Inspiring Photos for an Inspiring Day!

Hello & Happy Hump Day!!
L.L. here from The Beauty File, my personal space where you
can find a daily smattering of beauty, makeup, fashion, music & film.
Perhaps you'll get to know me better by seeing where I find inspiration.
Hope you have a delightful day & stop by if you're so inclined.
I'll {probably} be home!

An abundance of talent:
{Kate & Gwyneth shot by Mario Testino}

A clever advertisement:
{Moncler, Fall 2009}

An iconic face & photographer:
{Bardot & Avedon}

A tongue in cheek fashionable perspective:
{via Garance Dore}

A lovely hair shade:
{via ...love Maegan's tumblr}

A piece of statement foot wear:
{Stella McCartney, Fall 2009}A larger than life win {with even larger jewels}:
{Penelope for Vicky Christina Barcelona}

Seed Catalogs of Yore

I read about these old seed catalogs in Marcine's blog, A Clock Without Hands. Marcine spent one Sunday evening browsing through the Smithsonian Library Seed Catalog and these are some of her favorites. I think they would make great postcards and posters. I'm astounded at the high quality of design for these rather mundane items -- illustrations in seed catalogs! Aren't they startlingly beautiful?

You can find more of Marcine's ephemera favorites on Flickr.

Sun Prints

Hello, Becka here again! Thank you all for making me feel so welcome when I last posted, I'm sorry there has been a bit of a gap in the middle here, but the heat really only motivated me to sit in front of the fan with a popsicle or cold beer for the last week or so! I'm back now, I promise!

As a young photography student I had the pleasure of being introduced to the work of Anna Atkins, widely credited as the first female photographer. She was the first person to ever publish a book entirely made up of photographic images, and if I could ever get hold of that book I would be a very happy girl! For the book she worked entirely in the medium of cyanotype or sun print, where you place the objects on the paper and then leave them in the sun so that the ultra violet rays act as a photo enlarger would to expose the 'film'. I totally fell in love with this method, and made many of these over my high school and university photography career! But now, I'd like to share some of the pioneering Anna Atkins' work. She was also a botanist, and so beautiful English plant and sea plant life were often her photographic subjects.

I just love the eerie beauty of them! It is much cooler here today, but I am hoping we get some sun later in the day so that I can make some sun prints of my own!

Hope you're all having a lovely day!

xo

Home Sweet Home

Hello, this is Micaela of the blog the Drifter and the Gypsy. I'm guest posting today. What can you do with a budget of $10,000 and a little cottage? Christina Salway and John Moskowitz show the world their first home purchase.

The couple flocked to the quaint little suburb, Sparrow Bush, NY due to the outrageously priced real estate in New York City (who can blame them?). They spent weekends, from October to May renovating their 700-square-foot 1920s cottage, turning it into a real dream.
Christina, an interior desginer and John, a former television script coordinator closed on their little place last September for $95,000.

They did all of the necessary reconstruction themselves. Most of their furnishings, appliances, and artwork were bought on Craigslist, yard sales, thrift shops, and even found on the streets.


With a good eye, and a bit of creativity, you can sure do a lot. The inexpensive vintage furniture and decorations spotted on the street, purchased on Craigslist, and various other places make the house look all the cozier, homier. I'm not sure it would have the same mood if everything was bought brand new.

To read the whole article from the NY Times, click here.

Have you ever tackled a task or known someone who tackled a task like this?

Vintage Americana

New York Times Home section feature: The New Antiquarians seen here

I love this cabinet of curiousities

Sisters ( with fabulous names )Porter, and Hollister blogs here

XO, Flux Capacitor

Colour Lover: The Deluxe Edition

I run a Colour Lover series on my blog every Monday. Colour Lover is an online community for people who LOOOOOOOOVE color. Colour Lovers create color palettes just for the heck of it. They also create wallpaper patterns from these very color palettes and share them with everyone.

The beauty of Colour Lover is that you can sample and extract colors from any image. That's what I do in my Colour Lover series -- I sample colors from a single photo every Monday, just for the heck of it. Today's Deluxe Edition features not just one, but five images, paintings from my favorite artists: Chagall, Monet, Boticelli, Renoir, da Vinci. Please note that the color palettes for La Promenade and Mona Lisa were created by fellow Colour Lover, Ruecian.

I hope you enjoy these! :)