monochrome bouquet: purple!

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well! The week is already a bit old, but today I would like to show you the flowers I shot at home on Sunday. The weather was cold but very sunny and I enjoyed the nap of the little miss to make a bouquet and do my first open air shooting at home in the garden. It was very enjoyable! I decided to mix different flowers but to stick to one colour: purple.  I really like monochrome bouquets - sticking to one colour and playing with shapes and palettes. I think, that way, you notice better the different colours of the scabiosa and of the heart of the anemone.  For this bouquet, I chose:

• scabiosa
• veronica
• anemones 
• eucalyptus (for the green touch)

You can see which is which in the picture underneath. 

What about you? How do you like your bouquets? Do you like to go colourful or to stick to one main colour? I wish you all a great day! Elodie

LOVEly flower blogs #4 - Tulipina

Good morning, Today I am delighted to introduce you to the wonderful Kiana - from the blog Tulipina. She has a very natural and creative style and uses a lot of unusual vessels for her bouquets. In this little interview,  you can discover a little more about Tulipina and about Kiana's story. You can read the other interviews from the LOVEly flower blogs series, here, here and here. I hope you will enjoy it. I don't want to spoil anything, but the pictures are just stunning! Have a nice Monday! Elodie

Who are you and what are you talking about in your blog?

Hi, I’m Kiana Underwood – floral designer at Tulipina. My blog is focused on beautiful floral design and DIY – using as much of the natural beauty that surrounds us. I love to design using unique vessels, and I love more eclectic rather than traditional floral design. In addition, I do a lot of event work, and really enjoy quirky and eclectic weddings.

Where does your passion for flowers come from?

My mother always had fresh flowers in the home growing up, and I was privileged to have access to some lovely gardens as a child. I think that these things certainly inspired a passion for flowers. I received a Master’s degree in International Relations, but didn’t get very far into a career before deciding to have children. While I had very regularly put together floral arrangements for family and friends, I decided to turn this passion into a business in 2011, and it’s been amazing for me creatively to explore my passion on an everyday basis.

What inspires you?

There is so much natural beauty that surrounds us, and I get an enormous amount of inspiration from my garden, as well as my neighborhood. I am very fortunate to live in California, which has a moderate climate that allows access to great floral varieties year-round.

What is your favorite flower?

There are many flowers that I love to work with, but as far as a personal favorite, mine is gardenia. The delicate nature of the flower and the aroma are to die for.

Which other flower blogs are you reading regularly?

With three children plus a dog, a DIY-focused blog, and a business, I don’t have a lot of time to read other blogs. When I do have a spare moment, my reading is usually not flower-related.

 

(c) All photography by N. Underwood

Blue variation

Hello everyone, I gave a little dinner party last Saturday, and it's always the occasion for me to pimp my flat with some fresh cut flowers. When I was on the market, I bought some blue flowers. I decided not to mix them, but to make three different bouquet and display them on different spots of the flat. Here is the result. I hope you will enjoy it. Which one do you prefer? Myosotis, delphinium or hortensia? Speak to you soon!

xxx Elodie

My new love

Hello everyone! Today I want to share my new love with you. Last month I bought myself a new smartphone. After a lot of research, and thinking: iphone 5 or not, etc...I decided to buy the new SAMSUNG GALAXY Note II. The main criteria for me were, the battery (which lasts twice as long as the iphone) the size of the display, to read online-magazines and blogs, and the quality of the camera. I must say I am pretty happy. I am also pretty happy about the Mint Cover.

Like a lot of bloggers, I am a big fan of Instagram. You can follow my stream here.

Here are a couple of photos I took with my new smartphone and just a little bit of Instagram magic:

And what about you? Which smartphone do you use? Are you on Instagram too? If yes I would love to see your stream!

Talk to you soon!

Elodie

a christmassy still life

Hello everyone, I hope you had a lovely week-end. We had dreadful weather in Hamburg today - we had a lot of snow and it has been raining on the snow, so it's all slushy now. Whatever! It is a good opportunity to finish my small Christmas decoration at home. This year I decided to use my little home-made table (made out of an old bathroom mirror) to display a little christmassy, wintery landscape and I am pretty happy about the result. I love the fact that the table reflects the scene, especially when the lantern is lit up.

