Victorian teacup candles

After not-that-many hours of burning, my Jane Austen candle died. And I went on a Sunday Afternoon mission to find a new scented candle. Which is when I found these - Victorian and Twenties teacups filled with vanilla wax, from a teeny kitsch shop called Nicholas and Steele in Raynes Park.
The scent is very light; perhaps too light. But you can use the 'holders' afterwards as teacups. Bought one but have my eye on six more. Dangerous, given the shop is 50 steps from my house - and that the candles are £15 a piece...

Polished v Pebbles

My favourite is still the wonderfully rugged, non-descript, concrete and beautifully imperfect flooring in Andy Warhol's Factoy. Here are some of the other most intriguing floorings...
(The loo pebbles is the en suite of a particularly unique hotel)

Fantasie Florentine

Just discovered Fantasie Florentine, a teeny paper shop near the Ponte Vecchi in Firenze (and next to the gorge Hotel Lungarno with the best restaurant in the city). A prunish elderly lady with lots of hair slides and a shop the size of a stamp that smells of incense. Inside, is rolls of the most beautiful paper for the equivalent of 30p. Here are three of the designs I bought. She also covers books, pencil pots and bookmarks with her papers. No website, sadly.

My Rome-o

Another Rome purchase - a mounted lamb's skull on a plaque. What do you think? Paid EUR20 for it. Only after I'd handed over the cash, the owner looked delighted and he and his wife shook my hand profusely. Rip off? Or friendly Italianos?

Fashion art - Mario in Rome

Greetings from Rome, where I saw the Mario Testino exhibition. Nearly bought a print of this Gemma Ward-goldfish portrait...

Little rusty chandelier

This, I love. A Little Rusty chandelier. Better, it holds candles, not horrible glarey lightbulbs. A steal at £17.95 (gosh, I hate that expression). Would sit well in a sitting room with a rough, bulky railway sleeper mantlepiece.

What I fell for

...This stove. All shiny and traffic light red. I couldn't afford it, of course. Most things at TwoColumbiaRoad are beyond my thin means. So I bought this instead...

A Jane Austen candle. Frivolously priced at £21 given it doesn't smell of much. Supposed to smell of jasmine and gardenia. Should have gone with the Edgar Allen Poe.

Moodboard for: Beach huts, clapboards, St Ives, Cape Cod

My mood board: Whitewashed. Sand tangled. Pastel doorframes. Clapboard walls. White.

Lighting and textures

Something evocative about the crumbly textures, clashing tile patterns and dewy lighting here. I took there on recent trips to Sudan, Senegal and India.

Homely hotels

Villa des Orangers in Marrakech - one of few hotels I'd rather live in, than have a home. The city itself is a stressful bind but the private riads...

Mine was over two storeys. Up top, in front of the bed, was a clawfooted bath beside a open fire place.

The pictures (or this sleepily written post) simply doesn't do it justice.

Lofty ambitions

My perfect loft. Rafters. Colour. Stripped back floor. Mood board walls. Thanks Bright Bazaar. That is all.

Pigeons and sunshines

I know it's only a mug. And not even a floral, chintzy one. But there's something just right about pigeon grey and sunshine yellow.

Spotted it at cutesy boutique Treacle on Columbia Road. Shame it's £10.50. Worth it though...

Flower market

Was very excited about making my first trip to Columbia Road Flower Market on Saturday, in London's East End.
But out of all of the flowers in the market, what did I pick? A £1 bunch of what Wills called 'hippy flowers'. Ditty, brash clashing colours, teeny little petal heads. They didn't even have a name.

But they still put my £10 crispy, papery velvet roses to shame

And studys that cook...

Following on from my previous post, I also like the way Isle Crawford makes rooms so fluid - and how this kitchen merges with a dining table, which merges with a bedroom... And that rather ominous sword in the middle.

Still not as fluid as the rolltop bath I once saw - in the centre of a bedroom...

Kitchens That Sing

If you didn't see Stella mag's Interiors Special on Sunday, this is what you missed... Isle Crawford's delicious kitchen. All marble, wood, streamlined steel - and a picture of the Queen with a wonky crown. Don't know how on earth to crack this on a budget. Though you might want to try Dannetti for the rainbow bright plastic chairs.

Chief's home

The village chief was a bit of a diva. (His glasses are bananas). He kindly agreed to meet me on a recent trip to Southern Sudan and posed in front of his home for me. Loving the chalk wall art.

Jelly bean rugs and Edinburgh flats

Conversation Pieces is a very good blog.
And when I saw the author's home in Company mag, it inspired me to set up this. Check out Zoe's description of toiling over this rainbow rug. And how she made it by stitching together two little bits of fabric she picked up for a bargain at Paper Chase. (Reminds me of lots of spilled jelly beans).

Can't imagine buying anything so big in London when I get my first place next summer. But one can dream...

Dali in Wonderland

Very excited! Just stumbled across Modernity. It's a Swedish furniture supplier with pieces that look a bit contorted and Dali-esque. Other that are like a trippy Alice in Wonderland set.


My friend Rachel who will probably think this is cheating. She's shown me around lots of furniture warehouses in Helsingborg with treasures like this if you rummage through the junk - all with much tinier pricetags. This is the lazy girl's option. And a wonderful one too.

My last taxidermy post, I promise

... but loving the unlikely Christmassy stag put together by that clever Michelle Ogundehin.

The uncoolest thing I could possibly post

Before I type this, I want to clarify that a) I am 25, not 75, and that b) I don't own a cat or fill out the 'doddery, eccentric spinster' box on the Census.

But I am rather partialled to this £7 National Trust lavender linen spray. I have to forcibly stop myself covering my clothes with it.

Note to self: This is not perfume.

Guess which supermodel lives here?

Another of The Selby's finest inclusions (like this one). I like this supermodel's mix of stag heads, scrubby whitewashed brickwork, studded armchairs - and utterly superfluous mannequins in her dressing room...
Can you guess who it is yet? No? Here's the answer...

Nice digs, Helena Christensen. Big fan of the industrial worktops and papery roses.

On the subject of weddings...

... this is a Midsummer Night's Dream wedding breakfast table (apparently), that I'd like to transplant into my back garden. Especially the hazy silverbirches and naked bulbs with their romantic orange haze.

Beware, the wax

I used to have tremendous fun lining up empty wine bottles, jamming skinny candles into them, then waiting for a waterfall of wax to cling to the glass. Until, that is, my oak table top became smattered with gluey lumps of dried-on wax. Beware Time to buy a real candelabra, I think.

Tip: Try Melody Maison for French, chintzy ones. Though steer clear of white. Too weddingy.

Moths are on vacation...

...in my kitchen cupboards. Despite disinfecting and plugging all visible holes, the beasts are unsquashable. So ensued a tossup between planting mothballs in my bags of peanuts - or pouring my peanuts (and rice etc) into these glass clip lid jars. The jars won. £2 a pop from Tesco. Peanuts, indeed.

The perfect clash

To me, this is the perfect clash: Peeling industrial walls, ditzy upholstered armchairs with clean lines, abstract cushions and French boudoir picture frames. Not sure about the steel lamp. Make mine a porcelain butterfly birdcage...

More light art

After my little Gert post, here's another artist who turns ambientic (is that a word?) lighting into an art form.
If you can't see, it's a steely bird cage (with a loop up top to hang it) filled with tiny porcelain butterflies that light up.