Showing posts with label interiors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interiors. Show all posts

Friday, 13 January 2023

On the 4th Day of New Years...

... I would like to present to you...
… four paper pests…
… three growing bathers… 
... two storytellers...
... and a lazy day in space.


Did you know that the majority of spiders in your home right now, are male? A study was done by the University of Gloucestershire and Charles Darwin House, and it showed that 82% (which is 4 out of 5) of the spiders in your house are male, and it’s because they’re basically bar hopping looking for the next pretty long legged lady.

I’m slightly less level headed about seeing spiders in the house than I used to be, since one fell from the ceiling as I was sitting at my parents kitchen table, and crawled in my ear… 


… spiders, and bugs in general, don’t bother me as long as they understand that if they stay away from me (and definitely out of my ears), that I’ll stay away from them, or at least re-home them to the garden. 

So, how does my traumatic bug experience lead in to Day 4? With three-dimensional fauxidermy insects.

When I was a kid, my parents had a framed set of pinned butterflies on the wall. At some point over the years, it was carefully retired to the loft because it felt cruel. I never know how I feel about pinned butterflies, on one hand I love seeing these creatures up close, butterfly wings being made up of minuscule scales that look like iridescent shingles or tapestry stitches and that fascinates me. But on the other hand, if you don’t know where they’ve come from, are they culled or found dead, is it right to have them on your wall?

Every time I go up into the loft, I look at them, dusty and unloved, and it feels kind of sad to have them hidden away, but I also can’t quite resolve my feelings about them. My parents however do still have butterflies on the walls, two huge ones that I made out of wool a few years ago. They’re both a little under a meter wide, a bit bigger than your average butterfly, but resurrecting them from hideous ex-window display items covered in pale green yellow sisal, I think it’s a vast improvement.

(I realise this is a tragic photograph, the lighting is not great in a narrow hall and there’s no chance I was going to attempt taking them off the wall because 
I’d inevitably not get them back up, and just to top it off every time I tried to size it the image quality dropped. Yay! But here are my butterflies anyway.)

Bug decor is a definite yes, and paper fauxidermy, is starting to become a favourite…

Giant Stag Beetle

Amsterdam based Studio ROOF, create these large insects out of recycled cardboard, printed with plant based inks which they sell as kits which slot together. Which is amazing, they’re simple, colourful and easy to put together - my little sister has had three of the kits and they were a doddle - and they make really nice pieces of three dimensional wall art.

Longhorn Beetle

(Yes, I may now have to make a giant type-case full of giant bugs. What did I say about being weak for a new craft? Apply that to anything displayed in a type-case too.)

Lady Beetles

Comet Moths

Not limited to insects like stag, scarab, shield and longhorn beetles, Studio ROOF also produce butterflies, moths, dragonflies, flowers, sea creatures, birds and jungle animals, basically any nature inspired design you could think of, and while they’re not painted to be realistic, they’re minimal patterning and use of colour blocking make designs which really stand out. 



Stag Beetle

Another brand that sends you insects pre-squashed from the Netherlands are Assembli. Created by designer Joop Bource, the flat pack bugs employ a similar design to that of Studio ROOF, with slotting pieces of cardboard to create a three dimensional skeleton. However, they then rely on folded metallic paper to create the exoskeleton, adding even more three dimensionality and realism.

Atlas Beetle



Assembli refer to their kits as puzzles and projects, shunning the idea that these are merely products to be purchased and displayed, but instead are something that the recipient is creating themselves. They may be pre-cut, but they take time and effort to build (45 minutes according to Bource) and that should bring the owner just as much pride for creating it, as joy for owning it. 

The pride you feel having something you’ve made hanging on your wall, whether it’s from scratch or from  a kit, making something is ridiculously fulfilling. And it hits just as hard when you’re an adult as when your mum or dad pinned your drawing on the fridge or hung that janky looking Christmas decoration on the tree when you were a kid. 

I want one of these kits, I want to sit for forty-five minutes putting it together and then get to hang it on the wall or sit it on a shelf and have that paper bug make me feel good about doing something creative just for fun, without the pressure of everything else. Because I’ll always be that kid coveting the magazines with kits, and choosing an art kit or a toy.


Link || Assembli  || Website || Etsy || Instagram || Facebook || TikTok || Pinterest || YouTube || Atlas Beetle Kit || Stag Beetle Kit


Moving less than couple of hundred miles down from Amsterdam, you end up in Belgium, not only where part of my family tree comes from, but the home of the multidisciplinary design studio and ad agency, Soon. 


Working with IGEPA Belux, one of the leading paper merchants in Belgium and Luxembourg, Soon were challenged to make the company stand out amongst their competitors, especially in relation to their ecological impact. Alongside highlighting the companies new line of recycled paper, they were also challenged to use the brochures for these products as their medium for creating the advert, new visual identity and branding. 

They did this by painstakingly hand-making a paper insect for each paper in the line.



