After more than ten fulfilling, magical years beginning in the good old days of 2012, Hello Pretty is retiring and heading off to the beach with a drink with a tiny umbrella.
Read our goodbye letter
The theme of this week's newsletter is one of my favourite colours: Yellow!
I've put together some pretty pictures for you of a selection of the South African talent that we're celebrating this week. Enjoy!
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Guys. No but guys. Look at these yellow cats. Are they not the best?
Fathima, fellow cat lady from Happiness Is... has done this most amazing illustration for this months #WDC2014 inspired downloadable wallpaper, and we LOVE it. Can you tell?
Download this bit of tech sunshine for free over HERE.
Talented right? She's so brilliant. You should all go visit her Hello Pretty store right this second!
Check out our past wallpapers over here.
We were recently invited to paint the town yellow with Smeg and WDC2014, and since we've been all about the #dailyyellow this year, we obviously couldn't say no. With the dress code requiring a touch of yellow, and the invite hinting at a special unveiling done by Smeg CEO Vittorio Bertazzoni, we were all kinds of excited when we made our way to the brand new Smeg showroom on Strand Street.
The Italians know how to do things in style, and this evening was no exception. Prosecco and beautiful people were in abundant supply - as were some extremely liberal interpretations of the dress code!
But if we're honest, the highlight of the evening was the ENORMOUS wheel of Parmesan made for and at the Smeg family farm. This meant two things: Amazing truffle risotto made and served inside the wheel of cheese; and that I have a new life ambition (have my own Parmesan that's made on my farm in Italy).
And there it is! The limited edition WDC yello Smeg Fiat. With a belly full of Peroni, naturally. Here's the official video from the evening which includes some of the speeches made (and bonus cameos by two of Team HP).
This picture of Scott going to town on the frozen yoghurt and macarons pretty much sums up the evening perfectly: Great food, great company, great design. Many thanks to Smeg and WDC2014! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to start looking for my Italian farm. My Parmesan's not going to make itself.
At the Miss+Meisie Showcase and I Heart Market in Durban - gorgeous right?
In the Homeology and D&M Made With Love DIY and Styling ebook, available here.
Stunning! And the best part is being able to own a piece of Terry Angelos art free and gratis. Get downloading, and tag us in pics of you and your new fancy computer wallpapers!
We loved last months WDC2014 inspired downloadable wallpaper so much, that we're doing it again!
This month we have the lovely Lilian Fairall treating us to not one, but TWO gorgeous hand illustrated wallpapers:
1. Download HERE
2. Download HERE
Gorgeous or what? It's so hard to choose a favourite!
Send us a photo of how you're rocking your wallpaper this month - remember to tag it #hpwdc14, and visit the Lilian Fairall Hello Pretty store to check out more work by this talented lady: http://hellopretty.co.za/lilian-fairall
So guys, it's no secret that we are privy to some pretty fantastic talent here at Hello Pretty. South Africans have some mad skillz - and we're super proud of being able to support them, see and help them grow, and revel in their general awesomeness.
One such human is Jeanine from Love Mary J - this lady specialises in geometric, linear inspired illustrations that will just knock your socks off.
We were lucky enough to have her treat us to a really gorgeous, illustrated World Design Capital inspired downloadable desktop - cool huh!? AND it involves pugs and polka dots. I mean, if that's not a recipe for success, I don't know what is.
So you should all check out her Hello Pretty store here, (especially her pet portraits) and download this super fun wallpaper right over here.
Nice right?
If you follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, you would have seen us jumping into the spirit of World Design Captial feet first. We all agreed that this is an important year for everybody, whether you were a recognised project or not. It's so easy to get involved, even in a tiny way.
And so we set out to inject a teensy bit of yellow into our daily lives. And as we've been going along, we've been thrilled to see people jumping in - tagging us in something yellow that brightened up their day, or sending us yellow inspiration. It's the most satisfying feeling to have people interacting with us in that way - all of a sudden this small thing becomes much bigger and more exciting. We're not changing the world, but hopefully it brings a smile to the faces of the people who see it, and in turn directs them to the collective awesomeness that is WDC2014.
I recently received an email from Nadia, the talented illustrator and maker behind Bvbblegvm, saying that she had made us something yellow, which was just so exciting. Is this not amazing? Not only is it pretty, yellow, and generally fabulous, it imparts some solid wisdom as well.
Shorly after that I received an email from Nikita from Didzy Designs saying that she had designed some new phone covers to join the yellow madness and I just broke into a huge cheesy smile. I'm just so excited by everyone joining in. 365 yellow photos is no small feat! We value the encouragement and support so much, and so far we have yet to resort to photos of bananas.
Some sweet found #dailyyellow inpiration from Stacey of The Love Bucket and a snapshot in the life of Andrea Jane.
So thank you Nadia, Nikita, Stacey, Andrea and to all our followers that encourage our mini project - we'll be sending a lot more yellow your way!
I recently waxed lyrical about Kelly from Sunflowers and Spears’s #bloggersecretsanta, and our fab gift from citygirlsearching’s Roxy. But I do have to blow our own horn a little too! Before I had any idea of the amazingness that was on it’s way to us from Roxy, I was more excited to send our gift than receive one - it was so much fun sourcing all the goodies, and I even knuckled down and did a spot of DIY (you can take my word for the fact that I’m no Martha Stewart, and that as a result you should all be impressed).
I decided to do a yellow and gold themed gift, and scoured the site for small but lovely and useful items to include. After finally narrowing down my gigantic list of potential gifts, I settled on these:
A paper plane brooch by Landi Kuhn
A set of button clips by Bow Peep (not strictly part of the colour scheme, but adorable none the less)
A set of gold reindeer vinyl stickers by Match Set Love
And a voucher for the lucky lady to pick out something from Hello Pretty for herself
Inspired by Lovilee’s “Christmas in a Bottle,” I grabbed a sweet customised Consol jar that I bought at iheartmarket (and made by Sk8shade’s lovely mom), and jazzed it up with a lick of gold spray paint. I quickly became addicted and spray painted everything else, myself and parts of my dog too.
Our recipient is the very gorgeous mom-to-be Samantha, from everythingsamanthahearts, and since soon she will be gifted with a bouncing baby girl, I threw in a cupcake flavoured Yankee Candle for a few moments of indulgent “me-time” every now and then in between the new baby madness. (For all their many many pros, rumour has it newborns don’t sleep much. Mom deserves a candlelit bubble bath every now and then while Dad babysits!)
After a while spent dealing with nail destroying post office anxiety, the glitter and polka dot Christmas box eventually arrived, and I am so happy to report that Samantha loved it. All of us at Hello Pretty wish you the most wonderful Christmas and you have our most heartfelt congrats on the pending new addition to your family. We hope the arrival of baby Olive is the first happening in a long line of other great things that make 2014 your best year yet.
Kisses!
I’m a big National Geographic nerd. The photography offered up by National Geographic is in a league of its own and since I was really little I would devour any NG mag I came across.
I was browsing their site recently (as one does!) and found that they have colour photo series (serieses? I don’t know.) called Life in Colour.
Anyway - colour! Here’s Yellow. Click through to the site for the captions of the individual photographs and credits to the talented photographers
Enjoy!
