
    
30. Organization = Liberty. 
    Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’
    
    
31. Don’t borrow money. 
    Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
    
    
32. Listen carefully. 
    Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
    
    
33. Take field trips. 
    The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
    
    
34. Make mistakes faster. 
    This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
    
    
35. Imitate. 
    Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
    
    
36. Scat. 
    When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
    
    
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
    
    
38. Explore the other edge. 
    Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
    
    
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. 
    Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
    
    
40. Avoid fields. 
    Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
    
    
41. Laugh. 
    People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
    
    
42. Remember. 
    Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
    
    
43. Power to the people. 
    Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

There are so many FANTASTIC points that relate so wonderfully to how I want to live my life in 2012 and beyond

I am going to make a point of referring back to this manifesto throughout the weeks
as I find it truly empowering, inspiring and also grounding

dommie 

While You Were Sleeping

 

Recently I have been spending alot of time caring for a VERY dear loved one
yet
it is was what I call 'a good op'
yep alot of ouchs and eeeeeks but NOW !!!!! my little lady is feeling the benefits of her new hip
and I am so happy that she is meeting 2012 with all her dreams and reality of gardening
and going on trips with family and friends

While my little lady was having an afternoon snooze
I popped into the kitchen and had five minutes of flowers diy fun
from scraps of items that I had to hand 

..... and when she awoke there was this sweet little flower
sitting happily in it's new home on the kitchen window sill

dommie

Pretty Up

When sending a little thank you to your neighbours
remember to grab some ribbon, a tag, and a card
and ta dah !!!!! a cute looking gift in an instant

dommie

Spread the Love

 

This is way too cute

dommie

January Inspiration Board

 

Vintage ALL the way

Hiring out my Vintage China for Weddings and Parties

Enjoying some down time and sewing

Messing about with photography and filters

Starting to get out and about more - make more time for coffee and shopping in shops and markets - not just online

Trying to stop loving Cath Kidston way too much - as if I will ever - she is GENIUS !!!!!

Setting up gorgeous areas of interest - the window dresser in me will be unleashed

Writing about more fabby sellers and makers and running more Take Five Interviews

Developing my florist business - this is the one thing I am MOST excited about

I have THE best building to potter and grow to my heart's content
and it will be mine all mine while it cannot be used by it's owner who is VERY close to my heart 

So - THIS - is going to be my hobby/interest/fun project

I will TRY not to go a million miles an hour and I know that the speed that cuttings and seeds grow will pace my enthusiasm

Funny - as I used to watch my Grandy moving tiny seeds into pots with meticulous precision
a cap on his head, shorts on, on a sunny day

This project is for you Ronnie xxx

Giving an old suitcase yet another gorgeous reason for being

A cute use for sooooo vintage china I have accumulated

An urge to cook more - but pretty things to keep my concentration

These pretties were made by my chum Lee - yum yum

Breathing in fresh air more

Getting my mum business with a candle making collaboration ready for early Spring orders

Keeping as positive as I can when tricky times come to call

dommie

xxx
 

A five minute gift DIY - Perfect for Chrimbo

You know when you want to give someone a special gift
heck that is the way it should always be >.<
yet - you generally do not spend tonnes on each other
gift protocol is quite funny at times

Well - I as you know ADORE giving gifts
and the other day bought a dear chum
a hyacinth - the flower that she loves

It cost a few beans
and when I got it home - in it's gold plastic pot - yukky
I suddenly thought ...... hmmmmm ..... I know the perfect new home for it

One cup and saucer taken from my stash, ribbon and a wooden tag
two seconds of re-potting ..... and

Voila !!!!!

A super cute and thoughtful gift

- and guess what !!!!!

She loved it - and so did ALL the girls
so much so that they think I should go into production
and are asking/begging me to make more - te he !!!!!

That florists was a dream - maybe now it has naturally evolved into a reality

dommie