I didn’t really appreciate these paper cut insects properly, aside from how pretty they are, until I saw the making of video and could see how the designers brought these insects to life and created lush paper environments, full of plants and flowers for them to interact with.

That said, I love the delicacy, the lacy wings and the shingled bodies and I’d have one of the yellow bugs in a frame on a wall in a heartbeat.

Link || Soon || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Vimeo || Behance 



A hop, skip and a jump across the English Channel and back to the UK, with probably the most intricate and meticulously assembled handmade insects of the bunch. 


Created by UK based paper artist Lisa Lloyd, these insects are made up of thousands of hand cut pieces of coloured paper, layered onto inner skeletons formed out of card, paper and tissue and all held together with glue. This designer is old school, it would be so easy to have a counter full of laser cutters programmed by a computer, making sure that each piece is pre-cut and ready just to be glued together, but instead it’s Lloyd, scissors and scalpel blade after scalpel blade to add to her tin of blunt ones. Something every crafter probably has stashed away somewhere in their supplies.
 


Lloyds insects are some of her more intimate creations. They’re small in comparison to her larger, swirling birds and animals, which are dynamic, full of movement, colour and life, but despite their diminutive size, they’re full of incredible detail and their forms are instantly recognisable as the creatures they’re inspired by. 

The intricacy is amazing. These tiny geometric shapes placed on the bee’s body like shingled gives enough of a fur texture to mimic the hairy body of a bee, and the lattice cut out of the wings brings the lightness and lacy quality of bug wings, and without either needing to be replicas in texture, colour or sheerness, you know what they are. And the pastel colour make them unique, and give them a brightness which is incredibly attractive.

Once an extraordinary number of hours and attention to detail has been spent on each piece of paper art, Lloyd takes photographs of her work so she can sells them as prints, have them featured in magazines, advertisements and TV, and after such extreme amount of time and effort is taken on one piece, it’s an incredibly logically way to all more people to enjoy her art.

Link || Lisa Lloyd || Website || Instagram || Facebook || Pinterest || YouTube || Vimeo || Art Republic


Cardboard, paper, some cutting, some folding and maybe a little glue, the same things we used as kids, and it can do such a lot. Two of these were pre-cut kits and two were hand cut piece of artwork, but they’re all connected, they all have unique interpretations of not only insects, but of three-dimensionality. 

And that’s what I like about these, yes some are more beautiful, more detailed, even more artistic than others, but they all rely on mimicking that robust form a lot of beetles and insect have to protect themselves, and I’d rather pin a paper bug to my wall, or in a frame, than a real bug.

This is something I really want to do for my own space, I love the kits, particularly the Assembli ones, but I also love the idea of using textiles, 3D printing or just creating my own cardboard or paper bugs. Maybe not quite on the same scale as my butterflies. Though I’m also coveting these amazing brass beetles, as well as a brass mirror beetle, and a brass bee door knocker… researching this sent me down a rabbit hole of brass bug based decor and I’m in trouble.


Anyway, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight! Part five is fluttering in the room somewhere, go grab a butterfly net and I’ll pin it down!



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Listening: Spiderwebs - No Doubt
Posted by Emily Boyd at 15:09 0 comments
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Tuesday, 10 January 2023

On the 3rd Day of New Years…

... I would like to present to you...
… three growing bathers… 
... two storytellers...
... and a lazy day in space.


I love plants. I can’t go through the supermarkets without at least glancing at the pot plants, or go to visit my gran without plotting when and how I can take cuttings from the houseplant on her coffee table, so I can propagate them. Ironically my most recent snippets, from a Watermelon Peperomia I gave her for her birthday a couple of years ago, and one I have successfully propagated four plants from two leaf cuttings, has now a plant of mine that she’s coveting, since the mother plant is starting to look a little worse for wear.


That’s why I love propagation, you can share and re-share your favourite plants, grow an army of your favourites and keep ancient relics from your family tree alive. For example, the three yellow tree peonies I started growing, were seeds from my grans garden. I planted them more than over a decade ago, they took two years to sprout and this year, finally, they flowered.



Peonies can take between seven and eight years to be mature enough to flower, so for the past few years I’ve been waiting with bated breath to see whether they would be true to colour or not. Then these beautiful buttercup yellow flowers appeared and all that time waiting was worth it. 


As are the hot pink flowers about to open on both my Christmas Cactuses, which are cuttings from one which belonged to my great gran, and is now a huge plant that lives in my grans house and every time my grandparents were away, I was charged with not killing. Only almost did once, but I blame a blistering hot summer and a south facing window.


This is my very long winded way of say that propagation is an amazing way to increase the number of plants you own, and acquire new ones from your existing plant babs, from friends and from family without having to go out and buy new plants. Though, it does open you up to looking for pretty pots and vessels in which to place your cutting while you’re waiting for them to root. So here for Day 3, one I covet, one I aspire too and one I’m almost there with…



Water propagation is my preferred method for growing cuttings, and the one I have the most success with. Mostly that’s because it is simple. All you need is a clear receptacle filled with room temperature water and pop it on your windowsill, changing it out once a week if you remember. If you’re lucky, you’ll see fine roots start to develop and once they’re a couple of inches long you can pot them up, and the worst case scenario is they die off. 


