photo: paul raeside
Spotted in a long post on Desire to Inspire showing work of interiors photographer Paul Raeside: walls with roughly painted stripes. Right up our alley: graphical, imperfect, charming, do-able…though perhaps not as easy as it looks (we’d practice first on some scraps sheets of plywood or walls we plan to paint over, or even heavy paper tacked on the wall). read more…
The great blog Ouno recently documented a visit to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyds Wright’s winter home and the main campus of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. A photo of the “dinner cabaret room” caught our eye: strings of tiny lights glowe3d on the ceiling. We don’t know if this is a Wrightian touch or an innovation of the current caretakers (more images below). But it got us thinking about using string lights as actual indoor lighting…not Christmas lights, but strings of lights with bigger, more illuminating bulbs.
So, we went on the hunt for ideas and sources, to explore the possibilities.
We love these lights hung vertically to make a partition and define a room… read more…
The image of a Khan market storefront in Delhi spotted on Ouno got us thinking about strangely beautiful walls of stacked logs can be. We’ve blogged some in the past, but recently found some new iterations of the great, elemental and possibly practical idea. Check out this chic wall in Alpenstueck restaurant in Berlin: read more…
annaleena's hem
From Annaleena’s Hem: “I fixed some everyday luxury with cherry twigs and green flowers. Then I covered the vase with a bubble wrap, just because I like the material and its beautiful with green flowers.”
We never thought of bubble wrap as decorative material…especially in tandem with flowers!
H-m-m-m it does have some curiously translucent, light refracting qualities…
Related posts: dill weed (and other edible) flower arrangements
improv flower arrangement: pond in a vase
guerilla florist bella meyer: “flowers as natural art supplies”
d-i-y spring blooms in winter
little makeshift vases
When we first read about Appree’s leaf-shaped sticky notes, we wrote them off as just another expensive and unnecessary take on a good simple, efficient design – the Post-It. THEN we saw them used to embellish a wall – not trying to be practical ‘post-its’ but rather, tiny little leaf sculptures…
….a-h-h-h there’s a sweet idea for decorating a room. read more…
photo:mark sherwood + queensland art gallery
For an interactive installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, artist Yayoi Kusama created a totally white room as a palette for visiting children to embellish as they pleased with colored dot stickers; ultimately thousands of stickers were used, to make bulls-eyes, whorls, dribbles and overlapping hits of color. The results of this crazy-simple exercise in spontaneous design is the increasingly stunning transformation of the white room…a big lesson to our often white-stuck decorating heads. Check out the transformation from start to finish…
We wish our gift wrapping could do the boogie-woogie like this Gif Wrap by Fueled by Coffee. But barring that bit of magical brilliance, here’s our favorite strategies for impromptu gift wrapping. read more…
photo: herbert matter, courtesy of the calder foundation
Of all the brilliant artists we feature on ‘the improvised life’, Alexander Calder holds a special place in our hearts. In addition to his monumental artworks and legendary mobiles, he was a prolific creator of household objects for everyday use. If he or his wife Louisa or a friend needed something utilitarian, he would devise a solution on the spot, with whatever was at hand.
The trove of his improvisations is vast and inspiring; each invites rethinking of common objects we often take for granted: tin cans, pie tins, wire, bits of scrap wood. His creations were not only useful, but visually stunning.
Here is the artist telling how he created a barbeque grill out of an iron garden chair after his son-in-law Jean Davidson invited a horde of people over for a party: read more…
photo: sally schneider
We recently came across a compelling blog post about letters sent home by Russian soldiers during World War II. Without access to envelopes and postcards, the soldiers folded up triangular letters that were their own package–”letter and envelope in one.” The folded format was necessary since mail needed to be reviewed by censors and couldn’t be sealed.
Although the letters are a great example of historical improvisation, we love the simple little how-to that accompanies the story – an origami-ish illustration for folding up your own triangular letter. It’s a fun, out-of-the-ordinary way to send a gift or holiday card, or just pass along a note to a friend. There’s something really satisfying about unfolding the paper and finding the letter inside; like having a friend in grade-school passing you a folded-up secret in the hallways between classes. read more…
photo: ugo mulas
What the sculptor David Smith could do with with simple squares and rectangles…
….
…his studio is as inspiring… read more…
We found this beautiful gif of a running scrapwood horse on dvdp, with the caption “horses know how to run with style.”
That’s what we want to do.
(…It’s a clip from the Chemical Brothers video ‘Horse Power’, which we find curiously thrilling watched with the sound off; we felt like we’d been riding a galloping horse…which always shakes things up).
reuben miller
At the end of designer Reuben Miller‘s clever riff on the extreme repurposing movement, some readers commented that that a fly swatter face protector and a paint brush door stop were “stupid’; other’s thought Dada. Some, like us, dug the IDEA that you can make something out of just about anything.
But we fell in love with one repurposing idea for real: stamps as nail “polish”. We’d just come back from the post office where we’d bought some pretty groovy stamps: a tiny Edward Hopper sailboat scene: read more…
Recently, Manhattan User’s Guide featured a chic cast iron book bar from Beekman 1802 in a round-up of gifts under $21. It’s designed to hold open the pages of a book, while providing a horizontal guide for reading. It is 7 inches long by 1/4 inch square and weighs 4.4 ounces; with shipping, it costs $23.
We thought it was a great idea, being non-fru-fru, elemental and totally utilitarian, qualities we value in our attempts to keep things minimal. We wondered if we could fashion one ourselves out of a softer metal – say copper, which would oxidize nicely but presented no danger of rusting. read more…
photo: henry hamilton bennett
A friend recently sent us a postcard with this image; it’s called Leaping the Chasm at Stand Rock, Wisconsin Dells, 1887 by Henry Hamilton Bennett. On the back she wrote: “…thought it was an appropriate image for this phase of your life – taking risk, eager to have a new perspective/vantage point, lots of momentum for this jump, etc” .
We don’t know when a post card has packed more of punch. With it came such good wishes and recognition, we felt like we drank a tonic.
It’s partly the power of snail mail, because snail mail means someone has taken the time to write – in effect, to make – and send something tangible, giving the words all the more power. It’s REAL; we can tape it on our wall and be reminded of so much.
Postcard as tiny, potent gift.
Related posts: sending virtual flowers and b’day cakes
postcardly: send a real postcard via email
poems as gifts: don wentworth’s ‘past all traps’
“don’t give up!” (the inspirational letters project)
origami made of anything (vic muniz’ birds of a feather)
smallnotebook.org
While we were checking out ideas for making a faux fire for mantle with no hearth, we came across a clever d-i-y for a wood fireplace mantel made of stacked boards. Take away the retro lamp and file drawer cabinet and it curiously stylish and modern. And although you can’t light a fire in it, you could (with care) use an array of votives in glasses or pillar candles along it’s hearth… read more…
