cheap + great
Looking through to the “bones” of this hutch by Amy Somerville London Ltd, we realize that is not that extraordinary. Its greatness lies in the clever surface pattern: blocks of color and what appears to be gold or silver leaf. Somerville’s website told the story ”satin-finished ebonised walnut…detailed in high-gloss red and green lacquer, white gold leaf and patinated brass…bespoke handles and solid brass hinges with a patinated finish.”
Ikea’s pine Hemnes wardrobe, already stained a dark black brown, might make a good base in which to color block high gloss paint (use oil-base for serious gloss; water-base can’t achieve it). But what about metal leaf? read more…
02.20.13 |
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in cheap + great, d-i-y, furniture, how-to, inside, materials, resources, resources blogs + sites |
Spotted in a the cube room, a concept room created by designer Fabian Gatermann for a design hostel in Cologne, Germany: a fab shipping pallet bed painted like one of Piet Mondrian‘s famous “Compositions” from 20′s and 30′s.
On close inspection, it appears that the bed was made to LOOK like it was made of pallets; it seems a bit too perfectly made, its wood a bit too smooth to be from real pallets.
Nevertheless, pallets provide great inspiration, and clever use of paint can take pallet furniture to a new level… read more…
02.19.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, furniture, inside, materials, resources, sleeping |
oldworldgrange.tumblr.com
Of the many inspired DIY ideas to be found in the rustic Sunset House we posted previously is a beautiful and rather startling floor made of wood “bricks”. We’d never thought of simply cutting the ends off wood planks to make wood bricks. Industrious owners Lilah and Nick made a pattern of the wood bricks, end-cuts-up, above, and then grouted it with cement, which makes some bricks darker, while others take on a muted silvery sheen. read more…
02.12.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, dream houses, floors, outside, reclaim, resources |
Over our many years of traveling to West Virginia, we’ve admired a number of eccentric, cozy dwellings, including a school bus with a giant stone hearth built onto it, nestled by a river. But this shack we spotted at Cabin Porn incites serious envy.
A couple named Lilah and Nick built the Sunset House using lumber from a barn on their property which was cut and milled from the land by the previous owner many years ago. All the windows are reclaimed from junkyards over their history of thrifting together. read more…
02.12.13 |
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in before + after, cheap + great, cool spaces, d-i-y, diy, dream houses, materials, outside, reclaim |
We found this today on the strange, great, illuminating Daily Fluxus Do It Yourself Instructions:
Instructions:
1. Identify the happiest feeling of the day.
2. Put it in a jar.
3. Switch it if something happier happens.
…
We’re wondering if this happiness jar would work in a similar way as jars full of air captured in a special place we posted about some time ago: when we look at them, we know that there is a bit of that place in there, along with good memories.
Can we activate happiness with this iteration from Fluxus?
What else could we store in a jar to remind us of what we need to remember?
via Daily Fluxus Do It Yourself Instructions
Related posts: a jar of air + memory
3 powerful principles for remembering + learning anything
stealing and tailoring ideas
quilts as memory-keepers
digital memory archive (photograph stuff then give it away)
02.12.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, gifts, resources, tools |
We’ve been admiring this Valentine for years. It’s by Fluxus, a collaborative whose philosophy resonates with our own:
Erase the boundary between Art and Life…
Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.
Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.
Fluxus, whose founders included Yoko Ono and John Cage, created this mission statement in the 60′s, WAY ahead of the curve. Its philosphy resonates more than ever.
Apparently there’s also a male version of the Valentine, though we couldn’t see much difference. You’ll find them here. We haven’t been able to log-on to Fluxus’ e-shop and aren’t sure if it’s up-and-running. We might just print out this valentine to give to our love, with the blanks filled in… read more…
02.11.13 |
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in art, cheap + great, copy this!, gifts, quotes, stores |
justin beal
Autoprogettazione, roughly translated “self design,” was a project and book by the modernist artist and designer Enzo Mari that gives instructions for building easy-to-assemble furniture — tables, chairs, bookshelves, wardrobe – using rough boards and nails. Originally published in 1974, it has been reprinted many times. Mari created the project because he thought
…if people were encouraged to build a table with their own hands…they would be able to understand the thinking behind it.
