Nie Nie Day Auction


For anyone who hasn’t read about it, a wonderful wonderful woman and blogger named Stephanie Nielson (known as Nie Nie) and her husband were in a private plane crash a little over a week ago. You can read details on her sister’s blog. They are an awesome and inspirational bunch, with a long and expensive road of recovery ahead. So, that brings us to today – Nie Nie Day! A day of auctions across blogland, with all money going to the Nielson Family Fund. You can find many more auctions here and we encourage you to bid on many! As fans of Nie Nie and her inspiring blog, we couldn’t let this opportunity to help pass us by, so we came up with something to contribute.

WHICH BRINGS US TO OUR ITEM:

The winner of this auction will receive a

Our designers (McKay and Chris) will work with you
to create the perfect artwork for your blog.

Already have the blog design of your dreams? Why not bid on it as a gift for a friend!

We happen to think that we are easy to work with, fun, creative, and versatile. McKay has been designing web sites for 9 years, and her work includes Peekaboo Baby, Kage Handbags, This is Me Journal, Tales from the Crib, and others. McKay also worked in the interactive division of Scholastic Publishing, and is now a mom when not glued to her computer (well, she’s a mom even WHEN glued to her computer, but not a very effective one). Chris recently graduated with a degree in Computer Graphic Design from Natcoll in New Zealand and has extensive experience in logo and brand concept design. Chris designed the logo for the Snapdragon Inn, the concept for this blog you are reading right now, and designed all the logos pictured in this post as well as many, many others. She has done a great deal of work in print design for private clients, and is also working on her first line of textiles.

How this auction works:

  • You have until MONDAY (9/1), midnight EDT to bid.
  • Make a comment that contains your bid. Please don’t post under Anonymous – use a Blogger login or the “other” category.
  • Bidding starts at $25. Bids must be in increments of $1.00. Any bids with increases of less than $1.00 will be deleted.
  • Winning bid will be the highest bid as of 12:01am EDT on Tuesday 9/2. If you have a blog or link associated with your comment, we will contact you there, or you can email us at innkeeper(at)snapdragon(dot)com. We will then send you instructions on sending payment directly to the Christian and Stephanie Nielson Rehab Fund, either via PayPal or a check.

    • Pillows – gathering thoughts

    images from stylist Irina Graewe found on decor8

    As I mentioned in the My Deco File post, and Chris mentioned in her post on fabric design, we are getting ready to send Chris off to India to work with our friends on some custom fabric designs, as well as sourcing the other fabrics for our interiors and getting our pillow covers and curtains and the like all taken care of.

    With that in mind, we’ve been on a massive “pillow inspiration” hunt, and it just so happens that decor8 did had an awesome post on pillows just last week:


    And just this morning design*sponge has a post on new pillows from Angela Adams:

    We’re looking for inspiration on three points here – fabrics, pillow shape, and pillow finishing. What is out there that YOU love?

    –McKay

    Signage!


    We are getting closer and closer to having all our permits, and were needing a mock up of the sign we will have in the front along the road. McKay and K80 gave out a few ideas and then I worked with the curves of the logo and the white space to come up with the final, Top Right was the winner. It’s only a mock up but I can just see a beautiful wood sign with the perfectly placed spot pointing upwards. Nice.

    –Chris

    In Training


    We will hit Brimfield next week, and in preparation Chris and I headed out for a day of flea marketing on Saturday. Not really looking to purchase, more to get our brains ready and a feeling of the prices we can find in our area.

    After we got about a half hour down the road, we realized we had forgotten to bring along a camera to document the day for the blog. And as we both have pretty crappy cell phone cameras, we decided we’d have to go without. Please forgive! So, you’ll just have to picture Chris and myself cruising the roads of Vermont in my rumbling rig.

    One of our first stops was The Joy of Junque. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven by this spot and have never stopped, but it’s a great find! They had some nice pieces at really great prices. You can see some of their items on their website (and pictured above), but a number of my favorites (like a beautiful secretary/filing cabinet) are not on there. Again, I promise we’ll bring a camera next time!

    Next we went through Manchester with the goal of stopping by the Manchester flea market mentioned in the design*sponge flea market guide but there didn’t seem to be much going on there. In the interest of time, we skipped the VADA Antiques Show, figuring we’ll get more than a taste of that at Brimfield, and continued north, stopping at all the signs that said Antiques. We found some good deals and some awesome people, and we’ll certainly be back that way soon.

    Again, in Rutland the design*sponge guide let us down, but then again we didn’t exactly call ahead. Exhausted at this point, we cranked up the tunes and cruised on back home. It was a good training day, but clearly we have to work on our endurance!

    And to finish up, as usual a somewhat random addition to one of my posts – as I was writing this I went looking for a cabinet that was like one that I saw, and I didn’t find it, but I did find this beaut – not the look of the Inn really, but SO COOL:

    from 1stdibs.com

    Maybe for my office? Next time I stumble on to a few extra thousand $. :-)

    – McKay

    My Deco File


    The majority of us live in the same town, some within shouting distance of each other. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to easy sharing of information as we make our way through this process. I’ve especially found that as each of us gather inspiration photos and ideas from around the internet, we end up clogging everyone’s inbox with emailed photos, not really very organized.

    That’s why I was so excited to try out Domino’s new My Deco File tool. You can save images from any website or that you upload yourself, organize them into albums (called Deco Books), add comments, even share them via email or on a Facebook page. (The Snapdragon Inn is on Facebook by the way – if you haven’t already become a fan, you should!)

    So far, I’ve found it to be easy to use and we’ve started right in with a window treatment Deco Book, a wall decor ideas Deco Book, and a decorative pillows Book. They aren’t quite to sharing stage yet, but I imagine sometime next week we’ll have something to show. We are working hard to get our concepts in line before Chris heads off to India to get our fabrics!

    I will definitely use this for personal use, but it’s also a great tool when collaborating with others across distances. Anyone out there have design tools that they’ve found especially helpful when working on their own projects? Please share!

    –McKay