We love these curiously chic duct-tape safety glasses and assumed they were made by duct taping an existing pair of glasses, until we found the how-to and list of ingredients: duct tape, a hanger, a beer bottle and two plastic furniture caster cups. Will wonders never cease??!!!
Related posts: zebra duct tape!!
duct tape: potato chip bag pants
duct tape repair of bear-ravaged plane
back on Thursday (maybe sooner) + duct tape
A friend once told us that when she was young, she learned to draw from Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book: Make a World
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…
photo: dominic wilcox
When we want to wake/shake up our thinking, we check in at Dominic Wilcox‘s blog Variations on Normal. You never know what that clever guy will come up with. We especially love his month-long project, Speed Creating. Every day for 30 consecutive days, HE practiced waking up his thinking by making something creative with whatever was at hand in the course of his day, whether at home, in his studio, on the subway – anywhere. Writes Wilcox:
I believe that this self-imposed project with it’s constraints on time and money will force me to take an instinctive and experimental approach. The fear of failure and the usual time spent thinking through the potential pitfalls of a project will not be an option and I will need to react swiftly to my thoughts, observations and experimental outcomes discovered along the way. I am not focused solely on the final objects or images but on the creative journey I take. Complete failures are expected and embraced.
We love that Wilcox created a practice with inbuilt constraints designed to push his own limits and experiment, embracing the possibility of failure. You can see the 30 projects he came up with here. We especially love his Measuring Tape Diary made by spray painting an extended measuring tape white, and then recording the events of his day on it. We can imagine someone – or Wilcox himself – coming across it years later, and opening it up to discover…a day.
Check out his curiously beautiful Onion Ring Fabric made by glueing together bright orange onion crisps with flexible glue: read more…
(Video link here.) Although we’ve spent decades improvising in the kitchen (figuring out ways to cure hams in a city apartment and make souffles in iron skillets and teacups) we haven’t embraced molecular gastronomy in our everyday cooking. We enjoy its magical qualities on forays to the restaurants of inventive chefs like Wylie Dufresne and Daniel Humm….and now on YouTube with Alinea’s edible helium-filled balloon. We WOULD love to experience this triumph of fun, imagination and beauty (especially knowing that it started with Alinea chef Grant Achatz asking himself “What if…” and then figuring out how to do it.)
While we find we can go pretty far pushing the limits of ordinary cooking equipment, there is one esoteric tool we have found truly useful: The Smoking Gun. It’s a battery-powered pistol that turns hardwood sawdust like cherry, applewood and hickory into fragrant smoke with which you can infuse all manner of food read more…
photo: anthony giglio
Our friend and resident oenophile Anthony Giglio snapped this picture of a rather bold and desperate masking tape repair. We see it as a fine example of what we are frequently told is the powerful effect of reading ‘the improvised life’ daily: gradually you’re vision changes. You not only ‘see’ and delight in found improvisations around you, but you also find yourself improvising solutions to all sorts of dilemmas.
Who needs an auto body shop?
This crazy repair eminded us of There I Fixed It, a blog chock full of desperate, uninhibited and sometimes brilliant fixes.
Related posts: ‘window box’ car bumper
the beauty of black masking tape
d-i-y “masked” painted tables
japanese masking tape in cool colors +patterns
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…
Ever since we gave up paying a personal trainer to keep us exercising, we’ve been slipping and sliding around with staying disciplined, and EXPLORING ways to get our heads and bodies into healthy work outs. Here are two simple strategies that we’ve found remarkably helpful:
1) posting this image on our wall (and in our heads). It’s a series of MRI images comparing cross-sections of muscles: a simple powerful message.
2) follow Leo Barbuta of Zen Habit’s advice: start small, and exercise in tiny bits, having fun while you do it, gradually building up to a routine that you work into your life:
“When the actions are tiny, they are easy. You have no excuse. You can do them anywhere, all day long…
I fold fitness into my life, like blueberries into batter, and it becomes a part of the recipe, not just a topping.”
