We’ve long been fans of unhemmed linen tableclothes, napkins, shower curtains – a rectangle of pure linen just ripped to leave a raw edge *. We hadn’t though of this swell embellishment: the yarn stitching accentuates the intentionality of NOT-HEMMED in a really beautiful and charming way. read more…
swarm studios for antropologie
We’ve written about painting chair and table legs, and we’ve written about pink but we’ve never considered putting the two ideas together…until we came across this image of just one leg of a chair painted pink. It’s a lovely visual surprise that makes an old chair looks like it’s dressed to-the-nines.
Although in reality, every leg of this table is painted pink, this picture got us imagining how just one leg or even two legs painted would look: much better to our eye. read more…
Early this morning we received an email from a friend who was about to make chocolate truffles for her Valentine, and wasn’t sure how to transport them. The email was sent in the wee hours of the morning, and we realized that for many, today means a last-minute scramble to get ready for Valentine’s day – TOMORROW. So here are some suggestions we’ve found in our morning surfing, or that we include in our personal arsenal.
We love the cut-and-fold d-i-y cards Made by Joel came up with. They are meant as a kid’s project but we think they’d make a swell grownup valentine: the template ever-inventive Joel Henriques generously included as a pdf has an appealing abstract look that is great unto itself… read more…
photo: philippe halsman
We love of images of people jumping and leaping and have posted quite a few: they seemed like apt visual metaphors for a life principle, of being willing to take leaps…risk…or just jump for joy. In 1959 , photographer Philippe Halsman published a series of famous people jumping. Our favorite is Eva Marie Saint, leaping with such joyous abandon.
It’s clear to us that when you jump, no matter who you are, you jump -if only a little – out of your usual stance, witness Halsman’s picture of the Duke and Dutchess of Windsor. read more…
photo: mirja/koulun lattia narisee
There’s a lot we love about this whimsically d-i-y decorated storage cabinet:
The torquoise and yellow legs… read more…
photo: paul raeside
Spotted in a long post on Desire to Inspire showing work of interiors photographer Paul Raeside: walls with roughly painted stripes. Right up our alley: graphical, imperfect, charming, do-able…though perhaps not as easy as it looks (we’d practice first on some scraps sheets of plywood or walls we plan to paint over, or even heavy paper tacked on the wall). read more…
photo: sally schneider
Just before Christmas, I posted my best-ever butter cookie recipe: Ethereal Brown Sugar Butter Cookies, along with many variations. The versatile cookie dough recently inspired yet another improvisation on the basic theme. Actually, it’s an improvisation on my Tuscan Herb Salt Recipe, that I then used on the butter cookies, to make a double-improvisation: Brown Sugar Butter Cookies with Thyme-Rosemary-Lavender Salt…
I used the essential Herb Salt method to make a fragrant salt using classic Herbes de Provence: rosemary, thyme and lavender (instead of the usual garlic, rosemary and sage). After I cut out the raw cooky dough, I sprinkled each disk with some of the aromatic salt, hoping that the combination would make for a subtle, surprising and delicious cookie. It did, and has become a new favorite.
That’s what happens when you start improvising: one idea links and layers with another, until you have improvisations made of improvisations…
The basic method is simple… read more…
copyright: mastermind maps
A few weeks ago we wrote about the concept of “pulsing and resting,” throughout the work day; actually taking breaks from work in order to get more done (and do better work!). One of our readers introduced us to the Pomodoro Technique, (names after a tomato-shaped timer) which is based on this very idea and provides a specific method:
photo: sally schneider
At dinner parties these days, everybody seems to be drinking lots of water, in addition to or instead of wine. Rather than plunking a pitcher of water on the table that will undoubtedly need several refills, we’ve found another solution. We decant filtered water into great-looking wine bottles whose labels we’ve soaked off. We keep 4 or 5 of them in the fridge to have chilled water readily available. They look great on the table, and seem to make non-wine drinking guests feel like they are included in the pouring of something special.
During an ordinary day, we find them a simple, useful pleasure: chilled water to pour from a lovely vessel.
Once you start really looking at wine bottles, you’ll notice all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors, some more beautiful than others. We go for the most austerely sculptural we can find. read more…
Last week Mondoblogo posted two photos taken at Art Basel of wonderful geometrically-painted walls with doors (they are part of the blog’s illuminating challenge to identify what is actual “art” and what is not). The top is “Final Cut” by artist Ernst Caramelle. The second “a random door”…
We’re putting them in our file of cool ideas for painting a room with a door. read more…
annaleena's hem
From Annaleena’s Hem: “I fixed some everyday luxury with cherry twigs and green flowers. Then I covered the vase with a bubble wrap, just because I like the material and its beautiful with green flowers.”
We never thought of bubble wrap as decorative material…especially in tandem with flowers!
H-m-m-m it does have some curiously translucent, light refracting qualities…
Related posts: dill weed (and other edible) flower arrangements
improv flower arrangement: pond in a vase
guerilla florist bella meyer: “flowers as natural art supplies”
d-i-y spring blooms in winter
little makeshift vases
We really like this novel way to store magazines by strapping stacks of them with belts; it turns them into an objet, a surprising something that is more stylish than a stack of magazines, yet serves a function. Cool-looking belts can be had cheap at second-hand and thrift stores. We wondered if the stack could go stool height without slipping around, for impromtu seating or surface. We found this iteration of the idea… read more…
Recently, we’ve been on the hunt for great lighting, that is, lighting that is cool looking and gives us the option of as much light as we want to adjust hi-or-low with a dimmer. We keep finding wonderfully designed lights with really low wattage bulbs, like 40 or 60, which rule them out. We want at least 100 watts worth.
As always when we can’t find what’s in our heads (which is surprisingly often), we look around to see if we can make it ourselves. For a while now, we’ve been a fan of lighting designer Lindsay Adelman’s free d-i-y lighting plans (there are four on her website) which give you a basic plan, parts, where to buy them, and how-to’s - information that makes it possible to improvise. A note in the You Make It section of her site says:
“Experimenting with off-the-shelf parts is how Lindsey got started before designing and manufacturing the custom system for the Bubble Series.”
We’re inspired. We’re already looking into read more…
A favorite way we’ve found to savor an artwork or image without owning it is simply to prop a book with the work open against a wall, on a shelf or sideboard or mantle. Every time we pass by or glance up, it is there for us to enjoy. When we tire of it, or become “blind” from seeing it frequently, we open the book to another page, or display another open book altogether.
We’ve found this is a great way to put ideas we want to remember in our field of vision…
For example, it allows us to have flowers in our place when no live ones are available or worth buying, like the begonia and sunflower, above, from Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones… read more…
photo:mark sherwood + queensland art gallery
For an interactive installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, artist Yayoi Kusama created a totally white room as a palette for visiting children to embellish as they pleased with colored dot stickers; ultimately thousands of stickers were used, to make bulls-eyes, whorls, dribbles and overlapping hits of color. The results of this crazy-simple exercise in spontaneous design is the increasingly stunning transformation of the white room…a big lesson to our often white-stuck decorating heads. Check out the transformation from start to finish…
