photo: michael mcgillis
“Wake” by Michael McGillis is a 95-foot long pathway enclosed on both sides by brightly-painted cut logs; it’s on display at the Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota. Although the installation is apparently a commentary on humanity’s disruption of nature, for us (barbarians!) it’s an idea for embellishing the logs we hauled home after Hurricane Sandy, or still have our eye on out in the park…or a way to sparkle up part of a stash of fire wood. read more…
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While we were poking around floral designer Emily Thompson’s website, we came across this swell little tabletop decoration: pillar candles
Related posts: fab bird’s nest wreath (+ other found holiday decor ideas)
diy holiday wreaths (out of just about anything)
alt christmas trees made of string lights n’ things to d-i-y
d-i-y tape trees for walls, windows, or…
alt (wall) Christmas trees
holiday tabletop decor from the farmer’s market
photo: maria robledo
After we posted about making wreaths of “just about anything“, Maria Robledo sent us a picture of a wreath that pushes that idea in the most wonderful and surprising way: a real bird’s nest nestled into winter branches whose leaves have dropped. It was a gift from inspired floral designer Emily Thompson, who even left bits of New York City debris that were part of the find.
Maria photographed on story on Thompson’s “wild” wreath-making for Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Wrote Maria: ”Emily’s wreaths are always naturally-shaped. Doesn’t use the pre-wreath gadgets.” We found a slide-show here.
We love that Thompson often uses found and foraged materials. Any of the materials she winds into wreaths could simply be arranged on the holiday table, instead of flowers… read more…
We’re not sure what Cara de Silva was doing reading Garden and Gun, but we love the story she spotted on wreaths made in the South. There’s a beauty made with tobacco leaves and a few sprigs of red berries, and another made from cotton plants: materials sourced from fields. It reminded us that a holiday wreath can be made from just about anything. Grapevine, which can be bought already wound into a wreath is lovely as is, and makes a fine round base into which to arrange all sorts of materials, from pine and holly to paper origami (It was the base of the cotton sprig wreath): read more…
welt als tastatur (1996), by thomas feuerstein
This surprising kitchen is the brainchild of Austrian conceptual artist Thomas Feuerstein. It is an artwork, but like many artworks we come across, it contains wonderful ideas to be had and used, like scrabble tiles on the walls.
Just for the hell of it, we started hunting down scrabble tiles. We didn’t find any ceramic ones, but found vinyl ones in Sweden at Bokstavskakel…We thinking they’d make a fine floor.
via Uncopy
Related posts: glossy white tile wall as erasable white board
rug and tile designs as painted floor (or wall) inspiration
christopher niemann’s fab color-tiled bathrooms
insta fridge fix: dalmation spots
d-i-y reverse painted glass as wall covering and…
We are smitten by the ornaments Orange Howell is making by hand-casting various macaroni shapes and gold-or-silverplating them. We took one look and thought: We want to wear them as jewelry, especially that Penne Rigate ornament: read more…
ollson & jensen
One unexpected outcome of Hurricane Sandy for us was our new obsession with trees, after we saw some mighty ones toppled over and wondered how we could give them a second life. We hauled a bunch of huge heavy trunk parts home and have found ourselves wandering the park daily to check out the progress of the Parks Department in clearing them away, hoping to snag some slices of the massive 3-foot in diameter oak we wrote about. Most of it has been removed, save the huge trunk and roots. Today we counted the rings and figure the tree to have been around 150 years old.
A reader named Susie Flax summed up what it is that hooked us about the fallen trees in an email, along with a link to the very cool sliced tree trunk coffee table above, after our own hearts: read more…
photo: sally schneider
Recently, Lynne Rosetto Kasper of public radio’s The Splendid Table asked Sally to come up with some ideas for decorating the holiday table. (On December 21st, you can listen to a packed 6 or so minutes of ideas). Sally went right to her local farmer’s market to “forage” for visually beautiful, of-the-season items she could put right on the table, to create an instant still-lifes in lieu of, or in combination with, flowers. For Thanksgiving, she found fragrant quinces (above), apples and tiny seckel pears. The secret of their charm: Sally carefully picks through the crates to find fruits with their leaves still attached which evoke farms and orchards… (After the meal, they can be roasted or braised.)
