{getting geometric, paint-chip style}

One of these days, we hope to paint the kitchen a stormy, stony grey. But rather than live with dozens of grey paint swatches taped haphazardly to the wall, I thought it better to give all those samples a point (or three).

Poor Pinterest followers, you've been patiently putting up with months of pins simply labelled "triangles". I love them, the trinity of shapes, just as good right-angled as isosceles, stacked or built into squares.

Some recent favourites:

1. Castle artwork, via Tres Plus Cool  2. Anthropologie quilt  3. Znak mosaic wall decals, via Apartment Therapy  4.  Susanna Vento interior, via Emma's Design Blogg

The pattern I finally settled on is a take on the "flying geese" pattern in quilting -- a pattern I have yet to attempt with fabric, but love the directionality of. If I remember anything from art teachers of yore, it's that every part of a painting works to lead your eye somewhere, and the overall effect can be static or dynamic -- dull or interesting.

Using triangles is perhaps rather an obvious way to explore that idea -- arrows for the eye to follow! -- but a nice base from which to play with colour. Greys, blacks, the palest of pinks... and a little red, of course.

Yes, that's a two-step tutorial -- cut triangle, stick triangle. Repeat.

Note: Glidden's paint samples are by far the best to make things out of, being large, solid squares of colour, without any fancy poke-a-part-out bits. 

Also note: For the backing, I used a sheet of cut-it-yourself mat board. A large piece of paper would work as well, but I've lost the glass to my frame and need something a bit sturdier so there's no mid-section flop-down. 

And a note for Justin: This has been up in the kitchen for four days now -- please notice soon!

{pinterest challenge: woolly letters}

Starting to think I'm going Pinsane? Maybe. But with 3682 pins, I couldn't stop at recreating just one. I'm hoping I can stop at five -- that seems like it should Pinough for now, right?

I fell in love with these wool-wrapped words, originally posted here. As you might remember, I've gone on about how I love capturing handwriting in stitches and stencils, and now in pipe cleaners. It's true -- the way you shape letters, even with an awkward piece of fuzzy-covered metal, takes on your personality, somehow. That, I love.

The word love, on the other hand, wasn't quite doing it for me. Not that we don't like love, or need to remind ourselves of it -- it just wasn't screaming "make me!" 

We're in the process of giving Tilly's room a bit of a makeover, and, strange as it might sound for a little girl, we're going to use a lot of grey. Grey, white, and, of course, some lovely bright red! With those colours in mind, I had a go at bending Tilly's name out of pipe cleaners, and wrapping it up nice and warm for the rare chilly weather we're enjoying.

Something else Pinished -- four pins down, 3678 to go...

{pinterest challenge: ruffles}

This tutorial -- seen on, you guessed it, Pinterest -- was for a ruffled tote bag to take Trick or Treating. With a different set of colours, though, it was easily adapted for a new season of celebration.

Don't know how to make ruffles? You will after sewing this bag. (Note: you'll probably also have discovered how NOT to do it!) Tilly has been trotting around with ours today, and I love how it looks as if she's wearing a floor-length flamenco dress!

P.S. Looking for a free Christmas present? I'm giving away a new piece from my shop over here -- stop by, leave a comment, and win yourself an original bit of Red Red.

{pinterest challenge: little houses}

The Pinterest Challenge is back! The idea: to take an idea you've pinned, and make it a reality. Last time, a blurry shot from a room set became a giant canvas. This time, I'm working on a smaller scale...

Inspired by all the miniature clay houses on my Little Houses board, I picked up a few packs of Sculptey on sale, and a jar of enamel paint. How hard can it be to make a pointy square?

Turns out, not hard at all, with the help of a steak knife and a rolling pin. The difficult thing was preventing crumbling. As you can see, lots of my houses have that chalky rubble-sort-of-look of a thousand-year-old Danish church.

Spread out across a map, it was just like looking across the fields in Jutland as we drove across Denmark this summer, seeing spire after spire poking out of the trees. (Just pretend it's not a map of Japan, where, I'm sure, mini skyscrapers would be much more appropriate)

A bit of stamping...

...and we're red-dy to write our own little house messages. I'm playing with the idea of an advent town -- twenty-four houses, stamped with the numbers 1 through to 24, one of which will appear each evening as Christmas grows near.

P.S. Bonus Pinterest Challenge also completed: to use a map, somehow, anyhow. Since Sophie kindly sent in the antique French map, I've bought a hand-drawn map of Bungay in Suffolk, been given the Japanese map above by my Dad, and a map of Bahrain by Justin. Now, to put them to use!

{the pinterest challenge: fine art edition}

So, having finished the background yesterday, I started the painting of the dandelions. Did I wait twenty-four hours? Most definitely not. A scant five hours after painting the background, I found the paint brush back in my hand.

I unstuck the paper towel templates as I painted each dandelion head, but kept them nearby as a guide. With the dandelion seeds, I was going for not too hearty, nor too blobby. I know, all very technical.

In case you're wondering about paints, for the flowers I used Burnt Umber brown acrylic and black fabric paint (I'd run out of black acrylic). I'm not sure that's ideal -- they seemed a little shy at first, and took a good deal of stirring to get comfortable enough to mix with each other.

And, of course, there's the obligatory red. Seeing as the painting's beauty came from its complete lack of colour, the red had to be very subtle. Just five small dots, next to the far right stem. Just enough to make sure my granddad, who always says that every work of art needs a dot of red, is happy.



And before we have the final reveal, I just thought I'd remind you of the inspiration (a painting spotted on Pinterest):

Here is our version (I don't know when Mr Dala Horse crept in there... perhaps, subconsciously, I'm putting a spot of red in all my photos now, too):

What do you think? Passable as something to hang on the wall? Justin's kind reaction was "It could be a tracing!" (a la Michael Scott at Pam's art show) I had to laugh at myself as I was trying to copy the little imperfections from the original -- notice the seeds slightly out of place above the second and fourth dandelions?

It turns out there's a whole movement now of people recreating things they've pinned. To see some of the amazing creations, pop over to YHL's Pinterest Challenge.