We found a swell 21 second video on YouTube but imbedding is disabled so click this link to watch it. It comes with our wishes for a HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Related posts: happy halloween!!!!! (2010) happy halloween!!! (2009) halloween inspiration: cardboard box as the empire state building
Read Morepaper bag = potent, fast, minimalist halloween costume
This image reminded us just how much potential an ordinary paper bag has to be a creepy, potent impromptu Halloween costume. And it affords one of the primal pleasures of a good costume: wearing a mask to become…someone else…and view the world through a strange and anonymous lens… via Designer Observer: Accidental Mysteries Related posts: happy…
Read Moremodern art gallery as halloween costume
Over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, we found a how-to for a swell group Halloween costume: a traveling exhibition of modern art… Here, Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock are represented because… “… the best choices are iconic artists whose distinctive styles may be recognizable even in third-rate attempts (like ours) to mimic their styles.” The only tweak…
Read Moreliving a portable life via jeroen toirkens ‘nomad’
The best part of Maria Popova’s Brainpickings blog is, for us, the glimpses she gives us into new books. With extensive pictures and well-selected quotes, she immediately and completely draws you in to the world of the book she’s featuring. This picture from the book Nomad by Jeroen Toirkens particularly spoke to us, as it reveals the…
Read Morejoy ride: practice makes wondrous perfection
(Video link here.)…yeah, people are AWESOME. via Kottke Related posts: weekend fun: new danny macaskill video danny macaskill’s joy ride danny macaskill’s bike lesson (setbacks + difficulties + perseverance = mastery)
Read Morewhat’s in the innovator’s cookbook?
(Video link.) We’re excited for Steven Johnson’s new book, The Innovator’s Cookbook: Essentials for Inventing What Is Next. It looks like he has called upon an all-star cast of innovators and researchers to discuss what makes for successful innovation. In the video, he gives away some important parts of the recipe: We like being instructed…
Read Morecrepe paper walls, lanterns, plaid…
We forgot how great old-fashioned crepe paper streamers are for jazzing up a space until we stumbled pictures we clipped from Aesthetic Outburst ages ago: it’s an easy way to give a room charmingly festive atmosphere with a bit of “kid” in it. The magic is all in the colors you choose like this mix…
Read Moretheo jansen’s ‘life forms’ evolve!
(Video link here.) We’ve posted before about artist Theo Jansen’s remarkable Strandbeests, creatures made entirely from PVC pipe that move on their own using wind-power. Watching them scurry across the beach like enormous prehistoric insects never ceases to delight us. Jansen, who has been working on his beasts for over 20 years, has often referred…
Read Moreannals of bad design?: sculptural bathtub
Apparently this dramatic bathtub was made out of a “giant pebble-shaped granite piece brought back from Bali and sculpted”…The pipes fixtures are cleverly hidden in the wooden chest that sits next to it and the Baroque chandelier doubles as a shower head. Hmmmm…we’re serious fans of baths and wonderful bathtubs. Could this one possibly be…
Read Morea unique approach to living (+ dying)
(Video link here.) An old friend of ours used to say “God has put two kinds of doctors on earth: those who help us die and those who prevent us from living.” Katherine who is in the video above understands this well. As a hospice worker and then a hospice patient, she’s seen both sides…
Read Morerole model? the inimitable frida kahlo completely self-possessed
Found on the New Yorker’s online Photo Booth: Frida Kahlo, photographed by the great Nickolas Muray….
Read Morebrick lust (where are cool bricks hiding?)
A most beautiful wall: cool modernist, geometric bricks and hunks of painted wood (Japanese, of course)…makes us crazy to find bricks like this… We didn’t find a thing via google until we stumbled on Mondoblogo‘s post of some wonderful brick constructions posted in Apartamento Magazine.
Read Moreportable milk crate farm (d-i-y), for roof, terrace, lot
As much as we love the vertical shipping pallet garden we wrote about in May, it’s flaw is that if you needed to move it off your balcony, you might be in some trouble. Enter the milk crate farm! When the bad economy stalled construction at New York City’s Alexandria Center for Life Science, Chef…
Read Morejohnny swing’s welded coin chair
We’ve always loved the Butterfly Chair made by the great Johnny Swing. He welded 1,500 half dollar coins at 7,000 points. It makes us want to pick up a welding torch…(we actually googled “how to weld“…) Check out more Swing brilliance (made out of all sorts of coins) here. His story is quite something, too. We…
Read More4-step algorithm for change
Leo Babauta has gained a big following on his blog Zen Habits, where he posts daily about simplifying your life to what you REALLY want to be doing. We often find useful practices we truly can apply to our lives. The other day, we read all the way through his lengthy post How I Changed…
Read Morewearing clothes backwards
This photo entitled simply “Curious Photo” (from the George Eastman House collection), reminded us of the many possibilities for wearing clothes backwards. We remembered a chic woman we knew that used to wear ordinary cardigans backwards, turning them into a something ELSE… …then we thought: Ohhh, THAT’S what we can try with an Issy Miyake shirt out made…
Read Morealexander calder’s breakthrough year
Last night we were lucky enough to see a jewel of an exhibit of Alexander Calder’s work that will be on view at The Pace Gallery in New York City until December 23rd. It features works from a single, seminal year in the sculptor’s life – 1941 – that marked the start of a very…
Read Moredept of mindshifts: pencilhead ‘right here, right now’
PencilHead is some seriously beautiful animation by qwaqa (?), set to Fat Boy Slim’s ‘Right Here, Right Now’. Beautiful to watch w/o sound as well… via The Curious Brain Related posts: vision break: a dress that makes music… (green) porno break! (+ porno house gift???!!!) what would happen if you took a dance break?
Read Morecool low shelf…bench…table…altar…
Spotted at Core 77: a floor-mounted Book Rail from the 1930’s. It’s an odd and beautiful thing that we never heard of before. It would make a perfect low-down display for objets or a moderne altar. Wonder where to get one or something like it… The one, above, is from Factory 20, a trove of…
Read Moreinvent to thrive: plastic bottles of daylight
(Video link here.) Barr Hogan sent us this compelling video about a man who invented simple, easy-to-make solar light “bulbs” using ordinary materials housed in recycled plastic liter bottles. He has literally brought daylight indoors to poor families in the Philippines whose houses are so close together, they block the sun from entering. Now the My…
Read More