Archive for the ‘Inspirations’ Category

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Inspiration | A couple of cool images

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

We draw inspiration for not our modern jewelry in a number of ways, such as seeing what other creatives are doing. Since both of us have a design-background, we regularly use tools like Adobe Illustrator of Photoshop in our ‘ideation’ phase when we come up with new products.

When we saw this “Real-World” photoshop image, we knew we had to share.  There’s a Flickr set of how they put this image of the Photoshop interface using real-life objects:

(via BoingBoing.  See the full-size image here).

We also love illustration, which is part of the reason why we started up our Metal for Monsters line — it gave us an excuse to collaborate with some really talented illustrators.  The second image that crossed our paths recently is a great illustration by Patrick Moberg:

(via Drawn! See Patrick Moberg’s blog here).

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Posted in Art and Illustration, Inspirations, Photography | 2 Comments »

Inspiration | Test your Colour IQ

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Being in a creative field such as design, we make it a point of pride to pay attention to small details (like the intricate patterns of our engraved-wood designs, or the tiny radius in the corners of our bamboo inlays — that’s not a result of happy accidents; it’s all on purpose!)

Another thing we can be rather picky about is specific shades of colour – how to name the various washi patterns we have is always fun.  I had seen this a while back and meant to blog about it, and then noticed that Drawn! mentioned it today — this is a fun little test to see just how well you can discern varying hues. Good fun for all you visual-types :)

It doesn’t take that long to do, and in case you’re wondering here’s Vivian’s result:

The lower the score the better, so not too shabby.  So you can see why we make it a point of contention to identify ‘vermillion’ versus ‘rust’!

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Posted in Inspirations | 3 Comments »

Inspiration | More virtual shopping spreads

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

When we did our “virtual shopping” mood boards a few weeks ago, we actually did a couple more than what were posted.

So without further ado, here they are:

Hangin\' out with the guys

I’ll admit I forgot to add in the captions this time around but, you can get full shopping details on the polyvore version of the spread (click on each of the images).  (As before, with Eric’s “guy” shopping, everything can be found in one store: Bluefly.com, and he paired it with the a solid Blend Creations “Dragon” stainless steel pendant).

Hot evening out

I love a really good LBD (little black dress) — probably too much since many of my “nice” dresses tend to be black.  I also really like wearing red accessories with them and I think there’s something quite “classic’ about it.  The Blend Creations red bamboo pendant and earrings have quite the shock of red and perfect for the LBD :)

Finally, the last one makes me wish that it would stay summer just a little bit longer:

Summer breeze casual

It’s a watermelon-inspired colour palette with our “Pink plum blossoms” necklace and earrings paired with a bright pink jersey dress and the tailored bag.  (I have a thing for structured purses it seems).

Happy shopping :)

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Inspiration | The guy’s take on virtual window shopping

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Funky modern guy's jewelry

In the continuation of a theme, I’ve decided to do my version of Vivian’s post yesterday, where she showed our “flowerish” engraved jewelry matched with a summer outfit.

For the guy’s outfit, we’ve got a “smart casual” look. Starting from the top-left corner and going clockwise, the outfit is made up of:

Yes, I realize that everything in the outfit comes from the same store, but it’s true to the guy way of shopping: Get in, buy everything you could possibly need and get the heck out.

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Inspiration | Virtual window shopping

Monday, July 21st, 2008

I would have said Windows® shopping, but our PC has decided not to connect to the internet so we’re almost exclusively Mac-surfing now.

I’ve been wanting to do a little shopping, but it seems whenever we have the free time to go shopping, it’s usually past closing time at the mall.  Instead, it’s virtual shopping for me and the added benefit is that there’s an overwhelming selection, and I can always pretend that everything would fit me perfectly. :)

I created a little inspiration board with the outfit I found for a fictitious dress-up lunch with the girls:
Summer fashion inspiration

In case you’re interested in the details, clockwise from the top-left corner:

Now, I created this little inspiration piece in Illustrator, but if you’re ever in the mood to pull together your own inspiration boards, you can whittle away some time playing with Polyvore, where I was able to pull together the same outfit, complete with clickable links, in a fraction of the time.

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Posted in Fashion, For her, Inspirations | 1 Comment »

Weddings | Bridesmaid jewelry

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

We’ve been busy with making up a set of bridesmaid jewelry for five members of a bridal party.

If you’re curious, we were told that the bridal party would be wearing strapless dresses in taupe silk very similar to the dress below by Aria dress (style 160), only with the double-hem in taupe/brown and turquoise sashes. The bride wanted to add a splash of colour to the necklines that would co-ordinate with the hits of turquoise used in her wedding.

aria dress style 160

We suggested the turquoise plum blossoms necklace for the bridesmaids with the matching earrings (from Blend Creations of course!). They were a great choice for the bride who said she loved contemporary, modern and funky sort of styling. :) Even better — her bridesmaids are pretty happy with the choices, which is good since the jewelry was both bridal party accessories and bridesmaid gifts all rolled into one.

bridesmaid necklacebridesmaid earrings

For the bride’s niece, the “junior” bridesmaid who didn’t want to be left out of the bridesmaid jewelry shopping, we went with the small pendant version of the same plum blossom pattern, (but on a silver chain):

junior bridesmaid pendant

The wedding will be at the end of the month, and I know the focus is on the bride and all, but I do love it when brides choose to have their bridal party wear our contemporary jewelry. I can’t wait to see the wedding photos!

