Hallowed Grounds Espresso

This is a job we just finished at Hartleys. The cafe opened a few days before Xmas and is trading over the new year period, as those of us staying in Brisvegas over the hols still want coffee!

It's located on busy Logan Rd, pretty much opposite Photo Continental and beside the Raine and Horne real estate office. If you're lucky you can jag a street park out the front, but there is also a heap of parking behind the store. Just look for the blue P sign directing you up a narrow driveway.

This is the tenancy a couple of months ago before the fitout.

Above photo is the progress of all the finishes starting to come together.

This is the more developed selection finishes that I did at Hartleys. The scroll pattern is the feature wallpaper. The longer rectangular sample is the black timber vinyl used on the floor. The other samples are laminates used on the counter and other various joinery.

The lovely Baresque wallpaper installed behind the counter.

The dark wall contrasts really well against the "Zebra timber" chairs the owners selected.

The menu boards are being re-written this week as the owners just did these as temporary boards and it's very tricky to do black boards until you've had some practise.

Owners Jon (left) and Clive (right)

The guys will soon be extending their hours for weekend breakfasts and early 5:30am starts for commuters who are chasing their wake up "cup of joe".

Keep an eye on their website currently being developed.

www.hallowedgrounds.com.au

Happy & successful trading Hallowed Grounds.

Warwick

 

I called in at Warwick Fabrics yesterday. It seems every time I go there they have some cute new upholstered seats or ottomans to showcase their fabrics. These scriptive ottomans were very eye catching.

This beautiful big day bed is near their gorgeous external courtyard. It gave me lovely ideas about spending some time over the holidays relaxing with my always massive pile of books and magazines.

And to finish off, their very stylish designer Xmas tree at the front door.

Merry Christmas.

Lyssy May

Today's store is for the girls! It's called Lyssy May and the store specialises in beautiful hand made hand bags. The actual store is based in Melbourne, but Alyssa who is the creative genius behind the brand, has a fantastic web site, which just makes me drooll every time I have a peak.

Originally when Alyssa started her shop she was based in Brisbane and I used to often drive past and get stopped at the red light out the front. I was always looking in the window until one day I finally went in and became hooked. This is my own collection featured above. The one at the back with the red stick handles is called "chopsticks", as they are actually chopsticks. I use my bags for special occasions, or when I know I'm not going on site, as I'm always worried about them getting covered in plaster board dust. And like any woman who appreciates shoes and handbags; I love them all!

When Alyssa was based in Brisbane I hosted an afternoon tea handbag party. It was a lovely excuse to have a girlie afternoon and get dressed up and enjoy champagne and nibbles, whilst "shopping" all under the shade of the jacaranda trees. These lovely ladies above are Di Dalton (my best friend's MIL) and Suzanne McCarthy (my sister in law)

Half the fun in hosting a girl's afternoon tea is the planning and decorating and all the little touches. I sent out hand made invitations and then decorated the trees with these simple hanging silk flowers, all in the same colour scheme as the invites. They looked very effective "en mass".

My gorgeous and always stylish friend Rachie Dalton (above) enjoying pink champagne and browsing.

Some more decorating touches that I'd potted up a few weeks earlier and painted the simple terracotta pots to match the colour scheme also.

Check out the latest Lyssy May range and I bet you'll become hooked too.

http://www.lyssymay.com/

Rosalie Village Garden Centre

Head from Milton Fruit Bowl back up Baroona Rd towards Wine Experience (shown on a previous post) and you'll find Rosalie Village Garden Centre. This "store" lies between Wine Experience and the Rosalie Deli on the corner. You enter via this narrow staircase between two shops.

It's not huge, but they do carry a good range of plants. It's always a great location if you are looking for a "living" gift for a friend.

For 10 minutes you can loose yourself from the cafe bustle below and immerse yourself in greenery and the gentle sound of trickling water and the scent of flowers and plants.

