Paint Chip Art

A few weeks ago, a couple bloggers (Sherry from Young House Love, Katie from Bower Power, Lana from Make A House A Home, and Emily from Style By Emily Henderson) challenged each other to create something inspired by a pin on their Pinterest board. They aptly dubbed it the "Pinterest Challenge: Summer Edition" and invited everyone else on the world wide web to play as well.

Well, this occurred during a weekend that I was completely swamped (I think I was throwing my garage sale, having a small get-together, and competing in another triathlon) but I was excited to jump on board for the following week. Much to my sadness, however, this Pinterest Challenge was only a one-week stint, so when I was stretching my fingers, reading to post about my follow-up Pinterest project, the blog-o-sphere was crickets. Nevertheless, my spirit wasn't crushed for good and I forged ahead creating a piece of art for our newly hung frame gallery inspired by one of my own pinterests.

When I saw this easy-peasy project from Jessica at How About Orange, I swung into the nearest store selling paint on my lunch break and selected an assortment of swatches.

Although I love the pattern Jessica created, I had to make mine different and decided on laying strips of the colors diagonally. To achieve the look I wanted, I first cut the swatches into 1" strips.

Then I started arranging them, and as I was playing with the color balance, I decided to cut the ends of the strips at a 45º angle to add some interest to the otherwise boring strips. To keep the strips in place, I used some double-sided tape and trimmed to fit in my frame.

While I was working on this little diddy, Justin kept razzing me for playing around with paint chips, scissors, and tape but once he saw my piece hanging on the wall, those jabs stopped and he was impressed by how professional it looks.

Please do your best from the surrounding empty frames as you oogle my masterpiece. I think it's a great addition to the wall and I can't wait to share what I pop in the other frames.

(Not surprisingly, paint-chip art has been a-buzz across the interweb since it's nearly entirely free to make and easily customized. Check out Young House Love's success and One Project Closer's self-admitted fail.)

HOW's Goodies

In June I took a short hiatus to attend the HOW Design Conference in Denver, Colorado. I had a great time and am very grateful to my employer for sending me. In addition to absorbing as much creativity as I could, and being inspired by the wonderful lecturers, I picked up a boat-load of goodies including the Eat Local screen-printed dish towel that I framed and hung in our mini hallway. Here's an overview shot of my bounty.

Mohawk paper handed out hundreds of these reuseable Baggu shopping bags, which google told me normally cost $8 a sack!

French paper company handed out these awesome frisbees, which Justin and I needed since our former frisbee took a trip down the river last summer.

They also handed out these paper specs that were en masse at the white party.

The mini peace lily on my desk now hails the name Mr. French but isn't afraid of his Kanye West tendencies. Bravo French.

From Hoefler & Frere-Jones I received some typography fortune cookies. You may see this saying as my google status every now and then "Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill; use too many fonts and your eyes will fall out." True story.

And no goodie bag is complete without a handful of pins. The ones on the paper board are from Shutterstock and, if I remember correctly, the others are from Veer.

For the first two weeks back in the office, I rocked them like a champ.

Did anyone else attend the HOW Design Conference? What goods top your list?

Inspiring our office

Let me remind you of a little 2010 action plan I set many many moons ago: cleaning-up, decorating, and designing the office so it is a functioning space. I admit that I have been holding back on you all because Justin and I have slowly been tackling this eye-sore for the last few months, but before I share any progress, I want to share my inspiration and color palette for this soon-to-be working zone.

Did I wet your design appetite? Be sure to check back soon for first ever photos of what we are now referring to as our office!

Custom Coasters

Raise your hand if you have seen a coaster set like this before? Come on, you know what I'm talking about! They are generally glass, about 1/4" thick, and have a small window—about the size of a business card—for a photo? Ah yes, now we're on the same page.

After we moved in to our home and filled it with furniture, I didn't want sweaty drinks casting rings on the new wood surfaces, so I picked up a boxed set of these coasters from Goodwill for a couple bucks. However, I also didn't want our guests placing a bottle of beer on pics of our beautiful faces so on my computer I created a few patterns in Adobe Illustrator, printed them out, cut them down to size, and slid them into place.