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Inspiration | From Teeny to Tiny

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Being designers, we like to try to keep up with what is going on in different areas of design; in what ways the envelope is being pushed. One of the most exciting developments is always when things are designed to be functional and really really small.  Cue the Tumbleweed tiny house company where the houses are well… teeny and tiny… as described.

Since we last posted about the Tumbleweed tiny house company, they’ve completely revamped their site and they will be adding a whole slew of new tiny houses (can’t wait!). Their biggest house now stands at a majestic 774 sq ft. Their smallest at a proud 65 sq ft.

Seen below is the Harbinger at 297 sq ft (not including the loft).

Jay Shafer, the founder, has done amazing things with very little space. The floor plans continue to be my favorite to peruse. It’s great to see such a small space used so efficiently. Bigger builders should take a serious look at his body of work to see the improvements that they could bring to their oversized 2500 sq ft behemoths — at least by comparison.


I can just imagine Mr. Shafer working on his tiny drafting table drawing up these tiny plans. Note how big the arc of the door appears on such a small floor plate.

The only thing missing is seeing one of his houses done up in a more contemporary style. Not that it needs to be all glass and stainless, but something a “tiny” less country, and dare I say, a “tiny” bit more rock’n'roll.

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Inspiration | These boots were made for walkin’

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Whenever possible, we like to exercise our design-brains outside of our own jewelry designs.  

Doc Martens is having a fun little design contest (that happens to be some very clever marketing, btw) where you can design your own set of boots. You can design either the 8-hole or the 14-hole boot and they’ll be picking two winners. One will be decided by the popular vote, and the other will be decided by their panel.

I thought it’d be fun to do a quick design with the 14-hole boot and when I checked the status of my boot I’d already had one vote — a “Hate it!”. Haha. Well, it’s not for everyone, though neither are most of the pretty outlandish boot designs on the Doc Martens design site.

Doc Martens boot design

If you feel like giving my boot design the “Love”, go visit the Flowerish boot design page and vote.

You can also go there and design your own boot — if you plan on using their templates, a word of warning, they have Photoshop and Illustrator templates, but only in the latest, CS3 version :P.

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Portfolio | More custom wedding invitations

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Here’s another set of custom wedding invitations that we did recently for our friends Claudia and Dan. Like Shona & Craig’s invitations, this design was also laser-cut.

Close-up C and D

Claudia and Dan had told us that they really liked our Flowerish: Circle card designs and they wanted something similar to that, but more personalized for their wedding. They chose a ‘bordeaux’-coloured cardstock lined with a cream-coloured cardstock. (Red is a very lucky colour for Asian weddings, and traditionally paired with gold, but us new-fangled Asian kids like to move away from that a bit yet still keep the older generation mostly happy).

custom wedding invitation

Inside, we did a formal yet classic-looking layout with a smaller, less flourishy version of the “C&D” emblem at the top:

custom wedding invitation, inside

The neat thing is, they like the emblem so much that it will be repeated in favours and other elements of their wedding. :)

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Posted in Graphic Design, Portfolio, Weddings | 3 Comments »

Inspiration | Drooling over a backsplash

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

I don’t mean literally, since I’m not sure that that’s physically possible. Gravity would make it really difficult anyway.

We’re considering updating our kitchen from its oh-so-chic late 1980′s look. Its functionality is horrendous too– some of the precious little counterspace there is is rendered useless by microwave that looms less than a foot above, and then there’s a horrendously tiny fake double-sink where one sink is bar-sized, which wouldn’t be so bad except that we don’t have a dishwasher so a real sink is a necessity, but I digress.

I wanted to talk about this:

Pretty blue glass tiles

This is the backsplash that I’ve been drooling over. Interstyle (a Canadian company) makes these beautiful forget-me-not blue 1″x 8″ glass tiles. I like them because they’re not your typical 1″ x 1″ tile and I think that the nice horizontal lines would help to visually expand our tiny kitchen. There’s a nice retro-modern feel to them too.

I have no idea how much they are yet, because I haven’t yet gone to a retailer that carries them. I imagine they’re not the most economical choice of backsplash, but it is oh so pretty.

Beyond it’s implications in our own home, I think the shiny and matte textural contrast, the cerulean hue and that retro yet modern look make me think about possible inlay designs for our jewelry.  Hmmm.

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Posted in Inspirations, Interiors | No Comments »

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