Sneak Peek

My fellow South African blogger, Skinny Laminx, has her lovely place featured on Design*Sponge today. Enjoy!

Show and Tell

I recently finished up a brochure on safety, where I did the illustrations. I thought that seeing I am always sharing other people's work, it's time to share mine. The illustrations are meant to encourage people to read what could be really dry subject matter (want to read about fire safety, anyone?), so although not all can be humourous, I did include some whimsy into a few. These two are for medical emergencies and safety in a laboratory.

Inspiration

As seen Elle Deco SA, Spring 2003: the house of Gideon and Gianpaolo, SA fashion and footwear movers and shakers.

Tyre Sandals

This is a little something I've been meaning to share with you for a while. My hubby owns a lovely pair of sandals made from old tyres... (that's tires, to my American friends). Now that we've had a few warmer days I'm thinking of spring attire...



Check out the tread, tyre name, and nails holding it all together.

These sandals are traditionally what male Zulu dancers wear, but I've read that they are equally useful for "strolling around the homestead" (er, I guess that's the category the hubs falls into!) They always remind me of Johnny Clegg and his Zulu dancing. .. I believe he's retired from dancing now, but you can check out his moves on youtube. The dancing starts about a minute and a half into the piece, although the music leading up to the dancing is well worth that time. The video is from the 46664 concert. This concert was named after Nelson Mandela's prison number, from his years on Robben Island, and was to raise awareness of the AIDS crisis in Africa.



If anyone is interested in purchasing sandals, try this link:
http://www.scatterlingsclub.com/shop/catalogues/ViewCatalog.asp?
Catalog=10#Product19 (it's best to copy paste, as it is too long to appear on one line)

Living Vicariously

Ah, to be at the Design Indaba... but I wasn't, so I really enjoyed the coverage on Elle Deco's blog by Skinny LaMinx.

I do find it frustrating, though, that so many artist/designers that look SO exciting are not on the web. Please, please! In order for South African art and design to get on the international map, it has to be accessible: and that means the web. So c'mon! Get on the web people!

Those who do have websites, I've covered for you a bit more in depth below... there were a couple I've covered before, so I won't go there again (The Letterpress Company and TinTown)

The illustrations by Lorenzo Nassimbeni caught my eye... you can see where his architecture approach forms his vision. Very interesting.



I liked his photography too.



Another artist with web presence whose work appealed to me was Lisa Firer. You can see her blog here.



If anyone knows of any exciting southern African artist on the web, please let me know.

Wola Nani

I completely felt the love on my birthday... lots of phone calls, emails and messages. I am really lucky to have such wonderful friends and family. The icing on the cake was my pressies from the hubby. He outdid himself, as usual, with a couple bowls from South Africa (via Anthropologie), which I absolutely love. The yellow bowl is made from Lion matches paper, and the little one is made up of sardines packaging. I love how the tails overlap!



You can see by the labels on the back that they are made by Wola Nani in SA.

I was also given a book on South African architecture, and find myself spending hours looking at the detail in many of the pics.





Sorry about the bad lighting on the book, I just took the pics a minute ago and its getting dark...

Where Does the Time Go?

Hi. Remember me? I promise that I have not forgotten you :)

Sorry about the long silence but so much has happened since last I posted on my blog! I have a new job, finished up a few projects for my freelance work and for my school program and have had a birthday! Phew! I'm tired just thinking about it! Then add to that a furnace that keeps breaking and things... have.. been... CRAZY!

Anyway, I'm back! Hopefully with my change in job I am going to have more time to devote to my little blog again, and that makes me happy!

I'll be showing you some great goodies I got for my bday (the hubby spoiled me, as always!) and getting back on track with some wonderful southern African artists and designers that you NEED to see!

While you wait for me to pull myself towards myself, you should head over to the Elle Decoration blog. This past week the Design Indaba expo was happening, so Skinny MaLinx had some great coverage on that site. My favourites are these:





BUT no details yet, these are just to whet your appetite. Now, get yourself over to Elle Decoration and enjoy the plethora of exciting design!