This beautiful textile design by Lara Cameron is really fueling my lust for teardrop patterns.

I really love this rug. (I can’t wait until Fritz is 100% with the housebreaking so we can have rugs again.)

In an American Idol shirt, no less! Hysterical. I definitely think this is worthy of closing out the week. Have an excellent weekend!

Irish Blood, English Heart (Tuesday, 4/30)

All You Need is Me (Monday, 4/29)

The pots are saying: “Hey ya!” Make your neighbourhood more alive

I love this idea! These flowerpots are by Maija Louekari (I’ve mentioned her before). So fun!

What would you make pots on your windowsill spell? I’m thinking “Go away!”, personally, but that’s not very nice of me. Maybe this is an idea better reserved for the back garden for those of us who are less…gregarious.

Los Angeles architect Fritz Haeg narrows the divide between residents and their communities with projects like Edible Estates, an international effort to convert front lawns into working food gardens.

Watch it all the way through. It’ll make you feel great, I promise. (From Dwell.)

I’m feeling really excited about Ellsworth Kelly lately (who, by the way, comes from Newburgh). I can’t wait to see these two pieces in the Color Chart exhibit at MoMA. Has anyone been yet?

Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance II. 1951.
Cut-and-pasted color-coated paper and pencil on four sheets of paper, 38 1/4 x 38 1/4" (97.2 x 97.2 cm).

Colors for a Large Wall. 1951.
Oil on canvas, sixty-four panels, 7′ 10 1/2" x 7′ 10 1/2" (240 x 240 cm).

I have a full-blown, unrequited furniture crush!

A couple of weeks ago I saw this sweet 1956 Heritage Henredon table for auction on eBay. It wound up selling for $360, and that’s too much money for me to spend on something I really have absolutely no use for. It is absolutely gorgeous, though, and I cant stop thinking about it! I actually dreamt about it last night (and fell out of bed twice?)—that it was sitting in the back room of our house, the room that’s still unrenovated. In my dream, the room was painted white from top to bottom (including the floor), and nothing was in it other than this table.

I’m so flattered that Kathryn at Perfectbound has given me a “you’ve made my day” award, because really, isn’t making someone’s day just about the nicest thing you can do? Kathryn and Julie’s blog is so beautiful—such attention to detail! Thank you.

Now I’m supposed to pass along the award to five blogs that have made my day! This kind of thing always makes me nervous because I can be shy sometimes, but this is all just about showing appreciation, right? So I’ll try.

Jen at My Polariod Blog
Jenn at Jenn Ski Studio
Kelly at Hoping for Happy Accidents
Sandra at Smosch
Tina at Swissmiss

Thanks! You’ve made my day!

Here are the obligatory “rules” that follow these sorts of posts…
The ‘you make my day award’ works like this:
1) Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make me think and/or make my day
2) Acknowledge the post of the award giver
3) Tell the award winners that they have won by commenting on their blogs with the news!

This isn’t my scavenger rehab project, but it’s so impressive that I have to post it. Gregory over at AT:LA found a mangy-looking old stereo cabinet on the side of the road, and totally rehabbed it to the point of gorgeousness over the course of a month. It was gutted, stripped, standed, and stained. The front panel was unsalvageable, so Gregory covered it with these bamboo pulp wall flats. Amazing! Here’s how the cabinet looked BEFORE:

Gregory will be continuing to document the electronic upgrade to the interior of the cabinet at Unplggd, but for now you can take a look at his step-by step process in seven parts:
The Stereo Cabinet #1
The Stereo Cabinet #2 - The Strip Show
The Stereo Cabinet #3 - Enter Sandman
The Stereo Cabinet #4 - No Guts, No Glory
The Stereo Cabinet #5 - House of Stain
The Stereo Cabinet #6 - A Stain In the Neck
The Stereo Cabinet #7 - Moving On

A few days ago I was skimming through the Design House Stockholm website, and I came across these gorgeous “Bono” mugs designed by Catharina Kippel. Instantly overtaken by the perfection of the one with the droplet pattern in particular (I have a bit of an obsession with teardrop shapes), I grabbed the photo, posted it on Flickr, and started to agonize over the likely cost of shipping and VAT to get a set of these delivered to me in New York.

Shortly thereafter, Katie popped in to inform me that Crate & Barrel is selling all four of the Design House Stockholm mugs for a mere $10.95! HOORAY. Needless to say, I’ll be stopping in to C&B tonight to pick up several.

More things that are making me happy today:

I love this kitchen by DAPStockholm (found via designsponge), with its red Arne Jacobsen faucet (part of the Vola line I love) and the Cole & Sons wallpaper (which I really expected to be tiring of by now, but I still love it). It reminds me of another favorite kitchen of mine.

I really do love red in the kitchen! Isn’t it nice how everything starts to tie together after a while?

Also:

+ I’ve really been enjoying Alice’s posts over at Peapods.

+ Camilla posted really beautiful photos of her morning walk yesterday.

+ It’s almost the weekend!

Today at Desire to Inspire Jo posted some great photos from interiors photographer Amanda Prior’s portfolio. One of the featured kitchens stood out for me because it uses the same freestanding UDDEN units and GRUNDTAL shelving from IKEA that I have in my own kitchen, but used in a completely different way.

The color scheme is a bit too “pretty” for me, but there’s a lot of inspiration here. The shallow wood shelf that surround the units looks great, as does the recessed glass shelving. I also really like the pullout undercabinets (custom-built, perhaps?) with butcherblock tops:

I just want to know where the refrigerator is!

As I’ve mentioned before (more than once), some of the things IKEA does best are their textiles! I’ve been waiting impatiently for the 2008 lines to hit the stores, and hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to stock up. That triangle-bunting print is killing me with its adorableness.

