Beautiful writing sets by graphic design team Ortolan for K.W Doggett‘s Rives paper range. Photos – Narelle Brewer.
JUST LOOK at these simply beautiful writing sets by graphic design team Ortolan, to promote K.W Doggett‘s Rives paper range. I’m sure you’ll spot the painterly work of Kat Macleod, who worked alongside fellow Ortolaner Narelle Brewer to design this exquisite promo. The outcome is a modern day stationery set featuring beautiful illustrations and quirky correspondence etiquette tips. My favourite – ‘If you want to be invited back, think ink! An email is not a thank you note’. Gawd. Guilty as charged.
Sadly you cannot buy these :( They’re for promotional use only. But excitingly today you might win one! K.W Doggett would love to fill the mailboxes of 5 lucky TDF readers with a package of papery designy etiquettey goodness.
If you’d like to be in the running, please leave a comment on this post today Thursday March 31st, before 10.00pm Melbourne time. The winners will be selected at random tomorrow.
Thankyou and good morning. :)
*update – thanks so much for all your entries! 5 winners have now been randomly selected – the winning comments were #60, #206, #111, #230, and #58. Congratulations Claire, Chloe, Angelique, Hailey and Margie!
Aw the cuteness of the gift tags!
All envelopes should be yellow on the inside. Surely.
There are so many reasons why I admire Jodie’s work with both Bholu and Armadillo&Co. The biggest though is the way both of these companies support, encourage and empower women to work outside of their ‘traditional’ fields. Today is another example of this with the creation of placemats, table-runners and rug samples on looms. – Jenny x
Normally weaving on looms is not a woman’s job, but with our placemats and table runners, we have developed the perfect job for them! A mini loom is how our samples, and smaller products are made. Just beautiful and so manageable.
The women also traditionally prepare the yarn. After it is dyed, it is delivered to the village to be spun into the perfect spool of yarn to then be fitted into a little wooden boat shaped tool called a shuttle. Their spinning wheels are reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi’s spinning wheels, which are made out of old bicycle parts.
Another weave, which is happily made by women is the Sahara weave. A detailed threaded style of weaving on a vertical loom. When we visited our Sahara weavers, we saw several families of women with the daughters and mothers all working side by side on the same rug.
Their fingers are a lot smaller and nimble than those of mens, which makes them more suited to the job. Our weavers have their looms in their homes, which makes it easy for them to keep the household and domestic responsibilities maintained and in more quiet times, they continue weaving.
- Jodie x
The sewing room of all sewing rooms belongs to Kristine Lempriere of Townmouse!
Sewing room details – including pieces from the sweet Townmouse children’s clothing range
This is I think the speediest home tour turnaround yet! I photographed it yesterday – and here it is today! (bit of a last minute content shuffle ya know). ANYWAY. How delectably pretty is the Malvern home of Kristine Lempriere and family!? Kristine lives here with husband Will and four kids – Max, Tom, Henri and sweet toddler Adelaide. It’s the kind of classic Victorian home that Melbourne is so famous for… beautiful high ceilings, elegant cornice detailing in every corner, and views to beautiful green garden foliage from almost every room. It’s big enough for all six of them (just!), but it’s not overly grand or precious or fussy. The Lempriere family home is just welcoming and understated and practical and truly beautiful.
But this isn’t just home to a busy family of six – it’s also home to Kristine’s wonderful children’s clothing business, Townmouse! From a light-filled room in the very centre of the house (where a dining room would once have been), Kristine has set up what I can confidently say is the sewing room of all sewing rooms! (Jenny Butler was with me also yesterday and would support this claim!). It is here that Kristine designs the patterns for her irresistably cute clothing range… grabbing a child from the TV room every now and then to try out and tweak her new designs! It’s such a beautiful room to work from, filled with pretty details, vintage haberdashery and Liberty fabrics! And I must say it is so lovely to see a home business granted the largest and most beautiful room in the house, rather than the bungalow out the back!
Huge thanks to Kristine for having us yesterday! It always takes much longer than I remember to photograph a house and she was super patient – and gave us chocolate cake. :) OH and she also let me borrow her 50mm Canon camera lens! Amazing! (I need one so bad). From now on I expect all homes I photograph to supply my photographic equipment. ha ha!
