I am more than considering buying a last minute ticket to Melbourne to see this extraordinary ‘Spring Orchard’ paper creation by Gloss Creative. A 30-foot vine made with a kilometre of rope and over 2000 individually crafted paper pieces of fruit and vegetation, the installation was designed for Melbourne’s GPO fashion centre to celebration contemporary art and the spring birth of new fashion. I love how Gloss Creative described their work: “we have created a ‘new generation’ orchard, a mass of overgrown, monstrous fruits & vines bursting over the balconies, down to the ground floor.” If it is this gorgeous in photographs, I can’t even imagine how incredible it would be in person. What a feat of vibrantly colourful paper art, breathtaking detail and craftsmanship.

(photography by Sam Ali and Marcel Aucar; images via gloss creative’s blog and stylehunter)

If her homeware range Swiden Design is any indication, designer Charlotte Swiden is as bonkers about colour as I am. The Swedish-born, Melbourne-based creative is launching a new line next week called “Tivolivat” inspired by fun park rides, fairy floss and ferris wheels. From illustrated prints to painted wood decorations, the collection is bursting with colour and modern shapes. My favourite pieces are Tivolivat’s bold, geometric and happy-inducing cushion covers. I think that beautiful pattern of multi-coloured rectangle and square stripes (on the bottom far right in the first image) might just find a new home at my place…

I have already babbled on and on about the vibrantly colourful and innovative RGB Wallpaper by Milan studio Carnovsky. Overlapping primary coloured illustrations create a beautiful multicoloured print in everyday light but when a red, green or blue light (RGB colour) is shone upon the room’s paper, only one of the three overlapping patterns is visible and the other two are hidden. When I spotted their new installation ‘La Selva’, I fell in love all over again. Adorning the walls of Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes, a café and exhibition space in East London’s Shoreditch, the wallpaper takes on a whole new chic look as part of an interior design. Doesn’t it look great next to a chalkboard menu? The theme of ‘jungle’ works brilliantly as its textured vegetation, daunting beasts and exotic creatures create three mesmerizing layers for each colour of light. If you happen to be London, La Selva is on view until September 21st, 2011. It looks like Carnovsky has created limited edition prints as well. Pick me up one please?!

(spotted on design boom)

The FAME Festival in Grottaglie, Italy hosts artists from all over the world for one to four weeks during the spring and summer months to create street art installations, screenprints, ceramics and large-scale murals. The festival has produced some fantastic pieces of street art including what might be my very favourite, this tiny clothesline. Last week, artists Brad Downey and Akay collaborated over six days to create some imaginative and colourful pieces including this beautiful pasta curtain and ‘tipping point’ installation featuring dramatically linked cans of paint. Throwing pots of colour off a roof to create a spontaneous colour palette is officially on my life list…

(see more of the collaboration here)

Man Blowing a Bubble, a short film by Mitch Ansara has officially made my day. Perhaps because of my inappropriate use of emoticons in business correspondence or my love for Mary Tyler Moore’s stylish typewriting, this film set on paper just makes me happy.

(image via flickr; visit mitch’s blog here)

Most Fashion Weeks are a glorious parade of one runway show after another but I always look forward to seeing how some designers buck the trend and do something unique. New Zealand label Twentysevennames did just that when showed their Autumn/Winter 2012 line in an exhibit of Guy Coombes photographs. The concept kind of reminds me of that wallpaper/shirt scene in Garden State. What a brilliant way to highlight the patterns of the collection and stand out from the crowd. I hope Twentysevennames creates an entire lookbook of these fabulous photographs. I’m starting to think fashion should be sold alongside matching wallpaper…

(spotted on liebemarlene vintage)

Advertising the new Westfield Stratford City shopping center in London, this film captures 100 years of East London style in 100 seconds (as well as popular dance styles). I love the level of detail like the male dancer going off to war in the 1940′s section. It also makes me wonder what the heck went on in the 1990′s and 2000′s. Was it that dull fashion wise? It makes me wish for a comeback of the fashions featured in early to mid 1900′s portion of the piece! The 2011 outfit is rather chic so perhaps we are at the start of another great fashion era. What a fantastic film showcasing brilliant styling as well as British fashion and its dominant colours.

(spotted on notcot)

In the nerdiest way possible, I love looking through the colour archives of Vintage Printable. Curating out-of-copyright scientific illustration, the site has a large collection of fascinating old paint and textile swatches, book scans and pretty much every other colour relic under the sun. If you are working on a project with a specific era colour theme in mind, this site would be a wonderful resource for finding hues that dominated the time period. Notice how the late 1800′s/early 1900′s swatches are focused on warm oranges, yellows, greens browns and pastels? I think some of these pieces would look great framed on a studio wall (particularly those American Ornithology and Gemstone charts at top). Looking through the collection highlights that colour may sometimes be pure decoration and beauty but many times, it also serves a substantial and vital scientific role.

From top:
1.) American Ornithology Chart, 1901.
2.) Colour chart of gems and minerals, Lewis Feuchtwanger 1867.
3.) Tertiary colour details, no year.
4.) Town and Country paint colours, 1872.
5.) Textile dye scans, 1907.
6.) Textile colour dye information, no year.
7.) A color combination chart for layered clothing, no year.
8.) Text Books of Art Education, 1905 Prang Educational Company.

