Saturday Inspirations- Inspiring People

A few people doing awesome things. : ) Click on the links to find out more about them!





Wangari Maathai
She started the Greenbelt movement in Nigeria.

















Burners Without Borders disaster relief in Pisco, Peru after the huge 8/15/07 earthquake.









Alex Steffen Started www.Worldchanging.com, which is full of thoughtful articles about anything from toxins in kids toys to plans for future growths in population.

Firday DIY- Happy little home for your shoes

....or you could just call it a shoe organizer, but I just think my shoes look all snug and comfy in my new diy shoe holder. They used to be in a big pile at the bottom of my closet- blah!

I wanted to use up some of my fabrics leftover from craft projects ect. to make this so I chose the 2 strongest, largest chunks of fabric I had. The dark grey/black fabric is denim and the green patterned fabric is vintage upholstery fabric my boyfriend's grandma gave me.

Inspiration Saturday- Lace!

Maybe it's because spring's almost here but I've been finding lots of cool lace stuff lately. Actually come to think of it, it was the official first day of spring the other day wasn't it?



I noticed this one because it was in a blog on DIY City.

It's a new textile called Eternal Lace made by Laura Anne Marseden of the UK. It's made out of recycled plastic grocery bags and then treated with "secret processes" : )




This necklace was made from laser cut acrylic. The pattern is beautiful! It's by Lauren K. Roberts.




















I love the way Bayousalvage collages vintage lace and old photos onto clothing.

Sunday Inspiration- Textile Designers with Cool Digs

I love decorating! but even more so I enjoy just thinking about decorating hahaha. I may have mentioned this before in this blog but I have a "cozy" little studio apt that I share with my boyfriend (who would never have bothered unpacking the moving boxes when we moved in 2 years ago if it wasn't for me ; ) ) So on rainy days like today when I'm working in the antique shop and no one's coming in, I tend to oogle cool decorating stuff online and in magazines quite a bit, it's decorating vicariously.




Lately I've read a couple features about the homes of textile designers and hey, textile designers have super fun houses! So check out these pics from the Metropolitan Home's Feb issue, they're of Rita Motta's house. Her brother designed the cool floating bedside lamp.


















I couldn't get any large pics of this one but in the Mar issue of Readymade they also profiled a cool textile designer's house: Talla Wesley's. I love the wallpaper in this pic.

Friday DIY- Spring Cleaning!

It's a beautiful spring day today in Brooklyn! : ) and it's my birthday! yay!

anyways, lately I'v been cleaning my apt like crazy, so I felt it was appropriate to to do a DIY cleaning blog. I've been trying out recipes for eco-friendly cleaning substances, because what good does a cleaning spree do ya if your house ends up smelling like clorox in the end? It just seems counter-productive to use something as unhealthy as bleach to "clean" up.

I found this website: http://www.ecocycle.org/hazwaste/recipes.cfm and it's full of recipes for eco-friendly cleaning stuff. Here's the recipes I've tried so far:


Drain Declogger
Pour together:
¼ c baking soda down the drain, followed by
½ c. vinegar
Cover drain and let sit for 15 minutes. Follow with 2 qts. boiling water.

Mildew Remover
Dissolve together: ½ c, vinegar
½ c. borax in warm water.
Apply with sponge or spray bottle.

I kept an eye out for borax and didn't happen to find any until I popped into a Met grocery store the other day.

I was most impressed with the the drain declogger. It worked just as well as regular draino and definately better than the CVS-brand rip off of draino I tried awhile ago.

The mildew remover recipe worked pretty well, I tried it on my shower curtain. I think I'll have to give it one more go for it to be really completely clean. On the plus side, it always takes awhile to scrub the whole curtain and I tend to get whatever cleaner I use for that all over myself and the entire bathroom, so it was a much pleasanter experience to be covered in vinegar, borax and water than the usual nasty chemicals.







...and now for something completely different. I cranked out a few new stud earrings, this time using a leftover netted fabric. I like how the yellow ones came out because the texture reminds me of honeycomb.

Saturday Inspirations-Design Inspired by Nature

Saturday Inspirations- a day late! oops!

this week's inspirations are all designs that were inspired by nature.
If you haven't heard about it yet you have to check out this book:
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired By Nature by Janine Benyus. Biomimicry is all about taking inspiration from the natural world, whether it's the form, function or a process. My favorite parts of this book are when Benyus outlines several projects she's worked on (as well as others' projects) that are great examples of taking a natural design or process and applying it to a design problem. You can check out some of those projects here.















The "With A Little Help of the Bees" vase was made by Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny for Droog. They constructed a vase-shaped hive, and the bees did the rest! It takes 40,000 bees one week to make one vase.












I first noticed the Solio universal solar powered chargers when I was working at Habana Outpost as an intern doing random stuff like researching eco products for them to sell. I like that the design integrates so well with the use. They're so pretty!













The Trabecula Bench by Freedom of Creation is a rapid-manufactured piece inspired by the bone structure of birds.




















The "Silence" rug is by Permafrost and is made to mimic a snowy field with the tracks of a rabbit running through.












The Cibola pendant Lamp by Dominick Bromley, evokes the form of an onion!

Saturday Inspirations- Electronics

This week's Sat Inspirations are all about electricity and repurposed electronic stuff.

I spotted this toothbrush holder in the March 2008 issue of Dwell magazine. It's part of a series of projects by Scott Amron called "Die Electric". The concept is about using less electricity in order to cause less harm to our environment. So these ideas suggest other uses for our electrical sockets! Check out more of these projects at www.dieelectric.org.



This one is from one of my favorite etsy shops: www.debbyaremdesigns.etsy.com. It's a suncatcher made from reurposed electronic lithography film. It looks great as a suncatcher, awesome reuse!




Here's a great kid's project by Tiffany Threadgould from RePlayGround: suncatchers made from old CDs! (I'm on a cool suncatcher kick today ; ) )

























Going back to the theme of reducing our energy use- a co-worker at my freelance photoshop-editting job told me about this cool energy-saving site: www.blackle.com. It's a search engine that's powered by Google's Custom Search and it uses predominately black screens because that takes less energy than the usual predominately white screens used on regular Google and many other sites. That's a way of saving energy that I've never thought about before! If you read the "About Blackle" section on their site it also mentions having less windows open at a time as a way to save energy. Intriguing!

The Bent Fest is coming to NYC this April, always a good time. It's a huge festival of artist and musicians who build and rebuild their own electronic instruments using circuit bending. www.bentfestival.org.

Also, if you're into electronic music, Vector Zero and several other awesome innovative electronic musicians are playing tonight at 10pm at the BPM in Williamsburg. check out their myspace page: www.myspace.com/mekatronics