Sania Pell

amsterdam anniversary

December 11, 2011  in inspiring places

We had a wonderful few days in Amsterdam last weekend celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. Even though the weather was somewhat cold, grey and drizzly we had an inspiring time wandering the historic canals, museums, galleries and shops armed with Pia Jane Bijkerk’s Amsterdam: Made by Hand and the Wallpaper* City Guide to Amsterdam. The Dutch locals were lovely – friendly, laid-back with an under-stated cool style and we came home thinking it was a city we could quite happily live in.

We took inspiration from museum and gallery trips including the wonderful Rijksmuseum that, even though it is mid-renovation the one open wing is filled with stunning artworks from the Dutch golden age (Willem van de Welde I’s pen paintings from the mid 17th century were just amazing and so detailed). We also visited the Van Gogh Museum, Foam photography gallery as well as touring a couple of the beautiful canal-side houses on Herengracht and the moving Anne Frank House.

What I love about Amsterdam is that, although you are surrounded by the historic architecture and canals it doesn’t feel old fashioned nor just a big tourist attraction. With the vast volume of cyclists buzzing around it feels like a living city and you can glimpse into real homes as you wander, seeing modern interiors and creative solutions that respect the heritage but are contemporary and forward thinking.

The creativity and individuality is evident everywhere. I loved this personalised bicycle covered in silk flowers.

We visited the famous flower market and also the Waterloopein flea market which was disappointing unfortunately as it was all general stalls rather than antiques or bric-a-brac, though it looked like a lot of stalls had closed up early. The farmers’ market on the Noordermarkt was fabulous and well worth a visit.

Touring the shops, my favourites were Moooi, Droog and The Frozen Fountain. Bebob Design had a great selection of vintage and new classic 20th century furniture.  I always like to visit a major, old department store on a city break and we whizzed around De Bijenkorf which also has a good cafe/restaurant on the top floor. We stumbled upon a lovely little concept store called Maison NL and peered through the window of Raw Materials home store which looked interesting but was unfortunately closed when we found it. The American Book Centre was brilliant and opposite it Atheneum had a huge international selection of creative magazines.

All in all we had a lovely time celebrating our wedding anniversary and returned inspired. Thank you for making us welcome Amsterdam, we hope to see you again soon.

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craft project: christmas wreath

December 8, 2011  in diy craft projects, homemade

I was flicking through some old photos and found these images of two of the Christmas wreathes that I made last year and donated to sell at my children’s schools Christmas fair. I originally posted them on my Homemade Home Facebook page last year but as it’s that time of year again, and following the wonderful response to my simple clay decorations project, I thought I would share them here.

I bought the plain, woven wooden wreathes and then embellished them by hand with felt leaves, beads, ribbon, buttons and a little Robin in some cases. I made a dozen or so and each one was unique.

I used real leaves that had fallen in my local park as templates, pinning them to the felt fabric and simply cutting round them. All of the felt, buttons, beads and ribbon came from my stash of haberdashery goodies.

I used strong glue to fix the leaves on, let the glue dry and then sewed the red beads, to look like winter berries, and also old buttons on to the leaves to add visual interest. The matching ribbon finishes things off.

If you try this idea and use felt or fabric them make sure your front door is well sheltered from bad weather or the rain may be a problem.

My children loved the little birds. They were inspired by the little Robin who visits our back garden regularly, sitting on the fence and watching us in our kitchen.

What Christmas decorations are you making this year?

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natural beauty book winner

December 6, 2011  in news

A huge thank you to everyone who entered the prize draw to win A Green Guide to Natural Beauty by Karen Gilbert from CICO Books.

Your comments were lovely and it was really interesting to hear about all of the different things you love making.

So I printed off  all of the entries, cut them up separately and put them in my grandfather’s old bowler hat, closed my eyes, rummaged and pulled one out.

And the winner is…

Anneline!

Congratulations to Anneline who said “I love anything handmade and love doing various arts and crafts but my passion is textile and surface pattern design which also means that I love to sew. This book would be perfect to help me with my handmade Christmas as I’m aiming to make all presents myself this year.”

Thank you again to everyone for entering and to CICO Books for donating the book and postage, and I’m sure I’ll run another giveaway in the future.

For those that didn’t win, don’t forget the book is available to buy on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Thank you!

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off to amsterdam

November 30, 2011  in news

I’m off to Amsterdam for a few days with my husband for our 10th wedding anniversary. I haven’t been there since I went inter-railing around Europe when I was 18 and am really looking forward to it.

I’ll be back next week but in the meantime don’t forget to enter the Natural Beauty book giveaway which ends tonight! (click here)

I will do the prize draw next week and let the winner know by email and follow up with a post. Thanks to all those who have entered so far, the comments have been great.

See you next week.

PS The drawing is by my little boy!

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sugar and spice and all things…

November 25, 2011  in diy craft projects, food styling, homemade

I first worked with Uli Schade on a story for Elle Decoration magazine and we just clicked straight away and went on to shoot some of my favourite photo stories. We got together again recently to shoot this little homemade edible gifts story. Food is a little bit of a departure for me but combining it with decoration as gifts and ideas for your table was fun, especially with Christmas not too far away.

When my graphic designer husband saw the photos he thought it was perfect to try something different to make the most of their high quality. He had been wanting to try out issuu.com for a while and suggested we try them as a little digital magazine booklet rather than a normal blog post. So we gave it a go, jotted down the recipes and some words and let him design it.

If you’re on iPhone/iPad and can’t see it click here

It’s a bit of fun but hopefully it will inspire you to try making some edible gifts for your friends and family this Christmas.

Who knows, if you like it we may do it again. What do you think? We would love to hear. And if you like it please share the link!

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winter blues

November 23, 2011  in flowers

After the lovely comments on my Fluro Flora post I thought I would post a couple more images that I took while I was in the mood for experimenting with paint. As a contrast to the fluorescent I had also tried a powder blue, just a tester pot of emulsion I had in the shed. I picked a dead head of a climbing Hydrangea that grows up the fence in my garden and thought the blues would go well against the neutral browns of the dried flowers.

I played with scale again, using a miniature dolls house place setting with an old recipe book cover as a table. The book belonged to my husband’s grandmother and is called ‘Radiation Cooking’ which sounds rather worrying but it was first published in 1927 and is just recipes for oven cookers with automatic heat controllers which were the new fangled technology of the time.

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