materials
painting: winston roeth
Today, not for the first time, we mistook an artwork for a household object – a mirror actually. We saw this work by Winston Roeth at YouHaveBeenHereSometime right after seeing some images of mirrors and our brain said: “Wow, what a great deeply-orange painted mirror! Why don’t we make one of those?!!” Then we scrolled down and read the copy. We looked back and realized there was no shiny mirror surface after all, but pure geometry on canvas.
Beautiful. So we read about Roeth and looked at some pictures.
We still loved the idea for a deeply orange-framed mirror, inspired by Roeth (whose work we can’f afford) and went hunting around for how to make, or get, one. read more…
04.11.12 |
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in art, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, elements, inside, materials, people, resources |
photo: todd selby
In The Selby’s recent photo essay of Coffee Supreme in Auckland New Zealand, we spotted some very cool uses for pegboard, a material with which we’ve become enamored when we saw a pegboard headboard.
Practically, pegboard is masonite (tempered hardboard) with holes punched in it to hold metal tool holders. Visually, pegboard is polka dot masonite that can be painted any color. It is cheap, strong and light (a 4′ x 8′ sheet costs around $20). At Coffee Supreme, they use pegboard in all sorts of ways: as a surface, above or as a simple, polka dot wall…
read more…
04.10.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, elements, inside, materials, resources, walls + windows |
ohjoy.blogs.com
If you didn’t get it together to send plastic goody-filled Easter eggs by mail, or sprout little plants in egg shells, we thought we’d offer some solutions for last-minute Easter egg decorating:
There’s still time to make your own plant-based dyes for truly gorgeous Easter eggs (it’s totally fun). We especially dig the moderne neon dip-dyed egg above, which you can do with neon food dye
available at the supermarket; here’s how to.
And don’t forget, eggs are a blank palette; you can just write or paint right on them with markers. read more…
04.06.12 |
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in celebrations, copy this!, d-i-y, food, how-to, materials, projects + play, strategies |
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We’re crazy about this smudged chalkboard wall – no words – that reminds us a bit of the chalky walls in Paolo Soleri’s Cosanti. And that got us thinking about how we might mix custom-colors of chalkboard paint (for writing or not) in colors that we LOVE, like an this odd green, or a rich midnight blue or ORANGE. Then we stumbled on a couple of posts about How-to Mix Your Own Chalkboard Paint. Easy-peasy. The most reliable-looking formula is from Martha Stewart Living. The gist is simple: you mix a spoonful of unsanded grout (we have some left over from setting bathroom floor tiles) into flat-finish latex paint. Voila! Chalkboard paint. Once you paint it on, you need to temper it with chalk (easy). Here’s the method, via Martha: read more…
04.03.12 |
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in copy this!, d-i-y, how-to, materials, resources, solutions, walls + windows |
piotr redlinski for the new york times
The most inspiring article in last weekend’s New York Times was about Chris Hackett and his workshop in Gowanus, the epicenter of Brooklyn’s burgeoning underground of artists, inventors, chefs, carpenters, urban gardeners, hackers, fabricators, scavengers, repurposers, live-free-or-die,and prepare-for-the-shit-to-hit-the-fan proponents.
On Chris Hackett’s personal periodic table, the world’s most interesting, and abundant, substance is an element he calls obtainium. Things classified as obtainium might include the discarded teapot that he once turned into a propane burner, or the broken beer bottle he used to make a razor, or the 9-millimeter shell casings he acquired some time ago, melted in a backyard foundry (also made of obtainium) and cast into brass knuckles for a girlfriend.
