Sweet wrapper light

I do love a bit of ingenuity to create nearly free stuff that spruces up your space. And this is quite the most creative use of rubbish I've seen in a long time: a decorative bedroom light – made from sweet wrappers.

Isn't it lovely? It was made by my friend Holly (who's becoming such a regular feature I think she should have her own column here... I am working on it... she made the gorgeous cushion, too). The colourful ingredients? A box of Quality Street polished off at Christmas. Once the lights shine through those spangly wrappers, they are transformed.

The heart-shaped basic structure was, in this case, a originally a decorative festive thing from Ikea, with lights in it that had broken. But you could make your own from wire – coat-hanger thickness (using some pliers will make it easier and more shapely). Or buy a heart-shaped wreath wire (this is a multi-buy, so you could hook a few together and then think of something else creative to do with the spares now that you're all fired up with ideas). Or find another shape or discarded household thing that could do with some reinvention; you could use anything that you can hang on the wall using cord (as here) or fishing wire (so it's invisible) or just a couple of cup hooks.

Holly pulled out and threw away the broken lights her Ikea decoration had come with, then wound two new sets of fairy lights around it, and then (ridiculously) simply scrunched up the coloured wrappers and poked them between the wires. You could stick yours on with clear sticky tape, depending on what you find to use as your base. Soooo easy. And just goes to show what you can do with broken stuff and rubbish, other than throwing it in the bin.

I'd love to see other people's creations if any of you have done/do something similar so do get in touch with photos if so...

House envy - and sexy parquet walls

Today I have fallen in love with a flat in Blackheath, southeast London. Not only is it an Eric Lyons designed building – he of the pioneering 1950s affordable housing design, the Span house (my own place, an 1968 ex-council house, is a shameless copy of said style, which typically features wall to wall windows and a built-in garage). But mainly I have fallen for this place because of its sexy walls...

Parquet walls? What an excellent, excellent idea. I love parquet generally and I'm very partial to a wood-panelled wall (if only I could find the right wall in my place to panel, I'd do it). 

Parquet can be bought reclaimed and beautifully worn in, from places such as McKay Flooring (an excellent shop that also has a strangely compelling blog, odd when it's all about floors but trust me). However, is an expensive option because, walls or floor, fitting it requires a highly skilled expert. But... it looks incredible, doesn't it?

The architect behind this design is Carl Trenfield, who emailed to tell me about the concrete worktops, which he and his joiner poured in situ. Not only did the design include the sink and cleverly sloping drainer, it also – cast your eyes leftwards – includes a built-in herb trough. What a fantastic idea. The green, warm wood and soft grey concrete are also a tonal trio made in heaven.

Anyone out there have a wood-panelled wall to share? I'd love to see it, and I'm still looking for people with quirky kitchen or bathroom splashbacks to talk to.

The Blackheath house is for sale via The Modern House estate agency for £325,000 and has two bedrooms, a study and separate kitchen and living areas. 

At home with... Sam Jones of Hey Pico!

Sam Jones makes beautiful cushions from vintage fabric and sells them at her online shop, Hey Pico! I love her cushions and guessed she might have a beautiful home to match. Indeed she does... 

I'll hand over to Sam to tell you all about her southeast London house, her style, inspiration – and her ridiculously photogenic dog! (And isn't that the most stylish dog bed you've ever seen?)

I’m Sam Jones and I live in Brockley, southeast London. I started making cushions from vintage fabrics two years ago, purely for myself to start with, and it reawakened a passion that had lain dormant for some time. I’d forgotten how much I love the design and textures of old fabrics, particularly 1950s barkcloth and I’m drawn to  strong mid-century modern graphics so, I set up HeyPico! really so I could indulge my fabric habit, make lovely cushions and sell them on. 

I live with my husband and Bedlington terrier in a two-bedroom Victorian terraced house with a cute little garden.

I love furniture from the 50s and 60s and we’ve got several nice pieces including a lovely sideboard (see top photo) from eBay which we bought after my husband broke the leg off of our old Habitat one whilst trying to move it. It was a bargain, including delivery all the way from Norwich, I think it was a happy accident as it’s much more stylish.

I bought the arc lamp (also above) about 15 years ago in a little shop in Brixton, they’re a bit ubiquitous now but I particularly like this one as the stand is totally arched, no straight bit, with a solid marble base – impossible to move!  

I love colour.  And lots of it. The lounge is painted dark red, which I love, it’s really cosy and seductive, it doesn’t get a lot of light so my thinking was, "make it darker!" The kitchen has bright yellow tiles around the work surfaces which our builders were initially appalled but they did admit, once they were up, that they looked "nowhere near as bad as they’d thought." The bedroom is a "fruits of the forest yogurt" pink, the office a 50s pale green and the bathroom a 50s pale blue. The hall and landing are white which hangs it all together and prevents it from looking too much. Basically, I’ve never recovered from visiting the house of Frida Kahlo in Mexico fifteen years ago. I’d seen a picture of it in an interiors book and absolutely loved all the bright Mediterranean colours but I didn’t realise who it had belonged to. When I walked into one of the rooms and the penny dropped, it was, literally, like stepping into a painting or a dream.

