Back again

We are back after a perfect trip - with lots of tasty food - and it´s so hard to start cooking again after a holiday in Italy - because everything here seems so bland. Why can´t I have Antipasto misto del mare everyday for lunch or a bruschetta con melanzane? And why is it raining all day here? - when the sun is already out and hot in Italy - and why don´t we have lemontrees and the sweet smell of almond trees here? I have lived in Italy when I was younger - and I´m not sure I could live there again - but I would really like to incorporate a few Italian things into my daily life in Denmark - but Berlosconi is surely not on that list - I just can´t believe his back again.
Tomorrow is holiday here - so this was a short week - I´ll post some holiday shots later.

Procida - here we come

We will be spending the next 4 days right here - it was my birthday present from Mr. K - who knows how much I love this little island close to Napoli. It´s the 3rd time I´ll visit this little gem - and I look forward to sit on our terrace sipping white wine and just looking at the sea and the horizont - and the little fishing boats coming in and out. It´s a very quiet and healing place with a wonderfull smell of lemontrees, pizza and the sea. I´ll be back here on wensday - a presto!

It´s the Island where the movies Il Postino/the Postman - and The Talented Mr. Ripley was filmed - see more photos here or a movie here.

Meet Karla - our new Studio Pet

Dreaming

My dear cousin sent me this picture some weeks ago - and now it sits on my inspiration board. The text says " Make dreams reality" and it was such a great gift eventhough it´s just a picture cut out from the back of a cereal box - but it´s also picture of one of my dreams. And ever since my daughter was a baby and I would walk for hours with her in her pram - or put her to sleep in it outside - the last is quite common here -I have dreamt of a having a pram of my own - and I was happy to see that somebody else out there shares that dream. See what I mean?

Photos

I was looking through some of my old photos this morning -and found this beauty. I upgraded to a Flickr Pro account recently - but I´m still way behind on organizing my photos - both my digital ones and my old printed ones. I sometimes wish that I would break a leg or something - so that I can just lay in bed for a week and organize them - and create photobooks - but then again you should be carefull what you wish for - so instead I wish for a weeks free-time to organize them! And I also wish for a Polaroid camera when I visit Jen´s Polaroid blog or her Flickr.

Studio update

It´s been a quiet week at my blog - which means it´s been a busy week in my studio - and in between magazine design and logo design I´ve managed to paint and experiment a little as you can see. Guess it was about time to give you a small glimpse of my new space - I´ll post more photos once we are all set - because our interior is completely Ikea Hacker worthy. It´s also been a week full of lovely surprises - I received an Indian surprise packet from lovely Sabine, and I won some amazing Orla Kiely stationary at Decor8. It was a random draw - but here is my winning entry anyway - with links to decor and stationery stores in my city and around. Enjoy!

Berlin: http://www.leporello-berlin.de/

Copenhagen:
http://www.royalshopping.com/

http://www.normann-copenhagen.com/

http://www.dzoo.dk/

http://www.danish-edge.dk/

http://www.gronlykke.com/

http://www.hskjalmp.dk/

Aarhus - my city:

http://www.lynfabrikken.dk/

http://www.1x1textil.dk/

http://www.designertorvet.dk/

http://www.boxdelux.dk/

Luxury Hippie Style

Pure eye-candy from around the web - and now on my wishlist. I´m a little obsessed with these colours at the moment - and this luxury hippie style . Find it here: dress, chair, ring, pillow and necklace - and have a great weekend!

ba&sh <3

I´m completely smitten with all the looks and the styling from ba&sh summer 2008 collection - and the bags are just GREAT! I hope their online shop opens real soon. via Spray Glue

Happy 40th sister!

It´s my older sisters 40th birthday today. In many ways we are complete opposites - she is a left brained person and has a phd. in molecular biology - and does RNA and DNA research in various projects - and can memorise all phone-numbers, birthdays, postcodes and pincodes. She is also the queen of desserts and cakes - and has left some of my boyfriends wondering if they picked the right sister after they had tasted her cakes... But most of all she is a great sister and a great friend. Tillykke søde Mette.

girly spring

Now that all the easter decorations have been packed away - I´m tempted to add some girly spring colours to our home like the objects above from moods.dk - but I´m not sure my "minimalistic man" would agree - so I´ll resist since I think that creating a home is all about creating a space where everyone feels at home.

My easter projects

Here´s some pictures that sums up our easter holiday. First my little craft project - felt pen drawings on wooden easter eggs - I´m quite pleased with them .) I´m also quite pleased that I´m done with cooking and baking for our B-parties - and finally I´m happy we got to spend 2 days in our summerhouse - surrounded by snow and a fantastic light and a great excuse to do nothing at all.

