So I had this awesome project for the January Jumpstart, and let’s just say it didn’t work out as planned. But I’m moving on, and I may even use some of the incredible vintage fabric I bought in future projects, one of which will most certainly be for me to wear rather than my house. In the meantime, if you need some color ideas, check out Adobe’s kuler color tool:
Great for everyday inspiration, and a fun little toy.
In honor of Apple’s new products and updates (yes, I would like a MacBook Air, thanks), I’m going to skip the antiques route for today and go a little more hi-tech. As I’ve mentioned before, I love my iPhone, even after all these weeks. While the body and the screen are very scratch resistant – I haven’t put a scratch on it yet and I just toss it in my bag – it’d still be cool to have a non-mass-manufactured cover for it. As usual, etsy has the cure:
I LOVE this. In fact, I might buy it myself. But let’s see what else is out there:
There are MANY more styles there to choose from, but just so I’m not a total hypocrite, the ones I’ve shown are almost all under $10 (the exception is the felty one for $16.50) Sorry Belkin, I think I’d rather have one of these.
When I was in college, I always used to look forward to the annual poster sale that would happen in the student center just before classes started. Although most people went for the Shining / Scarface / beers of the world posters, I managed to find some reproduction (duh) vintage advertising posters, which at the time were just starting to get cool.
Well, I’m all grown up now, but I still like posters. I think because we all used posters at college-age, it seems like a very dorm-y thing to do, but posters are still cool – you just have to know what to look for.
via design*sponge, this is her home, with possibly the coolest poster I’ve ever seen in my life. Most of her “sneak peeks” also have amazing posters in their homes; some are vintage, some are new (some are incredibly expensive wallpaper panels which I can’t even think about being able to afford comfortably). So where can you replicate this look?
I already discussed Aesthetic Apparatus in a previous post, but they’re worth another mention here.
Writer and designer Meg Mateo Ilasco has a (sold out) AA poster for The Wrens. This poster for Sparklehorse is a favorite at the moment:
Travel posters, while lovely, can also be prohibitively expensive. If your budget is around $100-$200, by all means, try these on for size:
If this is real, and it sells for less than $100, I’ll be stunned and regret not bidding. Jean Carlu was a tremendously important commercial artist from the 30’s through the 50’s and 60’s, creating some of the most reproduced and sought-after commercial and war-related poster designs. His style sort of bridged the period between the strong art deco lines of the 20’s into a more cubist, abstract modernism. I heart Jean Carlu.
That last one was designed by artist David Klein, who designed posters for TWA, Amtrak and more, and whose style pretty much epitomizes the 60’s modern look. His work can go for $600 and up on art sites and in stores, but usually ends up between $80 – $300 on ebay, averaging around $150 for the large TWA posters. The non-TWA stuff (even the Amtrak stuff, which is still awesome) can be had for around $40-60, but come up for bids less often.
Alas, these travel posters are out of my budget. I’m looking for something more in the $20 and under range. So, rather than going the repro route, I’m gonna jump over to vintage movie posters. Does it matter what movie it’s for? No! Does it matter if it’s in english? No! Check it:
There is such an inundation of vintage movie posters of terrible or forgotten movies out there (or even good or remembered ones) that they’re unbelievably cheap. Supply and demand, I like to call it.
This movie is actually awesome.
Anyway, there are a lot of posters. Ah, but you say, the poster is the cheap part, sure. But framing is expensive! True. Or true-ish. If you want to go the custom route, there are affordable framing stores. Here’s a tip: don’t go to a chain. For example, Frugal Phil’s (which I believe may refer to Phyllis Diller) on Lincoln and Grand (?) in Santa Monica does a good job for a relatively low price – I got a large format (maybe 30 by 40 inches) photograph framed and matted there for $40, so if you just want to frame it yourself, they’re pretty cheap. Better yet, if you don’t care about matting, thrift stores abound in crappy framed posters. That doesn’t mean they have to stay in those frames.
Art is easy to find!
I woke up this morning thinking it was Thursday for some reason, and I felt great. Not until I started my computer did I realize it was Wednesday, and August already to boot. So I shall get over it and inspire myself with Flickr finds.
Our new kitchen has a huge glass display area with three shelves.
I have a lot of vintage Pyrex, Fireking, and Fiesta, but am kind of at a loss as to how to make them look good arranged on a shelf, especially since I actually use them so they can’t really be in an odd still life position that makes them hard to get to. So, for examples of good-looking shelves, I managed to dig these up.
Studio corner of a Canadian artist who makes really cute little creatures.
This guy’s apartment is ridiculous. Every photo of it drops my jaw further – especially where he reveals how little he paid for things. It’s completely amazing, and very inspiring.
for a different palette.
cultery trays. Brilliant.
I love cake stands.
This one could be my favorite – I love the fabric behind the shelf.
And the obligatory sfgirlbybay image. Her place is beautiful – a little too white for my taste, but beautiful nonetheless.
Happy August!
Lisa Hanawalt, in addition to being a completely awesome human being, is also a startlingly good artist. I’m proud to hang two of her pieces in our home – a photograph and a watercolor – but this new brush pen thingy style of illustration she’s got going makes me swoon:
See more at her Flickr set and her website. For more of her illustration, check out the comic Tip Me Over Pour Me Out, which is funny. Very funny.
Yeah, I know it’s actually spelled “towels”, but see, I was trying to play off the fact that phonetically, the word “owl” is kind of in “towel”, and thus was making a reference to towels with owls on them. Nevermind.
Feedsack (or flour sack) towels have been around since at least the early 1800’s, when household goods like flour, sugar, grains, and animal feed were stored on the farm in bags made of homespun linen. Although the bags could be brought back to the miller for refill, many sacks were recycled by the resourceful farm wife in the form of diapers, clothing, and – as I get to my point – dish towels. After the advent of mechanized sewing, the feedsack industry boomed, and cloth sacks were used by farmer and manufacturer alike to store and transport goods. Since different goods are different sizes – flour, for instance, is much finer than rice – sacks were made of varying quality according to the goods they contained. Flour sacks had the largest share of the feedsack market, and since they were also the finest weave, they became extremely popular for household linen use.
Flour sack towels have made a comeback as of late, partially because they’re inexpensive but mostly because they’re cool and easily embroidered – how often has someone complimented you on your hunter green and burgundy dish towels you got at Ross? Fortunately, for only a couple more dollars (sometimes less) than those unsightly rags, you can get a work of art that’s both stylish and functional.
Anyway, everyone knows owls are cute. Not real owls, of course, because those can be kind of scary up close, with those talons and beaks (does anyone remember The Secret of NIMH?), but the stylized owls that have been popping up on every purse and earring in sight. Since this is about homethings, however, we’re going to look at some kitchen textiles with owls on them:
Rock Paper Scissors has some really painfully beautiful screen-printed textiles:
A set of two towels costs $12 (plus shipping), and since they’re really works of art, it’s like you’re only paying $6 for wonderful little kitchen art.
Kraken’s etsy shop has lots of magical things, but the owl napkins ($20 for a set of 4) are marvelous:
Then, of course, there’s fruitflypie’s shop, where not only can you get a cute little towl for just $4.50, but also small owl-themed ceramic containers for various uses:
They come in all different colors, and a few different molds and sizes.
Of course, you can always buy plain flour sack towels (they sell them at practically any supermarket) and embroider them yourself, if you’re so artistically inclined. The possibilities are endless!