The display cabinet in the bathroom (above) is lovely, I bought it at a vintage furniture fair at York Hall in Bethnal Green, the sellers are based in Milton Keynes, Retro Bazaar, and they’re great for furniture or if you’re looking for real cult 60s and 70s ceramics, telephones and electrics. 

I do love ladies in Victorian garb and the courting  couple in this picture remind me a bit of The White Stripes, had they lived in England in the 1900s! It’s hung in the bathroom, I found it in a junk shop in Devon – it’s great to have little finds like that on trips.  

I really like the coloured storage jars in the kitchen, they complement the yellow tiles. I refer to it as "the sky line", if we’re a bit flush, it’s the full tourist treat, if not, it looks as though the wrecking ball has been in. The green lady’s head (below) I found in an antiques shop in Suffolk, I’ve no knowledge of her origins but she looks suitably snooty to preside over kitchen hygiene issues. 

The bathroom’s a really good size and the roll-top bath sits under the window. If there is such a thing as a lovely net curtain, this is it! I bought it many years ago in a street market in Naples and it has accompanied me to many dwellings. 

The bed is interesting, I bought it from the basement of a chandelier shop in Notting Hill and I had to put wooden slats across it myself. It’s Romanian and quite unusual. I love the cushion on the bed, I made it from a beautiful piece of tapestry that I found in a market in Madrid, it cost two Euros and it’s probably over 100 years old.  

I covered a piece of cork in the office to use as a pin board for postcards and photos that inspire me. It’s a fab piece of fabric which I got from a US website called Repro Depot – they seem to be having a break on the fabric front at the moment, which is a shame as they did some great reproductions, really colourful graphics – hopefully they’ll be back.

Get the look (or at least the cushions)

Delores, Celia and Alice – all £40.

Sam's favourite links

Donna Flower For vintage fabrics from turn of the century through to the 70s

Fabbits An Etsy shop selling 70s European fabric. Great caravan vibes

Design*Sponge I imagine everybody knows this one but I love the DIY upholstery tips, which is something I’m veering towards at the moment

Interiors Nut The polar opposite to my house, all very neutral and grown up but beautiful with a real eye for classic design

Drake and Naylor A great little website with some interesting vintage ceramics and curiosities, they have a stall on the Broadway market in Hackney at the weekends

Retro Bazaar For dyed-in-the-wool retro fans.

The Vintage Guide to London All the markets, fairs and happenings around London, listed by area, which is handy

Things and People Only recently discovered this lovely little site dedicated to people talking about objects that are dear to them and the story behind it – heart warming

Family (and other) treasured photos: a clever idea for display

I went round to my lovely friends Nick and Lulu's for dinner last week. They have a stunning house, and it always takes me about 20 minutes to focus on either of them as I gaze around at beautiful and stylish things they've moved or added since the last visit. And this, below, was what most transfixed me this time...

Very sweetly, it was Nick's anniversary present to Lulu; a grid formation collage of photographs of the family, their friends, their wedding... I think it's a really striking way to display favourite photos (rather than having them languish on your hard drive, or just pick three or four to blow up and print).

Nick spent a long time resizing all the images identically (the overall image is A0 size, 1189 x 841mm, so pretty big) and arranging them, using the design software, Quark. If you don't have digital versions of all the images, you'd need a scanner to get them on screen. Places like Snappy Snaps offer scanning services if you don't have access to a machine yourself. As for the printing, Bonus Prints go up to A1 size, which costs just under £30. For the layout, you could also use Photoshop, InDesign or possibly your computer's basic, in-house photography package. Nick got the whole thing printed on high quality paper, to give it a crisp, sharp finish.

I'd love to hear – and see – any similar projects other people have done. I've gathered up a big wicker basket of photos I love and am thinking of having a go at something similar myself.

How to… tackle an old house (Antoni & Alison style)

If you saw today's Insider column in the Independent on Sunday, about the studio/house of Brit fashion design duo Antoni and Alison – and how they did it up, you might want to see how it looks. 

Well, here are a few snaps of their quirkily styled and lovingly restored space...

