Olivia’s Fab Four is a weekly post that features my favourite finds on Instagram for the past week. To be in the running, all you have to do is hashtag your product photos #oliviasfabfour and tag them with my handle: @oliviashead.
Here are this week’s beautiful products (clockwise from top left)
It’s our biggest 7 Vignettes prize ever: thanks to next month’s sponsor, Life Interiors, the overall winner of our monthly Instagram competition will win a $1,000 voucher to spend with them in store or online. Not only that, but each day, someone will win a $100 voucher for the entry judged the best. So even if you don’t manage all seven, you could still win something. I think you’re probably running out of reasons not to take part!
Life Interiors sell some of our favourite Australian brands — including Kip & Co, mexsii and Kate & Kate — and a fantastic range of Australian made and imported furniture and homewares. These new gold and copper pieces recently caught my eye. Gorgeous!
“We are extremely excited to sponsor 7 Vignettes for the month of April,” said Life Interiors’ Nicole Arvela, who will be the guest judge. “We love the competition and the way it inspires individuals to be creative and to share their style within the 7 Vignettes community. We can’t wait to see what everybody will create out of this month’s themes!”
Please share these themes with your friends and followers
You could put your winnings towards a mexsii bedhead!
Plenty of goodies you could blow $1,000 on at Life Interiors!
If you’re new to the challenge, find out how to take part here. And if you need inspiration, or are not quite sure what a vignette is, simply check out the #7vignettes hashtag, where you’ll find more than 55,000 images!
Don’t forget to tag us (@interiorsaddict) and @lifeinteriors. The fun starts a week today on Wednesday 1 April 2015. We regret that only Australian residents are eligible to win prizes but welcome your entries from all over the world!
Life Interiors is at Unit A3, 35-39 Bourke Rd (entrance via 46-62 Maddox Street) Alexandria, NSW 2015. We recommend you hop over to The Grounds for a coffee or something yummy after you’ve shopped up a storm…
Olivia’s Fab Four is a weekly post that features my favourite finds on Instagram for the past week. To be in the running, all you have to do is hashtag your product photos #oliviasfabfour and tag them with my handle: @oliviashead.
Here are this week’s beautiful products (clockwise from top left)
Olivia’s Fab Four is a weekly post that features my favourite finds on Instagram for the past week. To be in the running, all you have to do is hashtag your product photos #oliviasfabfour and tag them with my handle: @oliviashead.
Here are this week’s gorgeous products (clockwise from top left)
I’m the first to admit to having a serious addiction to both Instagram and Pinterest. I am a visual learner and well, there are just so many pretty pictures, how can you not be? Yet, I still find myself collecting magazine cutouts and swatches of fabric (surely I can’t be the only person out there doing this?).
I wanted to create an inspiration board for my home office where I could physically pin such finds. I had a bit of a look around online and in stores and couldn’t find anything that matched my decor, let alone any that I was willing to have on show to visitors. All I found were plain boring cork boards or, if you wanted to mix it up, half cork board/half whiteboard and let’s be honest, nothing that looked like that would be going up on my walls! So, as you do, I decided to make my own. Here is what I made and now I’m going to show you just how easy it was to whip up!
Step1: Decide on a frame and design + Pick up supplies
Being a renter, I needed something relatively light so my trusty 3m velcro strips would hold it up. This threw out my original idea of an ornate vintage frame, so I went for a lightweight and budget friendly option from my local junk shop. I opted for a monochrome pattern that was striking with a relatively easy pattern to paint (given my lack of painting skills).
Cork board
White primer paint
Black water-based acrylic paint
Paintbrush
Masking tape
Pins
Step 2: Time to prime
I never realised just how absorbent cork board was! It literally soaks up the primer as you’re painting, so you will need to do at least two coats to make sure you have a decent base.
Step 3: Mark out your pattern and paint
This is the most time-consuming part of this relatively quick project. Mark out your pattern with the masking tape. I didn’t use anything fancy, just a tape measure and a lead pencil to make sure my pattern was going to work out evenly across the board.
Then simply paint over the pattern. I would recommend two coats for this stage as well.
Step 4: Affix to wall
Once the paint is dry, remove the masking tape and ta-dah! Your pattern will all make sense. Then all you need to do is affix to your wall and get pinning!
I picked up these gold pins in a pack with gold paperclips and bulldog clips from Kmart for only two bucks!
–Kathryn Bamford is our girl on the ground in Melbourne; you can follow her DIY & design adventures on Instagram @thedesignrookie.
How it can be almost March already I just DO NOT KNOW. But on the plus side, it’s a month closer to meeting our baby and almost time for another round of 7 Vignettes! Next month, our sponsor and guest judge are the lovely people at Melbourne homewares and furniture retailer keekï. The prize is a $500 voucher (to spend in store or online) and there’ll also be daily prizes of $30 vouchers for each theme.
