The other day, we spotted natural fiber rugs on the floor of a Swedish farmhouse — they look like coir or jute — that seem to have been stenciled with a pattern. Brilliant, why didn’t we think of that?!!! The technique would allow you add simple geometric designs to inexpensive and durable rugs. It might even be a way to give new life to stained or worned sisals (sisals ain’t cheap and show wear like crazy).
photo by anna kern
When we were renovating the bathroom of our new place, we chose a wall-hung sink in order to make the small 7′x5′ room look bigger (vanities take up a lot of space and close things in – see below). We were very careful to give the plumbing sleek lines to keep the spare look, at a good deal of thought and effort and $$ (nice looking p-traps cost more than garden variety ones…starting at about $50 bucks and going up well over $100 for fancy, moderne ones). It isn’t easy to make plumbing look pleasing…UNLESS you take off in a totally different direction…
…and PUSH the visual impact of the the plumbing, as in this photo from a Swedish family home. They used bold loops of PVC, copper, and stainless pipe along with a outsized brass faucet.
Although we LOVE the spare, relatively low-budget and now-spacious bathroom we created (details to come in future posts)… read more…
photo: lisa klappe
We LOVE New York-based creative alissia melka-teichroew‘s series of ballpoint pen wallpaper designs, part of rollout‘s artist series. The made us want to got right up into a corner and start doodling, and drawing stripes… read more…
In an effort to bring more nature into this urban home, Polish architecture firm mode:lina conspired with the own to make a chandelier out a tree branch. “It can not be just any branch!” said the owner, “I will bring one from the place where I used to spend my childhood holidays.”
We’re adding it to our file of tree branch inspirations, started when we started hauling home downed limbs after Hurricane Sandy.
The chandelier seems to be little more than the carefully-chosen branch looped with outdoor string lights and hardwired into the ceiling. It’s one of the best chandelier’s we’ve seen in some time… read more…
les floralies
Recently, we were enticed to buy a travel-size-two-fer of Les Floralies Sniff Boxes: one to encourage sleep, the other “focus”. Sniff boxes are little vials of “aroma beads” infused with various mixes of essential oils designed to assist well-being. We enjoyed Les Floralies‘ scents and charming packaging — and found that opening a sniff box did provided a lovely, instant break. But we have to admit that as soon as we opened the intriguing little vials, we started thinking about how we could improvise some ourselves, with our own, custom-mixed blend of scents. What would be the medium that would hold the scent of the essential oils for a good amount of time, without being messy when opened? White rice, balls of infused wax, salt...? Suddenly, we realized we had ALREADY improvised a solution — years ago.
The ladder idea came up when there was no more room in the cupboards for the pots and pans, and it looks great.
(Video link here.) In 2010, Graham Hill, the founder of treehugger.com, bought 420 square foot apartment in a tenement building in New York City’s Soho and, over two years, turned it into a showcase for tiny living.
Hill wanted a tiny space hat would expand to fulfill his wish list which included dinner parties for 12, accommodations for 2 overnight guests, a home office and a home theater with digital projector. He crowdsourced the design as a competition and received 300 entries from all over the world. Two Romanian architecture students won with their design “One Size Fits All”.
Hill’s LifeEdited apartment can be expanded to include the functionality of 1,100 square feet: walls, drawers and beds move and unfold to create 6 rooms: living room, dining room, office, guest office, master bedroom and guest bedroom, kitchen and the bathroom (which morphs into a phone booth or meditation room).
The video shows the transformation and is packed with interesting ideas. read more…
*digikijo
A few weeks ago, after Susan Dworski mentioned that she carved stamps out of erasers, we started thinking about all the things you could do with home-made stamps. Why not stamp a pattern on sheets or rolls of paper to make your own fab holiday wrapping paper? (It’s easy, you just get yourself some Staedtler Mars Erasers
Then we remembered some wonderful gift wrap our friend Holton Rower made with his kids one Christmas. He made his stamps out of potatoes. read more…
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…
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…
‘the improvised life’s former assistant Sarah M alerted us to this easy-to-make gift for the holidays: color block wooden spoons, along with a link to A Cozy Kitchen showing how-to. It could not be easier: buy some wooden spoons
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…
(Video link here.) On Ambatalia’s blog, we came across this useful little video demonstrating several ways of folding Furoshiki clothes — large squares of fabric — to make carry bags and packages. What the video fails to show is the little revelation that is scattered around Ambatalia’s site: you can WEAR Furoshiki clothes as well. Tied around the waist, they make a swell apron. When made out of beautiful fabric, you can wear them as a scarf. Molly de Vries of Ambatalia designed this “42-inch square everyday furoshiki scarf” from fine Irish linen; it’s washable and meant to be worn “crumply”: read more…
(Video link here.) Susan Dworski alerted us to this stunning video, in an email with the subject line: “ah, the improvisational human spirit”. It’s about a remarkable orchestra from a remote village in Paraguay — a slum built on landfill — where its young musicians play with instruments made from foraged trash. The village’s inhabitants eke out a living by culling saleable items and materials in the huge dump. When a half-destroyed violin was found, Nicolas Gomez had the idea to rehabilitate it using found materials; the improvisation of other instruments followed.
It is astonishing to hear the wondrous first strains of Bach’s Suite No.1 in G major Prélude played on a cello improvised out of “an oil can, wood that was thrown away in the garbage…its pegs made out of an old tool used to tenderize beef and to make gnocchi…”
…And to hear how these kids lives have been changed by music: “When I listen to the sound of a violin, I feel butterflies in my stomach.” Says Music Director Favio Chavez, “The world sends us garbage. We send back music.” read more…
