We love painted floors, especially white ones because they expand and brighten a space AND are a great inexpensive solution to dealing with not-great floors. We never thought of painting a little patch of colorfully painted boards to break up the expanse, as interior designer Annette Verkuyls did in her home in an early twentieth century warehouse…
…unexpected and charming…
via French By Design
Being a cook with ongoing kitchen design fantasies, I’m always on the lookout for solutions that are wonderful to look at and completely functional. I LOVE this stove hood by Architects Lhoas & Lhoas that looks like a modern sculpture; I imagine its lovely asymmetry subtly shifting the way I feel – and cook – in the kitchen. Since many range hoods have to be custom-made by a metal fabricator, it doesn’t seem like it would be such a stretch, or that expensive, to make one with more unusual lines, like this one. It would be beautiful in plain aluminum or steel, which could probably be powder-coated in a color, OR could easily be covered in wood to make painting it easy (changing colors as your mood changes).
Here’s another gorgeous hood we found on Lhoas & Lhoas site: read more…
Evert Collier
An image we saw on Ancient Industries put us on the trail of Evert Collier, the 17th century Dutch still-life and trompe l’oeil painter. Several of his works show strips of leather tacked onto a board or wall to make a kind of catch-all, into which you could slide or hang all sorts of essential objects. A centuries-old great idea. read more…
Annaleena K Photography
We hadn’t realized how beautiful black masking tape
It is amazing what a little paint can do to transform a shipping pallet. It even makes the rough grain and embossed printing look good. Add some industrial wheels
Stuart Williams
Our neighbor Stuart Williams, who lives down the hall from us, sent us a holiday e-card that he designed : a great example of swell d-i-y greetings makable with design, drawing, or photo software. Use photos or graphics to design your PDF and SEND IT OUT via email, to say HELLO to lots of folks easily.
Stuart’s card also reminded us about the connectivity of ideas that happens in an apartment building or a neighborhood, when folks start talking to each other and asking “What are you up to these days?” On elevator rides in our building, we’ve gotten make-up lessons from a professional make-up artist, and learned about the Secrets of Paris Department Stores. We became friends with Couturier de Cardboard Matthew Sporzynski, and the recipient of his stealth gift-giving.
Stopping to chat one day, we discovered that our neighbor Stuart is a site-specific, environmental artist. He created the Luminous Earth Grid, a vast array of 1,680 fluorescent lamps, which swept over the undulating landscape north of San Francisco (in an expanse equal to eight football fields), like an immense electrified quilt: read more…
Maria Robledo
Maria Robledo sent us this email of a swell gift wrapping idea her family came up with: “Covering over commercial labels on gift boxes w a little paint and saving on wrapping paper!”
Just paint those boxes with a little acrylic paint. Gorgeous!
…great for all sorts of boxes…
Thanks Maria!
Related post: ps: how to transform a cardboard box
give your gift in a fab (recycled) box
Joel Henriques
We are big fans of d-i-y gift wrapping made of found, free, repurposed or cheap materials. Why spend the money on bought wrap when there’s so much good stuff just lying around. We really like Joel Henriques’ idea (of the ever-inspiring blog Made by Joel): use torn out pages from old art magazines…
or design magazines…
or foreign language newspapers newspapers…
…or kid’s drawings…
His paper-cutouts-as-ribbons are swell, too! read more…
If we were going to make a gingerbread house, we’d forego the Victorian thing and go modernist, living out our architectural fantasies. We typed “modernist gingerbread houses” into Google Images and found a trove. Our favorite is Kristina Hahn’s wondrous creation, The Cake Study House. The list of Special Features evoke stunning possibilities:
banana succulents
almond cacti
hazelnut flowers
chili pepper palmtree
almond grass
pepper ferns
tea candle fireplace
seed-grassy backyard read more…
Daniel Hale
We’ve been seeing a lot of great alt-Christmas trees around, but our favorites so far are architect/salvage artist Daniel Hale’s constructions at his home in Napa Valley, featured on his Holiday Home Tour blog post. He made several holiday trees – all very different – starting with the one in the entryway, made of “cut-offs and discards from the year’s projects”. The lines of orange paint are the brilliant touch that pulls it together… read more…
Getty: Alex Hoerner (NY Times)
The New York Times T Magazine recently published a teeny piece about ink being the new IT accessory for making temporary tattoos and asked four artists to create a design. We especially love Maria Abramovic’s. It echoes our posts last summer about drawing a heart in the palm of your hand, and using your hand as a “pad” for notes.
It all got us wondering exactly how healthy it is to be putting ink on your skin more than occasionally; what exactly would your body be absorbing? There isn’t much solid info. According to WiseGeek, water-based inks are considered non-hazardous. Indelible/permanent inks definitely have quite a few potentially toxic chemicals.
You can always buy non-toxic tattoo markers
Since we know that henna, a plant-based dye, has been used for thousands of years in India to make temporary tattoos called Mehndi, read more…
Sally Schneider
When Ellen Silverman was over photographing Prunes in Armagnac for our holiday food gift post, we were hunting through our collection of tablecloths to use as a background. Nothing seemed right. It was the end of the day and the light was waning. In desperation, she threw a big linen apron of Sally’s onto the table and set the jar of prunes on it. Perfect! read more…
A friend sent us these photos of the drawings her young artist/fashion-design-o-phile daughter made on her desktop, with this note:
” My daughter artist drawing on her brand new desk… When we moved into our new home w her NEW desk, she needed to make it her own.
I was blown away when I saw her markings. As a kid I would not ever have been allowed this. Who knows how this gesture could free her up in her creative process as she develops?”
We’re reminded of the post we did about artist Dieter Roth, who covered his work tables with sheets of cardboard, so he could write/draw/collage what he wanted then-and-there; they eventually become artworks.
We love the idea of ideas flowing right from the brain onto a page or a surface (with no worries about “brand new”)… read more…
Michel Arnaud
Although it’s not really our style, we’ve culled quite a few ideas from 1st Dib’s excerpt of All-American: The Exuberant Style of William Diamond and Anthony Baratta
Joel Henriques
One of our favorite blogs these days is Made by Joel, the toy and craft projects that artist Joel Henriques makes for his kids. He manages to make A LOT out of ‘nothing’: dollhouses out of Cheerios boxes, puppets from paper clips and cardboard, cities from paper. The thing that we love is how Joel’s creations affect our thinking. We find ourselves mentally applying his ideas and his spare, modernist sensibility to our grown-up lives, looking at ordinary stuff as art materials, and solutions. We want his paper dollhouse furniture made life-size… read more…
