Just a few scans from one of my favorite books, and a great source of inspiration.   Available if you order online through Powell’s or through Amazon.

I have some big plans for these.  Visit the Hairpin Legs website to get your own set.

Sculpture by Claire and Sean, 2006, customized pulp fiction, Ikea Lack shelving

Images via Remodelista,  Apartment Therapy

I would love this blog to be a place you could come to check on a product, and see if it really works.  For the first real product review/comparison I decided on something I have seen and heard a lot about lately.  In fact, I have three of these in my living room.  If you have picked up a design magazine of any kind, then you have seen some version of a cantilevered shelf.  These shelves show up almost everywhere – and with good reason.  They are practical and functional, attractive, easy to install (in most cases), and generally inexpensive.  Overall a great design solution with an ever widening array of uses.   End to end, stacked, staggered, painted, wallpapered, repainted, as furniture… just Google the ways to use one and see all that comes up.   Recently though, I have run across way to many knock-offs that are pretty poor quality, and I thought it might be worth a post to show the difference.
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Winter has had a death grip this year, and maybe you need something to lighten your creative spirits.  Everywhere you look, there is end of winter/beginning of spring sales with great deals on some amazing and random things.  Take advantage and find some thing to either use or make something great out of.  I have seen some pretty good prices on some very interesting things from Pedlars, Three Potato Four, & West Elm.

Some sites may not be selling anything, but offer daily inspiration of all kinds.  Convoy and Cavalier Essentials are a couple of my favorites.

If you are like me, then finding the right type of planner/organizer is essential if you are ever going to use it.  Unless it fits my life perfectly, i am not likely to stick with it.  I might use if once or twice, but after a few days or weeks of trying I will give up.  For me, it is finding something that can be as flexible and unscripted as my days tend to be. My priorities are constantly shifting and things that were on the back burner will suddenly leap to the foreground and need immediate attention.  I have tried a lot of different types and styles, and I have come to the conclusion that anything offering more than today’s date at the top of the page and a blank slate below is too much.  Day’s events can easily take up three pages after a few calls from clients, or as little as half a page if  its just me and my computer.

If you are anything like me, then the Flexible Day Planner from designers Lisa Smith Michael Savona may be the perfect fit.  I love the open ended feel of this planner.  Space to write, draw, clip, and stick.   More excitingly, this post is the opening post of Show Show Room.  “The planner is the debut product of Show Show Room, an online display space that pushes design retail to a new conceptual level. Show Show Room not only features retail products, but also the ideas and explorations that fueled their design.”

via Design Bureau

Thanks to Maxim Dalton for perfectly executing a board game version of the greatest movie of my teenage life.   Now if only I could scrape together the nearly one million dollars required to get the house to go with it.

“Buenos Aires-based designer Maxim Dalton created this beauty of a board game. Following Ferris’ outlandishly epic day of hooky, the game features familiar locales and iconography.”

Via Design Bureau