Milton Fruit Bowl

I love this store. Milton Fruit Bowl on Baroona Rd has been here for years. But it's more than just a fruit shop. It's a feast for your eyes. The owners are very switched on and carry a gorgeous selection of French market baskets, timber crates in assorted sizes and also other beautiful products like these cymbidium orchids.

If you are looking for a special type of fruit or vege, they're sure to have it. They have awards on display for mushroom retailing. They don't just carry one type they have an amazing array of each fruit and vege.

They also stock a huge selection of nuts and spices. This is the place to go if you are looking for good quality and something that you can't find elsewhere and take your time to enjoy browsing!

Flight

Here's a job recently completed by Hartley Shopfitters. It's the new function room attached to Era restaurant at South Brisbane. If you've been to Era before you may remember that they had a large bottle shop next door. After the January floods where they ended up with approx 300mm of water through the restaurant they assessed what they wanted to do. They decided to reduce the bottle shop to around half its size and create a function room which can be accessed via the restaurant.



This stunning chandelier is from Yellow Goat a light manufacturing company based on the Gold Coast. They create the most incredible mind blowing light fittings. It makes a fantastic feature.

http://www.yellowgoat.com.au/

This really effective look on the windows is a pattern used elsewhere in Era. It's in a small version on some of their suspended lamp shades. We blew this up and played with the layout. It's done simply with frosted film. Sometimes the most simple things can have the most outstanding effects. The Hamilton Family, who own Era added the mesh curtains, which look fantastic.

There are two doors into the function room. This one in the left corner of the photo below, comes in from the restaurant. We reclaimed a couple of bays from the beautiful wine display wall.

It was a pleasure to work with Brad and his family and I'm sure that anyone dining at Flight will have the same outstanding experience of food and service that I have previously enjoyed at Era.

http://www.erabistro.com.au/

A nice drop

This store, "Wine Experience" at Rosalie, Brisbane is a client of Hartley Shopfitters. It's located in the Baroona Rd precinct. Although the store has been there for a number of years, towards the end of 2009, Hartleys did a major refurb. It looked fantastic after and had a really nice and dark moody feel. The store has a mezzanine section at the back and then a type of attic room, where they run wine appreciation courses.
http://www.wineexperience.com.au/

During January this year most people would have Wine Experience on tv, however you would have only seen the top of the store facade above the flood water. Pretty much the whole store was flooded except for this top attic room. Some wine was able to be moved upstairs into this room, other bottles were moved off site, but a lot of stock was still lost. As soon as the water receded the guys from Hartleys were over there helping to clean up and then running all the new joinery thru the factory. Fortunately the plans were easily at hand and it's always quicker to construct a 2nd time round!

After a long year for the owners of Wine Experience; father and son Denis and Michael Nolan, are just finishing off the last areas. Hartley's have just made this wall mural for their attic room.  It's made from timber wine crates with the manufacturers stamps on them. Some of the crates are very old and rare. I had the fun job of laying them out to see what type of pattern we could get. It was like making a patch work quilt out of timber.

We might even look at some more wine inspired art for this area. This is a little project I made a while ago for myself. No, I didn't drink all the bottles myself!

A parting note with a wine undertone- if you consider yourself a "land lubber" and can never remember your port from your starboard, here's the trick.

"There's always Port left at the end of the night."

On the grass!

Here's a bit of fun that I had recently. Grass where you wouldn't expect it. Astro turf in fact. It's a barber shop at Whites Hill in Brisbane. I thought it would be good to play with some masculine elements such as grass and Western red cedar. When the shop was completed it had a really strong smell from the cedar, which also added to the "blokey" feel.

When I started looking into artificial grass, I realised what a huge range there was. It's used by golf courses for the putting ranges as well as other sports and also local councils on road side strips. The grass comes in a variety of pile heights and some even has the brownish undergrowth effect.

