All Things Lovely

My Favourite iPhone Photos Apps

I am little obsessed with Instagram at the moment, especially since I'm doing the Photo A Day challenge. Friends sometimes ask what apps I use for all my photos so I thought I'd share my favourites. This isn't a sponsored post, just my favourite and most used apps.

I take the majority of my photos just with the camera on the iPhone. I never use the camera in the Instagram App, and will only edit my photos in Instagram if I'm in a hurry. I do love the Brannan filter though. I want my photos to start in a high resolution for printing later on. 

Mt first normal step is to open the photo on Afterlight. This app is awesome. I crop and add a filter generally through this app. You can actually do pretty much everything in it. Change the brightness, edit the contrast, sharpness, shadows etc.

Once I've done that I often want to add a filmy grain to it. Especially for my Photo A Day projct, I try and have some consistency with the grain and the frame. For my grain I use Blender. I've downloaded lots of overlays such as Mextures by Merek Davis, NDPATTERNS by Simon Fletcher and brenoverlays by Bren at Shalecubs. I am a little in love with overlays. Blender basically merges two photos into one, so you can do awesome edits with other photos. I'm a fan.

Once I've jazzed it all up, I'll either move it to Snapseed or Camera+. Snapseed I mainly use if I want to add some nice soft focus, and fiddle with some other things.

Last step is moving into Camera+ to add the border. I decided to stick with a thin black border for all my photos but they've got some other really nice frames. You can also add some more great filters through this app.

What are your favourite apps? I'm always on the look out for more! Happy iPhoneography!

Wednesday Wish List

Are you as into online shopping as I am? I find it so dangerous! But living at the bottom of the world, often we don't have much of a choice, there are just better (and cheaper!) things online.

Here are a few things I'm crushing on at the moment. In all honesty though, the Coach bag is on it's way....oops.

One Pride & Prejudice Two Coach Candace Carryall Three Coach Keyring Four Gold Heart Ring Five iPhone Case

Weekend Happenings

Happy Monday! Hope you had a lovely and relaxing weekend. Mine was busy but all together lovely. I got to spend a lot of time with some of my favourite people, and lovely Sydney hasn't quite figured out we're halfway through autumn. The weather was so warm and sunny.

I spent Saturday with a friend in the city, starting with brunch at The Grounds of Alexandria. If you're around Sydney and you've never been I really recommend it. The wait is usually about 45 minutes, but they have a great takeaway area, and then beautiful gardens to sit or wander through. We managed to find a table in an old greenhouse where we sat for ages drinking coffee and fresh lemonade and eating delicious bacon and egg rolls.

Sunday was so warm and sunny, so there's no other option but to hit the beach. I headed down to Bondi with one of my besties for brunch. We then just wandered around and enjoyed the views, and the water. There is nothing more beautiful than Sydney beaches.

Aren't the Bondi Icebergs pools just gorgeous. The colours are spectacular!

On the way home we popped in at Gelato Messina. Oh.My.Goodness. This stuff is sooo good! I was a piggy and got three flavours (I defy you to narrow it down to less!)

How was your weekend? Hope you got to do, eat and see lovely things!

Handcrafted Espresso Cups

My friend Shaun is one of those fabulous people who loves food and coffee. I mean L O V E S it. He's an incredible cook and I'm pretty lucky that he cooks for me fairly often. When his birthday came around late last year I wanted to find him the perfect gift. Cue...Kylie spending hours spent on Etsy.

Well, Artet Manufacture came to the party. I finally stumbled upon these divine handcrafted ceramic espresso cups. BINGO. I kept looking around as they're not cheap - but they were one of those things I just could not get out of my mind. You know that feeling? Nothing else will live up to what you've found. I was so happy when they finally arrived. They really were everything I'd hoped for and more.

Photos copyright Shaun Mowrey

Meet Lady Berkeley

Happy Monday! How was your weekend? Hope it was lovely and relaxing.

If you follow me on Instagram, you would have already seen a little puppy has come to share my home. My flatmate desperately wanted a puppy and so Lady Berkeley moved in about two months ago.

Isn't she adorable?! I promise I won't continually flood my blog with puppy pictures, but she's just so cute! Being a labrador, she's definitely a challenge but she's going well at puppy pre school. I'm expecting big things!

March Photo A Day

I shared earlier that this year I had committed to do Fat Mum Slim's wonderful Photo A Day Challenge. I'm pretty happy to say that three months down and I'm still on board. It's so easy, all you do is get the list and take a photo every day that relates to the prompt given. I love the challenge to my creativity every day. Here's what I shared on Instagram for March.

Ikea Herringbone Rug

The old Ikea hack. It's one of the best isn't it?! After being inspired by so many people online with the 'paint your own' Ikea rug I did my own about a year ago. One of my dearest friends always loved it, so for his birthday this year I painted an Ikea Egeby rug for him (lucky guy).