And if they understand the thinking behind it, just imagine what they could do…
Just leafing through Autoprogettazione makes us feel empowered to pick up a hammer. And we can’t help but think the rough boards Mari envisioned his readers using resemble – indeed could be culled from — the wood from shipping pallets.
Taking Mari’s basic approach and inspiration, many artist’s and designers have made their own iterations. We love Justin Beal‘s bed with a fab hot pink mattress, above. And we WANT Kueng Caputo’s Lampada lamp: read more…
02.07.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, furniture, gifts, people, resources books + zines |
photo: mikołaj molenda, jacek majewski
We are completely smitten with this jazzy floor at Relaks Cafe and Bike Repair Shop in Warsaw, Poland. Conceived of by Super super and Moko Architects as a low-budget flooring solution, it’s a modernist mosaic made out of scraps and offcuts of plywood, chipboard, mdf, maybe some cork and non slip rubber tiles… read more…
02.06.13 |
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in cheap + great, floors, hard, materials, reclaim, resources |
photo © melissa catanese,
We stumbled on some compelling photo placemats done as a public art project for Atlanta Celebrates Photography: photos printed onto large size paper, perfect IF you have a big color printer. The standard size of a placemat is 12″ x 18″, bigger we can print, although we suppose, we could have them done at Kinko’s.
The photo placemats got us mulling what we have around besides our roll of kraft paper for making some impromptu placemats. Our 11″ x 14″ pad of Strathmore Drawing Paper 
makes for nice big sheets with a ruffled edges where they were pulled off the spiral spine, and white space that invites a drawing, collage, quote or…
read more…
02.04.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, elements, food, inside, materials, resources, strategies |
When we first saw the Sapien vertical book shelf, we were smitten. What a great idea: an impermanent shelf that stacks books vertically, making use of odd spaces. We bought one, well, er, a less expensive knockoff
. Once we actually stacked it with books, we realized how problematic it actually was; it was too heavy to move. We solved that by finding a set of wheels that fits it perfectly.
We still didn’t love that way it looked: a busy tower of book titles, distracting to our minimalist slightly ADD eye. Then we saw THIS solution to that problem: read more…
01.29.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, inside, resources, solutions, storage, why not? |
The other day, we spotted natural fiber rugs on the floor of a Swedish farmhouse — they look like coir or jute — that seem to have been stenciled with a pattern. Brilliant, why didn’t we think of that?!!! The technique would allow you add simple geometric designs to inexpensive and durable rugs. It might even be a way to give new life to stained or worned sisals (sisals ain’t cheap and show wear like crazy).
read more…
01.17.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, elements, floors, inside, materials, resources |
photo by anna kern
When we were renovating the bathroom of our new place, we chose a wall-hung sink in order to make the small 7′x5′ room look bigger (vanities take up a lot of space and close things in – see below). We were very careful to give the plumbing sleek lines to keep the spare look, at a good deal of thought and effort and $$ (nice looking p-traps cost more than garden variety ones…starting at about $50 bucks and going up well over $100 for fancy, moderne ones). It isn’t easy to make plumbing look pleasing…UNLESS you take off in a totally different direction…
…and PUSH the visual impact of the the plumbing, as in this photo from a Swedish family home. They used bold loops of PVC, copper, and stainless pipe along with a outsized brass faucet.
Although we LOVE the spare, relatively low-budget and now-spacious bathroom we created (details to come in future posts)… read more…
01.16.13 |
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in bath, before + after, cheap + great, cool spaces, elements, inside, materials |
les floralies
Recently, we were enticed to buy a travel-size-two-fer of Les Floralies Sniff Boxes: one to encourage sleep, the other “focus”. Sniff boxes are little vials of “aroma beads” infused with various mixes of essential oils designed to assist well-being. We enjoyed Les Floralies‘ scents and charming packaging — and found that opening a sniff box did provided a lovely, instant break. But we have to admit that as soon as we opened the intriguing little vials, we started thinking about how we could improvise some ourselves, with our own, custom-mixed blend of scents. What would be the medium that would hold the scent of the essential oils for a good amount of time, without being messy when opened? White rice, balls of infused wax, salt...? Suddenly, we realized we had ALREADY improvised a solution — years ago.
read more…
01.07.13 |
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