Red Letter Day - its a sign of the times

Hi to all you today on this first Tuesday in April. 

I'm calling today a Red Letter Day in honour of the following photographs. 

The first one's courtesy of Cape Race Cultural Adventures with their kindly advice to tread carefully. It's been on my doing list, but the one where I have just not yet got round to doing.. that is paint the risers on the staircase and stencil them.

Next up is an interior by Rachel Reider Interiors. The salvage yards would be a good place to start if you want to find store, train, restaurant architectural features.

Decor Modern have incorporated an "F" from TGIFridays and housed in a lounge where large doesn't look out of place.

Retro chairs, mannequin and custom made bookshelves set this scene where French grocery store signage takes our eye to ceiling level. Nice.

I admire an aesthetic where a cot and nursery don't send parents into a tiz of pink and blue. This antique signage says St. Honore after the saint Honorius of Amiens. It's the part of Paris that houses the Louvre and Rue Fauberg, an exceptionally fashionable part of Paris too. Lucky baby. Image from SB Architects.

The Lettered Cottage asks whether this lovely wooden handpainted sign belonged to an Inn up a mountain or a Pub (Saloon Bar) on the edge of town..

Old world charm comes alive here from Jonathan Adler who did the designing of the lobby at the Parker Palm Springs adding quirky charm with this old drugstore hanging sign. 

I've featured pictures in my blog before from Life in the Fun Lane and below show a storage trunk stencilled romantically with "Supplies".  

Most brits know this is so true, the loos in France are pretty dodgy at the best of times. It is lovely that they are now warning us. Picture from Lucid Interior Designs.

Guest in this household are well advised with this lovely touch reminiscent of the 1930's where all offices in corporate buildings had signage written on glass whether clear or frosted.

Australians real love this word, I've seen it a lot in peoples houses - we're such a hedonistic race! Credit to Sweet As A Candy. 

Designers Bosworth Hoedemaker present a therapeutic answer to their design dilemma.

Buckets of Burlap in a cosy country kitchen where recycled coffee bags make an amusing cafe curtain.

I think this design art is from Sugarboo. I love the way the stencils are worked right up against the left handside of the plaques.

Michele Hinckley's bathroom renovation is part of a larger diy project the entire tract home that she's turned extra trendy. She featured my bus roll prints with her children's initials above the loo. This little reminder framed in yellow is super.

So next time you're lucky enough to walk a highstreet that's filled with independent retailers that aren't part of a chain, spare a thought for the signmaker whose work stands the test of time and may one day end up in your home.

All toothy grins and smiles

This post comes to you after a wondrous visit into town to Doug's up on Bourke. This place is an old warehouse full of industrial furniture hailing from cricket grounds to dining halls of schools. It contains a plethora of 1950's old public works equipment and desks right the way to the harbour docks. 

Doug's houses a huge emporium of eclectic goodies some small, some large and some ugly. Though the chap below, the old swine, is a prime example of loveable hunt trophies, falling into the latter category, hubby found this chap hugely funny as it reminded him of me! 

My boy Finley is continually being told to make sure he brushes well after meals, otherwise an hour in the dentist's chair could lead to an extraction. A small history lesson was carried out to show him how it used to be done!

Am so wanting to take this Eiffel Tower home and place it under the screen printed sign I made. Made of wire and crystals it stands over 6" tall. Not for sale, though it can be hired out.

In my long search for home lighting, we came across this original operating theatre light from the 60's.

Here I go again with the stencil infatuation - drawers and numbers. Love that steel architects drawer set too.

A wonderful example of early 1920's cash register, but...

.......

Elks, reindeer, goats and wild boar all for hire - hope these leave you with a smile:)

What a load of old cobblers, as the cockneys would say! Shoe dyes a plenty old and original.

Signing off today with a lovely handpainted shop signage demonstrating a well top-heavy hand script.

I Love A Rainy Day in Sydney

Why is it on the weekend when you'd expect to sleep-in you awaken at 5am, that's not normal.

Though for me, recently it does seem so. A downpour which is so synonymous with England brought me out of my slumber. It's one of those lashings-of we do need in this sunburnt country, specially our garden, the edges of which are a dusty track paced by our beautiful blue heeler, well.. she's actually a cross of some kind.

Likely to be part greyhound and the rest blue heeler, she's fast and tall. Nicknamed SB for sapphire blue and referred to as the high heeler, cos she's legs to her undercarriage.

Nuf said, I don't feel guilty about sitting aside the computer scrawling this as its pouring cats 'n dogs outside. Just love it, hearing the water make its way down the rocky ridge into the little kerbside brook, the same one that yields many a croaking frog nightly and which just the other day gave sustenance to an unusual animal. 

On glancing at it we thought it was a rat, bush rat, no, a snake not reddish brown, no a lizard not that either, a bandicoot, no.

So out came the big guns, out nautical nockulars, binoculars which revealed it to be a bird, so was it a baby black cockatoo. No an eagle with a curved beak. It was waddling like a parrot and had a long tail, spikey brown and blonde tinged jagged feathers.

This one called for an internet search, a 2nd hand book store bird book rifle through, eliminating kiwi kakas, bourkes parrots, ground parrots. Our one grazed on seeds and crickets by the brook (ditch) and disappeared back into the undergrowth.

Random google word pheasant. It was.. an australian pheasant, never seen one before, but I'm sure it will keep good company with the bush turkey and wake up birds that live nearby.

Thanks to Ness for including my Bus Roll in this Treasury found this morning.

Whilst adding favourites to my blogslist I happened across uppercasegallery and a new book A Collection a Day by Lisa Congdon this is very cute. So to all those collectors, do take a peek. Am loving the industrial typography signs and numbers featured within the pages.

Black letters, stencils, linen and lampshades are nicely combined and a unique use of a grain sack as the latter has such appeal. There's a fair bit of cupboard love also for Sandy's painting prowess. 

Having spent a fair few years calling Amsterdam my base I adore the gracht houses. In the early years the owners of the canal houses were taxed on the width their house took up overlooking those famous cobbled canal streets. 


They therefore kept their houses narrow, reducing their tax bill. Most were merchants of the East India Trading companies importing from asia. My eye was drawn to these delightful jewelry stands from polli They have been inspired by the cute frontages of these Amsterdam Icons.

I really like the industrial lighting over the kitchen bench here with its low sheen aluminium finish. I've been looking for lights of this type and have searched retro sources in Holland and the US  in the categories school lights, lights upcycled from loudspeakers, ships lights, cargo hold lights some are originals from cargo ships. These go so well in this space: Picture 

When I talk about industrial casual or cottage industrial, this is what I mean. 

The S strung up in the image reflects my passion to a "T" or should that be an "S". 

Sibella Court is a whirlwind of style, with projects going on across the globe, she's a true traveller and has alot of her inspirations documented on thesocietyinc 

It's an Alladins cave of collections and a great way to soothe ones eye with candy to die for.

To conclude todays post I found this adorable and informative combination of black and white, chalkboard and typography which has made my morning here created by Pia Jane Bijkerk and Eric Loechner for Street Cred.