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
This table takes the idea that form should follow function and turns it on its head. Clean lines contrast with the intricate lasercut pattern, and a usually utilitarian piece of furniture gets its turn in the spotlight with a beautiful brass shine. Get yours from Leg Studios here.
We featured this table in our newsletter this week, along with a curated collection of awesome brass and timber items. There's a new theme every week, so if you'd like to be kept in the loop, sign up below!
We've all played a childhood game of "I Spy" on long car trips, but usually our discoveries tended more towards the mundane - cars, trees, and the like. Lovely Lauren from iSpy has a knack for finding the hidden beauty in everything around her, and uses it to create beautiful homeware with bright, bold prints. Here's her story.
Ok, so I'm a graphic designer by day, and textile designer at night and on weekends. I spent 10 years living and working in Pretoria and Jo'burg as a graphic designer before we moved to Knysna in 2010. Taking a break to have babies and adjust to small town life resulted in an unintentional shift towards experimenting with textile design, just for kicks. At this stage in my life, I seem to be wearing many hats – wife, mom of two preschoolers, domestic manager, graphic designer, textile designer and a member of a really collective called Hands Design Collective – a good story for another day!
Has iSpy become a brand of it's own? Awesome if it has! Living in teeny Knysna, it feels like I'm Facebooking, emailing and posting into oblivion ;-)
It's really important to me to have iSpy products be as handmade as possible. A lot of my formal graphic design training centered around hand rendered design and illustration, so it's always been close to my heart. I believe this adds something special and gives my products a little bit of soul. I also want to support fellow Knysnarians wherever possible. All my designs are meticulously screenprinted by hand by a small family-run studio called The Natural Hand and my products are sewn by a jolly group of township ladies called Women of Vision. The leather components of my totes are sewn by the local shoe repair guy who operates just around the corner from our shop, so my bags take their place in the queue of shoes waiting for repairs.
...world domination, one town at a time ;-)
We can't say we'd mind! Living in a world full of colour and pretty prints sounds awesome, to be honest. You can see more of Lauren's work in the iSpy Hello Pretty store, and get in touch on Facebook.
The save the Rhino cause is near and dear to all of us - we're remembering the beauty and awesomeness of our precious wildlife today:
Happy shopping!
I have been crushing severely on this gorgeous ring for months, and have sworn to make it mine as soon as possible. The silver setting is crafted into a protea design, and the carnelian is perfect for a pop of colour, winter or summer. Get yours from Sweet Pea here.
We featured this ring in our newsletter this week, along with a curated collection of awesome orange items. There's a new theme every week, so if you'd like to be kept in the loop, sign up below!
Nice way to start a post hey? With all those yummy food pics?
Now that I have all of your drooly attention (and may be drooling a little bit myself), I will regale you will tales of Granny Goose.
It all started one morning when a lone slipper arrived at my doorstep - and what a slipper it was! It was the fluffiest, warmest slipper in all the land. I insisted on wearing it, even though my other foot was lonely and cold. And with that slipper came a pearly invitation to reunite it with its mate at the Claremont Sleep Lab.
So off I went - who am I to stand in the way of true love? (That is, the instant love I felt for these ah-MAZING slippers)
On arrival I was welcomed like an old friend, handed a cappaccino, and introduced to various bloggers and fancy industry people, including the likes of my girl crush Marcia Margolius (who has met both Tom Dixon and Philippe Starck in person - I shook the hand of the person who shook their hands. Be still my little fangurl heart).
We were introduced to Gaynor Walkey, the founder of Granny Goose, and she told us how she started her business with one cushion and one duvet. She would invite people to lie on them in her lounge, where she would manually add or decrease the feathers until you were your own brand of Goldilocks and it was Just Right. And BAM! Now it's a nationwide powerhouse. You go Gaynor.
(FYI, y'all can relax - the fancy bedding industry is a by-product of the meat industry. No live beasties were harmed in the making of this piece of floaty heaven.)
The customising of Granny Goose goodies stayed with Gaynor throughout, and birthed the concept of the sleep labs - we were soon all taking our shoes off and climbing into the dreamiest bed, (I ended up in bed wih Talya Goldberg - hay gurl haaay) testing out pillows.
To those of you that are worried, we learnt that down bedding is rarely the cause of allergies - dust mites are the nasty culprits, and they don't actually dig down very much. And if you want to wash your bedding, use half the amount of soap (to avoid loads of foam wrecking havock on the feathers), tumble dry just short of being dry, and then leave to dry naturally (not in direct sun though).
The staff were so helpful and friendly and generally lovely, phoning me a few weeks later to check in on how my new pillow was treating me - both in store and after sales service is truly impeccable.
Check out some behind the scenes videos here and here, and some FAQ's at the end of the post.
Now as I type, both feet are comfortably encased in fluffy down foot duvets, and are the most toasty. Winning.