Now, we have a custom set of drink coasters that, if the mood strikes, I can easily update with new patterns or, if moved to a different room, can easily change to match the room's decor.

If you don't have a computer or software to create your own art, you could buy some wrapping paper, look through magazines for patterns, or even bust out some crayons and markers for some real fun—use your imagination!

Best of CS Interiors: Fall 2010

As soon as I saw the new fall issue of CS Interiors on the stands, I dashed across the sidewalk, weaved through the pedestrian traffic, and grabbed a copy all for myself. I know I have shown why I love this publication time and time and time and time again, but I must reiterate that it is a fountain of beautiful photos and amazing home decor, mostly native to the Chicago area or created by Chicago-bread talent.

The fall 2010 issue is chock full of great inspiration, in fact, one of the ads caught my eye as well. Check out this beautiful (I'm guessing) ceramic rhino bust from Branca. Ever since taxidermy has come into the trendy home decor spot light, I have loved the alternative materials companies have made animal busts from including this little guy.

The article accompanying this photo was called The New Clutter, fitting, no? What strikes me in this photo is not only the abundance of old photos on the wall, yes there are a lot, but rather the manner in which they are used, as a wallpaper. It may not toot everyone's horn, but the large amount of photos applied en masse diminishes the "cluttered" look and appears as a varied texture, lush and rich paired with the red-burgundy leather couch.

Photo by Maia Harms, CS Interiors

Another way, albeit less hectic, to round up a collection is to create a framed collage, such as this one found in the home of Jerry Kleiner and Marisa Molinaro. I am always drawn to gallery-looking collections in homes and this one joins the pile in my inspiration folder. It can be quite difficult to successfully create an assorted framed collage but one tip I picked up from this image is to limit the frames you use to two colors, such as what Kleiner and Molinaro used (black and gold).

Photo by Tony Soluri, CS Interiors

When I glimpsed these voluptuous jug table lamps by C.A.I. Designers I was attracted to their bodies. The curves of the base are so lovely and large but in any other material they would appear heavy and overweight. However, because the base is transparent glass, and is paired with a well proportioned light-colored drum shade, the lamp is graceful and would look elegant sitting right on my office desk.

CS Interiors

It's not every day that a model home interior looks this mod. When charged with the task of designing the models of Aqua Parkhomes, designer Jeanne Gang called upon art guru Mark Rowland for some fine art finessing. With their two powers combined, they created a bedroom, and model, worth spending all your life savings. The triptych of tree photographs is by Jin Lee and is completely DIY worthy and doable.

Photo by Maia Harms, CS Interiors

Last, is this kinetic light fixture titled Gleam by RockPaperRobot. With the click of a button this $9,000 fixture can "widen or bend" and "cluster or radiate" depending on the mood of the operator. Aside from the price tag, I love everything about this baby. Adjustable lighting in every room is a dream I have and a motorized chandelier seems right up my alley.

CS Interiors

Thanks CS Interiors for another fabulous issue. I can't wait for winter 2010!

Want to flip through the whole issue? Read it online!

Budget Bouquets 2

For my second pass on deliberate bouquet arranging I picked up another bundle of $4 blooms from our local Aldi store.

Because of the current season, I chose a bundle with autumn colors.

I decided this time to first take stock of the options in my inventory and divide and conquer.

In addition to practicing and improving my floral arranging skills, I also want to expand my foliage knowledge so I made a point to learn the buds this time. From left to right we have: daisies, solidago, one type of chrysanthemums, ruscus, another type of chrysanthemums, and alstroemeria.

Following my natural tendencies to group like-colored flowers, I filled two cylindrical vases with river stones. In one vase I clustered the fuchsia daisies and the other one got the yellow chrysanthemums.

In my opinion alstroemeria is a very frilly, romantic flower which can also look great in a small bunch, but looking at what else remained from my selection I decided to include one of the large chrysanthemums and the stem of solidago filler.

The final vase received the second large chrysanthemum flower and the tall ruscus stem.

From the $4 bunch, I worked out 4 fabulous arrangements. I placed the mixed bouquet in the green vase on the desk in our main foyer. The two monochromatic arrangements stayed on our island but I put our hand-carved, gnarled-wood fruit bowl in between them. The remaining white vase with the modern arrangement went upstairs and set on my vanity. Stretching the budget bouquet to four arrangements is great, but being able to place the arrangements around the house makes me smile even bigger.

