Our Kickass veggie patch @plantingseason

Weeds cleared, soil sorted... this is our companion-planted organic veggie patch planted on Planting Day, 20 March.

In this 3x4 m square we planted.....

• Lettuce
• Sage
• Spinach
• Basil
• Broccoli
• Rosemary
• Tomatoes
• Thyme
• Carrots
• Parsley
• Peas
• Wild garlic
• Chives
• Nastursium
• Marigolds
• Celery

Importance of having an organic garden:

The environment

Health

The absolute delight of living in harmony with nature.

The garden is growing fast and furious - must be the worm castings. Looks like we are gonna have YUMMY food very soon...!! :)

I'm off to Splashy Fen now for a long weekend. See you on the other side.

Getting ready for our veggie patch.

Daniela-Designed is a member of planting season. Planting season is an interactiveweb campaign aimed at getting one million people/businesses to plant vegetables on planting day twice a year(march and september). They enable members by providing them with loads of useful info and links (on how to plant a sustainable organic veggie patch). check it out http://www.plantingseason.co.za/

So this year, my boyfriend and I made it our goal to plant a kickass veggie patch. We are unfortunatly (for the time being) are urban dwellers, recently moved into a new suberban spot, with not a much space, and hectically overgrown by weeds.

<-----------------This is we had to work with!!!!

It took us two sweat dripping weekends to clear, get rid of, and prepare soil.

Vermiculture --> Design meets Worm farming?? #earthfriend.ly living

This is our worm farm!

It may seem bizarre to be talking about worms on a jewelley blog, but i love these little guys and am in the process of bringing an aspect of these amazing creatures into my design. Not yet sure how im going to do that,(maybe play on the black-gold concept)but it will come.

Our worms and the worms used most commonly and effectively for vermiculture are known as Red Worms or Red Wrigglers. We feed our daily organic waste to them, with lots of love, and in return we get the best of the best --> nutrient rich organic compost as well as worm wee(super juice) which is a plant food and natural pest repellent. We started our worm farm with 1500 worms 6 months ago and our popultation has since tripled. We love our worms and treat them as we do our pets.

“We are emerging small- scale city farmers” and we use our worms to recycle, reduce reuse and restore.And to have free top of the range organic compost and worm wee.

Recycling our organic matter (the worms food) and then turning it into nutrient rich material.

Reducing our kitchen waste therefore reducing our carbon foot print by reducing the waste we send to landfill sites therefore reducing methane emissions.
Restore, using our vermicompost to put organic rich matter back into the soil.... giving us a great harvest of organic nutrient rich herbs and veggies.

Vermicompost is the highest grade of humus and the richest fertilizer, packed with micro-organisms, good bacteria, enzymes and micro and macro nutrients all in natures perfect ratio. And its 100% organic (that is, if you eating organically from your garden or buying the organic options in stores).

No wonder vermicompost is known as black-gold, and Queen Cleopatra declared earth worms sacred.

My favourite stand @DesignIndaba

My all time favorite stand at the Indaba!

This was done by an Emerging Creative, a Graphic design student from Port Elizabeth, Jedd McNeilage(doo design). There were a few different variations using different dogs... very cute! From what i understand the students had to enter a "making a difference" competition as part of the Sappi Ideas that Matter initiative. This is what he came up with, won and then Sappi sponsored printing and they put these life size cardboard dogs up at all the robots in P.E.

We need more designers like this!

And thanks, Jedd, for the takeaway... Readers, please sms PET to 38300 to help a dog in PE, thanks :)

Jedds details

doo design

Jedd_mc@hotmail.com

Goodtimes in Cape Town @DesignIndaba

Design Indaba is the mecca of design in South Africa. SO much creative inspiration packed under one roof. It was an absolute privilege to be apart of it as an Emerging Creative.
Re-use and Recycle definitely seems to be the way forward.... not only in everyday living but in asthetic design as well. I love it! Its fantastic to see people doing amazing AND USEFUL things with junk and waste. At some point, hopefully soonish, I will most certainly come out with a range incorporating recycled materials and silver.

The next best thing about my trip to CTN was the Kirstenbosch Gardens.... beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! Had an amazing day there. Took loads of pics that i will undoubtedly use as direct reference in jewellery pieces to come.

And this was my stand. Such fun! :)

Daniela-Designed
Emerging Creative

Daniela-Designed Catalogue

Daniela-Designed

View the whole photo gallery slideshow here

Piece name	Photo link	Price
Design-Indaba Range
Watering Can	Click here	R 1 600
Pot Plant	Click here	R 1 350
Leafy bangle	Click here	R 800
Leafy dropping necklace	Click here	R 1 600
Silver spoon (1 limited edition only)	Click here	R870
Leaf bangle with jump rings	Click here	R 550
Plain leaf bangle	Click here	R 450
Leafy string necklace	Click here	R 930
Leafy string bangle	Click here	R 600
Leafy bush rings	Click here	R 500
Single silver leaf ring	Click here	R 280
Leaf-link bracelet	Click here	R 700
Leaf-link neckpiece	Click here	R 1 200
2-silver-leaf earrings (pair)	Click here	R320
3-silver-leaf earrings (pair)	Click here	R 400
Leafy bunch earrings (pair)	Click here	R 180
Single leaf studs (pair)	Click here	R 120
Single leaf earrings (pair)	Click here Option 2	R 180 R 130
Fine silver leaf shape earrings (pair)	Click here	R 130
Copper enamel leaf earrings (pair)	Click here	R 160
Other
Blue-enamelled disk pendant	Click here	R 540
Cones ring	Click here	R 450
Foliage earrings (pair)	Click here	R 350
Peacock neckpiece	Click here	R 1 100
Peacock earrings (pair)	Click here	R 220
Peacock rings	Click here	R 220
Red Indian leaf neckpiece	Click here	R 1 100

Click here to order

Ready, set, let's go! A glimpse at the d-d Design Indaba range on show this week in CTN

After a hectic month of preparation for Design Indaba I can almost say I am ready. But ready or not, I am excited for this expo cause it's the first time I'm really ever going to be exhibiting for a large public audience. Just gotta put the final touches to my display then haul it all down to the Mother City for art lovers to check out. 

