Design^Sprout | Your Guide to Green Design

Project Runway Winner - Eco Friendly!

    Congratulations to Leanne Marshall, Project Runway's Season 5 winner. Fifty percent of her innovative collection was crafted with sustainable fabric. Her dowdy glasses and cliche´ hipster style bugged me at first but her lovely personality and talent won me over. You go (green) girl!

Finally! Jewelry That Works For You.

     A necklace that doubles as a clock -  who figures this stuff out??? Thankfully someone does because few things sound better than giving my jewelry a day job. The designer Thorunn Arnadottir explains:

     Each bead in the necklace is 5 minutes. the whole necklace is one solar day. the orange and red beads

represent the whole hours. as the wheel turns, one bead falls off and drops down the string every 5 minutes.

to tell time one must count the beads from the silver bead (midnight) or the golden bead (noon) to the last

bead that fell off the wheel.

     The necklace can also be taken off the wheel, worn and even moonlights at Arby's on the weekends. Genius.

Why Do Garage Sales Start So F-ing Early?

   Rummaging through other people's junk is one of my favorite things in the world.  The fact that I have to drag my sorry ass out of bed at the crack of dawn to do it - not so much. Cue the design stylings of Tawny Holt.  She not only finds the cool, early-bird gems I'm always missing, but remakes them into modern, couture pieces you can pretend you paid a lot of money for. Check out her Etsy shop here and go back to bed.

 

Guilt Free Clothing with Kick-Ass Style

    So you wanna be good. You want to dress sustainably in organic cotton with bamboo thread manufactured only by fair-trade companies but paying $95 for a t-shirt seems a bit c.r.a.z.y. to you. I understand. That's why I'm so thrilled for the change of seasons when things previously waaaaay out of my price range suddenly become affordable.
   Sublet, a green clothing line, whose designs I DROOL over is having a humdinger of a sale with some options under $100 and Greenloop, the mac daddy of sustainable fashion, has loads of items for men and women up to 60% off. Now is where is where I say something cliché like "Go green without spending a lot of green" but what could be more fitting?

The Parisian Fantasy (Vicarious Living For Us Poor Americans)

   Sometime while perusing the internet I ran across this wonderful little design blog, A Great Apartment in Paris.  Dedicated to a couple's fantasy of moving to Paris and living the life the rest of us wish we could afford, they document the triumphs and pitfalls of designing the ideal European apartment all while trying to remain completely green. Their design is fresh and fun and the information useful. Viva la France!

Finally, Charging We Can All Afford

   Because keeping a real plant alive is beyond my capabilities - Vivien Muller has designed one that not only attends to itself but nurtures all your electronics in the process. 54 mini photovoltaic panels turn those nasty UV rays into hours of Ipod/cell phone/laptop power. Cleverly engineered to "grow" depending on your particular gadget needs, the tiny bonsai "tree" sits atop a tray that conceals all your cumbersome cords. Brilliant.