If you love Kristine’s beautiful home, chances are you’ll also adore her sweet clothing range – do pop over to her website and blog to learn more!
CLICK HERE for the full tour and photos
We’re so excited today to be able to share with The Design Files readers the debut of Armadillo&Co‘s brand new colourways with the beautiful Stratum Collection! Not even officially released yet, these gorgeous rugs feature an earthy crimson colour which will no doubt add an injection of tasteful colour to any space. – Jenny x
We pride our rug collection on being earthy, natural and neutral, but who can resist a bit of colour!? We couldn’t, so we are just about to bring in a beautiful Crimson colour into the Stratum Collection. This hasn’t been released yet, top secret information to Design Files readers only!!
On our recent trip we spent the day with our Stratum Weavers, it was so lovely to see some colour in their hands. The horizontal flatweave looms are set up by being dug into the ground rather than having the loom sit higher than the ground and less head room. Makes sense!
The weavers work very quickly and in amazing tandem with their weaving partner. Our weavers are all one family, so it is often brothers, cousins, fathers and uncles all working together.
The weavers weave the rugs and then a finishing process is underway of snipping any loose threads, turning over the ends to make a beautiful finished product and final cleaning before packing and shipping to our warehouse in Australia, after which it finally ends up in your living room!
- Jodie x
Raph Rashid’s new Taco Truck made quite an impression! HIGHLY recommend the fish tacos! Top photo by Dawn Tan, bottom photo by me.
Gorgeous pieces by Finders Keepers newbie Emily Green!
Right I will commence my Finders Keepers wrap-up by saying HAVE YOU TRIED ONE OF THE TACO TRUCK TACOS YET!?? Because that was the most overheard sentence all weekend! Well… maybe it was the most overheard sentence if you were standing anywhere near me! They are freaking AMAZING! First burgers and now the best tacos in town?! Sheesh what will he think of next. Mamasita better watch their back! he he. Kidding kidding. (SERIOUSLY though, fish taco – to die for!).
OK enough tummy rumbling from me, and onto the main event! CRAFT! Craft and handmade treats and indie design in all manner of wonderous shapes and sizes. Lots of old favourites (Pene Durston, Betty Jo, Madeleine Stamer, Ink & Spindle!), and some new-ish faces (our favourite newbie – Emily Green!). As usual it was a super high quality curated mix, accompanied by a lineup of great local music and a good sprinkling of paper installation (no indie craft event is complete without one :)
I was having a slightly bad camera day I must admit (bit rusty and a bit jetlagged etc etc), so these aren’t as exhaustive or as pretty as usual… nevertheless it’s a good cross section of goodies! AND I must thank the ever-lovely Dawn Tan - some of these pics are hers… they are waaaaay prettier than mine, so thankyou Dawn you are super kind letting me share them! (Dawn also has much FK goodness on her site today- do pop over and see!).
Highlights below, in no particular order… CLICK HERE to check ‘em out!
Today Jodie shows us how the Armadillo&Co women in India bring together the delightful Flower Collection. While the rugs are quite beautiful, what has me truly impressed is that Jodie and Sally have envisaged and designed a collection of rugs that provides opportunities for the women, who traditionally aren’t involved in creating rugs, to be able to work in this field. Empowering and inspiring! -Jenny x
The Flower Collection which are all quaint circular rugs, have just been released in Australia in February this year. Sally and I developed this range about 9 months ago, and after lots of trial and error we came up with these.
The ‘girls’ are floral inspired, but they’re certainly not flowery or fussy: the meticulously crafted floor rugs are contemporary, beautiful and very unique.
They are quite a feminine touch to our range, more decorative yet still very design driven – something to soften the hard edges of the modern home. What we love about them, is not only their feminine look, but the fact they are made by women too. This is quite unusual in the rug industry, which is normally dominated by men due to the strength, which is required for weaving. (I will explore more about this on Thursday – stay tuned) The final finishing is done by all.
We particularly love them because they are quite playful in style – perfect for adding personality to intimate spaces such as a home office, a cosy reading corner or a child’s creative space.
They are painstakingly made by the hands of our women weavers, first plaiting the hemp and then weaving it into shape. It’s 100% woman!
- Jodie x
