Rookie Magazine’s looks-like-neon sign diy made out of EL wire got us thinking about using THAT as our holiday lighting, with signs showing JOY, or a moderne neon Xmas tree, or WHAT IF? or other messages for the coming year. The battery-powered flexible glowing tube has the essential effect of neon without complex glass manipulation. The process is doable in a few hours: a fine weekend project.
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The holidays have us thinking about ways to remember all those folks — some who traveled FAR — with whom we visited or shared a meal, celebrating and counting blessings. So compiled our collection of traditional and not-so-traditional forms of “guest books”.
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Over many years of cooking professionally, amidst sharp knives and fire, I learned that an accidental cut or burn was in fact a signal: a message from myself to myself that I was distracted. I needed to listen deeply to what was going on, or at the very least, slow down and take care. I…
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Buried in a photo series about C-Mine design center in Genk, Belgium at Vosges Paris is an image of someone rubber stamping what we thought at first were paper placemats or cloths. Wonderful idea!
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While planning the office portion of the Laboratory’s renovation, I had to be lean and efficient, having spent some serious money on a sliding wall to make it all disappear. I happily used a strategy that had served me (and about a million designers) for years: a desk made of pedestal file cabinets and a…
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Our friend Virginia del Giudice recently sent us another of her wonderful teeny gifts: a little colorfully wrapped bonbon of some sort. Only an inch across, it is an example of the power that even small gift can have in making the recipient feel appreciated, considered, cared for. We wondered what was in the mysterious cloth wrapping…
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Over the past months, we’ve been collecting an illuminating array of chair images over at the great site Aqqindex. Each one has made us think, look into its structure, opened our mind to the many possibility of “chair”. All are so startlingly simple, it makes us think we could make them ourself:
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As soon as we saw Mc&Co’s irregularly shaped mirrors we thought WANT. We’ve been thinking for some time that our very angular Laboratory could use some organic forms to soften it, and have been mulling how we might do that with mirrors. Mc&Co’s mirrors look like portals into other rooms. Swell! Although we’ve written about irregularly…
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How many times have you had your shoemaker polish your shoes, only to find the rough blims and tears on the scuffed toes pop up after the first wearing, making your shoes look as old as they really are? Having never found a shoemaker who solved the problem, we decided to experiment on a few…
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We’ve watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s many times and never noticed the very makeshift decor of Holly Golightly’s apartment: the crate coffee table…luggage storage bins…and…the wonderful clawfoot tub sofa. THAT set us on the hunt…
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Could it be that the great Mexican architect Luis Barrigan created a study with an unexpected, roughly-painted rather expressionistic trompe l’oeil window to brighten a windowless space? It LOOKS that way in this image we found at Aqqindex. It got us casting about for abstract optical illusions we might employ at home, the opposite of the usual trompe l’oeil that…
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Over the years, we fed ours and reader’s passion for practical things made of shipping pallets, with examples of the very best, most stylish versions we could find of pallet beds, sofas, side tables, steps, even a version of Le Corbusier’s iconic club chair. Gradually, novel ideas for pallet began to drop off as the diy-universe reached a saturation point,…
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In the last couple of apartments we’ve had, we’ve suffered —albeit, mildly in the scheme of things— the ubiquitous, ugly, boxy generic doorbell that most building’s management installs. We never really stopped to think how we could make it more pleasing to look at. Designer Laura Handler, who has a brilliant talent for fixing the irritating…
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We were blown away when we saw the digitized album Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes (also known as “sun prints”, made by placing on object on chemical-treated paper in the sun) that she made in the 1800s. Atkins, the first woman to make photographs, used the cyanotype process to document algaes and made some poetic, often pleasingly abstract images.…
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Designer Laura Handler continues to amaze us with the way she handles “some un-lovely things” in her Harlem apartment. We recently featured her disguise for ugly air conditioner surrounds using checkered duct tape. Now she’s turned her attention to another eye-sore whose ubiquitous look we’ve pondered and hated forever: big black flat-screen TV’s. (Why doesn’t some…
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Whenever I can’t get a stubborn stain out of a linen napkin, tablecloth or a blouse, I do what my Greek great-grandmother did: I squeeze lemon juice onto the stain and put it directly in the sun. When I lived in a south-facing apartment with no outdoor space, I’d open the window and rig ways to…
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Seattle artist Peregrine Church of Rainworks discovered a readily available spray that allowed him to stencil invisible signs and images on the sidewalk and walls, that would magically appear when it rained. It’s a beautiful effect that we’ve discovered we can do ourselves.
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When my 5-year-old-laptop bailed on me, I reacted like any strong independent woman with a brain and an alarm clock; I handed it off to my husband and said “This is broken, please fix it”. Seriously. Being the feminist my husband is, he said NO…….
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One of our practices is to look at artist’s work carefully to see what ideas we can steal apply in/on our own lives/walls/spaces. We take the do-able kernel and make it our own. We’ve discovered that conceptual artist Sol LeWitt actually left instructions for making his work (which became the works themselves). Why not follow LeWitt’s instruction in our own space, we wondered, to make a wonderful wall?
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Want to change your mindset and/or your space? Or devise a SERIOUS JOYFUL installation for a party? Create a floating sea of pink balloons, as Margaux Rodot, Mickaël Martin & Benoit Tastet did at the recent Lively Architecture Festival in Montpellier, France. They filled the courtyard of the Hotel de Griffy with balloons in varying shades of pink…
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