I am double-excited about this adventure because it is also the first time I will ever be in Cape Town!! Whoo hoo! So, despite the fact that there's work to be done, I will be sure to get in a few of the sights and sounds and maybe even a little party or two...

Hope to see you there. And if you are not going to be in CTN then you can check out my online catalogue HERE.

Remember to subscribe to my blog via email on the homepage. I'll be posting news and pics from Design Indaba so keep coming around...

Dee
--
www.daniela-designed.com
@danieladesigned on twitter

AWARENESS piece. A wearable piece, stand alone, brand

I really enjoyed the whole process of designing and manufacturing this piece, mostly because I didn’t have any specifics to follow - I threw the vernier out and just manufactured as I went. I find this a very rewarding way to work as nothing is too planned and in the end you come out with something that seems like a surprise.

Following in toe with my leafy earrings I wanted to continue with the organic theme. I kept my design and metal surface relatively plain and simple as I thought it would take away from the plant if I didn’t, the plant is the main focus of this piece.

This pot plant makes me really happy, and although it is not fully wearable, if it was to be worn, the wearer would have to be ever conscious of the fact that there is a plant with soil on their finger.

This makes the ring a mindful piece of jewellery, I like this idea. I would maybe like to make a sister to this piece that would be even more mindful, by creating a big pot with three finger holes.

Wearing this ring would be restrictive to the hand - a taste of our own medicine and reminder of how we feel we have the right to cut down trees and plants and then restrict them to grow only where suits us e.g. parks and nature reserves. Making the rest a concrete jungle.

From this piece I would definitely like to create an entire range of more wearable items.

I have received positive feedback, now just to leave it on the windowsill to get sun and love, and hope that my plant (and concept) grows.

Emotional piece

For this piece of jewellery I wanted to portray feelings of happiness joy and fulfilment. I therefore thought back to a time when I felt particularly happy which was living in Underberg. Part of what made this time special to me was the beauty surrounding me and the 3 hrs of yoga I did daily.

This was significant as it taught me a lot about myself and the life style I want to pursue. The yoga allowed me to relate it back to Indian designs as they aesthetically appeal to me. As well as the bright strong colour.

The technique I used is piercing as I feel it somehow is able portray a certain amount of depth whilst been decorative and effective. I also used enamel as I wanted to show the bright happiness that I felt at this time.

I would definitely like to expand on this piece by putting more time and thought into it as I believe with that it could be really beautiful. I think it is successful in showing the emotions I felt. I learnt about setting issues and a bit about enamelling, but most importantly I think that with every piece of jewellery I learn how to look at life from a different perspective and it allows me to put time and thought into aspects of life that I appreciate, as well as learning something new about myself each time, that’s what’s most important to me.

The feedback I received was overall positive, I think, and helped me to try and become more decorative. I am excited to make a beautiful chain for this pendant to finish the piece off.

“Let the beauty of what you love, be what you do”

I interpreted my quote in a directly personal way, by literally making the things I love; plants. I looked at different types of foliage that I find beautiful as well as looking at the positive and negative shapes that they made.

I used piercing, chasing, forging and blackening to get different textures and shapes of the different leaves, the blackening was to emphasis the positive and negative shapes and to make “shadows” as leaves do naturally when layered. These earrings make me feel happy and I like the way they jingle, and the fact that each earring is different - unique - yet clearly belonging as a pair.

While making this piece I learned that layering metal to look natural isn’t as easy as layering organic materials. I also learned about the different names of different shaped leaves. If I was to make this piece again I would make the individual elements smaller, so there could be more of them and I would attach them differently to make the back of the earring more beautiful. The making of this piece reinforced in myself that I want to carry on making “organic” pieces... it gives me most pleasure :)

B-tech intentions

This year i aim to use the concept of my jewellery to create an awareness around my topic, "sustainability" (expressing my concern), using my jewellery as a tool to convey this (narrative) message.

I intend (somehow) manufacturing jewellery that conveys the vulnerability/fragililty of nature. Whilst doing this i would like to investigate---- then incorporate where possible , sustainable ways to make jewellery more environmentally friendly.

I also plan to do more research on indigenous trees/plants and using these as reference to illustrate both the positive and the negative aspect of sustainability(fauna and flora as indicators). I also intend on finding and looking into jewellers and artist who use the environment as subject matter(in any meaningful way, not necessarily visual).eg Hamish Cambell , Sharon Church.

Other side.

Cloisonne Enamel Pendant.

Reversable.

Ring from the bottom.

A statement piece. Cones made from 925 and copper. Random ones blackened inside.

Photo etched 925 with white enamel.
I experimented with the kiln at different temperatures,
therefore giving the old 'antique' look desired.
I really enjoyed making this Braclet, and am looking forward to working with enamels again

The back of the peice. 925. Etched.
Each link etched with different design.

My concept and ideas come from the more traditional Art Nouveau stylized floral patterns.

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