Nuts For Glass Squirrels

I saw a couple of these glass bowls at Moss yesterday and I was amazed how animated the fish and squirrels look in glass. These glass bowls are made by Tittot from Taiwan using the lost wax technique, it involves 50 interconnected steps to create one bowl, you can read more about it here. Each bowl is available in limited edition of 388, a number that symbolizes good fortune in Chinese culture. Obviously my favorites are the squirrel bowls, but the fish ones look so real that they look almost like there are actually fish swimming inside!pictures: designboom.com

A Mobile Office

I'm imagining what this giant leather steamer trunk office would look like in my home, I love the mobility of it and how cool is it to have a giant luggage as your office?! You can get yours at Restoration Hardware.

Creators Only

I'm sure you've been to a lot of store-in-stores and pop-up stores these days, but have you heard of a hotel-in-hotel? There is one called Creators Inn by Elvine and the hotel-in-hotel is inside Hotel Scandic Malmen in Stockholm. It's not just a hotel room for anybody, it's only opened for a limited time- from August 1 to September 13, and get this, it's free, if you're a designer of some sort! You have to register for it and explain what kind of creative things you'll be doing during your stay how you can benefit from this trip. I would imagine that it's not easy to be selected for a free stay since it's only open for a few weeks. Let's take a look at the room:

It's not just a room, it's the size of a nice hotel suite, with a living room, a study, and a bedroom. The decor is cozy, simple and fun, kind of like the Ace Hotel. I really like the rugs in the living room.

The hotel also provides a list of contacts that you can call up if you need someone to go out with. There are also clothes and bike rental available for use. Great ideas!!! I would love to see this concept appear in other cities soon, even if they charge for the room, it would still work and be in high demand.

photos: creatorsinn.com

Liberty And Grayson Perry

I caught the Liberty fever today:Hermès Pour Liberty scarf. Hermès has designed a line of limited edition scarves for Liberty, they are available in different Liberty silk fabrics and the iconic Hermès Ex Libris design is screen printed over them. This one (above) is definitely my favorite.

The Liberty store is having a special exhibition called Prints Charming, it's a show of all things eccentric designed with Liberty prints. I like this Peacock print teapot because it's not the usual ditsy floral and I've always wanted something with Peacock feather.

I fell in love with this super cute print by artist Grayson Perry. He designed a line of textiles that subvert traditional images of childhood and gender.I love this vintage-inspired bicycles print too! After reading a little blurb about Perry, I became very curious about him and found this fabulous photo of him (below) dressed as his alter ego- Claire. Perry is a insanely talented artist known for his ceramics. He is married (yes, he's straight) and has a daughter. He did an exhibition based on his favorite teddy bear Alan Measles that he's had for 45 years, I love him! I must do more research on Grayson immediately!photos: Liberty.co.uk, guardian.co.uk

A Must Buy

We've always had a dishwasher at home, but with our new home we have upgraded to a human model- Chad (I mean a dishwashing machine model not a male model type). To make his job easier, I'm going to get him this dish rack by Simple Human, it's got a knife block to put the knives in a safe place, and you can place the cups on the cup stands where you can pull out an expandable drip tray right underneath. Most importantly, it is compact and comes in stainless steel with white.

image: simple human

A Solution for Hanging A Giant Print

For the kitchen, I bought a vintage French botanical chart on eBay that doesn't come with a wooden dowel that you can hang from the top just like any other botanical chart. I was going to make one myself to simulate the look but unsure how to make it, now I don't need to. I saw this picture in September issue of British Elle Decoration and this is the answer to my dilemma! First of all, the whole look of the room is so us (except Chad has a much larger vinyl collection and we don't like dead animal heads), it's hard to tell but that lamp base is a squirrel! Ok, back to print, the bird print looks like is mounted on some kind of cardboard and is just hanging from that clip on top, easy as pie, I can do that, guess that's my project for the weekend!

image: British Elle Decoration

Dressing Up My Living Room With...

As you may know, I moved into a new place 2 months ago, so today's posts are dedicated to home decorating. I need some ceiling lights for the living room and bedroom. Today I'm focused on the living room lighting, it will be hanging in the center of the room where we use as living and dining room, the ceiling is not that high so I can't get a tall pendant lamp, and I can't hang it low since it's not going to be hung on top of the dining table. Here are some of the lights that I consider buying, which one should I go for?

Lens Pressed Glass Pendant by Tom Dixon (above). It's from his latest lighting collection. I love the transparency and the industrial look of this light.

