Monday, January 28, 2013

Memorable Links Clearing House

I'm cleaning up some fairly pointless posts that link to some memorable web sites.
This is my link clearing house:
D.E. Sellers - Great flat packed furniture
GamFratesi - Furniture. Ultra clean and minimalist.
Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Home (Google Affiliate Ad)  
Architectural Watercolors - by Andrew Zega & Bernd H. Dams (gorgeous, intricate, detailed architectural renderings.)
Snowglobes as fine art - by Walter Martin & Paloma Munoz
Nicebunny - paper toys, cool edgy illustration and design
Wikipedia list of furniture designers
Artnet.com - buy original art online
Takashi Murakami
Yoshitomo Nara
Moleskine notebooks
... to be continued.


I suppose this clearing house fits with my original mission for this site.  This was my first blog from Sept 11, 2007
What I like. