Glamour Drops by Blue Fruit

Dreaming of your own Beach Box this summer?

2012-02-02T10:42:00.000+11:00

Living by the bay, as we do, often makes me dream of the notion of having my very own beach box. Right on the sand. Just like this. This one, which has just come on the market, is at Ranelagh Beach, Mt Eliza, and looks rather splendid in his coat of blue & yellow paint. The local Ranelagh beach is a favourite walking spot of ours, because the...

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Colour of the Month: Amethyst: February's Birthstone

2012-02-01T12:01:00.000+11:00

Way back yonder in 1870, the eponymous jewelry store Tiffany & Co produced a pamphlet extolling the virtues of birthstones. Each month was represented by a poem, of unknown origin, but simply referred to as the "Gregorian Birthstone Poems." As today is February 1st, I thought it may be fun to have a look at February's birthstone, which is, of course, the...

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Blue & Green should always be seen!

2012-01-31T06:53:00.000+11:00

Currently working on 3 interior design projects with wallpaper in them, and while each house is quite astonishingly different, there is no shortage of styles of this fabulous product. One of the projects has a blue and green colour scheme, so I have been hunting for suitable papers. These stunning wallpapers are by Publisher Textiles, and are hand made in Australia. They have an...

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Mirrors & marble: quiet elegance.

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000+11:00

Sparkling silver mirrors, white walls, Carrara marble, American oak floorboards: it's a simple formula for materials which creates a quiet ambience. In this house for sale at leafy Hawthorn, not only the materials, but also the colour scheme, has been applied consistently throughout every room as well as the exterior. Including...

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Weekend Thoughts: Days of Wine & Roses...

2012-01-28T12:25:00.000+11:00

Sunlight-filled afternoons lazing in the pool, chilled Champagne in hand, dreams of beautiful places yet to explore and adventures yet to be had... ...evenings spent with the one you love, with scented red roses in teacups, gently twinkling candlelight in crystal dishes... These are the wonderful days of wine & roses. The simplest things in life. And yet so...

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Designer to Watch: Natalia Grzybowski

2012-01-27T17:52:00.000+11:00

Scoops of vanilla icecream and meringue, gently folded into peaks and swirls... ...decorated with candied flowers. A luscious dessert? Not quite. They are the creations of young fashion design graduate Natalia Grzybowski, as part of her degree at the University of Technology, Sydney. And this is the collection which captured the judge's attention at...

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Friday Fun :: "Dressing" Hotel Rooms :: Fashion orientated Hotel in Amsterdam

2012-01-27T08:02:00.000+11:00

Part of the fun of going on holidays is staying somewhere quite different from home. And that idea has been taken quite literally in the new Exchange Hotel in Amsterdam. The rooms have been designed by fashion students, so each is quite unique. Students from the Amsterdam Fashion Institute were asked to "dress" the rooms. So every room is pure fantasy &...

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Clement Meadmore: not just sculpture...

2012-01-26T13:28:00.000+11:00

Arguably best known for his over-scaled folded steel landscape sculptures, held by galleries around the world, Clement Moore (1929-2005) began his career designing metal furniture in Melbourne in the 1950s. When The Age (Melbourne's local broadsheet)and the RVIA* sponsored their famous Small Homes Service after the war, to encourage people to build contemporary, imaginative...

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Gorgeous jewelry, vintage dolls, Mad Men furniture? Together? Oh yeah!

2012-01-25T12:57:00.000+11:00

If you have a soft spot for Mid Century Modern design classics and anything glamorous from that era, watch Mad Men & adore beautiful jewelry, you better read on... Maryann Roy makes miniature furniture from that most decadent of times, with the most exquisite detail imaginable. She started out by restoring vintage dolls in 1996, then decided they needed a suitable...

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One Room: Two Looks...Cobalt Blue Dining Room

2012-01-24T07:14:00.000+11:00

Look carefully. This is the same room - the dining room of stylist Heather Nette King. You can see what an incredible difference colour makes to the way the room is perceived. In the top image, styled recently for a feature, the walls are crisp white, the artwork has a white background & the little cupboard is snowy white. Which all draws the eye to the contrast of...

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Rustic Timber Trusses by the Sea...

2012-01-23T10:33:00.000+11:00

Imagine waking up in this romantic bedroom, to the sound of magpies caroling outside your window, a fresh sea breeze saltily wafting through the French doors, & the scent of gum leaves, warmed by the morning sun, luring you outside to explore the new day. Breakfast of fresh buttery croissants & strong coffee awaits on the terrace, from where you can plan the day's...

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How to Hairstyles: the Double French Twist

2012-01-23T09:06:00.000+11:00

While a French Twist hairstyle is a fail-safe way to add glamour to a workday hairstyle, rather keen to try this double version, which provides almost~perfect symmetry. It's a classically elegant look, beautiful in summer with a flower pinned into the centre, or in winter with a fancy pin tucked into the top of the twist. These peacock pins are from Etsy, wouldn't they...