Capalaba Produce

This is one of my favourite stores and well known to residents on the South East side of Brisbane. Capalaba Produce is fantastic and huge and constantly busy. They have all range of products for gardens, feed for livestock, as well as livestock such as chickens, ducklings, all types of birds, fish,  a fantastic plant nursery, pet supplies and even a little "farm" called Ted's corner.
There's something for everyone to look at. My kids love walking through Ted's Corner and patting the pigs, goats and sheep.
It's very common to drive into the car park and see one of the resident peacocks on full display with his tail up. The giant turkeys wander freely amongst the car park and there is also a fluffy chook who spends her days in the plant nursery as she gets picked on by the other chooks in the main pen.
The staff are a wealth of knowledge and carry all heavy bags to your car.

I love the facade which was constructed a few years ago. It has the look of an old Western town.

We Made Home Beautiful!

Very exciting news- my house has made it into the December issue of Home Beautiful, currently in the shops. The photo shoot was done in March and as I've learned in magazine world, there are very long lead times. Some of the home design magazines have stories stacked up in excess of 12 months.

My kids are very excited and the magazine has gone to school for show and tell. The photo shoot itself was a really fun day. We had the photographer and stylist there all day and they really do earn their money as it was a lot of work to take the original 20 photos. By the end of the day we were all very exhausted.

In some of the kitchen photos what you don't see are the dirty dishes hidden in the sink and the rest of the lunch crockery thrown into the dishwasher and other cupboards, just for the sake of creating the appearance of clear benches! Let's face it, anyone with kids knows how hard it is to keep the house spotless.

Happy Reading!

Tropical Lush

A weekend of gardening ahead with dreams of creating my own tropical oasis. I always love visiting locations that have lovely landscaping. We are so lucky in Qld to be able to easily create  lush tropical gardens. I know our Southern cousins look on with envy, however I think sometimes we do the same with their cold climate gardens full of abundant roses and all types of beautiful Autumn trees.
This is some inspiration from the grounds of Maison Noosa (one of my favourite towns) and the nearby Ginger Factory which has it's incredible ginger and flower festival coming up in January.

A stitch in time

These exciting finishes are actually classed as laminates. They're from the Sibu range which Halifax is distributing. I'm really excited about the stitched leather. There are a heap of stitching patterns and colours. It opens up a whole new world for shopfitouts. Previously we would need to send that part of the job off to the upholsterer with very specific instructions about the thread, stitch sizes etc, whereas now these can be applied in the factory along with the other laminated surfaces. The fabric type finishes including the furs, all come on a flexible backing, which also allow them to be bent around corners. One of the downfalls with traditional laminate is the black line you get along the edges. I'm looking forward to using these in upcoming jobs.

My Secret Garden

This beautiful store in Teneriffe, Brisbane is owned by Rick Majewski and Kerry Ryan. Rick is the very talented graphic designer who designed my Bailey Retail logo. Opening this store has been a dream of Rick's and it's wonderful to see dreams come to fruition!
My secret garden is aimed at all the inner city and Newstead, Valley residents who live in apartments and have small gardens. Rick has an eye for gorgeous product and I am fortunate that when I visit his store he shows me through all his stock, as I get so distracted by it all that I can't concentrate to talk about normal things with him.
My secret garden is in Florence St and definitely worth visiting.

cottage elements

For the past couple of weeks I've been driving past this Queenslander cottage in Springhill. It's been at various times of the afternoon and on some occassions I've seen the lights on behind this screening. I love the effective look created by such a simple use of vertical and horizontal timber studs. The lush palms and foliage behind really set off the white.

Out and About

This is an interesting little cafe that has been catching my eye as I drive through Coorparoo. It's called "The Gallery Soho". It's one of the trendy little "hole in the wall" cafe and coffee outlets that are becoming very popular at the moment and has an interesting blend of hexagonal mosaic tiles, hand blown glass pendants, exciting wall graphics and lots of oiled timber all complimented by the planter boxes at the front which add a nice distraction to the concrete of the adjacent shops.