And playing on an idea we posted some time ago of flower-and-vegetable arrangements, Sally plunked single radishes with their leaves in glass beakers and vases, for a suprising vegetal bouquet: read more…
Bookend (2006), by Helmut Smits
We recently stumbled on Uncopy, a website that collates images of artworks under surprising categories and keywords. As always, we hunted for ideas we could use or that would shake up our everyday thinking. Our thinking was definitely shaken up by Bookend by Helmut Smits. Smits simply placed a book under one end of an classic Ikea Billy bookshelf to set it intentionally askew and make something very ordinary into something ELSE, in one fell swoop.
via Uncopy
Related posts: naked and defiled: book bricks as decorating element?
a perfect set of wheels for making furniture mobile + a great sapien bookcase hack
ikea hack: reverse-painted glass brick room divider
clipped-together shelving pt. 1: wood (help needed)
clipped-together shelving pt. 2: cardboard boxes
photo: pamela hovland
Inspired by designer Pamela Hovland‘s hand-drawn place settings, we’ve just ordered a 48″ x 200′ roll of kraft paper
In the days after the party, Pamela cuts out the plates, attaches mailing labels and sends them to each guest, so they’ll have big memories of the wonderful day. read more…
photo: sally schneider
Not long after I dragged the tree sculpture home, I went back into the park to see what was happening with the huge, ancient 3-foot-in-diameter oak that Hurricane Sandy brought down. The parks people had been cutting it up — terrible to see. They just sawed it apart into chunks to chip; think of the beautiful wide boards or public seating it could have made…
I had no idea what I’d do with a big rough-hewn oak log, but figured it would be worth grabbing one before they disappeared, while the Parks Department workers were gone and the police weren’t patrolling. I found one a foot wide to haul home that was so heavy, I couldn’t get it on the 12″ round 3-wheeled dolly
photo: sally schneider
After we set up our office’s wonderful 15-foot desktop, we were dismayed to see the ugly cords dangling underneath – power strip, hard drive plugs, usb hub etc. Because of where our electrical outlets are placed, and the fact that we need to be able to access the various cords, we couldn’t simply hide the cords behind the file cabinets. We cast about for a solution, first propping a white-painted plywood scrap leftover from the renovation against the wires. read more…
photo: hellosandwich
Every since it burst on the scene, we’ve been in love with washi tape masking tape, using it for all sorts of decorative purposes, from wrapping gifts to tacking images or making signs on walls; we’ve posted about it a number of times. Then, over a year ago, we stumbled on a post about washi tape wallpaper, wide rolls of washi tape you could apply to your walls, and repositioned like masking tape, only these are really wide swaths of color. Darned if it wasn’t available, just like a lot of the great design ideas we find, so we didn’t post it.
Until today, that is. read more…
When we first saw this stack of books-stripped-bare of their covers to reveal neutral color and graphic texture, we thought: what a cool material for doing all sorts of things. Stack em to make stools, displays and ad hoc tables, or supports for low shelves. Books as bricks. Then we wondered: Could we really justify dismantling books in such a way?
Well yeah, maybe. There are all sorts of books that we’d feel justified in taking the covers off: falling apart ones, water-damaged ones, cheap ones, and especially fat catalogues. We tried it with the huge Outwater Hardware catalogue and found it made a lovely “brick” (we might glue a neutral top page on to the printed one). read more…
photo: city-furniture
Le Cabanon by Le Corbusier – Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France
Being weak (but learning) in the interior color department, we’ve loved Flavorwire’s recent round-up of the Surprisingly Colorful Homes of 10 Famous Architects. Although we’ve actually been inside Le Corbusier’s Le Cabanon in the south of France, we hadn’t quite realized just how much color he’d incorporated into his largely plywood interior. The slideshow covers a lot of territory, including the fabulous use of pink Luis Barragán made at Casa Barragán in Mexico City, the wonderful seemingly impromptu way Ray Kappe placed painting right next to the bed at his house in Los Angeles, and Albert Frey’s cool use of a corrugated metal ceiling in his house inPalm Springs. We especially love Finn Juhl’s understated home in Ordrup, Denmark. read more…
