Design^Sprout | Your Guide to Green Design

Bottle it on up

      The lovely ladies at Daily Candy introduced me to Love Bottles, an entirely recycled glass bottle that you can personalize and reuse again and again. Old-fashioned swing-top lid and vintage feel - perfect for you stylish peeps on the go.

A Perfect Sunday at the Renegade Craft Fair!

My web soul-mate Etsy gave out free packets of wild flower seeds.

Adorable aprons like these remind me of my friend Nicole, who bakes while wearing killer heels and has a drink recipe on hand for any occasion.

I can imagine these recycled, tea-cup pendant lights as the perfect touch in a little girl's room.

These little notes on wood veneer from the Misanthrope Specialty Co. cracked me up.

Recover Your Thoughts was one of my favorite stands - a super nice couple takes trash-bound library books and turns them into quirky journals. This way people on the bus think your reading Nietzsche when really you're just drawing cats.

Don't Quilt your Day Job featured these ingenious shopping bags made from...other shopping bags. Somehow they quilt these monsters together to form one stylish and eco-friendly tote.

Man, I wish I knew who designed these State Map necklaces. They are fantastic!

Everyone loves a Sock Monkey but does everyone love a Sock Monkey dressed as a Mexican wrestler? Si, si, si!

Artist Faryn Davis handcrafts each one of these beautiful, glass treasures.

2 pm: While giddily giving T great ideas for future presents a Tim Burton-esque band begins to march through the crowds. We were mezmorized as the sound slowly got louder and you realized that pieces from a huge band were coming together from throughout the entire building. The self-titled "circus-punk" band Mucca Pazza puts on one hell of a strange and wonderful show. Pretty impossible to describe but they're playing a few more days here in SF - I highly suggest you check them out!

4pm: Energized in my mind but tired in my feet, T and I make yet another trip to Starbucks. Thankfully the caffenine buzz kept me focused long enough to get this post out! Perfect end to a great day.

Admirable Imperfection

 

     Sustainability is all well and good, but for this girl, prettiness can be equally important.  Luckily, there are shops that seamlessly combine the two qualities.  Currently, I'm a bit (okay maybe more than a bit) obsessed with glassware from Branch.    The obsession started with their off pitcher.  Each one is handmade resulting in a wonderful variety of forms.  I want 7 of them to line my mantel. Next my magpie eye was drawn to the pretty colors of their slumped vases(above).

 

The form of the water drop jugs is pure art.

 

     And how handy would this off pitcher and cup be?  Particularly for those of us who frequently wake up to their kitty helping herself to any glasses of water left by the bed.

     All this prettyness is made from recycled glass which is processed in an electric furnace powered by wind energy.  I love combinations like that!  Of course, the price of these items is a bit steep for your average non-big-bucks-making girl.  However, maybe I can save my pennies and be content with just one amazing off pitcher.

Go Green Barbie?

     Well, it was inevitable, the original material girl herself has gone green...kind of.  Toy giant Mattel, no doubt hoping on the green bandwagon, has launched a program recycling the excess scraps of doll clothing left on their factory floors.  They plan on turning these once landfill bound remnants into patch- work accessories for eco-conscious children. Of course, the actual doll will remain a very earth-unfriendly PVC and all that colorful packaging, perfect for catching the attention of 6-year-olds, is later discarded and rarely recycled. 

    This makes me soooo smoldering mad that I wanted to get some other opinions.  Am I alone here in being disgusted with the "greenwashing" of America? Should I get over myself and pat Mattel on the back for at least making some effort? It seems to me that they are making a quick buck and using our concern for the planet to do it. If Mattel really wanted to make a difference why not reduce their insane amount of packaging or make the dolls out of a bio-degradable product? Okay, I'm getting down off my high horse. What do you think???

 

Stuck on Glue!

   The days of decoupage have certainly come full circle! Thanks to creative designers like Amelia of Bombus what was once old can now become a beautiful piece of art!  It's thrifty, fun and totally green. Check out DIY instructions here!

 

Happy Monday!

   Happy Monday! Isn't great to start off the week with a little bit of artistic inspiration? The uber-creative home of artist Hilary Pfeifer is certainly a great place to start! Owner of the Portland-based store Bunny With a Tool Belt, her remarkably inventive uses of recycled and found materials lend such personality in her work and in her home! Knowing we're all voyeurs at heart she has generously agreed to walk Design^Sprout readers through her home.

     "I use a ton of found objects in my work  (above) and alter them until you don't recognize the original form as  easily.  They come from thrift stores and some of Portland's great  reused art supply and building materials stores, which I scour on a  regular basis."

    "I saved covers from the New Yorker Magazine for a  few years to get enough to
paper a wall in my foyer.  It was inspired  by my grandmother's farmhouse, where
covers from the Saturday Evening  Post were decoupaged onto a cabinet in the
bathroom.  I put a few  layers of varathane on top and then hooks so I can hang
wet raincoats  and my cloth shopping bags near the door and out of the living room."

     "This is the stained glass window I designed and had  made for my front door. 
I chose various pieces of glass from the  scrap bin at a local glass shop, all
with white, and a simple  helvetica-esque font for the lettering."

     "An ikea bookshelf lets me alternate square cubbies  of books with some of my
favorite art objects."

     "A sitting area off the kitchen.  We are planning on  finding a great breakfast
table for this space, but right now I love  having this couch here because the
light is fantastic!"

     "One of many lights I own by artist/friend  Daniel Sadler.  A year or so before his
death, he started this series  of houses where he took photographs of actual
buildings and  transfered them to paper lamps.  He told me that this one was taken 
of various walls of a children's music school in New Orleans.  He  loved this building
so much that he returned the next day to take  more pictures and the building was
completely demolished!!"

     "There are a billion cupboards in  this room, so I decided to paint the walls a
pale greenish yellow,  and then randomly choose others to paint brown, kind of
like a  Mondrian painting.  The fridge is covered with a series of cards I 
made last year when I turned 40 and decided to list 40 things I'd 
always wanted to do in the hopes that I'd tick down the list before I 
turn 50!"

     "A detail of two of the cards, which I made with  some of the clippings from my
massive magazine image database I've  been compiling for the past two decades."

     "Here's the only shot of the dining room I'll  release right now!  It's a quilt I made
years ago from my family's  huge record collection.  I don't have a turntable and
was in the  middle of a transitional year, so I decided to use the Log Cabin 
pattern to show a series of labels that trace my musical influences, 
from my grandfather's 78's through my mother's albums like Bob Dylan 
and Carole King, to my 45s like Rick James' Funkytown and Elvis 
Costello."

     "The downstairs bathroom is quite small and  so I decided to paint it electric
colors and keep my collection of  glow-in-the-dark things there.  It's fun at night,
when the  blacklight does its magic!"

 
     "One of my favorite glow treasures--an  elephant ornament from the 1950's,
which is early glow plastic  technology."

     "This box holds a lot of smaller objects, waiting for  their second life!  Here's one of the pieces I have already completed for the  September show--a shiva-like plant with unusual blossoms at the tips."