Gallery Of Travel

This week is off to a pretty busy start. We've got so many things going on at once, so why not throw one more thing on our plate? AmIright? 

And you know how it goes with painting...paint one thing and then everything else is crying out to be painted too. We are determined to get the kitchen/dining and living room finished by Spring. Of course there will always be little things to do...anything you love should be a work in progress. But we're aiming at getting the big stuff done...walls, moldings, floors, ceiling, lighting...that stuff. 

While going through a box this weekend I came across one of my old inspiration scrapbooks. Back from the days before Pinterest. It's not exactly an art journal but I would add paint to the pages, and sketch renderings of rooms if necessary. But mostly it's clippings and pasted-in ideas and vibes for rooms. This one above is probably from 2007 or 2008. Its funny to see that my style, color palette and overall vibe hasn't changed all that much. I always loved a great dose of black mixed in with my pastels. A lot like the ever present black and white tiled floor and fixtures in old timey candy shoppes. I had posted a few pics of what we've got cookin' in the kitchen on Instagram and I got some comments of surprise that me the pastel girl would go black! But in reality, black features pretty heavily in my life. 

I pretty much only wear black, and wear black nail polish most of the year. But then I have my pink hair so that my love of pastels is always with me. 

Maybe the first time we did black walls was in one of our early apartments, probably more than a dozen years ago, we painted a hallway black and then hand painted big pale pink cabbage roses all over like a fabric pattern. It was inspired by vintage barkcloth and my perennial favorite Betsey Johnson. To me it looked like the worlds most perfect wallpaper. 

Black just makes the pastel things prettier. This is a blast from the past...back when we had a furniture collection. This was a large half round table called Everything's Rosey. Maybe my favorite in the collection...and apparently a customer fave too. We made so many of these. My dad built them and we painted them. Tons of very technical work for everyone involved.  

We've also been using black for years in our various styles of menu boards.

We love the way black actually makes sweet things sweeter. When we paint this piece we always do the cakes and cupcakes in the foreground before adding the black background, and it's amazing how much the look of everything just changes the instant the black is added.

We've had chalkboard doors for a few years and love them. A great place for writing to-do lists. Oh and while I'm sharing the above pic, I figured I'd link to our tutorial for those who had recently asked where to buy the wallpaper. It is actually hand painted and we blogged a tutorial a while back. It really looks harder than it is. Seriously, once you've traced the motifs on the hand painting is really basic.

 This pic is definitely a big inspiration for our kitchen. I love the professional culinary feel of it. We love cooking and all of our utensils and containers are pretty much only stainless steel, wood, and glass.  

I love this styling. I love the natural feel of it. The textures, glass, cream crockery, wood spoons...and the way everything looks set against black is so classic.

So we picked up some black paint...it is indeed chalkboard paint. We love the matte black look...and if we feel like doing some doodling the option is always there!

We loved it as soon as we rolled it on! It is dramatic, classic, and modern all at the same time. A bit of masculine structure to balance the sweet accessories.

Sweet accessories such as these! The second the wall was semi-dry I slid the table back in place just so I could set up some of these sweet things in front. It just made me so happy! It totally works for us! And we are so so excited to finish the room! 

We are working on picking the paint for the rest of the kitchen. Something warm but not too dark. Not mocha, but not too yellow either. Its funny how choosing a pink or an aqua is so easy for us. We instinctively know exactly what we want, but neutrals are a bit more tricky. 

Another thing we are really looking forward to is hanging art work and unpacking some of our collections to finally display. We had an old cupboard that we had used in the bathroom that was begging to be upcycled. So it too got a coat of black and a neutral grey/tan inside. Then some slight distressing, and we're papering the back wall of it with one of our favorite vintage wallpapers. Again, we wanted to keep it neutral and antique...and let our sweet pastel collections speak for themselves.