The first thing I did for my new little green house was repaint the kitchen. Ridiculous? Sort of, since I chose a color so similar to the first, but this time in a zero-VOC paint, American Pride. In my last post about paint, someone commented about my choice not to use Mythic paint:

FYI, you’ll spend more money buying your Mythic Paint online than you will from Greener Building Supply in Chatsworth. The paint starts at $41.99 per gallon for Flat (the most popular). They also color match most major brands over the phone and on the spot and ship world-wide.

Also you may want to know an important detail… Zero VOC’s does not translate to Non-Toxic. You can have a zero VOC paint that is loaded with cancer causing chemicals. The whole “zero voc” thing is misleading.

Mythic paint is zero VOC AND non-toxic and it out-performs all the other brands. The coverage is better and it’s more durable making it a better value.

Better value or not, I simply couldn’t justify driving 54 miles to Chatsworth and back for about $15-$20 in gas. But I came across something curious: American Pride is sold right here on the west side at Livingreen, is about $40 a gallon, and appears to be manufactured by the same company as Mythic. Are they just differently marketed paints? The company information is the same, and if you click the link from American Pride’s website to buy online, it takes you to Mythic’s homepage. If this is the case, then it’s true - this paint covered so well and with zero odor and splatter, it appeared immediately superior to the AFM Safecoat I used in my living room. True, here I used an eggshell finish on smooth walls and there it was flat on heavily textured walls, but the finish of the American Pride paint is so lovely.

So can anyone tell me the difference between the American Pride paint and Mythic? The FAQ’s for both paints seem to be pretty much the same.

Despite the high cost of hybrid cars and installing solar panels, being thrifty and being “green” have a lot in common. While I’m pretty sick of the G word as it relates to being sufferingly trendy and imperious - Alex recently returned from the Bay Area with tell of a high-end market sporting a banner outside reading “Did you remember your grocery bags?” - it’s a much shorter word to say than “environmentally responsible”, and by this time even phrases like “eco-friendly” or “earth-friendly” or whatever have been played out. So let’s just get those groans and eye rolls out of the way right now, and I’m going to use the word “green” just like anyone else.

Being environmentally responsible (see, I can’t really bring myself to say green) is really about consuming less, reusing, repurposing, and making as little impact on the environment as possible. Over the weekend I noticed a great website for greening your decor, appropriately called Green Your Decor, which has a category for products and solutions under $50.

These hemp pillows from Crate & Barrel are $30. She also found a pretty neat resource for vintage and other found objects, Kanibal Home. Some of their stuff gets kind of pricey (still under $200), but they have some neat things.

This wicker side table is listed at $38. So anyway, this week is devoted to green solutions that are also thrifty, and vice versa. Got some good tips? Let me know!

A few months back I was having a chat with a local vintage shop owner about how wonderful it would be to have a truck and drive to small towns across the country and pick up cheap vintage goodies and sell them in LA. He posited that all the good things were basically gone, snatched up by others with the same idea long ago, and there were no more treasures left to be had in middle America. Well, sir, I submit as my Exhibit A the St. Vincent Thrift Store in downtown Roscommon, Michigan. Every time we go here there is something that makes me cry because I can’t take it with me. The sofa above actually had a matching armchair that was completely insane (you can see the back behind the sofa) because it had this crazy blue and green 60’s flower pattern on the front. I don’t remember prices exactly, but they fell in the general area of $40-$50 for the sofas, and less than that for tables and lamps. Sick. Some other treasures included:

They had so many amazing lamps with original shades. There were also vintage sewing patterns, although most of them dated from the 80’s with a few from the 70’s and a couple from the 60’s. I made a robe circa 1970, but sadly, couldn’t fit any furniture in my checked baggage. In the above photo you can also see the front of the aforementioned crazy chair. No treasures left, eh? I rest my case.

It’s that time of year again: summer vacation time! To celebrate this momentous occasion, I am first going to get very sick with a cold and sore throat (done) and then I’m going to hopefully recover by tomorrow morning to make the magical, fun-filled journey to enjoy the San Francisco Bay Area and then to spend a week at this lovely internet-free cabin in Michigan. Have a good weekend, week, and then weekend again!