When the creative partners bought the derelict 1820s house they spent a year, says Antoni, “Going ‘Agh! What do we do with it?’” They wanted to respect its history but not to the point it resembled an English Heritage property. The result is a surprisingly beautiful blend of Mr Blobby ornaments and painstakingly salvaged authenticity. On 17 September, as part of London Fashion Week, they open it to the public (Openhouselondon.org.uk). I asked Antoni what he’d learnt during the restoration…

Love conquers all “Never buy to sell on,” says Antoni. “Fall in love with a place.” It’s what gave he and Alison the strength to grapple with a collapsed roof, wall-mushrooms an exterior covered in plastic flowers. There was also a "secret" cemented over basement that the previous owner had filled with relics from his job – as a dustman. In other words, rubbish.

Gotta have faith “The surveyor told us to ‘walk away’ and my dad, a builder, said ‘don’t do it’,” he continues. “But the house had survived two world wars, been a workshop, a dress-making shop, a lino off-cuts shop and been DIY-ed to death. Being told no gave us a challenge.”

Expert touch "Somebody said: ‘Get an architect’. So we did. And it was brilliant because the architect said, 'What you want to do is lose this wall here, rip out this, turn it into a big modernist space…’ and then we knew he was talking rubbish. It made us realise we wanted to preserve as much as we could because we’d grown to love everything about it."

Your history “We asked people in the local pub, went to the records office – anything to piece together the house’s history. It helped us make decisions about what to keep and restore.”

Can’t touch this “Don’t do anything immediately – it took us a year of thinking to start work. We took photos of every inch and laid them out elsewhere to help us make a plan. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed while surrounded by the space.” It is also tempting, he adds, to expose wonderful things as you find them – in their case, the original banisters, among many other treasures. But resist until building work is complete – things are easily ruined amid the dust and chaos.

Truth and rights “The house’s history was important to us – but we weren’t slaves to the era. When we added new bits, even matching wood panels, we didn’t try to make them look old. Nothing is fake: we wanted to be honest.”

Mega mix The duo have chairs – which you can see further up – once owned by the Beatles (bought from the Jesus and Mary Christian Trust and, now, adorned with a specially- made brass plaque noting the Fab Four's probable link), Billy Butlin’s old bathroom (the sink is also labelled with one of the pair's commissioned plaques) and 1940s lighting discarded from a department store. “We deliberately added things slowly and organically,” Antoni explains. “It’s not stuff you’d maybe think would all work in a Georgian house – like Mr Blobby! But he fits in beautifully because he’s loved. And I think that’s the secret: don’t get things just because you think they’re worth something, get them because you think ‘I really love that.’”

Search and rescue “Salvo is brilliant. You can post very specific things you’re after – like an 1820s sink – and someone, nerdishly, will have a tip.”

Scene and heard Interview a good few builders on-site: “You wouldn’t hire anyone else without doing so. And listen more than you speak.”


Boxing clever Antoni's dad was a builder. His top tip? “Don’t let workmen box things in. If they make stuff thinking it’ll be on display, they’ll do it beautifully. Box in at the end if you like, knowing there’s perfection underneath.”

Inside job Take a guided tour of the house online: Antoniandalison.co.uk

Arno Maasdorp's super cool supper club home

Last week I interviewed the very creative Arno Maasdorp, who runs the renowned Saltoun Supper Club in Brixton. 

It's for the Independent and is part of a bigger piece about people who change their homes around a lot – it's not published until next Friday. Meanwhile, when I was over there I couldn't resist taking some snaps of his incredible flat. He has a really unique style and his creativity really inspired me. Have a look around...

Rattan bowls are pinned all over one of his dining room walls. Such a simple, and affordable, idea – but really clever thinking, and it looks so cool.

 

Love Arno's display of antique teacups – if you've got enough of anything, creating a little collection of whatever it is is a great way to decorate – and best of all you can use things you already have. Arno is planning to swap the cups for glass domes filled with all sorts of different geometric shaped things soon.

Who needs huge works of art to fill a big blank space? I love this display of quirky little objects pinned to the wall.

I have this fantastic Gilbert & George swear box too. Mine isn't signed by the artists though...

So bold to paint the stairs black. I love it. And these bright giant jelly baby dolls are a great touch. Repetition can work wonders.

Habitat's floating frames (above left) are my favourite. So classy. I love how the landing becomes a work of art (by the way, on top of the little child-size chair is a tray of fake grass and a glass dome filled with little dolls).

Posh prints, swish wall stickers and affordable art

Maybe you can afford some serious one-off pieces of art for your walls. Maybe you can afford one or two. Maybe you're broke and your walls are bare. 

Either way - why not brighten up that blank space you're staring at with one of these tasty bits of design. The first in a series of three... 

This retro-style double decker bus print, 50 x 70cm, is just £15 from the V&A shop and designed by Japanese illustrator Takashi Furuya. You can find more of his lovely work at this online shop and, if you can read Japanese, learn about the artist on his personal website. Even if you can't read Japanese, it's a very sweet site and still worth a glance.

