Weekly Inspiration Post

To remain in the colorful vibes of last Friday's Fabulous Photo's, we have chosen a colorful set of bracelets for this weeks Weekly Inspiration. The bright blue and pink really stand out and give the soft pastels a playful look. Doesn't it look dainty and cute?

This sweet combination contains a bright pink Delicate As Stone, a soft lilac Royal Princess, a crisp white version of Sunny Beaches, a Summer Lovin' with white beads and a turquoise leaf, and a prototype bracelet of blue wax cord and a wishbone charm. 

Love,

Lisa and Ivanna

Colours

When we first started our jewelry shop, we made it very clear that we mainly wanted to get our inspiration from colours that can be found in nature. At first, we mostly used colors that were very earthy - like grey, green, and brown. However, as we went on, we got inspired by the brighter colours that nature has to offer, which you can see in the pictures below. We wanted these striking colors to show in our jewelry and that's why we have a more cheerful twist in our collection ever since.

flamingo, cuddling birds, lake, flowers

As you can see, we have a thing for pink and turquoise :p What about you, which colours do you like most?

Love,
Lisa & Ivanna

Be good

It is remarkable how much pressure we have to endure to meet our own expectations and those of others. Although a bit of pressure can be good at times, we don't think it is healthy to constantly have to try to be perfect. So for this week, we chose a quote by John Steinbeck, from his novel 'East of Eden'.

And now that you don't have to be perfect,

You can be good

- John Steinbeck 

We love this quote, because it shows that by the time you let go of this pressure, you can start to feel more peaceful with yourself and your environment. In other words it says, try to be the best you can be, but let go of the idea of being perfect.

We are working very hard on designing a bracelet that carries out this message!

What do you think of it? Do you agree, or do you think people should always strive for perfection?

Love, 

Lisa and Ivanna

Monday's Musical Delight - Playlist #7: 80's New Wave

When I finished listening to The Cure's Pictures Of You yesterday, I quite surprised myself. Normally I would just finish my The Cure playlist, but this time I did something different: I clicked on Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence. Right after that, I searched for Joy Division, and before I knew it, I spent the rest of the afternoon listening to every 80's new wave song in my collection. Since I rather enjoyed myself with it, I figured I might as well give you a little sample. (I had to cut down a few nice ones, because the page would take ages to load if I made the playlist as long as I want it to be.) So, I present to you: my six favourite 80's New Wave songs. Enjoy!

Lots of Love,
Lisa
 

World Food Festival - Harvest Feast

The World Food Festival is a brand new festival in Rotterdam which presents different culinary trents from all over the world. Food-producing companies in all shapes and sizes participate in this festival and share their ideas on food development.

One of the participants is the 'Dakakker' (rooftop farm). Me and my boyfriend went to visit the Dakakker, which is an initiative of his brother, Wouter Bauman from the Rotterdam Environment Centre. The Dakakker was founded in the context of urban agriculture. The idea is that a city can partly become self-sufficient in food-production, which also means less transport and fresher vegetables. The free space of flat roofs in the city is very suitable for growing food. It also contributes to the greening of the city. As Spring to Fall we really like this idea!

On this special day, a part of the vegetables were harvested and used to prepare a very tastful dinner for interested guests. Together with other volunteers we made pumpkinsoup and pasta pesto, of course with ingredients derived from the roof field. There was also honey for sale, made by the bees which are also on the roof, and there was live music. The food was delicious and the dinner was very appreciated. A very fun and succesful day!

To read more about the Dakakker you can click here.
To read more about the World Food Festival you can click here (English) or here (Dutch).

xxx Ivanna

Weekly Inspiration Post

This week we chose for a combination of bracelets and a necklace with a sweet and bohemian look. The lovely gemstones and the symbol of the tree of life add a touch of nature to this set. The colors that are used in the glass beaded bracelets fit perfectly with the beginning of the fall.

This beautiful set contains the Tree of Life Necklace, Ménage a Trois (wishbone charm), the white jade version of Greek Goddess and the white howlite version of Delicate as Stone.

