Covet Garden Goes IndieGoGo

[A mock-up for the cover of our special print edition of Covet Garden!]

Last week, on our Facebook page, Covet Garden told you about our plan to create a special print edition, called Covet Garden Home. Today, we are pleased as punch to announce our Covet Garden Home IndieGoGo campaign to make that happen.

We launched our online lifestyle magazine with a mission to give you a rare peek into the lives and homes of people with lots of imagination who have decorated their living spaces by themselves. And since we débuted the most frequent question we've received from our readers is, When will you have a print edition?

Our plan is to produce a 100+ page half magazine/half book that will help readers tell their own design stories by revisiting your favourite homes from past issues of Covet Garden and by brand-new environments, DIY projects and food and drink ideas. Our goal is to deliver printed and bound copies to our readers by Winter 2013.

Why are we asking for help? We haven’t charged anything to bring you Covet Garden magazine online, but a print version means additional production costs such as paper, printing and shipping from the printing press to our offices and then to our readers.

In short, we’d like to raise $18,000 to help cover these necessary expenses. This figure is not the full project cost; we hope to make money (and spread the word about Covet Garden) by selling the print edition in stores and through booksellers as well as online. 

For full details about our print plans and our fundraising campaign, visit our IndieGoGo Campaign page here!

Jenn Hannotte on 7 Vignettes

When clever ways of showcasing new talent emerge with new technologies and apps, I get excited. At the start of this year, the very clever Jen Bishop of Interiors Addict out of Australia launched a contest called 7 Vignettes on Instagram, the popular photo-sharing social media app.

Here's the deal: a couple of weeks prior to the 1st of a month, she posts a list of seven broad concepts— "Layered," "Soft," "White," etc. Then, each day, for seven days, you create and post a vignette using that day's theme. Last month, the contest logged over 15,000 images and is growing all the time. If you don't want to join in on the fun, searching the #7vignettes hashtag is a great place for inspiration, and will lead you to many talented creative people from all over the world.

Check out some of last month's winners for the concepts of Ceramic, Dining, Colourful and Timber. Get all the details here!

Contributor Jenn Hannotte is the principal of Hannotte Interiors.

Putting the Flea Back Into The Junction

We here at Covet Garden love the Junction Flea (full disclosure, one of our co-founders has a table there) all year-round, but frankly we are so glad that it's moving back outdoors for their May 12th extravaganza. Here are three reasons why:

1. More and bigger spaces. More space means more stuff. The Great Hall was great, but sometimes felt a little claustrophobic. We like free-range shopping!

2. We also like making a day of a trip to the Junction. While you can easily spend hours examining well-selected treasure both handmade and vintage, checking out local restaurants, galleries and shops only adds to the adventure.

3. Good eats! One of our favourite things about the Flea is all of the artisinal food and drink. There's nothing like starting a day at the Flea at the Manual Labour Coffee's trailer, interspersed with some frozen ice pops, a nice sandwich for lunch and whatever new and wonderous treats the vendors at the Flea will come up with this month.

And if you can't make it out this month, you can always check out Flea co-founders Paul Mercer and Micah Lenahan's new venture, Thank You. It's a jewel box of a boutique at 1080 Queen St. W. (at Dovercourt  across from the Great Hall). Its mix of carefully chosen vintage goods and new handmade artifacts such as silk screened posters and greeting cards is full of the spirit of the Junction Flea.

Good Fourtou

[Designer Brian McCarthy's bathroom from House Beautiful's April 2013 issue]

We came across this image of a whimsical, art-filled home in last month's issue of House Beautiful. We were instantly inspired by the unconventional use of art in the space — especially the mix of classical furniture and antiques mixe with the modern photo-based art. Further digging on the internet turned up more amazing work from Belgian artist Jean Francois Fourtou, the artist who created two of the pieces shown above.

[Fourtou's giraffe sculpture in desiner Ora Ito's home via here]

Of course, the life-sized animal pieces he constructs out of paper reminded us of the presence of animals in Morgan and Christopher's apartment from this month's Covet Garden. Taxidermy may not be your thing, but how amazing are these giraffes in the spaces here? Fourtou's pieces are all about memories of childhood and trying to recover lost pieces of your past in your environment. We certainly remember thinking that a magical creature might be around every corner when we were young and love the idea of recapturing that feeling in our homes now!

[Fourtou's home and atelier in Marrakech]

Issue 34 is Now Live!

[cover image Ashley Capp]

This month, Covet Garden is super psyched to take you inside of Morgan and Christopher's College Street apartment. Not only does it house the couple's many cool and colourful collections (Contemprary art! Needlepoint! Anatomical models!), it is also home to the The Contemporary Zoological Conservatory. That's right, Morgan and Christopher have a museum right in the middle of their abode.

As always, we have cool DIY and drink projects plus fashion and décor ideas inspired by Morgan and Christopher's distinctive style. Not to steal the spotlight from this dynamic duo, this issue also contains an important announcement about Covet Garden's future plans to take over the world! Read on for more details and have a happy May!