Paint and PMS

Today I have a great tip for my fellow graphic designers (especially those who work with clients that are far away, are difficult to schedule meetings with, or are particularly picky about color). It is a simple concept that could be used in many ways but I have used it mostly for matching colors my clients have selected for their wedding.

When starting a project, one of the questions I always ask is if there is a color palette chosen or considered for the project. Either answer I receive, yes or no, I ask my clients to visit any home improvement store and select paint swatches that are the closest to what they have in mind. After they have done this, they tell me the store, brand, and color so I can find the same swatches. Paint companies tire over making sure their swatches match their paint colors accurately, therefore, the swatches should be the same from store to store. After locating the swatches, I use my PMS swatch book (a catalog of premixed ink colors) to match the paint swatches my client has chosen.

Recently my client chose paint colors from Lowe's Valspar collection, which have a really convenient window that is handy to locate the most precise equivalent. The photo below may appear to match...

but close up, you can see that it is still slightly off.

As much as I consider myself a genius for thinking of this method, I'm sure I'm not the only one who uses it. Anyone else use paint swatches in their job or see another way to use them to improve their work process?

London Logomania

I recently returned from a fabulous trip in sunny London, England (joke!). I am still sifting through the 4.3 GB of photos I took so I don't have any to share just yet but hopefully will soon.

Prior to my trip, I had heard London be referred to as a great design city and throughout my trip I couldn't help but notice some excellent logos at many of the places I did and did not visit.

The first one that caught my eye is for the Zoological Society of London. Although I didn't visit the Zoo, I can't help but adore this logo. I love the use of the animal prints filling in the letterforms. Without knowing what ZSL stand for, one immediately knows it must be in one way or another associated with animals because of the patterns. I have also seen this logo in various applications and am pleased to report that the weight and size of the pattern changes depending on the logo size for legibility reasons. When the logo is large, the pattern is smaller and when the logo is small, the pattern is larger.

Next is the logo for the Victoria and Albert Museum. What strikes me about this logo is how the designer used the ampersand to imply and complete the left side of the A, rather than have an awkward gap between the & and A. Ingenious.

Two other museums with awesome logos are the Tate Modern and Tate Britain. Without question, one can immediately understand that these logos are not only related in name but encapsulate the same branding. In fact, the Tate museum in Liverpool and St. Ives also follow the same branding. Although both are art museums, the difference between these two attractions are the type of art displayed. Tate Britain showcases British art from 1500 and Tate Modern displays international modern and contemporary art.

Because I was in England for a while, I got to visit the typical tourist places (e.g. Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, etc.) but I also got to visit some off-the-beaten path castles in the country as well. These castles, as well as various other historical sites (Stonehenge!) around England, are all part of English Heritage that "protects and promotes England's spectacular historic environment and ensures that its past is researched and understood." In addition to enjoying the time spent at these historic sites, I don't mind the logo either. I think most of their locations are castles or other fortresses, so the icon is extremely appropriate.

One of my favorite things I did in London was take flight on the London Eye, a giant 443 feet tall Ferris wheel located along the Thames River. The logo for this extravagant attraction not only incorporates the 360 degree view of the city that the rider experiences but also an interpretation of the glass pod one rides in during her journey. No one can miss the eye in the logo either.

I first saw the logo for The Royal Parks during an early morning stroll through the infamous Hyde Park in central London. However, it was so small on the sign that I didn't realize the crown was made up of leaves. Not until afterwards, when I was looking through my photos, did I realize how great this logo is. Do you agree?

To finish this post off, here is a retro-inspired logo for a crêperie where I got lunch one day, Crème de la Crêpe. At first I thought the drooling typeface was for added funkiness, but only after I started eating my crêpe did I realize that the oozing letters mimic the contents of the crêpe dribbling down your face. Oh and you can bet that the crêpe was delicious!

All in all, I would agree that London is a good city for design but I wasn't knocked out of my socks by what I saw. And speaking of what I saw, stay tuned for photos from my trip, they may knock your socks off (well probably not, but here's hoping!).