Given my now full-fledged obsession with modern embroidery and typography, I pretty much yelped when I saw these gorgeous embroidered business cards by designer Nina Gregier. She decided to create the textured cards in reference to her latest project – fuchsia embroidered type. One glance at that project and I fell in love with Nina’s woven letters. They are so full of imagination, geometry and bold colour. Wow. The colours look amazing next to the black paper. Don’t you wish more business cards were tactile and hand detailed? Even the back of the threads on the flipside of the card is beautiful. I will visit Nina’s website regularly to see what handmade brilliance she dreams up next!

(cards spotted on lovely stationery)

I love these paper sculptures by Barcelona artist Jordi Ferreiro. Amazing how a gradient is formed by sheets of carefully arranged paper. Love that orange, blue and green combination bursting with texture…

Shopping List Magnets by Harrington and Squires allow a refrigerator to become one big grocery list while adding pops of colour to your kitchen. A fantastic London letterpress workshop, Harrington and Squires have recently added a set of Spice Magnets to their collection. I’m thinking you could take a cell phone photo of your fridge before heading to the grocery store so no paper list is needed at all. Can’t wait to see what they add next. Perhaps liquor store, farmer’s market or bakery essentials? The possibilities for food and colour seem limitless…

(photographs via harrington and squires, kitchen critic & unlimited editions)

Ursus Wehrli is a Swiss artist made famous by his Tidying Up Art books that re-arrange famous works of art into tidy sets of painting components that feel like infographics dedicated to how art is created. I love the direction of his new book The Art of Clean Up as Ursus organizes common objects or everyday scenes into orderly parts and colour palettes. Have you ever looked at pine branches or alphabet soup in such a fascinating way? I have always stared at parking lots and thought about the colour order that could be created so I love how Ursus made a scene of colour theory out of such an everyday place. The book comes out next month and I can’t wait to see what other things have been “tidied” by Ursus’ clever mind. Organizing never looked so good…

(spotted on hunter harmony’s pinterest via things organized neatly & this is colossal)

I love these Action Pencils by We Are What We Do, a non-profit organization that gives all profits from their stationery line directly to schools and community projects. Even the most snooze-inducing tasks can be brightened up with some colourful, positive and community improving desk supplies. These pencils bear just six of the 131 small and simple actions that We Are What We Do list as ways to make someone’s day, make your home a big greener and overall, do a little chunk of good. I really hope the organization comes out with a giant box of 131 Action Pencils. Each day, you could grab a pencil and complete the action. A vibrantly colourful desk and a happier life would be the end result I think…

(spotted on our workshop; read more about the fantastic mission of we are what we do line here)

‘Recycled Shadow’ is a Spanish street art installation created by architectural collective Meva. Inspired by the disturbing fact that 938,000 free daily papers are distributed daily in Madrid and most end up garbage cans, the artists folded hundreds of newspaper pages into windmills that were then hung on nylon mesh above a Alicante, Spain street as well as the courtyard of the Ministry of Environment in Madrid. The recycled windmills bring attention to a civic issue while also providing whimsical shade to people on the street. I love the look of that picturesque Spanish street and the shape of shadows created. As Meva commented about their installation, “the windmills are organized to provide shadow with a simple changing pattern, each of them rotates and balances on its own to the rhythm of the gentle summer breeze.” Beautiful street art with a message. Is there anything better?

(spotted on designboom)

I love fashion editorials. A perfect fusion of concept, design, art, drama and story. They are like mini films bursting with gorgeous fashion. A few months ago, I started to realize that a lot of my favourite editorials were by a handful of photographers. Sølve Sundsbø, a Norwegian fashion photographer, is definitely at the top of that list. His work is so imaginative, so dramatic and always full of magnificent sweeps of colour. I recently read an interview where Sølve describes his work: “If I’ve got a style, it’s that I’ve got no style.” I love that his work is always fresh and that each “film” is a unique take on fashion. Working for every major fashion magazine as well as clients like Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, Alexander McQueen, Gucci and Hermès, Sølve’s photographs often look like the product of technology and digital retouching. In reality, Sølve crafts his photographs with old-fashioned techniques and principles like shadows and light, hand-painted film and meticulous detail to composition and styling. His talent breathes new life and imagination into the world of fashion. Add to that an incredible eye and love for hue and you can understand why Sølve is a true colour hero!

(quote via the independent; photographs via ben trovato, the photography link, ru glamour, the 25th century, absinthrill, hapsical, image amplified and fashion gone rogue)

I first became smitten with the work of designer Sarah Illenberger when I discovered she was behind the fantastic cover of one of my favourite books, Papercraft (the second photo above). In addition to clever photography work like the raining watermelon I posted about previously, Sarah creates brilliant handmade paper pieces for publication covers, advertising pieces and set design. I was thrilled to read on the weekend that in September, Gestalten is publishing an entire book devoted to Sarah’s spectacular work. The cover, shown at the top of this post, is just plain fabulous. It’s amazing how a few twists of gold paper becomes a modern croissant. How great are those slices of speckled sausage? I can’t wait to read Sarah’s book and marvel at her handmade wonders and zest for making everyday objects joyful.

(read about on design boom; photographs via gestalten)