We want to fold fitness into our lives like blueberries into batter! Here’s his fitness program: read more…
photo: andrea raisfled
After reading our post about how to design your own textiles, our friend Andrea Raisfeld sent us this doodle by her daughter Maxie: “I thought it would make a great fabric design.” We’d love to find some fabric like this… Another great example of where your designs for on-demand textiles can come from.
Related posts: copy this: paint a pillow…sofa…bedspread…curtain…
sewing advice for beginners
copy this: “moderne” patchwork tablecloth
painted fabric redux: clothes!
We’ve long loved Dutch architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld’s elegant, elemental, iconic wood furniture. When we read that there was a book of his built-it-yourself furniture designs, we were thrilled….until we discovered that it cost $145 new and $78 used at Amazon. Darn. (Curious, a few days later we found that it IS available on Amazon
So we went on a hunt. And found it! How to Construct Rietveld Furniture is available for $39.95 at Tools for Woodworking. Here’s its enticing description:
Rietveld’s furniture is really easy to make. The joinery is well within the skill of even a rank beginner, and you come out with world class 20th century furniture…The designs range from his famous chairs to tables, stools, a magnificent sideboard, a few pieces scaled for children, and some lamps from his more architectural work. 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: marc raboy
One of the most inspiring D-I-Y books we know of is from the 70′s, with illustrations in black-and-white. It is Spiros Zakas’ More Furniture in 24 Hours, a book of plans for making simple, sculptural, practical pieces of furniture FAST, like this folding screen made of hollow-core doors and piano hinges. Unlike most hinged doors, this one doesn’t have to zig-zag to stand up…it can even be configured in a circle.
The book is chock full of ideas, which, if you don’t actually do them, will lodge in your mind as a possible solution or way to improvise your own creations, as a kind of liberation. Writes Zakas:
Making thing is an art, whether it is baking bread, sewing a quilt, or building a table. It is self-expression, a way of knowing what we like and how we like it, of discovering who we are. The interesting thing I have found is that everyone is creative in many ways if he or she will only try them. Just because you have neer done something doesn’t mean that you can’t. read more…
via modernthread.blogspot.com
We love the way the internet can increase people’s ability to design and fabricate things that have traditionally been the realm of professional designers and manufacturers. Our newest favorite online resource/service is digital fabric printing. Over the past three or four years, a number of online textile printers have popped up, including Spoonflower, Karma Kraft, and Fabric on Demand. While each site differs slightly in what they offer and how they work with you, the general principal remains the same: you pick a pattern or design your own, upload it to the site and select your fabric type and reference colors; then wait for your fabric (or practice swatch) to arrive at your front door.
As always, part of the trick is deciding which service to try. Luckily, Kim at TrueUp did the leg-work for us in 2009, printing the same design with four different companies. (One of them, Eye Candey, doesn’t seem to exist anymore). Her experience is extremely helpful, and includes tips about what file type and image resolution to use, as well as the differences in pigment type and the importance of color-correcting. She also created this handy comparison pdf (updated in March 2010) so you can see the differences between each printer.
If you’ve ever wanted to design your own textiles, it doesn’t get much easier than this. Need some ideas for patterns? We find them everywhere, read more…
(Video link here.) The results of our “what are you reading?” post have been incredibly illuminating. Thank you so much for sharing the many great paths for us to follow from Stinky
We especially liked a comment from Pippin that started: “Nothing specific, but rather a new approach.” read more…
Ever since we wrote about the discontinuation in America of Ikea’s great Alvar-Aalto-esque Frosta stool, – it is widely available in Europe – we have been involved in a curious correspondence with Ikea’s Customer Service Department; it has been a bit “like pulling teeth” (though much more pleasant) to get the information we are looking for.
When we wrote to ask why the Frosta stool is no longer being sold in America, we were told “Unfortunately, the Frosta stool…is no longer being manufactured by our suppliers.”.
When we asked why the stool is sold widely in Europe and not in the US – hence must be available from distributors – we got the original email with a chunk added: in addition to being unavailable from suppliers “we have no control over the products that IKEA Corporate from Sweden discontinues products here in the United States.” Confusing. read more…