Image: keeki
“The keekï team love to see what the 7 Vignettes community produce and are excited to support this fantastic creative space,” says visual merchandising manager Stephanie Butler. “To see what the talented and creativity members come up with each month is inspiring and exciting. We know it is going to be a great challenge to select an overall winner, so have decided to give away $30 vouchers as daily prizes too.”
Here are the March themes. Day two has two options; just in case you don’t have a coffee table, we hope you’ll have a shelf of some sort you can photograph! And day four, you can go crazy and take whatever inspiration you like. Hopefully you won’t be paralysed by choice! Feel free to share the below graphic with your networks and encourage them to join in the fun.
Please make sure you tag @interiorsaddict and @keeki_mystyle. Prizes are open to Australian residents only but everyone is welcome to take part, just for fun!
keekï, with two stores in Chadstone Home Plus Homemaker Centre and in Dandenong South, know a thing or two about creating beautiful displays. Designed to inspire your ideal interior, they display and accessorise their furniture collection in a series of room settings so you can visualise how specific items may look in your space. By mixing professional ideas with your own imagination, they can help you arrive at a place that truly feels like home. And if you’re not in Victoria, don’t worry, you can shop online.
If you’re new to the photo challenge, read all about how to take part here or comment with your questions below.
Olivia’s Fab Four is a weekly post that features my favourite finds on Instagram for the past week. To be in the running, all you have to do is hashtag your product photos #oliviasfabfour and tag them with my handle: @oliviashead.
Here are this week’s beautiful products (clockwise from top left)
Congratulations to this month’s overall winner Lauren Storey, as chosen by our sponsor and guest judge OZ Design Furniture! You win a $500 voucher and we can see why.
Group marketing manager Iarni Harvey says: “Congratulations to the February 7 Vignettes overall winner. We selected Lauren as her daily vignettes were styled to perfection with a fresh take on each day’s theme. Here at OZ Design Furniture, we have throughly enjoyed reviewing all the creative entries and sponsoring such a fabulous initiative.”
Lauren’s entry for ‘living’
Our seven daily winners, who each get $100 vouchers were:
Olivia’s Fab Four is a weekly post that features my favourite finds on Instagram for the past week. To be in the running, all you have to do is hashtag your product photos #oliviasfabfour and tag them with my handle: @oliviashead.
Here are this week’s beautiful products (clockwise from top left)
Olivia’s Fab Four is a weekly post that features my favourite finds on Instagram for the past week. To be in the running, all you have to do is hashtag your product photos #oliviasfabfour and tag them with my handle: @oliviashead.
Here are this week’s beautiful products (clockwise from top left)
January 2014 winner @picturedthoughts. Click for details
This month’s 7 Vignettes round on Instagram was something special with loads of you starting the New Year by having a go for the first time and doing brilliantly! So we’re really looking forward to the February round, starting on Sunday and sponsored by our guest judges OZ Design Furniture. They have generously donated a $500 voucher for the overall winner but we’ll keep things interesting with daily $100 voucher prizes too! So even if you don’t do all seven, you could still win a daily prize! Here are the themes.
Please feel free to share the above list image with your networks and get more people on board!
Iarni Harvey, OZ Design Furniture’s group marketing manager, says: “We love watching the creativity and sense of community on 7 Vignettes each month and were very keen to support it. We will be noting all our favourites for the daily and overall prizes and know how tough the judging is with so much great talent! Good luck to everyone and our advice is to just have a go, enjoy it and not over think it too much.” We couldn’t agree more!
January 2014 winner @picturedthoughts. Click for details
This month, you must tag all your images #7vignettes and tag @interiorsaddict and @ozdesignfurniture.
For all the details of how to take part, go here, and please feel free to ask any questions in the comments below and we’ll get back to you. There are no silly questions! If you’re doubting yourself, read this post.
See you on Instagram!
Please note, only Australian reisdents can win prizes but everyone is welcome to take part just for fun!
The winner, as chosen by the lovely ladies at Kip and Co, Kate, Alex and Hayley, is Jessie Brakenridge, a graphic designer from Adelaide. Congratulations @jessiebrakenridge, you win a $500 Kip and Co voucher which we’re sure will add some style, colour and fun to your bedroom!
Kate said: “Her images are really stunning and the colour in each is balanced beautifully. Cute use of all these amazing treasures! And like here at Kip where we try to use colours in fun ways, Jessie has nailed it! Really ace job and obviously a very talented still life stylist!”