I love triangles!

Between the Fialena (designed by Anna Svanfeldt) and Petronella lines, there are 10 new prints to choose from.

Within the world of book cover design (a world I inhabit for at least 40 hours a week), Chip Kidd is both admired and despised (I suspect that a lot of the animosity comes from a secret jealousy that we less-famous book cover designers don’t like to admit to or talk about). There is no disputing, though, that he is by far the most famous, the most rockstar of us all. Book cover design isn’t one of those things you just do here and there on a whim—most people I know who work in the field started out there, and will spend the majority of the duration of their careers there, too. This is especially true for those of us who, like Kidd, work in-house for a publishing company. A book cover designer doesn’t wake up one day and decide to start doing corporate identity packages at an ad agency (or, for that matter, book interiors—that’s a whole different world). I know people who have tried to leave the field, but they always come back eventually.

I think the next step for graphic designers is to figure out how to meaningfully generate their own content. That’s what I’ve found that I have been doing, and want to continue to do. Whether it’s a book, or whether it’s music, or a film, or whatever; I think it’s the natural growth, rather than just strictly working for a client all the time.

Kidd is really on to something with the above quote, and his point absolutely applies to every person working in the field of graphic design, regardless of their field of focus. Working in a creative position within a larger corporate environment can be difficult for a person who is visually expressive by nature. The further you get from the creative freedom of your college years, the more you become entirely directed towards satisfying an outside demand (whether it be from a publisher, and art director, or an author). I don’t think this is a simple as defining “Art” as a separate thing from “Design”; I think it’s about nurturing a part of yourself that will eventually die off completely unless you figure out how to generate that original content he’s talking about, even if it’s just for yourself. I know many, many graphic designers who have struggled with this idea for years.

Chip Kidd also has a FABULOUS apartment, which you can see some of in the video. He’s an avid collector of Batman and other comic book-related ephemera, and he definitely knows how to display that collection in a way that is both sophisticated and accessible. The New York Times ran a great article on Kidd and his home a couple of years ago. The Eileen Gray chairs are to die for, right?

By the way, my apologies to those who are seeing this post for a second time today (albeit in a different form). Technical difficulties and further thought required a total reposting!

I love the color red in the kitchen, and I have lots of red bits in mine, but lately I’ve been thinking about kitchens with red as the primary color. Look at these two red kitchens, both from Marie Claire Maison—aren’t they all wonderful? (And when did tiled countertops fall out of fashion? I love them!)

p.s. Does anyone watch How Not to Decorate? I don’t even care that it’s a home show, it’s like watching the best sitcom ever! I adore Colin and Justin, they are absolutely hilarious and have the best fashion sense. Hooray for short, stumpy neckties!

From Eames Demetrious:

These stamps were designed by the remarkable Derry Noyes, who design many of the stamps for the US Post Office. The first inklings of this possibility were 10 or 12 years ago when we (I am wearing my Eames Office hat here) first answered a request for research images.

There is a wonderful familial connection there, as Derry is the daughter of Eli Noyes, who was an extremely close friend of Charles and Ray’s and the director of design at IBM.

Slowly over this time period it blossomed to a full on set of 16 stamps to celebrate the richness of Charles and Ray’s work. We see the Eames House, La Chaise, the Lounge Chair, Crosspatch, House of Cards, the film Tops and more.

Just think: How many Toys are on stamps? How many short films? This is just a great thing.

I can’t wait! (via AT:LA)

I really really love Elisabeth Dunker’s work! Her Tree poster hangs in my front hall, and now she is offering a new one for sale, Krakatoa.

From the description at Little Red Stuga:

Krakatoa is a flirt with the colour palette and graphical forms from the 50’s, a mish-mash of inspirations of Hokusai, HC Andersen and Tove Jansson, created with the help of scissors, pen and vector graphics.

Krakatoa is a volcano between Sumatra and Java, mostly famous for it’s violent outbreak in 1883. You could hear the sound from the ends of the world and the tsunami that followed reached a height of 40 metres. The amount of dust in the atmosphere was so intense that the earth’s temperature dropped the following 5 years.

Enough said, really! Have a look at some of Elisabeth’s other work at Lula.se and at her blog, Fine Little Day. She’s such an inspiration.

Dadel fabric, designed by Maija Louekari for Marimekko’s Spring 2008 collection. Available in pastel (shown), red, and bright colorways. (PERFECT.)

Maija Louekari is quickly becoming one of my most favorite illustrators/textile artists. Nearly every Marimekko print I’ve fallen in love with over the past couple of years is her work! (And she was born in 1982. Gosh.)

Apparently Ernest Hemingway had the best taste ever in bathrooms. Here’s another one from his home in Key West, and one from his Cuban estate (in which he recorded his daily weight on the wall beside the scale). Look at that shower curtain!

Photos by Patrick and Kerry (top) and DBarefoot (bottom).

I cannot imagine a bathroom any more perfect than this.

Photos by arlo617 and wesh.

Oh, a little detail from my kitchen that I meant to make note of…! I really love Jenni Tuominen’s “Unessa” print for Marimekko and wanted to frame it for my kitchen, but because the repeat is so humongous (81″!!), I decided to buy the tea towel instead. Marimekko’s tea towels are large (18.5 x 27.5″), beautifully silkscreened, and 100% linen. Perfect for framing!

I machine-stiched black grosgrain ribbon around the edges to make a nice border (I miter-folded a single length of ribbon as I sewed to ensure good corners), and popped the whole thing into a 19.75 x 27.5″ RIBBA frame from IKEA. Done!