I’ve been looking for a new and fabulous make up bag — check out this red and blue grid pouch from Lia Hood’s site good morning, morning!
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First, check out this year long effort by Mulysa to catalog a plant a day — I’ve always wanted more proficiency with the natural world, to be able to see nuance in the world around me in that way. Also, her describitions of Oregon make me miss my childhood in Vermont.Second, Perfect Closet’s Frugal Friday feature is genius.
I’d been thinking that the decal thing was over and done with, but then I saw these gold bird decals on Urban Outfitters.com and thought of this chinoiserie pattern from my house clippings journal (originally from Domino). Which made me into decals, again.
I’ve had my eye on this dinning room table for two years — I don’t even have an apartment large enough for a dinning room let alone a table like this. However, that is why clipping journals exist — to keep track of all the bits of the universe that appeal/inspire/haunt me.
I thought we were close when we ended up with a pretty large windfall of William Sonoma Gift Cards post wedding (William Sonoma gift cards can be used at WS Home). However, WS Home has stopped carrying this table! Horrors! Anyone out there with one they want to get rid of? Or know of a top secret WS Home outlet?
This chiyogami pattern by lilfairy (via Print & Pattern) blew my mind. It’s wallpaper, except, not.
Update: Check out the “living” wallpaper on the green focused design blog Inhabitat. Wallpaper, except, not.
Denise Sharp is a paper fiend. I love this wedding cake decorated (even if its completely impractical, noted my husband) with paper from this most recent Martha Stewart Weddings (one of my guilty pleasures). I also like this paper arch d’triumph maybe because legend has it in my family that a distant forefather flew an airplane through it during the 1st world war. I hope so!
For my weekly post on decorative arts, I thought I’d write about material culture and the history of card writing and of Christmas cards in particular, since I finished sending mine (shown here) just last week! I’m interested in the study of “material culture” since it explores the relationship between artifacts and society. Christmas cards are certainly a cultural artifact, reflecting our collective interests, decorative tastes, social aspirations and beliefs.
This post was prompted by coming across George Buday’s The History of Christmas Cards when I popped in to Heights Books this afternoon. It is my favorite bookstore, the place I go when Tim’s out of town, when I’m lonely, killing time, or looking to get lost in the world of ideas. It was here that I discovered Japanese gardening at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, that interior decorating (something I had previously held in some contempt) could be about making were you live home, and fed my obsession with stamps.
The “first” christmas card was designed by John Callcott Horsley, an English designer, in the 1840s.
A quick comparison of my Christmas card to the one of the first commercial cards made in England in the 1840s shows both similarities (a non-religious image and greeting) and differences (my card is much more abstract, whereas the earlier card shows images of Dickensian poverty, my card is personalized, and printed by hand). More on material culture at a later date!
First, I love this Catalog Card Generator. I love libraries, big ones (NYU!), small ones (Putney, VT) and I love old school catalog cards because they make me feel connected to the past in a way that electronic databases just can’t.
Second, Wallpaper, especially vintage wallpaper, is a consuming passion at the moment as you’ll see in my shop. This “concrete wallpaper” design is something new to me, thanks to CoolHunter .
One of my favorite parts of attending the Cooper-Hewitt Master’s Program and living in New York is the auctions. I just browsed the catalouge for the January 21st Sotheby’s Americana auction and particularly liked the strawberry folk art painting (estimated to sell for $1200-1800), birdhouse (estimated to sell for $4000 - $8000) and door stops below (estimated to sell from $400 - $600).