Love, 

Lisa & Ivanna

Impression of Autumn

We cannot say we are enjoying the amount of rain that seems to announce the approaching autumn, but looking at these wonderful pictures makes it a little better. When you look at these beautiful colours and structures, you can almost feel the wind, and smeel de damp leaves. We have already used sceneries like this as an inspiration for bracelets like Sound of Nature and The Real Peace, and now that we are looking at it again, we can't wait to get to work with our bronze chains and brown beads!

train tracks, leaves, backpack, trees

How do you feel about the upcoming autumn? Do you enjoy walking in the rain, or do you prefer to stay inside, like us?

Love,

Lisa & Ivanna

Good Thoughts

We recently "updated" our Ménage À Trois bracelets*, and as we were preparing the listings on Etsy, our attention was drawn to the quote that has inspired us to make these.

"If you have good thoughts,

they will shine out of your face like sunbeams

and you will always look lovely."

     - Roald Dahl

This quote is from Roald Dahl's children's novel The Twits (in Dutch: De Griezels). In the full passage, the narrator explains that people with ugly thoughts, will always show this ugliness in the characteristics of their faces, whereas people with good thoughts can never be ugly, because the good thoughts are visible in their faces and make them look pretty. We were so impressed by this idea, that we tried to capture it in these bracelets.

What do you think of this quote; do you agree?

xx Lisa & Ivanna

* You can find these here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Playlist #6: Sweet&Comforting

Even though the blog lay-out and content have changed a little, the playlists will keep on coming (and more regularly now - yay!). We have arrived at #6 now, and since the last few days have been nothing but cold and rainy here, I picked some lovely, comforting songs. However.. I still can't really let go of the summer, so I made sure not to pick something too gloomy. I have been listening to Alt-J's Taro pretty much non-stop the last few weeks, and since it's such an incredible song, I just had to share it with you. It is quite a bleak song however, so I picked some cheerful ones as well, to even it out ;) I hope you'll enjoy them, and if you have any suggestions, let us know!

xx

Lisa

PS: How about the new colours of the music player - don't you just love the pink? ;)  

This is our new blog!

So, here it is: our new and improved blog! Our new style hasn't changed all that much, but we did make some minor adjustments: we've introduced some new fonts, refreshing bright colors and a cheerful, clear layout.

What else is new? We will make sure to blog on a more regular basis. Instead of writing long articles every few weeks on topics that are not really related to each other, we decided to write shorter articles on stuff that really, really, really inspires us, and are more coherent.

Boring? Nope. There is still plenty of variation, in the form of recurring posts:

• Monday's Musical Delight, in which Lisa will continue to make playlists, but this will now happen on a weekly basis (YAY!)
• Wednesday's Words of Wisdom. Because we love quotes, and lyrics, and poems, and want to share our most precious ones with you.
• Friday's Fabulous Photos, which will consist of beautiful photos of pretty much anything.
• We will keep posting our Weekly Inspiration as well, every weekend.
• And on top of all this, we will also enlighten with our Shop Updates every now and then, and post some personal stuff, if we feel like it :) This contains posts about our Personal Style, Things we Love or Places we've Been. 

What do you think of this new style? Any tips or comments?

Love,
Lisa & Ivanna

Blog Under Construction :)

As you may have noticed, we have not been very active on this blog the last couple of months. This summer has been very hectic for the both of us, in terms of study, work, internships, etcetera - and of course a much needed vacation here and there -, so we figured we'd better spend the very little time we had together on our shop, instead of our blog. 

However, now that the summer is coming to an end, and everything is starting to settle down again, we decided to call these last few months of radio silence a long, unannounced summer break, and make a fresh start :)

This fresh start does not only mean that will be posting more regularly, it also means we are going to make some changes. Even though we love this blog, we are quite unsatisfied with the irregular posts and the fact that most of the articles seem to be all over the place. So, we are now in the process of figuring out how to make our blog more coherent, and how we can make sure that we can keep blogging on a regular basis. Of course, after months without any blog-related creativity, our minds are flooding with new ideas, so it's taking quite a while to get everything going. But we're sure we will be back on track soon!

We'll keep you posted!

Love,

Lisa & Ivanna