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Baking: Lavender Butter Cake

2012-01-22T11:45:00.000+11:00

The aroma of freshly baked butter cake is incredible. But combine that with the scent of lavender, and the aroma pleasure factor goes off the scale. You can use fresh lavender florets, if you are lucky enough to have it growing in your garden, but you can also use the dried culinary lavender. I used fresh lavender, from an Alba (or white) variety...

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Game : Set : Style Match!

2012-01-20T14:00:00.000+11:00

(Ginger Rogers posing in 1941.) Thwap, thwap, thwap. The gentle and oh so delicious sound of tennis balls being thwapped across the court. It's tennis season in Melbourne - and the Australian Open is in the first week. In honour of the fabulous blue court surface, I wore a navy spotted dress to the match last night, to see Roddick & Hewitt...

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Friday Fun :: Tennis Thoughts

2012-01-20T10:19:00.000+11:00

On a beautiful day in 1874 a young man's thoughts wander on the tennis court... An illustration from Punch Magazine, October 1874, found via.

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On the Market:: a little slice of heaven

2012-01-19T09:26:00.001+11:00

Wistaria-twirled terraces of sun-dappled stone... ...rustic pergolas of salt-patterned timber... ...would you like to linger here for the afternoon, with a glass of Pinot Grigio, a nibble of local cheese and a good book? Flinders is a little seaside town on the Mornington Peninsula, much loved by Melbournians as a nearby coastal farming area, where the rich soils & high...

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Eye-catching : new swimwear collection from We are Handsome

2012-01-18T19:45:00.000+11:00

If you prefer your swimsuits to be of the unassuming variety, look away now. The new 2012 Romantic Collection by young Australian label We Are Handsome is colourful & bold. With their signature printed images creating alluring patterns and cuts reminiscent of the 1970s, they are the kind of swimsuit which just scream poolside glamour. Inspired to...

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A dramatically beautiful home

2012-01-17T08:17:00.000+11:00

If drama is your calling card, and you don't mind sleeping in a place where a thousand voices have once sung in heavenly choirs, then this somewhat extraordinary home may just be for you. Spot the stained glass? The home was originally the John Knox church, built in 1876 in the seaside Melbourne suburb of Brighton. Under the guide of architects Williams Boag the church was...

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A heart of red roses...

2012-01-16T18:52:00.000+11:00

Freshly picked from the garden are the most impossibly red roses, and as I arranged them in my beloved Alvar Aalto vase, the thought struck me that they resemble a heart. A little early for Valentine's, but beautiful in any season! The Savoy vase was designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1936, for a competition at the Paris World Fair. He obviously figured...

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Laid-back Elegance: a Delectable Duet

2012-01-14T07:00:00.000+11:00

Perhaps "laid back" and "elegance" don't at first appear to be a natural duet. But have a look at this beautiful collection from the young Sydney label AmberJules, and you may be tempted to think again. Using a restricted colour palette of grey, ivory, beige & blue, the pieces are intended to be classical, neither in nor out of seasonal trends. Natural...

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Friday Fun :: wit of the unexpected in an entrance

2012-01-13T11:17:00.001+11:00

An entrance is a marvelous space to play with a little wit. Because people generally do not linger there, the humour has to be quickly obvious. It can be a dramatic wit, or just outright fun, but it is the unexpected which makes it work. This is the Hôtel du Marc in Reims, & it's a great example of the dramatic variety of the unexpected. Rather than illuminating the whole...

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A Coastal Garden: by Fiona Brockhoff...it comes with a house too!

2012-01-12T16:50:00.002+11:00

Swept by the wild winds of the Mornington Peninsula, this grey foliaged garden, by local landscape designer Fiona Brockhoff, is a picture of rugged beauty. The house is all but hidden behind the garden. Fencing posts repeat the same driftwood texture & tones of the wind-curled branches of the trees. One of Brockhoff's mantras is to use local plantings wherever...

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Back to normal Transmission...Something Glamourous...

2012-01-12T05:30:00.000+11:00

After yesterday's dalliance with a stark apartment, today I am more than definitely in the mood for some out and out elegantly warm glamour. And I think the new Louis Vuitton Cruise campaign, mixed with Cecilia Fox's beautiful flowers, may just have the right note of sweet sophistication to do the trick... All...

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A Masculine Apartment? I might need one of those...

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000+11:00

"In our next house..." said my husband last night, pausing for poignancy, and possibly for loss of words, as he looked around our bedroom at the many hats, handbags & vases of roses, "there will be a Boy's Room. At least one." Perhaps he may prefer if we lived in an apartment like this one, which is probably about as masculine as one could...

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In pursuit of Glamour: the vintage swimsuit...

2012-01-10T10:25:00.001+11:00

In the pursuit of glamour, a beautifully cut swimsuit is definitely high on the must-have list. And there is plenty of inspiration in vintage swimwear, which has obviously influenced this year's rather retro range. Ruffles, halter necks, boylegs & frills fill the beaches in a glamourous celebration of style. But what if you are after something a little more authentically...

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