We never cease to be amazed at the uses people have come up for shipping pallets. Their boxy form naturally allows for building block type constructions of all kinds. DE-constructed, they afford an unpredictable variety of rustic, often beat-up woods, in roughly 2 or 3-foot lengths. The chicest application we’ve seen lately are these floors made by Arctic Plank.
Arctic Plank “upcycles” the salvaged wood boards, though doesn’t say exactly what that process entails. It looks to us like they sand, stain and finish the boards to create a unique patina. To deal with the short lengths of wood, they smartly cut the planks to make in zigzag, herringbone or parquet patterns. These look much more finished than aligning boards vertically, which makes for a rag-tag look that has a completely different kind of charm. Arctic Plank‘s floors got us thinking about just what the possibilities for shipping pallet floors might be… read more…
For years we’ve enjoyed a mantle with no fireplace. It was taken out of an old house in Maine; it’s color, an ochre yellow milk paint. It leans as a sort of sculpture against the living room wall, defining the space in a unique way, and just like that, it is a pleasure. Then some images of fireplaces in modernist dollhouses (which are in themselves amazing) got us thinking about implementing the idea of “fire”, even without an actual fireplace: making some sort of trompe l’oeil image of fire… read more…
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…
“… 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 we’d make to the concept is to wear some sort of face mask, which is much of the pleasure of Halloween: being anonymous…or someone/something other than yourself.
They suggest other alternatives to making a copy of a painting on a piece of canvas. Our favorite: “Have everyone dress up with a blank canvas and carry colored ink squirt guns.”
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 more…
(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 Shelter Foundation and other organizations have started campaigns, hoping to spread this simple d-i-y lighting throughout the world.
We are always inspired seeing ordinary materials transformed into a useful technological wonder – making a powerful force for change – in this case light – out of virtually “nothing”. It reminded us of the amazing William Kamkwamba, who rigged a windmill out of bits-and-pieces to bring electricity to his village in Africa. The survivalist in us loves knowing the recipe for this strange homemade lighting. read more…
Our favorite painting of late is Holton Rower’s ’6ac6g’, which, for a blessed few weeks was right around the corner from us at Pace Gallery. It caused quite a stir and has recently been written about in Art and Antiques with good reason; it is BEAUTIFUL.
We walked over several times to visit ’6ac6g’ – happy to hang out with it in person. We’d stand back to kind of bask in it, then walk up close to look at the complex layers and swirls of color that seemed to pool onto the floor.
Since we can’t afford to BUY the huge, wondrous painting (and even if we could, it wouldn’t fit in our space), we took a picture, and now wake up to it every morning on our computer screen – it’s our screensaver. It brings to mind the feeling we had standing in front of the real thing. Awesome.
Though we are great believers in EXPERIENCING art first hand, read more…
Charlies McFarlane sent us the photo of a makeshift gym, taken by a reporter embedded with soldiers in Afghanistan in 2010. They made due with what they had to devise a bench, and weights. It came just as we were researching alternatives to going to the gym, being resistant to the mindlessness of machines and sterile vibe. Look around you and you’ll see all sorts of things that will work fine as weights to lift. And we’re getting into this video of exercises we can do using just our ‘body-weight’ as a weight, i.e. calisthenics, done in a hotel room: body as gym. read more…
We’ve done several posts about Pasti-Dip over the years; it’s a paint-like substance you can dip an object into to give it a sealed, rubbery surface. We’ve seen tools plasti-dipped to make them more grippable, and flea-market cutlery to give it a modernist chic, even bookshelves coated in rubber paint via the great Max Lamb. We hadn’t imagined how useful it could be to dip the bottom third of a basket until we found this picture on 2 or 3 Things I know. It turns out IT came from a how-to posted on marthastewart.com about dipping baskets in paint…We’d just assumed they used PlastiDip, which would give the baskets a pleasing graphic element, seal their cracks and holes from small bits falling out, and fortify the weaving.
One of our readers, Pippin, recently sent in us a photo she’d found on flickr, with the following message:
“someday (someday) i’m going to put canvas on a wall as wall paper, and then just paint stuff on it—layer after layer. an experimental wall.”
We love the idea of an experimental wall whether it be a sheet of canvas, heavy paper, fabric, sheetrock, whatever: a blank space to layer ideas – experiment – without any constraints on the outcome. read more…
We’ve long been a fan of using the flowers and seed pods of farmer’s market vegetables and herbs for our flower arrangements. But we hadn’t thought of dill weed flowers until Terry Bordenave sent us an email:
We subscribe to a new, small CSA in northern Vermont (Deep Earth Farm) and in one of our weekly baskets of produce, Josh & Isaac included a bunch of dill weed. After stripping off the leaves to use in a meal or two, I was left with these striking seed heads. They reminded me of fireworks bursting – I’m a big fan of them and my husband is a member of the Pyrotechnics Guild of America and puts on amazing displays for our family – and I wanted to use them at the table somehow. This is what I came up with. I left them in these old medicine bottles for about a month, and they began to dry up and curl a bit. Before I tossed them on our compost pile, I saved some of their seeds for next year’s garden.
It reminds us of all the great “weeds” that can be flowers, with a slight shift of view.
We not crazy for headboards but find ourselves really liking the idea of a virtual headboard – painted right on the wall – that we recently stumbled on. When you want to change the style, just repaint… read more…
We’ve written before about how much we love Made By Joel’s, Joel Henrique’s website that features his charming handmade children’s toys. This October 11th will mark the release of Joel’s first book, Made to Play!: Handmade Toys and Crafts for Growing Imaginations.The book compiles a number of great toy-making and craft projects for children and their parents. Categorized by fun themes (The Zoo! Cars and trucks! Music and art! Dress-up!), most of the projects use ordinary crafting materials, like paper, fabric, tape and glue to make versatile and simple toys that kids can be proud they had a hand in making. Many of Joel’s creations are appealing to grownups as well. read more…
Dutch Interior magazine VT Wonen recently commissioned stylist Frans Uyterlinden to create interesting ‘show house’ using an eclectic mix of materials. (Check out a preview at VosgesParis). Our favorite bit: a bench/sideboard made by lashing together recycled boards. We see big possibilities in this idea… read more…
that comes with 5 tinting colors to play around with.
.The book compiles a number of great toy-making and craft projects for children and their parents. Categorized by fun themes (The Zoo! Cars and trucks! Music and art! Dress-up!), most of the projects use ordinary crafting materials, like paper, fabric, tape and glue to make versatile and simple toys that kids can be proud they had a hand in making. Many of Joel’s creations are appealing to grownups as well. 
