dotty for spots...

 We love a roll of sticker dots! So many uses - here are three of our favourites...

We bought our sticker dots up from a newsagent. They are available in a full range of colours, including metallics and neon. Oh the possibilities! We 'd love to hear your ideas...

the mondocherry girls xx

Sunday styling...

A beautiful sunny Sunday gave us the perfect opportunity to style up a few collections outside.

A bunch of our colourful cushion designs brought out the pretty colours in our painted linen button artwork.  We are loving the Brita Sweden indoor/outdoor rugs (also available in our shop).

The little car park behind our shop was empty today - the rustic fence makes a great backdrop and it was great not having to load the car up. So convenient!

Going green...

It was almost too perfect a day for photography - we were willing the tiny clouds over to cut down on the shadows. Waiting around in the sunshine sent Joy a little loopy!

We love working together - hooray for sisters!

Clare and Joy xx

classic blue and white...

Blue and white china and ceramics have always been one of Mum's favourite things to collect and so for a long time I steered away from them in an attempt to find my own decorating style. Over the last few years, however,  I have been increasingly adding this classic combination into my home.  My collection of blue and white vases have come mainly from op shops/thrift stores so they are not worth a lot but still manage to look great in a group. Teaming them with pink and fuchsia flowers is one of my favourite ways to display them. I have a feeling that I may be adding more and more blue and white to my home as the years go by...

Have you followed in your Mother's footsteps as far as decorating goes? Or are your homes completely different?

Clare xx

Instagram colour...

We were fairly late to jump on the Instagram bandwagon, but now we love it! With our phones always on hand, it is a quick and easy way to capture a gorgeous colour scheme, inspiration and new products arriving in store. Please come and share in our colourful world here!


the mondocherry girls xx

aglow...

I absolutely love the way that the afternoon sun, streaming through the window, lights up these beautiful tea glasses. Their jewel colours positively glow!

Love the pretty rainbow on the side of the plate.

Clare xx

baby pink...

Just finished a custom order for a brand new baby girl - no prizes for guessing her name!! A little bit of soft pink is always pretty, especially as little Lucy has two big brothers.

happy heart felt garland - available on our website

printed linen button artwork - email us to order similar

the mondocherry girls  xx

in miniature...

This afternoon I went out into my garden to pick some of the gorgeous roses that grow there, only to find that the gardener (who is included with our rental) had obviously decided that today was a good day to prune the rose bushes.  Hardly a rose left! So, I hunted around and found a selection of miniature posies which might not have quite the impact of a big vase of roses, but are still very pretty in their own right. Sometimes, you just have to work with what you have!

Clare x

the result of a paint tester pot...

Over the last 14 years or so this cupboard has been valuable storage  in the various homes we have lived in during that time ( 11 different houses I think at last count!) It has done duty in a study storing paperwork, a playroom holding puzzles, a dining room displaying crockery, and even in a hallway as a sort of general dumping ground. It was a super cheap buy and I remember intending to paint it from the very beginning, but just never got round to it. However, last time I was down at my local local hardware store, I impulsively picked a paint sample from the stand and had one of the tiny sample pots mixed up in this sea green colour. An hour later, and the insides of the shelves were done! I love the depth this gives the the rather deep cubby holes and the way the colour highlights the various vases and collections that I have displayed.

Now, I just need to get round to the other items on my  procrastination list - rug, plant pot, upholstery, window cleaning....

Hmmmm. Mental note: twist bottom left handle around a bit. It is funny how the camera highlights things you never notice in real life :)

Clare x

vintage botanical collection...

One of our favourite parts about having a shop is product styling. We have such fun shuffling things around, grouping items in a different way, and playing with colour and form.  Yesterday we created a display to highlight our vintage botanic collection using one of our shop blackboards. We were especially excited as we had imagined this vignette from the moment we started hand cutting the first petals of the first artwork. Don't you just love it when an idea comes to life just as you had dreamt it would?!

clockwise from top left: poppy, blue hydrangea, rose, purple hydrangea, peony, daisy

we love the amazing texture that using the vintage illustraions gives

sketching up the chalkboard

the fiddly bit!

finishing off

All artworks available in our online shop.

 the mondocherry girls xx

hello, love, hug...

Rows of pretty coloured embroidery threads have inspired our new range of greeting cards. Each one has a hand stitched (we must be crazy!) word on a linen square, hopefully useful for all sorts of occassions.

Ready to be attached to cards...

They will be arriving on our website and in our shop after Easter...


the mondocherry girls xx

using what I have for an Easter display...

It seems that I used to have a lot more time to make, bake and decorate for Easter. I'm not sure if you are feeling the same way, but this term seems to have been particularly busy and I can't believe how quickly Easter has crept up. This morning I was feeling just a little guilty I hadn't done anything special, so I 'shopped' from my home and found a few bits and pieces - an off cut of artificial grass (thanks Kelly!), a ceramic bunny, a bunch of pretty tulips, some old Scrabble letters and my collection of hand painted, wooden eggs - to put together a display for my hall table.