Hacket has been described as a “ master improviser…It’s almost like he thinks with his hands”, and his workshop, an obtainium mine, rich with materials for making: read more…
03.20.12 |
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in cool spaces, identity, inside, materials, paths + processes, people, principles, reclaim, reimagine, repurpose, why not? |
giverslog.com
We’d figured we had alt-easter gift covered for this year with our seedling-filled Easter eggs, when Cynthia from 50Years50Recipes sent us ANOTHER swell, novel gift. She stuffed plastic eggs with goodies and sent them through the mail, as an invitation to her her niece and nephews to come for an Easter visit (She got the idea from Giverslog.) We were under the impression that the increasingly restrictive postal system had banned oddly shaped packages years ago. Writes Cynthia:
The eggs did arrive, but it took 10 days to get from one end of Mass to the other and two weeks to get from western Massachusetts to upstate New York. So the good news is it works-the downside is that even with first class postage it takes a bit of time.
I also tried the filled bottles mentioned on Giverslog read more…
03.19.12 |
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in celebrations, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, family + friends, how-to, materials, projects + play, resources |
Last Easter, we posted Ambatalia’s extensive how-to on dying Easter eggs with natural dyes. We have that essential Easter item covered. What to do THIS year? There’s egg-shaped stones painted a la Max Ernst…
Then an image we saw in a Remodelista post about cold frames got us thinking about another kind of ALT Easter eggs. We discovered that halved egg shells are sometimes used as starter pots for seeds to sprout in (supplying the plant with a nice dose of calcium). We thought: wouldn’t a carton of eggs with little seedlings growing in them be a wondrous and surprising Easter gift? Why not?
The process is pretty simple: crack and empty the eggs*, fill with potting soil, add the seeds… Instructables has clear directions and a PDF. If you start planning now, we figure you’ll have some charming little shoots in time for Easter, on April 8th. (See packages will give you a sense of how long a particular seed takes to sprout; beans and cucumbers only take a few days.) read more…
03.15.12 |
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in celebrations, d-i-y, garden, gifts, how-to, materials, recipes |
andrea branzi @ carpenters workshop gallery, paris
Recently, we’ve seen bundles of birch logs being sold at delis around New York City: cheap enough for an evening’s cozy fire. Since we don’t have a fireplace, we’ve admired them as a lovely, elemental raw material – right on our doorstep – and mulled what we could do with them; we’ve been meaning to buy a pack just to have and see where they took us.
This morning we came across this shelving unit designed by architect Andrea Branzi - a simple birch log inserted into a simple black bookshelf, that makes for a charming and surprising visual.
So now we ARE going to go out and buy some logs before they’re gone with winter. read more…
03.14.12 |
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in copy this!, d-i-y, inside, materials, nature, people, resources, storage, stores |
photo: todd selby
Recently the New York Times ran an interactive feature about Osteria Senz’ Oste, an inn 40 miles or so north of Venice whose name translates “Tavern Without Host” or “Inn Without Barkeep.” The proprietor Cesare De Stefani wanted to create a space that “felt like home”, so he trusts people to pay what they wish for the superb local prosecco and salumi he serves there. The piece was photographed by Todd Selby of The Selby, who is known for honing in on specific and unique details of a space.
We were charmed by this image of visitor’s notes tacked up on a wall.”Why don’t we do that?” we wondered: create a wall of visits from friends and memorable times?
We recalled various iterations we’d seen of this idea: read more…
03.13.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, elements, entertaining, family + friends, inside, materials |
photo: carol mcdonnell
Carol McDonnell sent us an email about her very cool, very impromptu wrapping paper:
Now that the NY Times has beautiful large full color photos, I decided not buy paper, but use it to wrap several books. The giraffe and the donkey head from the Whitney make a charming way to recycle . . .
I’m nuts for both these shots . . . and am going to use them as wallpaper for my laptop and phone.
We love it! (and no instructions necessary)…
…it made us think of Pamela Hovland’s charming Magazine Page Envelopes.
Related post: ‘gif wrap’ + six strategies for cool, cheap gift wrap (d-i-y)
paint your (gift) boxes!
art wrapping paper for gifts
unwrapping the holidays: alt-gifts, d-i-y wrap and……… cool blogs
magazine pages as envelopes
03.08.12 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, gifts, materials, reclaim, resources |
