You don’t have to love the style of something to adore how it works. This is brilliant, and I will totally be ripping off the idea at some point in my future, albeit in a slightly less fussy faux-traditional fashion.
(Apologies for my lazy catalog ripping - I’d ripped it out simply to remind myself to post it, thinking that surely I’d be able to find a cleaner image online. Not so!)
That is just about the prettiest surface I have ever seen. It looks like labradorite, my most favorite stone ever, doing 24/7 what it normally only does when the sun hits it just so.
Seen in: Making Dark Rooms Glow in NYT Home & Garden section
Image by Bonny Makarewicz
I’m loving this cottage renovation. Pictures! I bliss out on pictures.
Images by Roger Davies
Via Shelterific
Quick! Someone lend me several thousand dollars so I can preorder six of these chairs.
They’re a beautiful mix of rough and refined, of modern and retro, and I really really want them. Probably the first chair in a long time that I’ve said, “Yes. I’d pay for that. Whatever you want.” Instead of, “Eh…I’ll look for something like it on Craigslist.”
I saw these on an Apartment Therapy round-up and had to have them. I’ve always loved intricate patterns - to me these are a geometer’s version of mehendi, and I adore it.
I went to a Feist concert in San Francisco Friday night. I wasn’t sure I was going to go, as my cat got in a bad accident Thursday and I was feeling pretty down. But the concert was sold out, my chances of getting tickets in the future were slim, and I really wanted to go.
So glad I did. As a backdrop for about a third of the show, she had the most amazing shadow work! I couldn’t catch the name of the lady doing it over the noise of the crowd; I wish I could credit her. There were moving silhouette vignettes, puppetry, finger painting, fabric shadows, projector overlays, and all kinds of mixed bag techniques, but the effects were almost always poignant (when they weren’t amusing).
It caused no little amount of consternation this morning to find there’s little documentation of the stuff on the web. No Google results came up (am I searching for the wrong thing?), nothing in the live concert clips on YouTube, and almost nothing on Flickr either. This lone pic from Flickr user photoscott was the best I could do.
Marianne makes ‘bangs. No, not the blonde kind, although she has those too. Interrobangs! Marianne and I bonded over Yugoslavian benches and shared Craigslist addictions. Now she’s letting me have my very own ‘bang in my favoritest color of blue. It came today in the mail. Shoulda seen me tear into that envelope, baby.
This is how I craft: I break out a bottle of gold leaf and look for something to attack. I spent five minutes rummaging around, and there they were: (more…)
I found this excerpt in one of my journals, dating back to 2004. It amused me so much, I thought I’d repost it.
I saw a bright orange six drawer tool chest in the sale papers today. As I’ve nothing more than a folding table heaped with various powertools on the back porch, I’ve been considering investing in some kind of appropriate container once I get settled on the other side of the country. Tabletop belt sanders aren’t the objects de arte I had in mind for my apartment. With enough bravado, do you think I could pass off a tall tool chest as indoor furniture? I already have a bright blue retro laminate dresser from a modern furniture store. I’m seriously thinking of getting a funky tool box and putting the TV on top of it in the living room. It’s that or get a second dresser. Clothes dressers don’t have those handy shallow top drawers, though, and neither do they come with ball-bearing drawer rollers, which are essential with heavier tools. Add another item to the list of things I must invent and market myself: tool chests for people who have no sheds, garages, basements, or workshops. Tool chests that look good in the hallway! Tool chests to fool your guests! Do I hear an “Amen, sister”?!
Do you think the above bright blue Clarke chest could be adequately worked into a living room scheme? Could it be coated with fun wood veneer à la Todd Oldham? Either way, I’d be a-okay with having a kitchen counter that looked like the red workspace on this page.
All ye of small spaces, what do you keep your tools in?
Sometimes you need mass amounts of accountability in order to find the discipline to do something you actually wanted to do anyway.
…Did that make any sense?
Like all the people who committed to The Fall Cure, implicitly trusting that their involvement in a larger community would keep them focused and on task, I am going to join DrawMo to force myself to, well, draw more. I used to love to draw. Somewhere in the college years, I was increasingly exposed to the idea that, you know, maybe I’m not too good at it compared to the art majors who lived in the basement of Lee Hall. Or even the other architecture students in my class. So I stopped.
But acknowledging that I’d rather read a paperback novel than Tolstoy doesn’t stop me from reading and loving it, so why should my mediocre drawing skills keep me from loving the thrill of putting pencil to paper?
So tonight I’m going to make myself a drawing kit out of my leftover architecture supplies, find a darling container to keep it in, and start counting down the days to November 1st with the glee of a kid awaiting their birthday. (The more anticipation approaching the event, the longer I’ll be able to stick to it, right?)
Join DrawMo yourself at the blog or the Flickr group.
(image by Richard Rogers)
Amy Butler and Michael Miller fabrics, bought by the yard on Ebay. If only the Belle Coriander print on the far left were on bark cloth or other upholstery weight fabric, I would so be doing the side chair in it.
I want to build this flex wall console and put it in A’s apartment. So many of the things I see these days that I want to replicate have me mourning the loss of access to laser cutters and CNC routers. Not that I ever used them when I had access to them in school (I was otherwise occupied), but now with some free time on my hands, I’m wishing a sign-up list was all that was between me and precision fabrication.
Seen in Apartment Therapy - Home Tech.
Not my usual furniture type (though I love the room in the background), but I just couldn’t resist sharing this bed. I really want an opportunity to bounce around on it and figure out how it works. What keeps it from tipping if you get a little action happy on the foot of the bed?
Via IKEA Hacker, I saw this DIY chandelier. Oh. My. Goodness. How gorgeous is that? I wish I knew more about electrical work - enough to be comfortable re-wiring things. As it is, I’ve nightmares about setting a fire in the attic through un-safe wiring. But when I learn more, or succeed in talking my dad into doing it for me, this chandelier, or something like it, is so completely MINE!
Okay, and their house is nice too.
And yes, I know I’m almost a year late on this one.
Wired mag is probably not where I want to see Martha Stewart, but I do subscribe to the following thought that she presented in an interview here:
Wired: One reason people like projects is because they get a sense of control over their environment and technology. It gives them ownership.
Stewart: That’s why I say, “You own it if you made it.” You don’t own the pie if you buy it. You just don’t. Doing projects really gives people self-confidence. Nothing is better than taking the pie out of the oven. What it does for you personally, and for your family’s idea of you, is something you can’t buy.
Making my own stuff does do something for me personally, and I have a really hard time finding the words to explain that to all the people I’ve met lately who don’t “do” anything but work, play, and consume. I guess when it comes to “making” or “producing,” either you understand the urge or you don’t. A lot of folks can’t see why I’d want to create more work for myself - why not just go home and watch TV for the rest of the day? But equally so, I can’t see why they’d want to, well…go home and watch TV for the rest of the day. There are so many amazing recipes to try, antique dressers to refinish, clothes to sew, walls to paint, vegetables to garden, books to read, blogs to browse, and ideas to be inspired by.
I’m a designer, a creator, and a tinkerer. Sue me.
Speaking of amazing recipes to try, this one came up through Apartment Therapy (Kitchen) that suggests something devilishly delicious to do with the scads of zucchini coming out of the garden: Chocolate Zucchini Cake. The write-up makes it sound much better than you’d first think. And I do have a new springform pan…
