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.

cool squirrel video

It´s a crazy week at my studio with lots of deadlines, so while I take a break from blogging please enjoy this little fellow that makes me smile a lot. Just click here - since I still can´t post directly form youtube.

Tide chandelier

Stuart Haygarths work has been been all over blogland lately - and I have to post about it too - because it´s so unique. The Tide chandelier is created from clear and translucent objects, primarily made of plastic -all found by Stuart Haygarth at the coastline of Kent.




DUNGENESS ( work in progress)



I have been collecting man-made debris from the Dungeness coastline in Kent over many years. I am sorting and categorizing the mass of objects and from each grouping creating a piece of work. The finished pieces take different forms such as sculptural & functional objects and photographic documentation.
So far I have completed two works. The first being ‘Tide Mark’ (2004) which is both an installation piece and a photographic work. Tide Mark is a collection of primarily plastic objects categorized by colour. Starting with white objects and ending with black, a kind of tide mark through the colour spectrum is produced.
The second work is the ‘Tide’ Chandelier (2005) which is created from a collection of clear and translucent plastic objects.

Kitchen revolution

I love this cover and the book promises fabulous recipes for busy women, wishing to eat healthy food. Well I´m definitely in that target group and with my birthday coming up it´s now on my wishlist - and you can buy it here! or read more from the author here at his blog.

Cammeo - by Campbell

Just love these new porcelain jars by multitalented Louise Campbell, produced by Kahler - they come in different sizes and each jar comes with a set of 6 coloured elastics. What a great combo - ceramics and elastics/rubberbands.

Sprinkleman

Sprinkleman, originally uploaded by Ben Pearce.

Don´t you just love this photo found at Flickr. Carneval/fastelavn is coming up and who wants to be dressed up like a pirate or princess when you can be a Sprinkleman!

Have a great weekend!

Nightjobs from my dinning table

Here are some more results from my dinning table this week - I got a commision for 2 collages and made the owl just for fun, since I´m trying to develope my style, so I can start making series when I get my new studio space soon. Since I plan to do a lot more collages and maybe open a web-shop please let me know what you think - and don´t worry I´m not quitting my dayjob... I just need to get away from the screen more often and play around and get paint on my hands.

The photos are taken last night at the kitchen table - sorry about the lack of light.

Thanks - and the final result...

Thank you for all your comments and emails - 3 was pro and 8 were against the type - and the final collage got type on it!!!! Well, who am I to ask advice and then act against it you may ask - but in this case the person who ordered the collage wished some type on it - but in the future I´ll resist from adding type and maybe just give the collages some titles that includes my little stories. And yes I´m planning to create series real soon.

Small survey

Here´s my most recent collage - and a quick question for you. If you were to recieve it or buy it would you prefer it with or without the text? And does the text makes sense to you at all?

Please leave a comment today - because I have to finish it tonight!

When I make these collages I can´t help creating little stories as well, and so this is the cat that dreams of being the first cat in space. And being a type fan it´s hard for me not to add type to my collages - let me know what you think, please!

Kunst For Alle

Tomorrow the local Art exhibition Kunst For Alle starts, and it´s always worth a visit due to it´s mix of artists - and one person worth looking out for is definetly Line Juhl Hansen, who made the painting above - I really like her big collage paintings, 80 x100 cm - and the fact that I will soon be sharing a studio space with her - I´ll tell you more soon...

GRIB - the crowd

Here´s a few pictures from the opening night - it was a great and curious crowd, and the gallery had the perfect location and size for the event. More pictures here

GRIB- the show

Here´s a few pictures from the exhibition- before it all started - I´m trying to get hold of some pictures of how packed the space was during the reception - we estimate that more than 400 people showed up and we were all quite overwhelmed with the response - it was such a great day!

You are invited!

If you are anywhere near my city, Aarhus in Dennark, you are hereby invited to the opening of our small group show, GRIB! - and if you decide to pop by, please come and say hello!

In short GRIB, which means catch, is a local project inspired by this project. It all started last september when I met the talented photographer Ida Schmidt and we started talking about our freelance lives and all the clever freelancers/designers/photographers we knew here in Århus. To make a long story short - we invited 6 persons/studios to take part, and each got a wildcard - so that we would enlarge our network and end up beeing 12. The project is now over and the result is a great group of people, a book that is now full of ideas and very diverse projects - and a great calender with all the final results displayed. You can read more about the idea behind the project in my blogpost here.

There´s also a blog in Danish - but I hope you will enjoy it just the same. I´ll post some pictures of the calender soon just because I´m so pleased with how it came out. It will be for sale at the group show - and I´m planning to organize a little give-away also...

And at this period of time, where everybody is focused on new year resolutions, I think it´s very important to celebrate all the things that one succeed in during 2007. And this project has been a succes and a wonderful experience, seeing how our first idea has grown and developed into something much bigger than expected. I think this is what happens when you start sharing ideas, dreams and passions.

Open the invite in Danish as a pdf.fil here