As usual, the guest judges were bowled over by the number of great entries and found it hard to pick just one winner. The girls have kindly decided to give two runner-up prizes of $50 vouchers to @design_salt and @pastelpeppermint. “We love @pastelpeppermint for how she has combined colour with something she loves — her two gorgeous cats Tortilla and Pinto. What ace names and great pics!
“And @design_salt because her very stylish photos were just really beautiful and how could we go past a jelly banana with chia on the ends? Genius!”
Winners, please contact me so we can pass your email address into Kip and Co. Thanks to our gorgeous guest judges and sponsors, we couldn’t think of a better brand to support our colourful themes this month!
Something really cool happened this week, in the middle of 7 Vignettes’ January challenge. We passed the magic 50k mark on the #7vignettes hashtag. Quite the milestone! It comes two years after I started the Instagram photo challenge. Seems bonkers to think it has been 24 months. And it’s still going as strong as ever if not stronger. I am so happy!
Now, I have always been a big fan of social media and the positives it can bring. I have met some of my now closest friends via Twitter and my husband and I first starting chatting on Facebook after being introduced by a mutual friend! 7 Vignettes is one of those social media things that keeps on giving, month after month, year after year!
Something special happened this month, other than reaching the big 50k. There’s always a great feeling of friendship and positivity around the challenge but this month, probably partly because of it being New Year and partly because I made a concerted effort to encourage newbies to give it a go, we had a lot of first-timers on board and boy, did they love it! And I loved seeing them loving it.
I even wrote this blog post yesterday to try and encourage more people to stop being scared and just have a go and have fun and stop being self-doubters. I hope it may encourage you too!
The January challenge finished yesterday (I’ll be announcing the winner tomorrow) and I always feel a little sad when I wake up the next morning and there’s no new pix (for another three weeks anyway!). See you all on 1 February, I hope! Make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter to get sent the themes first!
Still asking yourself what is 7 Vignettes?!Read all about it here with a fun video interview with The Block’s Darren Palmer on why it’s awesome.
I’ve been pondering this post for a really long time. I am completely in love with our 7 Vignettes community on Instagram and it gives me so much joy to see what people get out of the experience and how supportive everyone is of each other. I’m also blown away by the beautiful images but that almost comes second! It genuinely makes me feel sad and frustrated when I hear people saying they’re too intimidated to take part because the standard is so high, or that they don’t have time, or the right props. I wanted to debunk all these myths and encourage you to give it a go, just once, then come back and tell me you didn’t love it! Please read on for my roundup of the most common excuses and why they’re nonsense!
1. I don’t have enough cool stuff. Pft! Nonsense! Some of our best images contain seashells, hairy string, flowers from the garden, a corner of a textured rug, pieces of fruit, a cuppa or a chubby baby’s hand! It’s not about owning lots of designer homewares, it’s about how you put the stuff together, the natural light, the composition, even the Instagram filter. And sometimes (often) simple is best. As they say, it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it that counts!
@ofheartandhome
By @milburt
2. I’m intimidated by how good everyone else is.This is probably the biggest issue people have. I draw your attention to these recent comments…
I totally get it though. We have some super talented participants. It blows me away every month! But the absolute BEST thing about the 7 Vignettes community — even better than the beautiful feed of images — is the sense of community and all the lovely encouraging and friendly words for each other’s efforts. Take part and get to know them. You might even make a few new friends. I can promise you I have never ever heard of an incidence of anyone telling someone else theirs wasn’t up to scratch! And think what you can learn from these clever and inspiring people! Any doubts are in your own head only.
4. My home isn’t stylish enough. Again, 7 Vignettes isn’t about showcasing cool or expensive stuff or even your home. Interiors Addict’s motto is, after all, style without the snobbery! You don’t even have to show us any of your home if you don’t want to. Most people don’t. It’s less about interiors and more about creativity, fun and enjoyment.
5. I feel guilty taking part in something so self-indulgent when I should be hanging out with my kids. Enough with the mother guilt already (let’s face it, the overwhelming majority of participants are female, this is not me being sexist)! I’ve heard comments to this effect a few times and it really bothers me. Why not take a little time out for yourself to do something creative for a few minutes for seven days of the month? It doesn’t have to be every month. If you’re stuck in a job that you don’t love, this could be one of your only creative outlets. Your kids may want to join in too and be inspired by watching your creativity in action. This happens all the time and sometimes we get to see the little ones’ vignette attempts too (super cute)! We love seeing little hands in parents’ vignettes too. And we laugh when we hear the stories of husbands who just don’t get it. Share the outtakes and the funny stories with us. Most of all, keep it real!
Vignette by school girl @indiakitty
And, if you truly believe 7 Vignettes is too self-indulgent a pastime for a mother that’s fine, but please keep it to yourself and don’t make others feel guilty, okay? Thanks!