This pretty 1880 Yellow Bird print, by the Edward Lear, who is perhaps more famous for his crazy limericks, is quite weeny, at just 20x25cm, but costs just £10 and is one of a series of six from the V&A shop. Random Lear facts (if Wikipedia is to be believed): he was employed by the Zoological Society to draw birds, and briefly gave drawing lessons to Queen Victoria.

I want one of these Moose-heads from the Keep Calm Gallery. In fact I might want at least six of them for one big, bare and perplexing wall in the sitting room. I love, love, love them. But I also love the donkey wall sticker that I'll come to next time. And the idea of a whole wall of Penguin Classic postcards (see below), or some more of the garishly brilliant John Hinde prints from the incredible Martin Parr edited Butlin's book that I have just realised I really ought to blog about... But back to the Moose: he's £18, measures 546mm x 349mm and comes hand-printed on brown recycled kraft paper. Not sure what that is but it looks nice. 

Purchase this chirpy poster and When life gives you lemons you'll now know what to do. This uplifting old-school looking print is designed by Douglas Wilson (check out the very chirpy portrait of the typeface-mad artist on his own site: bold outfit!). The posters are hand pressed using an antique wooden type, making each one unique. They're £30 unframed and also come from the Keep Calm Gallery

Got a big wall to fill? Make a gallery of as many Penguin Classics postcards as you can muster (there are 100 in the box) and stick them in post-card sized frames (Ikea's cardboard ones are good for mass framing and don't look like cardboard if you squint - or even if you stand quite close). Or just pick your favourite jacket and stick it in a dinky-sized spot in a more extravagant frame. Staggeringly good value at just £14.99 from the Penguin online shop.

If, like me, the brutalist concrete archictecture of London's Southbank makes you go a bit oooooh, then this limited edition Southbank Centre graphic print by Paul Catherall, which measures £40x80cm, might be worth forking out £180 for. It's a lino-cut print, something Mr Catherall has become rather famous for, and there's also his take on the Hayward Gallery and several others to peruse. For more of Paul's prints, featuring other parts of London (and New York) in colourful and monochrome graphic form try the Paul Catherall website. I love his version of the Barbican Centre.

My big bro's cool home

A corner of one of the Sydney siblings' homes

While on the topic of the far-flung relatives with style - thought I'd finally post up a couple of snaps I wrestled out of one of my (two) brothers who live in Sydney. 

I think that Anglepoise came from the house we grew up in in south London. Aw. Nice things. Hoarding and compulsive arranging of piles of stuff, also passed down from mother.

The kitchen/diner. Nice.

Real homes gallery: we need YOU!

I'm putting together a Your Home Is Lovely gallery - of your lovely homes. Want to be part of it? Send photos to kate_burt at yahoo.co.uk

I know get heaps of inspiration from looking at how other people have made their places sparkle - whether with car-boot treasures, clever use of colour, or brilliant on-a-budget ideas that I'd never have thought of.

So you don't need to have a super swanky designer-y house: I'm simply after real homes with nice touches that might inspire other people.

So what should you send? Photos of whole rooms or just details or objects - along with a bit of information about where you got it/did it/came up with the idea. What are you waiting for: show us what you got!

More sexy stuff from the seventies

Check out 70s Style and Design, the lush, glossy and brand new book all about 70s style by my deeply stylish friends Kirsty 'the lady in the red coat is not allowed' Hislop, and Dominic 'architecuture/interiors supremo' Lutyens.

Sexy seventies living on a shoestring in NY

Oh my. I want to live in this place.

Featured recently in the NYTimes, it is the Brooklyn home of the American furniture designer, Jason Miller. Incredibly, because he rents rather than owns it, Miller forked out under 5000 dollars for the sexy retro refit. Check out the slideshow for full impact.

Is it all over for the bachelor pad?

Rob Pope's has a remote control shower, a leather-padded bar in the hall and an integrated sound system... but is the bachelor pad poised to become a thing of the past. Read my piece in today's Independent

A woman's touch: the joy of old photos

The idea of moving from a flat to a house for some reason got me fantasising that I'd be living a new life in the style of a 1950s housewife (all about the baking, perma-glamour and vintage kitchen, btw, nothing about the domestic subjugation). God knows where it came from - Mad Men was then but a twinkle in my TV set and interiors scrapbook.

I had, however, been listening to a LOT of Doris Day (and perhaps childhood memories of watching the cabin makeover scene in Calamity Jane - minus the lesbian undertones - had made its mark, see below). I, too, dreamed of breezily doing the housework while wearing a floral day dress (also below). Anyway - when I spotted this cheap print of Doris with Cary Grant on a stall in Greenwich Market for about £2, it made the perfect house-warming present for myself.

After something similar? Try typing "vintage photographs" plus the name of your favourite old movie star on ebay. Here are the search results for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers... Let me know what you bought.