Carl Kleiner's Christmas

 Toy Santa

Souvenier Santa

Fashion Santa

 Tax-Free Santa (Image source)

We're only about 6 weeks away from Christmas and I'm yet to buy one single present and more importantly, get into the festive spirit (I've have had a couple of mince pies mind you). I've got some pretty decent ideas for presents but like a lot of people I'm waiting that end of month payday.

Carl Kleiner is helping me feel pretty good about Christmas, with this series of images recently produced for Arlanda Airport's tax-free shopping campaign. The photographer and all round creative-don seems to do no wrong. He's right up there on my favorite modern artist list, with his humor, eye for detail and excellent use of colour which all never fail to brighten my mood. 

Have you started thinking about Christmas yet, ahead of the game with presents or being a last minute Scrooge?

Previously featured Carl Kleiner's work here and here.

Thinking About Colour

 I was somewhat inspired by Carl Kleiner's work this morning and decided to mess around with some colour combinations. Nothing ground breaking of course but I thought it was quite a nice idea, it makes it easier to see good (and bad) colour combos. I'm think about painting the outside of our house you see, not that I'm going to go crazy but I wouldn't mind trying two different colours.

The warm weather screws up my wardrobe, I'm more of a cool weather kind of guy. I usually end up wearing a plain coloured t-shirt or shirt and jeans/trousers but I guess that's what works for me. It does leave my feeling pretty frustrated though.

How do you guys still manage to feel good about summery outfits? I'm probably thinking too much about it.

Inspiration - Ikea Kitchen by Carl Kleiner

One of my favourite posts I've ever done was on Carl Kleiner, back in August '11, so I was pretty pleased when I heard he's be working on a new project. The photographer, along with stylist Evelina Kleiner (they must have got married since I last blogged about them, excellent!) really do have some  brilliantly creative ideas and their latest effort really does get the excitement veins a-popping. Above is the second time Kleiner has worked with Ikea, the first was for their successful cookery book Home is Best. This time around he concentrated on Kitchenware, with pretty effective results. Now these photos tick three boxes for me, my love of homeware/designy stuff in general, cooking and of course OCD heaven, Things Organized Neatly.

Tidy house tidy mind, well here's to wishful thinking.

You can check out more of Carl Kleiner's projects on his website

Inspiration - Carl Kleiner

Golden Ratio & Friends

Cafe M - Beirut

Finding stylist, photographer and all round creative bod Carl Kleiner couldn't have come at a better time. Yesterday I was wearing a waterproof jacket and hiking boots, I got soaked at approximately 2pm and still hadn't dried out when I eventually got back home in the early hours of this morning. I know British summers are notoriously sporadic and "average" but this takes the biscuit. A couple of good things that came out of it though were that it seemed to put a lot of the rioters off venturing outside and I also had ttime to browse for some inspiration.

If Kleiner's clever and playful work doesn't cheer you up on days like these I don't know what will. The projects featured here are "Golden Ratio & Friends", which was created simply by folding various types of paper. The second, "Cafe M - Beirut" is just what we all tried as kids, sticking fruit together to make faces! The Swedish photographer works closely with stylish Evelina Bratell. Together they produced the super popular Ikea cookbook Homemade is Best, which was all over the web a while back.

So, did it work? Have I cheered you up on this gloomy day? All images from his website.