Beat Light by Tom Dixon. Yes I'm a fan and I've wanted one for a long time. The one I want is the wide and short disc (second from from left), it's perfect for our ceiling height and would go perfectly with our black painting and white walls.

Cluster lamp by Moooi. It's witty and you can always change the look of the lamp and the ambient of the room with different light bulbs.

I'm really into brass these days and I really dig this vintage 60's lamp that I found on this Swedish website through Fine Little Day.

Flower Pot lamp by Panton. Chad said he has a silver version of it somewhere in the storage, not sure if we even want to go there since the space is jam packed like Tetris blocks, this blue enamel version is really cute so maybe...

images: tomdixon.net, allmodernlighting.com, www.bebop.se

My Walls Need Some Friends

They are looking a little bare right now, we have a few things hung on the walls but could use a couple new ones. Ever since we got the black painting I'm really into buying prints with black background. I love the owl print by Wayne Pate, but we had to roll it up due to a string of bad incidents that happened to our personal lives (we are superstitious!). But I'm a huge fan and would really love to buy a new print of his. I don't think I'm allowed to buy any more prints since we have so many that are stored inside our closets (we really edited down our art collection for the new place, perhaps a little too much!). The Frenchie bird above is the print that I sort of got an approval for... and here are some other ones that I would love to get:David Hockney by Wayne Pate. He really chose the most iconic image of the artist, that pose is so distinctively Hockney! I love the color of the paper Wayne used for the print, it's so retro chic!

A couple of prints by the lovely Eleanor! The top one is just what I was looking for, black and lots of black, and gold ink, it's sexy and dangerous!!! The second one has such beautiful silhouettes and colors that pop and most importantly this print will look so good on my wall, it's so Bruno Munari!

And this amazing photo of a Nymphenburg porcelain store room by Greg Krum (Chad's co-worker from the past and a dear friend), I wish I had gotten it back in January on this website, it's now completely sold out, not even one $2000 print left! Medium format photos are just so special, I can even sense the musty and cold storage room from the color of these worn out but beautiful cabinets.

images: good shape design, push me pull you, 2x200

Where Have I Been?

Hello hello! I'm back and I owe all of you some explanation why I stopped blogging for months. It started when I got a freelance gig at this great company and it kept me really busy for a while, and during the time Chad and I were looking to move out of our apartment where we made lots of squirrel friends. We looked at more than 50 apartments and ended up with the worst one we could have picked, I was miserable, could not sleep due to the noises and terrible neighbors, stressed and angry for the entire 5 months we were there. So we broke the lease and moved into a new place in July and I am so happy here. I'm now finally moved in and have the chance to relax and catch up where I left off back in December. The one good thing about moving to that crappy apartment was the neighborhood, we made a big move to Fort Greene, Brooklyn from the city, how brave were we?! (just kidding) We love love love the neighborhood and we're so lucky that our current apartment is only 2 blocks away from the last one, but it made a world of difference! Here are some pictures of our place, we have done a few home improvement projects and we have more to do. The painting in the first picture is by Shannon Lucy, a good friend of ours, the second picture is Chad's pride and joy- his record shelves, and the third picture is our window in the living room, we have some little plants and the dachshund pillow is a gift from a friend and it's created by another friend Aaron who lives just a couple blocks away! Below are my birthday presents from Chad, this labbit by Amanda Visell is probably my favorite toy figure from Kidrobot. The touching hands bangle bracelet is from Eley Kishimoto, I think it's the sweetest thing ever!

MMCo. MMGood!

Went to MarMarCo in Shoreditch London and instantly fell in love with these lovely ceramic biscuit-shaped boxes, at the store they used them to hold salt, how cute! As a bad blogger I didn't take any pictures of the store but found these in-store shots from Wee Birdy, great blog, btw!photos: weebirdy.com, marmarco.com

Habitat

I've been a huge fan of Habitat's for years now and when I visited the store on Regent St., I saw this really comfy and beautiful chair that is designed by Naoko Kanehira who's won the Habitat New Designer Award. I love that the chair is made of a bunch of cushions and the usage of patterns and bright colors makes it a very fun piece of furniture for your home.
I must confess that I was not blown away by the store at all, but here are some of the products from the catalog that caught my eye:

Heal's

Heal's is another furniture store that I knew very little about and thought was stuffy and boring. I just discovered through Elle Decorations (once again, the October issue is insanely good!) that I was so wrong about Heal's, it kinda rocks. It has been around since the 1800's as a famous bed-maker, in the recent years Heal's has collaborated with innovative designers creating affordable products that are exclusive to Heal's. Here some pieces from its latest collection, the credenza below is designed by Orla Kiely!photos: Heal's