I love these eggs...I'm sticking to a soft palette of pinks, cream and golds for my collection.

My kids were thrilled with the little vignette and I was reminded that we don't always have to invest heaps of time or money into making a holiday or event feel special.


Joy xx

from the lab...

We love finding new ways to display items in our shop and are always moving things around and rearranging products. When we stumbled acorss these old laboratory beakers we knew they would be perfect to showcase a stack of our colourful Keep Resin bangles. The beakers would also look stunning lined up along a dining table with a few pretty flower stems in each, or they would be a great way to store a growing collection of small shells or pebbles. What would you use them for?

the mondocherry girls xx

a colourful holiday house with a vintage touch...

It has been an absolute pleasure getting to know some of our regular customers since we opened our shop 7 months ago. One lovely lady who pops in to say hello (and who totally brightens up our day with her beautiful smile) is Angie. Angie and I have a lot in common - I think we bonded over stories about our unruly hair and skin that burns at even the thought of the sun! - and when she talked about her beach house at the Mornington Peninsular, we begged for photos as we knew that we were going to love it.

Angie and her family have had the beach house for 5 years and in that time Angie has been slowly decorating it with vintage finds and lots of pretty colour. She wanted it to have a totally different feel to her Melbourne home (which is decorated in more of a traditional Hampton's style) and for it to be a relaxed place to escape for the weekend. We think she has succeeded!

We love the gorgeous use of colour in the kitchen and way Angie has linked the blues, sea greens, reds and yellows through the various accessories.

Angie found one of these vintage electric kettles in a small antique store down the coast, and when the owner saw her interest, he went out to his shed and brought back the rest of his extensive collection and offered them to Angie at a bargain price. He even removed all the electric cables etc from them. What a find!

Such a pretty, welcoming bedroom. The vintage floral paintings look fabulous hung all the way to the ceiling and the combination of the watermelon and pale blue are perfect.

Can't you just imagine sitting at this cute little dining table, with its mismatched chairs and stool, having a cup of tea in the morning and contemplating whether the plan for the day should go beach, coffee, and nap or coffee, beach, and nap?! Life is tough on holiday.... :)

Thanks so much for letting us share these photos Angie.

Clare x

Monday fun...

New felt  garland - 11 puffy handstitched flags on 1.5m white cord and
Felt flower bouquet - original mondocherry designs!

We are busy spending a very hot public holiday styling up some last minute shots for our new website. Lucky we have collections of many items to use as props such as these old Ladybird books with their colourful spines!


Clare & Joy xx

3 balls of wool - my diy headboard...

I love a big master bedroom! We are very lucky to have a spacious one in this rental house in Melbourne, but it has been surprising hard to decorate as the walls, high ceiling and built in cupboards are all painted a very yellow-y cream and the flooring is a hard grey vinyl. The fresh white and yellow I used in my last house looked rather sickly so I needed to add some interest to stop it all looking a little blah. I am still on the lookout for a big rug to break up the expanse of grey floor (any ideas welcome please!), but in the meantime decided to add a bit of colour and texture to the wall behind the bed as it is the first thing you see as you open the door.

Artwork would have been the obvious solution, but the curvy shape of my bedhead makes it a little tricky to balance out and not being able to hammer nails in the wall meant that I would be having nightmares every night about getting knocked out by falling frames! So I repurposed two old sheets of pegboard that we had stashed in the garage, sprayed it with silver piant and got to work with a couple of balls of wool. I tried a cross stitch type pattern at first but it didn't have quite the graphic impact I wanted. So I ended up doing a sort of long stitch in a diamond and chevron design. It was a bit fiddly trying to reach behind the large piece of pegboard so I found the quickest and easiest method was to stand the board upright and have my eldest daughter on the back side feeding the needle and wool back through the holes. These children of mine are very patient with my crazy ideas!

I am happy with the way it has turned out and it certainly breaks up all the cream! I can easily cut off the pink if I change my colur scheme and replace it with something else, or unpick it all and change the design.  

Clare x

the finishing touches...

Have you ever bought a new car, only to suddenly see the same make and model driving everywhere when you had never really noticed them before? Or, you find out you are pregnant and then notice that every second person at the shopping centre seems to have a baby bump?! Well, since I decided on the colours to redecorate my new main bedroom, I am seeing grey, pale pink and sea green everywhere! We have ripped off all the old wallpaper (what a job that was!) and I've been picking up a few bits and pieces to tie the whole scheme together - that's the part I find the most fun!

Pretty picture frames

Gorgeous bowls in the perfect colours to hold so of the bits and bobs on my dresser.

Joy x