When the fridge is practically bare, I make a sublimely elemental pasta dish with pantry staples: good quality tinned anchovies, mellowed and transformed by extra virgin olive oil, garlic, dried hot pepper, and parsley. If you don’t like anchovies, the method will still work fine.
Read MoreOrdinary Chairs Completely Transformed by Sheep Skins
It many of the modern interiors we browse online, there’s a lamb or sheep skin thrown onto a mid-century chair. They are everywhere, so ubiquitous they are a bit…er…irritating. Then we saw this chair designed by Franco Albini for Cassina (in 1959! but still available) and thought Aha! Why not completely COVER an ordinary chair with sheep skin…
Read MoreDirty Pink Obsession: Even Donald Judd Loved It
It seems that even Artist Donald Judd liked muted, “dirty” pink walls, the focus of our ongoing obsession. Here’s one of the rooms in the Cobb House that he renovated in Marfa, Texas, the vast army base he bought and transformed in the 1990’s.
Read MoreArtist’s Cool Precursors to the Pallet Bed
Artists Donald Judd and Martin Kippenberger both liked sleeping on a low platform, unbounded in the room…the precursor to the popular pallet bed?
Read MoreThe Evolution of a Snowflake Is Like…Our Own
This wondrous video made us look up “How Are Snowflakes Formed?”, a question that, in all our long years, we’ve never known the answer to. And we found that the answers curiously echo the creative process and individual growth.
Read MoreShopping Cart Lawn Chair/Lounger
The supermarket shopping cart has always seemed to us to be a splendid raw material, its metal-grid walls and sturdy wheels rich with possibilities. Artists have long been hacking shopping carts, transforming them into moderne, beautifully-designed objects of leisure.
Read MoreBillboards with Art instead of Ads
Disliking the glut of advertising everywhwere, Etienne Lavie imagined what the Paris would look like if classical paintings replaced ads, and photoshopped his imaginings into real images.
Read More‘Will It Beard’s Strangely Inspiring Beard Improvisations
Will It Beard features a completely unique beard of the week, or perhaps better put: an iteration of the same beard, that of Pierce Thiot. He and his wife Stacy imagine a new beard embellishment to put in his beard every week and she photographs it. The resultings are curiously uplifting.
Read MoreWhen to Deconstruct A TOO Critical Eye
This fix of a kid’s scribble on the wall made realized that sometimes it’s good to step back before fixing something and reflect on our critical eye.
Read MoreNoguchi-esque Rice Paper Shade Light Hung LOW
On the heels of our post about Noguchi-esque Rice Paper Shade lighting, we spotted this one hung LOW to beautiful effect. It provides a round volume AND casts light where a table light would be.
Read MoreSplatter Decor: Splattered Paint as Home Design Element
During our obsessive rampage at AQQ Index the other day, we came across several examples of Pollock Inspired splatters on walls and floors; we realized what a cool design element they can be.
Read MoreThe Thrilling Adventure of Familiar Frontiers
(Video link HERE.) Mickey Smith is a surf photographer from Cornwall, England whose six minute video of wave riding in the ominous North Sea is a stunning, nail biting, vicarious experience for urbanistas and land-locked couch potatoes. But diving beyond the hair-raising visuals, listening to Smith’s philosophy of life is what makes this clip intriguing. Smith says, “I never…
Read MoreStylishly Graphical Tatoos, Mehndi and Otherwise
These tattooed fingers reminded us of a stylish, graphic inversion of the classic temporary Mehndi tattoos with which Indian women adorn their hands, do-able even with impermanent markers. Looking for HOW we might doing something like this, we stumbled on applicators for henna at Etsy and a picture that tells the whole story.
Read MoreCross-Layered Stripe-On-Stripe Table Cloths
Spotted at Ikea’s Blog Livet Hemma, this a swell little idea for jazzing up a tabletop: stripe-on-stripe table cloths created with swathes of fabric. via Livet Hemma
Read MoreA Necklace of Linked Bracelets (and Charms and Memories)
Pamela Hovland spotted this very cool necklace made from mismatched bracelets linked together using their existing fasteners, an idea that holds possibilities for transforming all kinds of jewelry
Read MoreIs Dirty Green the New Dirty Pink?
While browsing Elle Decoration’s cool new online image gallery, we noticed a lot of green interiors — slightly “dirty”, muted greens that is. It made us wonder if odd greens are the new “dirty pinks” we’ve been crazy about and monitoring…
Read MoreProductivity Practice: Read a Great Kid’s Book
One of our most useful productivity practices is to take a break in the late afternoon, lie down, and read a kid’s book until we fall asleep for a refreshing 30 minute nap. If it’s the right book, it will take our minds AWAY from all that’s on it and fire up our creativity.
Read MoreThe Baked Apple Improvisations
Maria Robledo’s Instagram of baked apples reminded me of my favorite baked apple recipe that I had at a dinner party one evening. They had an intense apple flavor brought out by modest ingredients: red current jelly, lemon juice and a little butter. Because the apples had been cored all the way through and covered…
Read MorePossibilities in the Realm of Bike Design
After we stumbled on this image of an crazy beautiful bike with square wheels, we followed links to a Classic Bikes Auction being held by Copake Auction. The online catalogue is surprisingly compelling, with all sorts of iterations on 2 and 3-wheeled human-powered vehicles, some like fanciful sculptures. (We can imagine having the square-wheeled bike in our…
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