Monaluna is a textile & surface design company producing fresh, modern prints & organic cotton fabric. Come inside. Take a look. Get inspired.
I’ve been working with the stationery company Mara-mi on a new line of office products, and the collection got a very kind mention on Bowie Style’s Print and Pattern blog today. Thanks, Bowie! I haven’t even seen the final samples yet, so it was fun to see the photos she’s posted. The line will be coming out this spring.
I’m still – still! – reorganizing my studio, and slowly sorting through all the stuff that got jumbled together during the move (and, let’s be honest, wasn’t all that organized before the move). It’s starting to look better, but now I’m lusting for some new studio storage. New office furniture isn’t really in the budget right now, but a girl can dream, right? I’ve been loving the rustic, vintage and farmhouse-y look of a lot of what’s out there now, and have been pulling together some images for my “someday, maybe, dream studio” inspiration board. Most are from a back issue of Art & Decoration magazine, and from Restoration Hardware. Check them out:
As I’ve mentioned here before, one of the things I’m really excited about with this new house is having a nice, big garden. We’ve also been really trying to live in as low-impact a way as possible, recycling everything we can, shopping at the local farmers’ market and trying to use less unnecessary packaging. After spending Christmas with my mother, a big proponent of composting and worm composting especially, we decided that now that we have the space and the yard, there’s no reason not to have our own colony of little composting worms. They accomplish two tasks at once: prevent organic scraps from going in the landfill, and supply wonderfully rich garden compost and “worm tea”, which is supposed to be amazing for plants. Although making a worm farm would be a perfect DIY project, I decided I just didn’t have the time for it right now, so I went searching and stumbled on Happy D Ranch, purveyors of fine worms and worm products. An easy mouse-click later we were on our way to being worm farmers! Well, the little guys arrived yesterday, and we got their new home all set up. Now we just have to be patient while they get settled in, and then we can start giving them our used coffee filters, apple cores, eggshells and junkmail (yes, junkmail!).
… the very image of. How am I supposed to get any work done with this bad influence lounging about?? *sigh*
I was so inspired by Holly Becker’s post on Decor8 last week that I bought some flowers for the house this weekend. My little hangup is I feel like the house needs to be clean if I’m going to invest in fresh flowers, so I had a fabulous Saturday evening of housecleaning while Dave recovered from minor surgery. I bought some tulips, because all this rain is making me long for spring, and another flower that I don’t know the name of, but which looks like a muscular heather. Anybody know what it’s called? When I put the tulips in the vase they were a little too droopy, so I tried the old trick of dropping a penny in the water. Within an hour, they were standing straight up. I googled and wikipedia’d the phenomenon trying to figure out why this works so well, but the only straight answer I could come up with is that the oxidation of the penny reduces algae growth in the water. That doesn’t seem like the right answer. So it remains a mystery, but if you ever want to get your tulip stems to stand at attention, try a penny.
One of the things I love most about my job is seeing all the amazing things that people make from the Monaluna fabrics. I get these nifty little alerts from google (sometimes) when people post stuff they’ve made with my fabric on the internet, and I love seeing the variety and creativity. I thought I’d post some of the etsy.com images today – so fun!
I have a little dilemma this morning. I can’t make the bed because our new kitty has decided to sleep in, and I simply can’t make her move. She’s just too cute. And she looks too content for me to disturb her little nap spot. And can I just say I am SO excited she’s joined our family? We got her on Sunday from a kitty rescue group called Community Concern for Cats, a non-profit organization that rescues stray and feral cats, and she is just the sweetest thing. I’ve never actually chosen a cat before – they’ve all come to me one way or another – and we were a little worried about how she’d adjust to her new home. Well, as soon as we let her out of her carrier she was purring and exploring and basically establishing herself as queen of the castle. Of course, the ladies at the adoption facility were very persuasive about the benefits of having at least two cats, so she may not be an only cat for long…
Only one problem: we’re having a little trouble with her name. She was named KitKat at the shelter, but it just doesn’t seem to fit her. Anyone have ideas?
Happy Friday, everybody!
Today’s project seems almost ridiculously housekeeper-y, especially for me, since I’m not a very good housekeeper. But we’ve had these sloppy plastic bags of rags lying around and getting in the way since we moved in – I’ll put them in a cupboard, and they just slump all over and make a mess. So I finally got fed up and made some bags to hang on the wall in our laundry room and hold the clean and dirty rags. I have to say, they work pretty well! You could use them for anything, really, but I labelled mine with stamp letters, so now they’re pretty specific.
I'm Jennifer, a designer and project-lover living in Northern California. This is where I chronicle the inspirations, projects and life behind Monaluna.
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