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Spotted in Design Milk’s recent story about Rua Confettora, unconventional, international design shop in Brescia, Italy: a white-painted ladder used as the support for glass shelves: instant, rustic/modern chic, made from ordinary materials.
When we hunted around, we discovered that Lab::Istanbul’s had created a line of shelving based on the idea: read more…
We SO love the crazy-imaginative prom dresses industrious students make to antidote and poke fun at over-the-top prom-ism. We’re adding this curiously-girlie-though-made-of-cardboard one to our collection that includes the divine…
duct tape and phone book dress
m&m wrapper dress (garbage is opportunity)
fishs eddy’s spoon dress
metal washer and attic insulation dress
vision break: a dress that makes music…
via Unconsumption
One of our secret passions is connectors — not just connectors of ideas – but connectors of physical things as well: materials you can build with. We can’t wait to try out Stick-lets, flexible, stretchy silicone connectors made in a variety of configuerations. (They’re meant for kids, but when did that ever stop us?) You use them to connect sticks and wood or metal dowels to build structures. They got us thinking about the indoor pop-up guest room we’ve been imagining for years. We’d get a bunch of 1-inch dowels and go to town.
Architects SMLXL Studio seems to have a real THING for shipping pallets, which they’ve used all through a tiny two story apartment in Prague. In many cases, it seems they took they pallets apart and reconfigured their components: thick blocks and slats to custom make furniture the exact size they wanted. Pallet has clearly become aesthetic… read more…
enrique oliveira
Henrique Oliveira uses old plywood, fencing recycled from dumpsters and landfills from his home city, São Paulo, shaped around PVC forms.
Henrique’s breakthrough occurred when he was a student at the University of São Paulo, where for two years the view from his studio window was a wooden construction fence. Over time Oliveira began to see the deterioration of the wood and its separation into multiple layers and colors. One week before the final student show opened, the construction was finished and the worn out plywood fence was discarded. Oliveira collected the wood and used it in his first installation
More of his powerful work here.
via The Wondrous, with thanks for Michael Warren of Mike and Molly’s House
Related posts: brightly-painted logs and branches
more salvaged tree trunk furniture
birch logs for book cases and other household accents
the unexpected stylishness of walls of stacked logs
simple stacked salvaged wood side table
fallen trees become cool park furniture
what a painted slab of plywood can do (d-i-y)
photo: jody kivort
We’ve just been mulling a wall in a bedroom that has an unfinished doorway, currently covered by a curtain. On the wall next to we temporarily propped a big mirror that gives great depth to the room and a bit of the view of the park across the way. The question: how to combine the mirror and a door with a minimal footprint (i.e. it doesn’t open into the smallish room.) We found an interesting solution at Desire to Inspire. Although we’re not crazy about the drab gray room itself, we like the idea of big sliding mirror that can act as a door when necessary.
read more…
Looking through to the “bones” of this hutch by Amy Somerville London Ltd, we realize that is not that extraordinary. Its greatness lies in the clever surface pattern: blocks of color and what appears to be gold or silver leaf. Somerville’s website told the story ”satin-finished ebonised walnut…detailed in high-gloss red and green lacquer, white gold leaf and patinated brass…bespoke handles and solid brass hinges with a patinated finish.”
Ikea’s pine Hemnes wardrobe, already stained a dark black brown, might make a good base in which to color block high gloss paint (use oil-base for serious gloss; water-base can’t achieve it). But what about metal leaf? read more…
Spotted in a the cube room, a concept room created by designer Fabian Gatermann for a design hostel in Cologne, Germany: a fab shipping pallet bed painted like one of Piet Mondrian‘s famous “Compositions” from 20′s and 30′s.
On close inspection, it appears that the bed was made to LOOK like it was made of pallets; it seems a bit too perfectly made, its wood a bit too smooth to be from real pallets.
Nevertheless, pallets provide great inspiration, and clever use of paint can take pallet furniture to a new level… read more…
ellie davies
When we walk through park or woods, we secretly imagine how we would surive there if we had to. What kind of shelter would we devise with what is there? It’s kid thinking, really: of forts and snug secret places, combined with our love of shelters of all kinds. Artist Elle Davies made that fantasy real in The Dwellings, a series of photographs of structures created “using a variety of traditional and improvised building techniques… from materials gathered from the forest floor.”
We love the possibilities inherent in the great valentine DIY we found at Mineco Co UK, made of woven paper. All you need is an exactto knife and straight edge and some nice paper. Mineco’s site tells how-to, but there’s lots of room for improvising (were thinking cut up photographs, magazines, ribbon…)
Over our many years of traveling to West Virginia, we’ve admired a number of eccentric, cozy dwellings, including a school bus with a giant stone hearth built onto it, nestled by a river. But this shack we spotted at Cabin Porn incites serious envy.
A couple named Lilah and Nick built the Sunset House using lumber from a barn on their property which was cut and milled from the land by the previous owner many years ago. All the windows are reclaimed from junkyards over their history of thrifting together. read more…
photo: mikołaj molenda, jacek majewski
We are completely smitten with this jazzy floor at Relaks Cafe and Bike Repair Shop in Warsaw, Poland. Conceived of by Super super and Moko Architects as a low-budget flooring solution, it’s a modernist mosaic made out of scraps and offcuts of plywood, chipboard, mdf, maybe some cork and non slip rubber tiles… read more…
(Video link here.) Last year we bought a waxed-cotton knapsack from Dargelos that we LOVE because it carries a huge amount of stuff without looking like it. Gradually the wax finish wore off and we began to look into rewaxing it. Dargelos recommends a solvent-free paste wax you can rub onto your fabric bag to refurbish it (They have a free how-to pdf here). Another way to go is Otter Wax, a solid brick of beeswax and plant-based waxes and oils (no petroleum or silicone).
We discovered that you can it to wax just about any cotton item to make them waterproof, and give them a weathered sheen that can be akin to leather… read more…
photo © melissa catanese,
We stumbled on some compelling photo placemats done as a public art project for Atlanta Celebrates Photography: photos printed onto large size paper, perfect IF you have a big color printer. The standard size of a placemat is 12″ x 18″, bigger we can print, although we suppose, we could have them done at Kinko’s.
The photo placemats got us mulling what we have around besides our roll of kraft paper for making some impromptu placemats. Our 11″ x 14″ pad of Strathmore Drawing Paper 
photo: nacho alegre
Omar Sosa and Ana Dominguez of Apartamento
…possibly faked, though it would be fun to get a bunch of breads and try. Nevertheless, they’re a charming reminder that read more…
