It's all Pozible {Belinda Kemp :: Gretchenmist}

If you've been reading here for a while then you'll know about the amazing site called Pozible. Last year we launched our own Pozible campaign with the Hey Maker Pop-Up project. Many of you were along for the ride, and helped us out. And how cool was that!

We reached our goal, and successfully ran out project thanks to the support of many people helping out with lots of little bits. 

I'm really pleased to share with you another creative who is following her dreams, and raising funds through Pozible to make her project a reality. 

Belinda Kemp is a Melbourne artist who works in the most beautiful and emotional colour palette. Her paintings are evocative and thoughtful in a soft and subtle way - they don't force you, but softly guide you along a journey. 

Last year Belinda had some intense and big things happen in her life. One would say life-changing events. You can hear about it on her Pozible campaign. Needless to say, this alone is an inspiring and courageous story. To move through this by using her art work and painting is a special thing. 

Belinda's hope is to travel to Gotenburg, Sweden, this year, to attend a camp run by Camilla Engman, who is an artistic inspiration to many many creatives around this world.

My thoughts on sites like Pozible are, that we can all spare $10-$25 (or more) on little things that make a big difference to someone else. Give up take away coffee for a week, and donate to Belinda (or maybe one of the other interesting, thoughtful, creative, unique, strange, crazy dreams that people share on Pozible). For Belinda to access any of the funds already donated, she needs to reach her whole goal. Pozible is an all-or-nothing site. 

So, jump on over and have a look. There are some delicious rewards on offer, but come on - the best reward is the warm feeling you get by helping someone else achieve their dream. Sending someone off to explore somewhere on your behalf. Knowing you had a part to play in someone else's life is a bigger stronger and happier feeling that you might image.......

Check out Belinda's blog Gretchenmist here

Etsy shop here

And Pozible campaign here - where you can pledge your donation.

*all images from Belinda Kemp's blog and Pozible site. I've only included a few, as I want you to go off an have an explore for yourself of Belinda's works.

lovely things today

it's raining again here. quiet and thoughtful mood. i have lots of things i want to post about - but no photos to share (camera isn't with me at the moment..), so instead i want to show you some beautiful images i am enjoying around the web today. {just a very small selection, mind you - there's always more over here, if you want....}

 {sweet crochet mushrooms, by Kate from Greedy For Colour.}

{glorious curtains + colours, from my collections of links - forgotten where, sorry}

{this beautiful bedroom scene, from Flora Douville}

{these peonies from House on Hill Road - they look like ballerina dresses. 

i so wish we could grow these here}

{this amazing, divine, dreamy scene from Tim Walker}

{this image from the soon-to-be released "Second Skin" by India Flint}

 {from Rummage. oh - no words to describe how this makes me feel}

*all images used with big thanks from the original sources.

{books} colour inspiration

Going through the shelf of library books; making sure I've read them all before they go back.

Lots of beautiful rich lush full colour and pattern inspiration here. Images above are from Shannon Fricke's book "Sense of Style - Colour". Images below are all from Tricia Guild's "Pattern".

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

oh toasty toasty {inspiration}

Last week, Sam came home from town, with the mail*, and handed me the two new catalogues from Toast. I know I've mentioned these lovely lovely catalogues before. Check them out, please do. They send these for free.

The styling is so so me. I love every bit of it. The mood, the colours, the light. And oh those settings. One of the big things about living in this country of mine (Australia), is that we are so far away from places like Morocco, Spain, France, Italy.... 

Toast, being a UK company, can just flit off there for their photo shoots. Oh. Oh. Oh. Those locations. 

I really love the styling, and never realised before my Shannon Fricke workshop, that it was by Twig Hutchinson. Oh, have a look over at her site. Now. I'm waiting here for you to look.

Anyway. I'm loving looking through the Toast catalogues, both the house&home and the Early Spring fashion one. Simply lovely. And so so continually inspiring. I have the Christmas one on my bookshelf, and flip through it often - to gaze at the luscious deep velvet dresses and shoes and.....

* Now that we live in the 'country' we have a mail box in town, at the main post office. This means no daily mail box check, only whenever we go into town once or twice a week. Sometimes I miss that feeling of hearing the mail delivery (wo)man driving down the street and stopping at our mail box, and running outside to check. But, then the up-side is that there's the anticipation of waiting to open the mail box with our key and peer inside the box. Sometimes a parcel slip means we have to head into the post office and hand the slip over, stating our box number, and then waiting while the ladies go off to find our parcel. The anticipation of a parcel......
HA - I just thought..... Does anyone want to do a parcel swap with me. Something little, something special, something thoughtful, something crafty, or a magazine from your country/town...... something something something. Email me if you like this idea {redseedstudio@gmail.com} or leave a comment.

afternoon tea & a few good books on the back verandah {or what would you call your autobiography....}

This is my little styled scene from the Shannon Fricke workshop last week. We did a theme board, using magazine tearsheets. I really like the colour tones.moods I've used; though a lot of the elements aren't quite right. The cushions should be much bigger, it really is out of proportion. And the white pebbles on the ground were putting me off quite a bit (though looking at the image on Shannon's blog they don't look too terrible).