Although the pattern I used was three colours and very structured, he only wanted two colours, and I decided to make the pattern a little more freehand after seeing this amazing herringbone patterned wall. Using Dulux White on White and Domino I painted the first coat fully white, then taped it up rather haphazardly, and covered the entire rug in the black. Make sure you get enough paint. I started with one litre of each colour. I ended up having to buy more, so it turned out to be about one and a half litres of each colour to fully cover it. Also, I recommend buying a cheap brush as you'll destroy it.

I added an additional step in this rug in that I sprayed it with a clear sealer after everything was dry. I find that my rug gets dirty quite quickly so I'm hoping the clear sealer just helps it to stay a little bit cleaner.

Fortunately he absolutely loves it! 

Eating At Kitchen By Mike

One of the things I love most about Sydney is the abundance of fantastic eating places. Cafes, restaurants, holes in walls to grab your coffee. I have my favourites, but I'd never eaten at Kitchen By Mike before, even though I'd heard it raved about for months.

Since I had last Monday off, I decided to head in seeing as though it should be quieter than the crazy weekend. Fortunately, I was right. The food is fresh, clean and delicious. I wanted my goats cheese and spinach quich to last forever. Not to mention the lemon meringue tart. Kitchen By Mike is set in an old factory, and much of the original architecture is on show. It's hipster vintage heaven. Kitchen By Mike is joined to the Koskela showroom which is an amazing space, made up of furnture, art and homewares. Food and shopping. I'm pretty much in heaven.

Kitchen By Mike // 85 Dunning Avenue, Rosebery

Freedom's New Style

Have you seen the new Freedom catalogue? I'm really loving the new style they have, very mid century modern.

These are a few of my favourites.

One Bucket Chair Two Sixties Buffet Three Neon Knit Cushion Four Mr Jones Armchair Five Laurent Dining Chair Six Retro Chair

Photo A Day Challenge

Well...happy new year! In March! I have recently become more inspired to get back to enjoying and living out my creativity, and along with that comes blogging, so hopefully I can find some interesting things to share with you all.

I'm sure many of you will have seen around blogland and Instagram, the brilliant brain child of Chantelle at Fat Mum Slim, her Photo A Day Challenge. I watched this unfold all last year over on Instagram and her blog, and didn't get involved, so decided as of January 1 this year, I was in.

I tried a photo a day challenge last year but really lost interest around February. I think the difference with this is the prompts that Chantelle gives at the beginning of each month, as well as the awesome community that's been built around it. So far I've not missed a day, and I'm really hoping to make a photo book at the end of year to sum up in pictures my 2013.

Here's a sample of what I've done this far, I'd love you to follow along if you'd like. You can find me on Instagram under kyliewakeley

An Instagram Christmas

Hello everyone! Oh dear, I really have gotten dreadful at this blogging thing. I guess life really gets in the way sometimes! It hasn't stopped me decorating and making things, and this weekend was one of those ones where Christmas DIY came out. I shared some pics over on Instagram of what I've been doing around the house (I'm kyliewakeley on Instagram if you want to follow along) and I thought I'd share them over here.

One thing I love about the blogging communty, and it's also highlighted by Pinterest is how generous people are in sharing printables, ideas and other ways for all of us to make Christmas special. Many of the things I've made in my home for Christmas have been inspired in some way by someone else, and I hope in turn I can inspire others. Sharing the love!

Anyway, here's some sneek peeks into my Christmas for this year.

The lead up to Christmas is nothing if not an excuse to eat. Since it's summer in Australia for Christmas, in my life it's not Christmas without a pavlova. This recipe is my favourite one to make from Donna Hay, it's easy and pretty much never fails. Add some cream, berries and grated chocolate and you're good to go.

I love sending Christmas cards, here they all are nearly ready for the post.

Presents wrapped and ready. I'm obsessed with keeping to a theme every year, this year is no exception!

For the first time ever, this year I have an advent calendar. Inspired by this printable from Room for Emptiness, I made this little hanging one. So easy! I just grabbed brown lunch bags, sewed up the middle of them to make them narrower, trimmed the sides, popped on the number sticker and hung them on twine with clothes pegs. They're now filled with chocolate....who's betting a couple of days get eaten at once?! I've got to admit, I'm a little bit in love with it. I've caught myself a few times just standing and gazing at it!

And who can say no to some Christmas cushions?! I quickly made some very cheap calico cushions, and then we found some beautiful Christmas pictures like here, here and here and stenciled them on. I can't remember where I found the instructions on how to transfer from paper to fabric, but it involves laser printing and turps!

Have you gotten in the Christmas swing? I think I was incredibly eager for Christmas this year, the tree was up two weeks ago and my shopping is pretty much done! It's just such a wonderful time of year.

 

Calligraphy Love

I am such a fan of hand lettering. While I have really neat handwriting, calligraphy is one of those thing I've not been able to master, So my appreciation is huge for those who are overflowing with talent in this area. Here's a few of my favourites from my Pinterest boards.

By James T Edmondson

By Oh My Deer

By Ladyfingers Letterpress

By Lindsay Letters. This is also available as a free download from Jones Design Company, how perfect for Christmas!

Do you love hand lettering and calligraphy like I do? Are you uber talented and can actually do it?!