I wish you a fantastic week. Only 15 days to go till Christmas! xxx Elodie

• The centre of this still life is a metallic candle holder in the shape of an old Dutch house that I bought in one of my favorite flower shops: Blumenküche.
• On the left, I made a little star bouquet using old bottles from the lovely interior shop Lieblingszimmer.
• The stars are hand-made glitter stars from the shop Nordlys and the paper ornament is from House Doctor. Around the neck of the bottle is an home-made star I made using the German polymer clay called Fimo. I stamped my name on it, with a lovely stamp from the German designer bastisRIKE.
• The plastic animal under the cloche is from a local toy store and I love the contrast with the big porcelain mushroom.

Here are a couple of close-ups of the still life.

Richard - A lovely shop indeed

As I had rented a wide-angle Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM last week-end and had my tripod with me, it was the perfect occasion to do something I have been wanting to so for a long time: a photo session at one of my favorite shops for interior design in Hamburg: RICHARD, in the Neustadt in Hamburg.I went there also with my Canon EF –  50 mm f/1.8. So some of the pictures are taken with the wide-angle lens and the close-ups with the 50 mm lens. It is obviously easier to do a couple of pics with the smartphone, but Mr. Love was kind enough to come with me and help me carry the material. Thank you Mr. Love!

It is the second blogpost I write about this district of Hamburg, the first one was about the lovely Japanese shop Akiko. They are both situated in the very cool Wexstrasse in this very creative part of the city. Richard is a shop with a  fantastic atmosphere and a wonderful mix of old and new. I am particularly in love with the beautiful vintage globe collection. The dark walls and the candles, give the shop an extremely cozy and inviting atmosphere and the prices are very affordable.

I have updated my LOVEly map of Hamburg, if you want to have an overview of my shop reviews in the blog so far. I am still working on a PDF version of the map.

RICHARD Wexstr.32a 20355 Hamburg

Monday   : closed Tu. – Fr.  : 11:00 – 19:00 Sat.            : 11:00 – 16:00

my living room or I'm not a minimalist

So here are some more photos from this week-end photo shooting with the wide-angle lens. I hope you like them: The lovely cat sitting in front of the lovely bookshelf Our bookshelf comes from the Scandinavian shop bolia. We have been researching a lot, before buying this one. For me it was very important, to have a bookshelf that can fit books, magazines and records. I also love the colour of the wood. The only problem is its weight, when you need to move...

The lovely grey wall We thought a lot about the right shade of grey for the wall. I think dark walls give a very intimate atmosphere to rooms and give you a very good background for displaying art and playing with light. The fabulous Tiger print on the wall is from the fantastic design shop in Hamburg Human Empire.

The lovely home cinema I really love not having a TV in the living room. I think that they just look pretty ugly, even the wide-screen, expensive ones. The beamer is still in the middle of the room, next to the sofa, but I think that you can much easily forget it than a big television.  If you have the possibility to hang your beamer in a corner of your room opposite to the screen, you want to project to, it is even better. It really transform the DVD nights in a cinema experience.

What do you think? Do you like grey in general and grey walls in particular too? Do you also hate televisions? What do you think about my wide-angle lens? the room looks huge doesn't it? I am sure that estate agent use that type of lens when they do pictures of a flat to make it bigger!

Speak to you soon!

Elodie

Oh the lovely living room - The wide-angle experience

As I told you on Sunday, I rented a wide-angle lens this week-end: a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM  from Calumet Photographic in Hamburg. It was really easy and cheap - 23 € for the week-end instead of 722 € if you buy it.I would recommend anyone interested in photography to rent a lens from time to time. It  is such a great option for trying out different type of photos, like portraits, still life or interior photos. I wanted to try a good lens for interior design photography. My living room is very narrow and long, and it is pretty tricky to take good pictures of it with a standard lens.  The result is quite good, but it was not a revelation like the first time I used a  Canon EF -  50 mm f/1.8. So there you go, here is a picture of my grey living room with Mr. Cheds right in the middle sitting on his throne as usual!

and another one from another perspective:

Mexican flowers with DIY vases

When I see bright green, pink or yellow, that always reminds me of mexican paintings, of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.I have loved the Arizona Green Tea bottles for ages, so when I discovered the paloma lemonade can at my local supermarket, I had the idea of this colorful flower arrangement - the mexican way - and why not listening to some Mexican music, while reading this post?

Lhasa de Sela - El Desierto

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/12034327" iframe="true" /]

Green variation

Today on my way back from work I was in the mood for a new flower arrangement. I really don't like flowers that come directly out of the greenhouse. I prefer them a bit wild. It reminds me of my parent's garden in the French countryside, or of a bunch of fresh flowers you bring back with you from a walk in the woods. It is very frustrating to live in the city and to have to pay for flowers you would just find on a road at the border of a field if you were living outside the city ... but there you go, in most flower shops you can still find "wild" flowers that are usually used to complete a bunch of colourful flowers at a moderate price. I like them just like that - I think they are just beautiful by themselves.