Happy Easter

This Easter bunny, drawn by Julie Østergaard is my desktop background right now - and it makes me smile everytime I look at it - so I thought I would share it with you. This easter holiday is very much about birthdays this year, mine was yesterday, Nanna will be 4-years old 20th of march, and my older sister celebrates her 40th on friday!

I hope to post a DIY-guide to my little peacebirds - in between parties and cooking - since a reader thought they would be a great easter project - and I agree!

things that make me happy

I found the wire for my camera 2 minutes after I bought a new one - so now I can finally share some new stuff with you. So here´s a glimpse of things that makes me happy these days. Springflowers in every room, buying the painting I just had to have, making a DIY typecase for my daughter, Nanna, and introducing her to Miss Piggy, seeing a fun and multi-ethnic crowd in her doll-house, more macros photos of flowers, and the fact that Nanna has started to draw people and animals, like this green mouse.

Have a great weekend everyone.

first collage in new studio

Here´s a pic from my mobile phone of my first collage done in my new studio, it´s part of our Grib project, and I´ll tell you more tomorrow where I hope yo share some of the other memebers works too. I just wanted to let you know that my new studio works so well - and that this is my blogpost nr. 400! Wauh.

Designboom wishlist

I wish I was going to Milan Design Week 2008 after seeing Designboom´s preview. And
the coloured glassblocks by Alessandro Mendini and the Silicone planters by Paula Hayes and the handfelted Textile Stone, by Pernelle Fagerlund are all on my wislist now. All via Designbooms blog.

Oldies but goodies

It´s been a quiet week at my blog - because I can´t find the wire that connects my camera with my computer - guess that´s what happens when you are moving to a new studio. So instead of sharing new stuff I´ll share some old stuff - from before I got my digital camera. I like the stillness and colours in these shots and they match my mood pretty well too - since my dear aunt is hospitalized due to a small blood clot this week - she´s fine now - but things like this put me in a reflective mood. Now I´m looking forward to spend the weekend in our summerhouse in front of the fire with a good cup of tea - have a nice weekend everyone.

Bird nerd

Outside my new studio is a wee garden full of birds - so yesterday I studied my beloved vintage Birdbook to do some research for my next collagebird, I wanted to make a "spring-bird" instead of the owl - and then today I stumbled upon Bird Nerd via Decor8 - and could see that "my idea" had already been done perfectly - and I got a bit disillusioned! Does that happen to you too sometimes?

Path of Love

Today is my first workday in my new studio - and you will not believe the amount of paper I´ve moved and thrown out during this move... but my sore legs has no problem believing it! I´ll share some pictures soon so you can see my new and bright surroundings. You can see my new adress above on my new Moo-cards which I got when I upgraded to a Flickr pro account recently. Kærligshedsstien means Path of Love - and I´ve always loved that name and this little path/passway in the middle of town.

Copenhagen Fashion week 2008

This is not a fashion blog- but I´ve followed Copenhagen Fashion Week which ended last week, through Cover´s blog - and I couldn´t resist pulling togethe some of my favorite outfits. The first 2 rows are by Won Hundred,and Rützou, and it seems like black is the new black - especially if you mix lots of different materials. Personally I was happy to see that purple is still going strong, at Stine Goya and Malene Birger and that some designers like Henrik Vibskov still remembers to play - don´t you just love that green and algee-like catwalk. While Copenhagen tries to brand itself as '5th fashion capital' after New York, London, Paris and Milan, clothing exports have now become Denmark´s fourth largest export (after machinery, meat products, dairy products and pharmaceuticals.) Pretty impressive - and this is what people in my city wear.

Nerdy blogstuff

I enjoy when someone can explain how things really work - because a lot of stuff is just hard to grasp being a right brain person - like airplanes, fax-machines and the internet :) So I love this piece of info-design from Wired that explains The Life Cycle of a Blog. And I also love these videos from Commoncraft that explains rss-feed in common English and social bookmarking.

I alos enjoyed this piece about Mapping the Culture of an Online Community describing the archetypes and their attributes. All via wemind´s blog.

My new workspace

I´m in the middle of moving into my new studio, see photo in the circle - so I´m busy packing and putting together Ikea furniture in between jobs. I will post pictures of the new space when we are all done - and also tell you a cute little story about the building then. My move is partly because I wish to combine my collages and graphic design more - and hopefully I´ll succeed to do this in my new surroundings which will be a combo of an office-space and studio-space - I´m a lucky girl right! I need a new name to add to Spagat - like Spagat-lab or Spagat design studio - instead of Spagat - grafisk design bureau - and if you have any good suggestions please leave a comment.



The collage above is made a saturday night at a friends dinnertable - drinking wine, chatting, flicking through magazines - and trying to visualize how I wish my new worklife to look. I highly recommend this exercise if you wish to make a move or a change in your life. If you can dream it you can do it!