6. I just don’t have time. My biggest advice here is not to over think it. And I hear time and time again that the most spontaneous vignettes can be the best. You can even set yourself a timer to make it more fun and challenging! Don’t just take it from me though…
So, I really hope that hearing from readers who may have felt you once upon a time and are now hooked on 7 Vignettes and loving it, will encourage you to have a go yourself! I dare you to come and join Instagram’s friendliest community! We even have events throughout the year where you can meet each other.
The next 7 Vignettes challenge starts on 1 February 2015. To be first to receive the themes list, make sure you sign up to our newsletter. For step by step instructions, go here and please ask any questions in the comments below.
7 Vignettes is always one of my highlights of each month and I’m still so proud to have started it. Now about to start its third year, I thought it would be remiss to let 2014 pass without showcasing some of our readers’ best efforts.
Here are my favourites from each monthly winner’s collections:
A huge thank you to all our participants, sponsors and guest judges!
Seeing all these together makes me think, as I have been all year, that it would be fantastic to take some of these images and turn them into something tangible and, at the same time, raise money for charity. I’d love that to be a project for 2015 and I’d really welcome your thoughts and ideas on what we could do and the best way to do it. Please comment below. Thanks! Jen.
Ready to take part in next month’s challenge, starting on New Year’s Day? You could win a $500 Kip and Co voucher! More info.
I can’t think of a better New Year’s creative resolution than to have a go at your first 7 Vignettes challenge! Or if you’re a regular already, there’s no better way to kick off 1 January than by getting your stylist on via Instagram, right? If you needed further incentive, I’m hoping the chance to win a $500 Kip and Co voucher and completely make over your bedroom for 2015 might be good enough!
Kip and Co linen
To keep things simple, as we hope lots of newbies will take part, the themes are all colour-based. Sparkle and rainbow are of course legitimate colours!
The challenge starts on 1 January 2015 and you must tag @interiorsaddict and @kipandco and use the hashtag #7vignettes. All the instructions can be found here if you’re new to it, and if you have questions, please pop them in the comments below and we will get back to you straight away!
Olivia’s Fab Four is a weekly post that features my favourite finds on Instagram for the past week. To be in the running, all you have to do is hashtag your product photos #oliviasfabfour and tag them with my handle: @oliviashead.
Here are this week’s beautiful products (clockwise from top left)
I am so excited to reveal to you an exciting collaboration that has been in the pipeline for months: Rainy Sunday’s 7 Vignettes Gather Journal. For the hundreds of you who take part in our monthly Instagram challenge, here’s somewhere gorgeous for you to keep all your styling inspiration together and you can buy it in time for Christmas (as a gift) or the January round of the competition (for yourself!).
Don’t you love that copper foil?!
The gather journals are the brainchild of Frith Hucks from Rainy Sunday and I leapt at the chance to get Interiors Addict involved. Rainy Sunday has evolved from a home enterprise making drinking jars (on a rainy Sunday) into a fully fledged homewares design business. Their products are often a modern take on old school ideas, so creating a series of journals with this in mind seemed quite natural.
Photo: Nikki Hernan
“Having dabbled with the 7 Vignettes Instagram challenge myself, I realised how much thought and planning goes in to each theme,” Frith says. “Why not create a journal that both inspired and helped participants create their best vignettes each month for the challenge? Rather than just a journal with blank pages, the Gather Journal gives you the background to 7 Vignettes, fantastic tips from previous challenge winner Nikki Hernan (aka Brown Paper Lemon) to help improve your compositions and ideas on where you can get more inspiration. It’s not just a regular journal – it really is a place for gathering.”
Photo: Nikki Hernan
From my point of view, the journal was a brilliant opportunity to showcase some of the work of one our very talented participants and blog readers, Nikki, who could not have been more excited to have her photos featured on its pages! “7 Vignettes gives you the freedom to be as expressive as you like, drawing from life experiences and connecting trinkets and heirlooms to tell tales and acknowledge loved ones,” Nikki says. “The old saying ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ rings true within vignettes. Exhibiting not only inanimate objects but also the mood that the artist is feeling. My style has has been enriched by this learning process which I look forward to continuing to explore.”
Photo: Nikki Hernan
The 7 Vignettes Gather Journal is the first in a series of journals Rainy Sunday will release next year including editions for green juices and flower arranging. “Hopefully there will be lots of feedback from this Gather Journal that we’ll use to help us enhance the design and inspiration we include in our next ones,” adds Frith.
You can get your hands on the first Gather Journals ($23 each) at Finders Keepers Sydney tonight (Friday 12 December 2014) or online from today.
And, if you truly believe 7 Vignettes is too self-indulgent a pastime for a mother that’s fine, but please keep it to yourself and don’t make others feel guilty, okay? Thanks!
