The new VISI 64 “DIY Deluxe” hits the shelves on Monday 28 January. Guest edited by our inimitable deputy editor Annemarie Meintjes, here is what she has to say.
We know you are going to love this collection of the best Smart Ideas that have appeared in the magazine over the past 12 years. Some of them originated within our creative team, a few were spotted for sale in design stores or online, and some of them we photographed in the homes of our readers.
What I’ve discovered about ideas like these is that they only happen when there is a need for a practical answer to a decor dilemma, such as when you need to conceal a bare light bulb while saving up for the designer light of your dreams, or when you look at the packaging and broken goods stacked up in your garage with new eyes. That’s when flat tyres, a bag of discarded phone chargers, keys left by lovers who slipped out the back door, and everything else that piles up while life happens, can be reinvented. Of course there are also all the objects we willingly hoard: the precious collections we want to present to the world in an unusual way.
Whether you want to create accents with colour, use objects from nature creatively, or style up a party venue for a special occasion, VISI’s smart ideas will show you how to rethink, recycle and revamp. The best part is that it looks great and costs little enough to enable you to restyle as often as you wish.
Although VISI’s former Johannesburg decor editor Klara van Wyngaarden and I got our hands really dirty scratching around in hardware stores and their dustbins, we would never have been able to bring these ideas to life without our team. The photographers were chosen for their brilliance, their love of DIY and their patience with our creative plans: they often had to jump in with “male logic” when a brilliant idea went up in flames (before the days of energy-saving light bulbs and LEDs), or a styrofoam masterpiece bubbled under the spray-paint nozzle. My heartfelt thanks to the team: Lise Avis, who spent hours in the archives collecting high-res images; Nadine Botha and Malibongwe Tyilo, who compiled the 32 Reasons to Always Love Smart Ideas (pages 123 to 184); Anton Pietersen, who put this issue together in such a fresh way that even I reconsidered some of the ideas for my apartment; Michelle Coburn who practised DIY on our words; and finally Sumien Brink, who made sure nothing slipped by without it being perfectly accurate and exciting at the same time.
Here’s to a 2013 filled with many more smart ideas!
Annemarie Meintjes has been VISI’s deputy editor since 2001. You can follow her on twitter @AM_VISI or follow her blog here.Decorate our cover with cross-stitch and you could win a fabulous prize! Click here.