My little assistant part#2 - the interior design cat

Good morning, so here comes the second post of the cheddy series. I am slowly transforming into the crazy cat lady, but I got very inspired...I want to show you today that a cat can be useful. Here are a couple of fotos, I took in my flat in the last couple of month:

1- Cheddar loves trying any king of chair or stool, just to check if it is comfi:

2- here comes Cheddar, the famous ipad holder:

3- and here is the cat lamp:

My little assistant part #1 - the fabric lover

So as the today is the World Cat Day, I decided to say thank you to my little assistant the famous Mr. Cheddar, by dedicating a series of posts to him. The first one will be about our common passion for nice fabric. He is a bit crazy about nice patterns (he has a basket with little crocodiles) but his favourite fabric (and I can't blame him) are the Liberty of London fabric. He loves (just like me) the floral prints and the softness of it. So here are a couple of pictures of Chedds on his favourite spots in the flat.

lovely dahlia

I love dahlia, their colours remind me of a mexican painting - in fact they were declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963. I bought a couple of them yesterday on my way back home - it is very dangerous for me to pass by a flower shop everyday! So let's see if you enjoy them too. I love playing with colours, but I think it is better not to mix too much. So I grouped them in two different vases.

Purple sweet peas

Now comes the answer to my question. The purple flowers I used this week for my flower arrangement were sweet peas. I love the simplicity and elegance of this flower. ‘sweet pea’, stands for «delicate pleasures’. The name comes from the Greek word, ‘lathyros’, meaning "pea" or "pulse," and the Latin word ‘odoratus’, meaning "fragrant".

Tea Party by Miss O.

I followed the instruction from the invitation, and went to Miss O's place at five o'clock on Sunday for tea.To go with the tea - I prepared some cucumber stars in the afternoon. The dress code had been perfectly respected: red, blue and white with some floral print. and obviously, we had some pimm's, to pimp up the tea! It was a very fine tea party indeed.

red roses and balkan music

I transformed my kitchen in a studio again this week end.I seam to be going through a rose phase at the moment. I found some very pretty dark red roses on my way home on Friday and I think they just look gorgeous. What do you think? I also pretty excited, because I am going to see two of my favorite bands tonight: Boban i Marko Markovic and Fanfare Ciacorlia - during the Balkan Brass Battle at the Museum der Arbeit open air. Maybe, this will bring you in the balkan mood too:

Nordlys - scandinavian design in Hamburg

You know I like Hamburg because it is so design orientated. I also like it because it has a lot of Scandinavian influences. In some small shops like Nordlys, I have got the impression to be in the city centre of Copenhagen! This very pretty shop is situated in the Görnerstrasse 4, in Hamburg, Eppdendorf.They sell some  pretty brands such as Bloomingville, Green Gate , Liv or Rice. You can also find a large selection of ribbans - that are really gorgeous as well aa a selection of pretty clothes. You can also drink a a nice Milchkaffee in the shop. The good thing is that the shop is also open on the Sunday. You can't miss the danish flag at the entrance

When you go - you have to have a look at the back of the shop to see the two beautiful cats of the shop owner having a nap in their wooden basket through the window

Görnerstrasse 4

wild roses

A bunch of flowers doesn't have to be complicated or expensive to be beautiful. Sometimes, a simple bunch of wild roses is enough.I like when roses have this vintage look and I don't like boring roses that come straight out of the green house. For me a rose should look like it comes directly from my garden - it shall make me forget for an instant that I live in the city...Have a good day

Johanna Schultz - Poetry with letters

Hello,
Today has been an exciting day blogwise. I published the new self-hosted version of my blog (no more .wordpress.com) as well as my madame love Facebook fanpage.
So now I would like to share another very cool shop in my lovely Eppendorf (the beautiful area of Hamburg I live in).
The shopkeeper is pretty young and called Johanna Schultz  - and so is the shop: Johanna Schultz - Wohnen 1700-1980 (Living 1700-1980).
Johanna sells a lot of beautiful objects in her antic shop. but my favorit ones are the letters. I am a big fan of the use of typography in the decoration: you can see examples on my pinterest board LOVEly letters.

Even if I love the letters, I must say that you can find a lot of other treasures in the shop, such as beautiful lamps, like an original artichocke lamp by Poul Henningsen or a lonely fawn coming strait out of a fairy tale.

keep it simple - the third bouquet

1- Inspection 2. Preparation

3. Et voilà!