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When case-making caddisflies are in their larval stage they gather material around them to build a protective housing. Hubert Duprat wondered if he could control the materials surrounding caddisflies so he could turn them into little jewelers, and it worked! These cases are made from gold flakes, semi-precious and precious stones as well as the caddisflies’ own silk. Read more about these fascinating insects.

I love lampshades, and remember running my fingers through the fringing in my Nana’s many gorgeous lampshades. She sold them all but I still have the base of one of my favourites. I need to find something like this shade to cap it off! Photo by Yvette Inufio.

Is this a vertical garden? Let’s pretend for this purpose that it is. I am fascinated by vertical gardens and hope to create my own one day. Photo via Apartment Therapy.

Are you dizzy yet? I am pretty dizzy after looking at 101 of these spiral staircases on Web Urbanist! When I have a mansion most of it will be taken up with giant spiral staircase that has the most ornately shaped balustrade creeping up to the top and I’ll lie at the bottom and imagine that it’s a giant sky snail.

Hellooooo, this needs to be on my couch. Under my queenly butt. PillowPalooza make this and many other fancy custom-made comfort devices.

Today I bought two bunches of lovely dahlias at the markets. I have long loved them but have never seen them to buy them and bring them home and gaze at their loveliness!

When I was unwrapping them and snipping the ends off to put them in a vase I discovered that they drop their petals way too easily. I ended up with a lot of bald flowers. A little googling tells me that the flowers that lose their petals are old flowers that are beyond usefulness.

Though as I was cleaning up, I noticed the petals had a very peppery scent. You must be able to eat them! I checked the wikipedia page and it says

The Aztecs gathered and cultivated the dahlia for food, ceremonies, as well as decorative purposes, and the long woody stem of one variety was used for small pipes.

What a handy little flower

The last few times we’ve been to the markets I forgot to pick up flowers, but today Nick helped me pick out the blooms! I actually saw the green chrysanthemums and grabbed them but didn’t know what to pair them with. Nick thought they’d go well with some white oriental lilies, and what do you know? They look very pretty! We are indeed a budding floral design couple.

I’m still in love with the Hipstamatic app. This is taken with the Kaimal Mark II lens and Ina’s 1969 film.

Taken with the John S lens and Blanko film. Life is simpler through the Hipstamatic’s viewfinder!

It’s so bright and sunny and hot today! We’ll probably be going for another swim at the local pool later.

We went to the markets this morning and I bought some more mystery flowers! Remember the mystery flowers from last Saturday? Amongst the suggested species: sweet pea, snapdragon and ranunculus; but the closest suggestion was from ozjoe who said they could be Stock flowers. The photo on the wikipedia page wasn’t convincing but after browsing Google image search I’m beginning to think they could indeed be a variety of them!

Now I implore you to continue the greenening of my opposable digit! What are these flowers? They have a very sturdy flower head with stiff, card-like petals. I remember these from my childhood as being the scratchy things that would rudely brush past us whenever we would trample people’s gardens.

I could ask the flower sellers at the markets… but that’d take the fun out of the game and deny you the opportunity of being a smart arse

I was in a shocking mood this morning but we went to the markets and bought loads of beautiful fruit and veges (and flowers!) so now I’m feeling a lot better. Included in our market booty: pomegranates to make pommie cupcakes, and besan flour to make delicious vegetable kofta balls. I took some photos of my haul to further enhance my cheering and then I whimsyfscked them (ie: put a bunch of colour layers over the image to make it look hip and vintage).

Nick enjoyed his wurst and sauerkraut immensely!

Now while I go bake a zebra cake for my friend’s birthday party tomorrow, you must tell me what these flowers are!

This week I’ve been seeing some fantastical floral headpieces, so I wanted to spotlight the fanciful world of flowers-on-people’s-heads! You don’t need to be a bride to plop some flora on your noggin either – every day is an excuse to be fancy.

⇒ I wish I could tell you where this headpiece came from, or who the model and photographer are, but like a lot of posts on tumblr this was uncredited. Still, beautiful!

⇒ I adore Grandiflora’s flowers-as-headwear! This is from a shoot in Vogue Australia.

⇒ This stunning photograph was taken by inverselive.

⇒ My gorgeous friend Zoe sporting a floral headband by my other talented friend Kiki! She’s just opened up a store on madeit.com.au under Elastic Wasteland. I’m waiting for Kiki to put up some of her headpieces so I can buy one!

⇒ Combining two of my favourite things: paper and flowers! Katsuya Kamo styled this headwear for Chanel’s Spring 2009 Couture Collection.

⇒ DIY some fancy: Grosgrain Fabulous graciously posted this tutorial on making felt poppies. I think you could easily turn these into an incredible headpiece. I’m going to attempt it in the next week!

I have promised to do a tutorial on flourishes, but my RSI is quite chronic at the moment so I’m reducing the amount of fine pointing activity I do – unfortunately this includes flourish work in Illustrator! I do have some free vector shapes lined up (peacocks!), but I’m quite snowed under at work right now and tend not to want to sit on my computer at all when I get home!

Right now – it’s my lunch break, and I’m sneaking in a quick blog entry just to let you know I’m still alive and thinking about you.

As I approach the upcoming flourish tutorial, I’ve been thinking a lot about individual style, and what I’m inspired by. A lot of my flourishes are derived from the lines and forms I see in gardens – albeit highly stylised. I’m also an avid fan of lurid patterns in textiles and anything tactile in general. I try to bring as much of this aesthetic into my own design work as possible, so I keep an eye on lots of interior design, craft and graphic design blogs.

The other night I came across a mother lode of gorgeous vintage floral and paisley fabric images on ebay, so I’ve transloaded many of the images to my flickr account. I’ll post my favourites here, along with a selection of other flora inspired items that really inspire me.
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