But, while jam jars, glasses and vases are all excellent options, the lure of a pretty propagator is always a risk, especially - for me - when they look like little terrariums!

So, the objects I am currently coveting for propagating are these enclosed terrarium style hydro vases by [10¹²] TERRA, a Japanese design team comprising of Daisuke Tsumanuma and Kenichi Yamada, and these are designed specifically to show off the root system of plants. And as hydroponic growing becomes more popular, and I can understand why. 

Simultaneously protecting the plant while exposing its delicate root system, making them look almost like displayed specimens, this type of growing system isn’t just good for propagating your cutting. With the right kind of plant, they can happily grow in water alone, dispensing with the need for soil, pot upgrades and the accompanying mess. It’s just a really modern and attractive way of growing plants in your home and for cuttings, can be filtered down from a beautiful vessel like this, to simply using a jam jar or vase. 


Link || [10¹²] TERRA || Website || Instagram || Store || Image
Link || Terra Hydro Terrarium via Cool Hunting


Now for something I aspire to, and that is the beautiful, aesthetic and lush way interior designer, Hilton Carter, has decorated his apartment using hundreds of plants, cuttings and propagators. 

Honestly, this is the stuff that plant lovers dreams are made of, and my knowledge of him stems from an interview and apartment walkthrough on YouTube and this wall of test tube propagators (known as Cradles, they are sold by Carter on his website in a variety of sizes and finishes) with its neon sign above, in a narrow hall.


I fell in love with this wall in particular, along with his apartments entire aesthetic I even went as far as buying his book, Wild at Home. It’s a beautiful way to create propagation station within a tight space, giving a permanent area for your cuttings, but also a way to really enjoy how beautiful the form, colour and shape of the leaves can be, even without the mother plant. Carter, who is also known as one of the OG plant influencers on social media, is showing how wonderful plants are as pieces of design within a home, but not only as someone who designs interiors for a living, but just as someone who truly loves plants and can’t live without them.

Plants in the home are wonderful and calming, they can improve your mood, they can improve the air quality of your space and I can’t imagine not having a home filled with them. But I aspire to create a wall like this one day, not only because it’s simple, yet stunning, but also because it’s achievable. Test tubes aren’t that expensive, and while Carter’s Cradles are beautiful, they’re also potentially DIY-able for those who don’t have the budget, so as long as you’re power-tool savvy, or know someone who is, you could easily bring something like this into your own design aesthetic without much difficult.

For that I found a tutorial by self taught carpenter, Jen Woodhouse, which gives a very similar aesthetic and I shall now be instantly adding to my future diy board on Pinterest.

Link || Hilton Carter || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Tik Tok || YouTube || Image
Link || Jen Woodhouse || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || TikTok || Pinterest || YouTube


Lastly, after something I covet and something I aspire to, I give you something I almost did. By that I mean that I did have the intention of creating a propagation system like this simple hanging vial and string set, even to the point where I have the tiny bottles. In fact these are what I do most of my propagating in these days, the small ones at least, there’s no way I could root an avocado in one of these teeny things, if I could I’d definitely be a witch.

As vessels for cuttings go, these are small, but really effective, and while I got them with the intention of stringing them together, I never did, I got ahead of myself and wanted to use them before I strung them together, and while I may string a few purely for the aesthetic, but it would ultimately be flawed for one reason, cleaning. By tying the vials together it would make them really hard to clean and do water changes, and since the only way I’ve managed to successful and thoroughly clean them is to soak them in Milton, a sterilising liquid used on baby bottles, which works like a dream when you can’t get a bottle brush to fit.

Thus, until I think of a work around, they will sit quite happily on a windowsill in amongst other pot plants and be the perfect size for little cuttings.

Link || Candora Clear Hanging Glass Vase Bottle String via Amazon 

Link || Interior DIY Water Gardens The Last Trend in Plants via My Desired Home 



With the cold this winter, and everyone trying to keep the heating off as long as possible to save on bills, it’s not the best circumstances to start taking cuttings from your plants. But there’s just something really satisfying about growing a plant from a cutting, and water propagation is the simplest way you could get started without having to buy any vessels… even if it’s stupidly pretty and you can’t stop thinking about it. 


A bit like how I can’t stop thinking about/am completely obsessed with the idea of emptying my antique type-case of all the nail polish and bric-à-brac it’s collected over the years, and filling it with polymer clay and paper miniature plants! Just because artist Hannah Lemon, posted the pictures of her beautiful handmade miniatures on display in one!




My god I’m easily lead when confronted by a new craft or equally a pretty plant! Totally screwed when it’s both.


Hope everyone’s having a good week. Part four up pretty damn soon for once…




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Listening: Younger - Seinabo Sey
Posted by Emily Boyd at 22:21 0 comments
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