A dynamic design duo + new blogs

It was love at first sight when I saw the pillow, top row, middle designed by Meyer-Lavigne a Danish design collective. Meyer-Lavigne mainly designs a wide variety of products for the home, as vases, bowls, cushions and bedding. Besides their own line of porcelain, they take on assignments for both bigger and smaller design companies. They also do some great
stylist and free-lance writing for different style magazines, with a focus on interior design and interior decorating. Check out their new website here.


I´ve also recently discovered 2 new danish blogs in english, that share my interest & taste in design and stuff - and I think you´ll enjoy them too. The first is Carpeitem written by Svanna, who originates from The Faroe Islands but lives in Copenhagen. The second is Copenhagen Collage created by Mette and Karline. Mette is a full blood creative dane and a print & pattern designer. Karline is a halfbreed American, born and raised in Seattle to a danish mother and american father and a novice illustrator, multimedia artist, and expert shopper & city scout. Their motto is: to inspire is to give, to be inspired is to live. I met Karline in person in Copenhagen 2 weeks ago for coffee and a long talk about design, blogs, passions and ideas and I´m sure their blog will be an interesting future read and I´m always happy to welcome new danish design blogs in English.

Wallcollection

Another thing I´ve been dying to share with you is Wallcollection which is a collaboration between Trine from Ferm Living & Mikkel from BechBox (also part of the Grib-project). They have just launched Wallcollection – made-to-measure designer wallpapers. The designs above are by the artists: Mette Løber, Julia Rothman, Wendy Plovmand and Emil Kozak - they also have a section where you can custom your own wallpaper. HAve fun and have a great weekend!

Textiles from Ferm Living

Trine Andersen, the founder of Ferm Living was part of our local Grib project - and ever since I saw some of her new textile products in her studio in january - I´ve been dying to share them with you, because they are just as fresh and spot on! as the rest of her products. You can see them on the website here - and if you live in the US you can find the more info here.

Happy Valentines day <3

Valentines Day is not so big here in DK - but it never hurts to spread a little love - and tell someone that you love them - so Happy Valentines Day to you all - and to my Mr. K. <3 Lets celebrate it with this wonderful song, One and Only by Teitur which means a lot to me - I hope I can somehow convince Teitur to come and play it at my wedding some day... My cousin made this cute video together with Teitur some time ago - so I know who to call - and tomorrow I will go and see him playing live I think.

Joy Sikorski

Easter is comin up real soon - so here´s a How to Draw a Daffodil and a How to Draw a Rabbit by Joy Sikorski. Joy is the creator of 2 of my favorite books How to Draw a Radish - and other fun things to do at work, and How to Draw a cup of coffee - and other fun ideas for home and garden. If you don´t know this special lady please visit her website - or read this interview with her. For me personally she was a real eye-opener when I first saw hers books in San Francisco 10 year ago. I was so delighted to discover that there are people like her in this world and publishers like Chronicle Books brave enough to publish her, and a market big enough to appreciate her way of playing, drawing and dreaming. Mind you - this was long before the days of blogging - so finding a creative soulmate was more rare back then...

If you are looking for new creative soul-mates or blogs, then Creature Comforts has put together an amazing visual guide to all the best design and style blogs out there. Start here.

2 x princess

Just had to share these darlings with you - Fastelavn/Carneval was 2 weeks ago and unlike last year, this year nothing could stop Nanna from dressing up as a princess - off course... Here she is with cousin Olivia, and a cheeky birthday boy in the background...

I´m always a little paranoid about posting pictures of my daugther - but since friends and family are regular readers here too - I have chosen to do it anyway. What´s your opinion? What would you do?

Nice clients = Nice flowers

As I said earlier - last week was extremely busy at my studio - I designed/shipped off all in all 24 + 12 +20 + 152 pages for printing - and consumed far to much cola, coffee and cigarettes!! So today I stopped smoking again, signed up for yoga classes, had brunch with a wonderful group of women and recieved these gorgeous flowers from a happy client - so now I´m back on track! Watch more examples of the power of flowers here and here :)

DIY - Typecase

I´m still here and here´s the result of my lastest DIY-project - a modern take on a typecase - a tray or box for storing printer's type. In this case it´s for storing my 6-year-old nephew´s collection of cars and Lego-men and it´s inspired by these made with vintage wallpaper. I don´t have a huge collection of vintage wallpaper so instead I used a mix of wallpaper, wrapping paper, magazine clippings and some of my own prints - and I had a lot of fun putting it together. I´m making 4 typecases all in all - the next 2 are for girls and I´ll post some pictures later. It´s a fun and simple project to do - and all you need is a little patience, a typecase, some paper and Decoupage glue.