DIY- danish paper stars

Watch out: once you have learned to make these Danish (or German or Moravian) paper stars, folding them is highly addictive. Since I have to work a lot - I am in the busiest month of the year - I had to put myself on a paper star diet!

Folding them is hard to learn. And this is an understatement. It took me some weeks, surfing the net for tutorials, trying again and again. Maybe I miss an important origami gene?
Next to a lot of paper strips and the perseverance of a pitbull dog, several You Tube tuts and this website helped me a lot.

winter-pop-up-shop in my village

Sorry for all you people living abroad, but there is finally something blog-worthy going on in my rather sleepy village, so here is some regional news...
It is about 3 sisters in a lovely - yet empty - new built house in Bussum. For years they have collected the best furniture and accessoires from the thrift shops, designed lovely (baby)T-shirts, crafted toys and cushions, made jam in beautiful jars etc. And now they are having this wonderful wintersale in the empty building. Everything they show is for sale, even the house is!

The weather is cold and sunny and the pop-up shop is open today so take your bikes for a little winter shopping tour! (landstraat 223)

The flat (waterproof) wall-vases are designed by Carolien Brusse and the terracotta lampshades are sold (to me!).

DIY- free downloadable paper trees!

Before you start downloading...I would like to show you this.
This wonderful little winter give-away (see cover below) comes with the new fab December issue of our Dutch Interior Magazine 101 - Woonideeën.


A booklet full of gorgeous, easy DIY projects from dutch designers, creaters and crafters. If you live in Holland or Belgium: Don't miss it!!

And these are the little paper trees I designed for this 101-craftbooklet and that I designed - tadaaaaa... - for you! Here is my free downloadable link to the prints with easy instructions. Download the English version.

It's my early Christmas present for you. Hope you enjoy it!

children - where are you now?

My products are my paper children. And like other grown up children, they tend to leave home and go on long trips. And like every other worried mum I don't want to loose track, so I google them every once in a while.
It fills me with pride to find photo's of them taken by their new friends in Sweden, Germany, in the UK, Japan or in the US... They are obviously well taken care of and they feel at home!
From above left: Sing angels in Sweden staying at the blog of Emelie and Kicki from Havtorn, two pictures at Anneli's 'house' called Cosas in Sweden and one photo at Sabine's place called La Mesa, in Germany!
To be continued...

sustainability day

Today it is sustainability day.
I think I can say, I do my best. It is often a matter of balancing between bad and worse. For example: the production of LED-lights seems to be very bad for the environment, whereas the use of LED-lights saves the world masses of energy!
Same balance-problem with these gorgeous Envirosax reusable bags I allways carry around. I save a pile of plastic bags offered in shops, but I wondered if the production (polyester) of the bags is that ecofriendly. Fortunately Envirosax has a good and honest answer to that on their website.

Oh, I almost forgot: of course my own products (paper, ink and bags) are ecofriendly as well!

early morning etsy

The bracelet of hollow green glassbeads I found in Alisha White's etsy-shop. I love the shape of this orange bag by Bayan Hippo. Well and on this one I actually should spend a whole post: J Clay's pottery, it is awesome! Check out Sheepish to keep you warm this winter, beautiful knit/crochetwork!

DDW

On our way home from France we paid a flying visit at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. Our Dutch pride, designer Piet Hein Eek (first two images), opened his new huge factory/showroom/office/studio/restaurant in one of the old industrial Philips buildings - called Strijp R. The photo's above are taken at that location. We went (by free Design Taxi's) to other locations too, but it was apparently só overwhelming that I forgot to take any pictures at all.

The enourmous tent lamp and the 'suitcase-cupboard' are designed by Lotty Lindeman, the black and white wallpaper is by Melissa Peen. But those great glass lamps... sorry, I know they are famous, seen them before, but I don't remember the designers name! Anyone?