Isn't that old metal tambourine just amazingly beautiful. Shannon had pulled some fantastic treasures from her collections for us to use in our styling. The cushion is from Cloth Fabric, and the little red vessel is from Shannon's new Free Range collection. That piece of blue cloth really reminded me of my mum, as many years ago she hand dyed some similar colour tones onto similar weave fabric; and we had pieces she'd made (cushions and things) around our home while I was growing up. And of course, that roll of twine is so very us - as we use jute and hemp twine in our packaging and always have a few rolls about. Though none of ours are on such pretty wooden spools. Note to self: Must look out for pretty wooden spools.

This is Lea's corner, which didn't quite get finished. A long day ran away from us too quickly and we didn't have time for all that we wanted! I love her tender little colours and attention to the smallest details - those budlets sitting in the vases, and the sparkly theme running through it all. And let me tell you - that piece of fabric sitting there was the most sublime piece of almost costume-like theatricality of perfection. I saw many woman stop and be enthralled by it during the day. I'm sure I've shown you scenes of Lea's home before, perhaps I'll have to search my archives and show you again and she does have a wonderful knack for styling in a real warm sense, and beautiful collection of special pieces in her home. {You see, I told you she was our sister by interest and talent and such}.

This was Sylv's corner. Afternoon tea and a few good books on the back verandah. Ha - that could be the title to Sylv's memoirs. No.....? Those green colours are just perfectly Sylv. Well, actually I think perhaps she's actually really a bit of a deeper green, but it's not far off. And the rambling shelf of plants with that beautiful touch-me-touch-me-but only ever so gently teapot. It has translucent spots on the lid. Oh, it was lovely. {Both Sylv + I spotted it on the kitchen counter as we walked into the room at the start of the day}. I'll just let you know, though, Sylv doesn't read Country Style magazine - not quite her cup-of-tea; just so you don't get different ideas about who she is, and all......

Looking at these three images now. I do quite like that in some way they somehow each vaguely represent each of the three of us as people. Maybe I'm just rambling now, or maybe my tired thoughts are making some real sense. {It is almost 9pm people, and now that I live in the county it's quite my bedtime! Though I do have some new library books I'm going to curl up with....}.

This is Take One, well, Take Two actually, but the top (first) picture is Take Three which is really Take One. If you get what I mean. ie - I just wanted to try something different, but went back to my original first setting, after having to check that less really was more and took out those play matchboxes.

One important thing that Shannon made us remember/realise was that even though you may have an excellent theme.idea.storyboard.location it might all go to pieces on the day of the styling shoot. So, be prepared for Plan B, which is to fly by the seat of you perfectly knowledgeable stylish pants.

*Shannon wrote a lovely little post about the workshop day on her blog too. And look.look.look she included the styling corners of both mine + Sylvs. Yah to that!

the process of making things look beautiful

 {This was the props table, full of all the things we could use to 

make our own little scenes. What a glorious collection of beautiful pieces}

Last week I went to a styling workshop, with two of my sisters*. 

It was with the lovely, talented and very friendly Shannon Fricke. She has a beautiful, open, light and dreamy studio space in Bangalow; where she works on her styling for magazines (such as RealLiving, InsideOut, Country Style, and many many overseas editions), her books, as well as her interior designer business. She has also just launched her first collection of ceramic pieces, which are made locally, and were dotted all around the studio space with a perfect feel of touch-me please glaze.shapes.colours.

We all had such a fun day - though boy was it tiring sitting and listening to Shannon talk about her amazing life, and all that she gets up to! The lunch was delicious; with some very yummy tastes and nice care and attention to the food. Always good to enjoy well prepared, healthy yet delicious and luxurious food.

These scenes really do look like a proper styled home / studio, don't they. I so like that Shannon's styling is clean, neat, and beautiful, yet very real, livable, a place where you feel you can mess things a little bit, and there is space to curl up your feet on the chair and read a book or two in the afternoon light. 

 {this is the 'after' image of that beautiful table laden with styling props}

I came away from the workshop quite inspired to get myself into some new projects. Also, with the big reminder that both Sam + I need to be more focussed on certain particular things about Red Seed Studio. The fun part of finally getting all my inspiration images / tearsheets into some sort of order, so that I can actually look at them is a start. Making theme boards is also a really worthwhile process that I'm going to try to do more often. Pinterest is an excellent online way of keeping inspiration images in one place, and organised too; but often I really need the tactileness of some magazine pages to touch.

*for those of you wondering, about "two of my sisters". Yes, I do only actually have two birth sisters; but have another sister by love and common interests. She is the mother of one of my nephews and I've known her since I was about 13 or so.