Kristina Klarin jewelry

Beautiful wooden bead necklaces by Kristina Klarin

Jane Foster Designs

Jane Foster's Etsy shop is stocked with screen printed art and items made from retro and vintage fabrics. Her Herzberger 50s fabric cushion is making me drool, also her fabric cats are so cute. Each have a hand screen printed linen face with vintage and retro fabrics for the body.

Thrifty Nest

Check out the colorful and thrifty home of artist Carolyn Burgess aka squirrelpearl. Here is what she had to say about her home:

We live in East Nashville, TN in a little brick Tudor style house for about 5 years. We are both native to the area, grew up in suburbs outside of Nashville. We have been working to restore our house and make it our own since the first day of ownership! We started knocking out walls and tearing off the siding that covered the stucco on the exterior...so much fun to do demo!!

Our house was built in 1940 and has arched doorways and a brick arched side patio, so when we wanted to open up our kitchen to the dining room - we wanted to mimic that arch to try to keep the house as close to period true as we could. We also retro renovated the kitchen by removing the mdf type cheapo cabinets that were installed by a previous owner, and replaced them with vintage Youngstown metal cabinets that we had stripped and powdercoated. They are from the 1950's, so they aren't what would have been original to the house, but they are close! We also removed the cheapo kitchen tile floor and refinished the hardwoods beneath this year. We love it now!



We love hitting estate sales and the local flea market (went just this morning!) for all of our little treasures. We love finding weird knick knacks and things that aren't run of the mill. I lean more towards 50s and 60s, my husband leans more towards 70s. We try to find a balance, but also have some new modern items so that it doesn't feel like a time warp when you walk in the front door!

We typically don't spend a lot of money on any of our purchases, but do spend a good amount of time out there "hunting", it is a sickness, I swear! Do you have it too? We have a basement full of odd chairs and stuff, that occasionally I'll think, "I have the perfect thing for that spot!" and it will have been in our basement for two years, not yet knowing it's purpose!

I get a lot of questions about our new (to us) yellow couch- it was free, but in it's current state, no one would've wanted to sit on it! We had it reupholstered and made it our own, we love it and the matching chairs so much now!! It is made by Adrian Pearsall for Craft Associates, his work was similar to Vladimir Kagan, which I see you found a side table-- jealous!! ;-)

check out her "Before and Afters" folder on flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/imacookoo/sets/72157623365104751/

Be sure to check out her Etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/squirrelpearl

CB2 sale

CB2 has some cute items for sale.
Paperclip side table
Geisha grellow table lamp
Bloomish rug

New at Urban Outfitters

Modern Sunburst Chandelier $158

This would look great in my walk in closet!

New Blog: An Hour from Nowhere

I've started a new blog called An Hour From Nowhere. It will feature New Hampshire events, places, people, artists and just about anything hip and fun that is going on in the state. As someone who has only lived here for two years, I've been on the look-out for cool things to do, read, visit, etc. So if you're from NH and want to share something interesting, please e-mail me.

Music Philosophy

I'm loving these posters from Music Philosophy.

A designer named is Mico combined their love of music and typography. You can find more work here.

We No Speak Americano ft. Cleary & Harding

Woodgrain

I am really starting to like the idea of modern furniture made with reclaimed, weathered and raw wood. I think it helps bring down the blandness of some pieces and warms them up by adding some eye-pleasing texture.

Our next furniture project is going to be floating side tables for our bedroom. Walnut on the outside to match the bed, with spalted maple drawer fronts. The spalted maple swirls (which occur naturally when a maple tree is infected by a fungus) are somewhat soft and spongy, so they need to be sealed and hardened with super glue. Then the wood is sealed with shellac and finally a protective topcoat can be applied. Here's what they will look like:

Thrift Find

I hit up one of my favorite thrift shops yesterday. Why is it my favorite, because it's the closest one and it's newish. New thrift shops are wonderful because no one knows about them yet! I snagged a Vladimir Kagan style side table for only $10! Not sure where I'm putting it yet, but I think it's going somewhere in the living room.

My tree & Me

My Tree and Me designs and customized modern genealogy charts. Choose a design, fill out their form and your chart is made. Fun and simple!

via thesomedayblog.com

More new work

Etsy

New to you

Hey everyone! Just a quick post to share some cute things I've picked up here and there in the last few months.

I got these cute vintage lunch trays, glass paper weights and a few vintage pillows from Etsy shop Atomic Living Home. The red wire sculpture came from CB2.

Bed Progression

The bed is looking amazing! Still need to pop in the top boards (see plan) and find a new king-size mattress.

Materials: 2 sheets of walnut veneer plywood, several 2x12's from the home center, and walnut veneer edge banding to hide the plywood edges. My husband cut his own shellac and added a reddish brown dye to it to better approximate the look of aged walnut furniture. After three coats of the tinted shellac, he put on two coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal wipe-on varnish - one gloss coat and one satin coat.

Total Cost: $490

The next project is going to be a set of matching floating nightstands with spalted maple drawer fronts to add some texture!

Why bed sheets used to be smooth and silky (and why they aren't today)

I'm looking for new king-size sheets for my new bed and I'm not having much luck... Seems like every time I get cotton sheets, all I can find are these linty, wrinkly, rough ones, regardless of the thread count. Now, I know when I was younger my mom would pick up vintage bed sheets from flea markets and they were always super smooth and cool to the touch (not to mention super durable - I have a mint green pillow case from the '70s that I still use today!)

So doing some internet sleuthing, I stumbled upon an Amazon.com review where a person who's had the same experience as me explains that those old sheets owe their silkiness to an industrial process called mercerization. Take it away, Wikipedia:

Mercerisation is a treatment for cotton fabric and thread that gives fabric a lustrous appearance. [...]

The process was devised in 1844 by John Mercer of Great Harwood, Lancashire, England, who treated cotton fibres with sodium hydroxide. The treatment caused the fibres to swell, which in Mercer's version of the process shrank the overall fabric size and made it stronger and easier to dye. The process did not become popular, however, until H. A. Lowe improved it into its modern form in 1890. By holding the cotton during treatment to prevent it from shrinking, Lowe found that the fibre gained a lustrous appearance.

[...]

Today the modern production method for mercerised cotton, also known as "pearl" or "pearle" cotton, gives cotton thread (or cotton-covered thread with a polyester core) a sodium hydroxide bath that is then neutralized with an acid bath. This treatment increases lustre, strength, affinity to dye, resistance to mildew, but also increases affinity to lint. Cotton with long staple fibre lengths responds best to mercerisation. Mercerised thread is commonly used to produce fine crochet.

The Amazon.com reviewer continues:

Sheets and pillowcases were marketed as mercerized and it was included on the label. Mercerization is a process of washing the fabric or thread under tension (to prevent shrinkage) with sodium hydroxide and an acid neutralizer which not only gives it a smooth luster and increases strength but reduces lint, improves mildew resistance and increases affinity for dye so it won't fade or bleed. In the 70's, we could buy sheets and pillowcases which were also "Pre-shrunk," "Cotton blend" and "no wrinkle, no iron."

You can still find vintage cotton/poly sheets in unopened, good condition on Ebay and Etsy. Hard to find, but totally worth the search!

New print for sale!

Find it on Etsy