Okay, I know this is off-topic because I usually only profile designers from no less than 40 years ago, but Lisa sent over a link to this amazing illustrator, Pascal Blanchet. His work pretty much speaks for itself, so I’ll let you just take in the awesomeness.

They’re all just like …. wow. Enjoy.

before …

and after …

I ran out of time this morning to take a decent picture of the whole room, so you can see it out of focus for now. We think it’s a big improvement anyway.

Will someone buy this please, so I don’t?

o! chair with such hope
my foremothers shake their heads
next time I’ll measure.

I’m not writing about my finished chair and its sad little homemade box cushion for the most mundane of reasons - I ran out of batteries for my camera. Lame. While the cushions could have been a lot worse, they could have been a hell of a lot better, and now I know that making box cushions takes practice.

Anyway, I mention E. McKnight Kauffer (not to be confused with M. Night Shyamalan) not because his work is particularly cheap or easy to come by, but because if you do ever happen to come across a poster or advertisement in an old magazine or book cover signed by him, you’ll know you’ve found something special. One of Kauffer’s most iconic designs was his 1949 cover for James Joyce’s Ulysses:

Kauffer’s design for Ulysses reflects a time when the distilled forms of modernism were being adapted to the realm of American book cover design with the great hope for a visual vocabulary that could transform not just design but society as a whole.¹

Though he was born in America and received some early training in San Francisco and Chicago, Kauffer’s modernist style largely evolved in Europe, where he moved to study around 1914. Influenced by cubist and deco movements, he artfully employed bold shapes, modern lettering, and geometric lines to bring a striking new look to familiar products and advertising.

To see more of Kauffer’s travel posters, visit the London Transport Museum’s collection.

Sometimes, you can find examples of Kauffer’s work to hang in your own abode. Every once in a while they’ll turn up on ebay:

I tried to find a better picture of this auction, and found this one. I think this would be adorable framed in a kid’s room. Click these images to view their auctions:

For more information about E. McKnight Kauffer, visit his AIGA biography, with a few more samples of his work.

¹Ned Drew & Paul Sternberger, By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design, Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.

Once, a long time ago, I made a pillow. The fabric was a lavender gingham, and I was about ten. Until now, that was the last time I sewed anything, except for perhaps a brief flirtation with making dog collars two years ago. Perhaps, like everything that requires skill, sewing takes practice and experience, and expecting to sew a perfect curtain or box cushion out of the gate is a little unrealistic. Not one to be daunted by my own obvious limitations, however, I went ahead and made some curtains. Now, sewing is challenging enough when you’re a beginner who is completely sober. But when I got the bright idea that these curtains needed to be sewn immediately, we had just returned from some social event or another that involved alcohol, and I put needle to fabric drunk as a skunk (I can only assume that skunks get so drunk because their species name rhymes with drunk). This is what happened:

Sorry the focus is off here, but it sort of illustrates my incompetence. First, I was too lazy to wind the bobbin with a thread that was even remotely close to the color of my fabric, so I got this awesome dark brown seam running through the back. Next, I was also too lazy to actually iron the fabric on the seam where I wanted to sew, so I had to keep folding it under and just sort of eyeing where the seam was supposed to go. The result, as you can see from the top photo, is a curtain with shitty uneven seams and a weird opening for the rod that oscillates from an inch and a half to three inches wide.

The next day, fresh as a daisy, I decide I’m going to do things up right. Nothing ever gets ironed in our house simply because the effort required to extract the child-sized Ikea ironing board from its burrow in the closet and the iron from the tangled mass of chaos under the bathroom sink overwhelms the desire to appear crisp and put-together. Wanting to learn from my past mistakes, however, I gathered up the strength to assemble these tools and actually ironed all the seams-to-be in the curtain still retaining hope and potential:

Even with all my sobriety and ironing, I still could have done a better job. I ironed over about a half inch of fabric, but sewed the seam right on the edge so that there’s quite a bit that’s just left hanging. Next time, I’ll have to line up my seam closer to the edge of what I’ve ironed, or iron a smaller seam.

For my next trick, I’ll attempt to make two perfect box cushions to replace the hot pink velour on this chair:

How do you think I’ll do? (Hint: see first curtain seam photo.)