We can imagine lots of ways to use this 16-drawer cabinet from Ikea, PS Sinka($249). It is made out almost entirely of solid birch (except for drawer bottoms and back), so doesn’t stand the chance of being chipped like a laminate. It could be easily taken off its base and hung on the wall, placed on…
Read Moreour typos – omg!
We’ve been running way too fast the past while, and reached a crescendo of typos today, including leaving the ‘l’ out of the word ‘public’. Yikes! We apologize – no excuse – but hope you’ll laugh. This is all, as ever, improvised…
Read Morefree map envelope app (+ an invite to governors island)
Map Envelope is a free online app that allows you to print paper envelopes lined with a Google Maps location of your choice, tagged with your message. You print the envelope, cut it out, fold and send; and whomever you send it to gets to open a lovely surprise. We thought Map Envelope would be…
Read Morefree guide for (secret) inventors
We’ve lost track of the inventions and products we’ve designed in our heads, or drawn, or even rigged a rough version of for our own use. We are, at heart, secret inventors, plotting ways to make the things we’ve looked for and can’t seem to find in stores or online. We love stories of ordinary…
Read Morestylish d-i-y photo collage
We like the idea of this black-and-white photo collage, made sleek and moderne by placing the photos on a grid within a defined rectangle, and leaving a bit of space between each one. We’re thinking a restickable “Post It” glue stick would do the trick, allowing you to shift and rearrange images at will without…
Read Morehow to haul stuff on a bike shanghai-style
While in Shanghai a year or so ago, photographer Alain Delorme became fascinated by the extraordinary loads carried by migrants on their bicycles and other rigged vehicles: “piles of stacked ‘made in china’ products which form unusual sculptures…loads of tires, water containers, office chairs, flowers…” The images are amazing, though we find the title Manufactured Totems and…
Read Moredishtowel as….
At Mill Valley Beerworks in California, they use .49 red-striped cotton Tekla dishtowels from Ikea as cloth napkins. They are reminiscent of classic French provincial tea towels. You can’t get any cheaper than that for a good-looking resource that invites improvisation: placemats, gift wrapping…stitched-together to become a pillow cover or… mapped with stripes going horizontally…
Read Moreon keeping goals to yourself
Once a therapist friend told us that he advises his clients NOT to talk about what they are working on in therapy outside the sessions; he felt it dissipated the energy and focus needed to achieve their goal which was personal change of one sort or another. His thinking still flies in the face of…
Read Morerube goldberg summer camp
This video is the wonderful product of the rather informal, seemingly impromptu Rube Goldberg Summer Camp, devised by and for the Kidde Woodward family and maybe a few friends. It is pure joy. We’re imagining one of those little kids telling what they did on their summer vacation…
Read Moresliding walls and (garage) doors
Friends of ours recently finished the long renovation of their brownstone in Brooklyn; designed by artists, the house is full of interesting ideas. One of the most dramatic is the floor-to-ceiling sliding doors that collapse sideways to open to the lush garden in the back…on two floors no less. (Our photographs were taken while the punch-list…
Read Morehacking ikea: throw away the book!
London-based designer Kenyon Yeh has developed a wonderful premise for hacking Ikea furniture (one of our favorite past-times): He buys standard Ikea flat-pack furniture and throws away the instruction book; then he assembles it the way he wants, adding new elements like an old English chair leg he cast in resin…It seems to us like…
Read Morea gift for the last day of summer
We were looking for a little gift to leave on the blog this last day of summer and thought The Wilderness Downtown would be just right…It is one of the very best things we’ve seen on the internet: crazy beautiful, imaginative, really surprising and moving… …click here, have patience while it loads, and watch to the…
Read Moremore improvising at the beach – in black tie
Improv Everywhere is devoted to “causing scenes of chaos and joy in public places”. Over the years, they have invited anyone-who-wants-to to participate in their missions which have included Cell-Phone Symphonies to No Pants Subway Rides. In the latest, they instructed their agents to appear at Coney Island dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns bought at thrift stores…
Read Moreimprovising at the beach
Until our recent vacation, we hadn’t been to the beach for so long that we’d forgotten what wonders lay there: raw materials free for the playing with… …Our friend James brought a ball with him, then hunted for the perfect piece of driftwood, for a pick-up game of stickball (and we realized that we never…
Read Morereality sandwich*: street mural, bronx-style via manny howard
Manny Howard emailed this photo in response to our post on San Francisco street murals…The Subject Line read: “the last mural to catch my eye was on the feed store in the bronx where i buy my chicken food” Manny still keeps a few chickens from the days when he turned his Brooklyn backyard into…
Read Morenew york city beekeeper/surfer
The Selby has run a really nice story-with-few-words about Andrew Field, chef of Rockaway Taco, in Rockaway Beach, Queens – right by the beach – who loves surfing and keeps bees on his roof (we are always heartened when we discover a New York City beekeeper; it reminds us that nature is here, even in…
Read Morethe unexpected delights of a real dictionary
…While we’re on the subject of bound dictionaries, largely considered an anachronism these days, we loved finding a dictionary on a stand at Zeitgeist Coffee in Seattle. We found ourselves flipping through randomly to discover a few odd words and ideas we never would have found otherwise: teeny surprises in our day, and a reminder
Read Moreps: drying out water-damaged books n’ things with rice
Shortly after we reported on Manny Howard’s experience drying out his water-logged cellphone out by burying it in rice, Valerie Sims emailed us this report: Several weeks ago a minor water leak reached an old dictionary that has sentimental value for me. Within a few hours, a small amount of water had wicked up through…
Read Moresimple stacked salvaged wood side table
A quick glance of these paired photos on Emma’s blog made us unconsciously splice the two ideas together: ‘salvaged wood bedside or sofa side table’, we thought…fine idea. There is so much great salvaged wood around these days, that can be easily cut and stacked askew to great effect… Related posts: Blog Find: Daniel Hales…
Read Morethinking about structures from the inside out
We came across this coupling of essential quotes when we were poking around John Zernings blog about Garden Trellises and Architectural Space Frames. “Applied to architecture and structure, the former is primarily an aesthetic position; the latter is a principle of economy.” wrote Zerning. We find both immensely useful, and made a sign to remind…
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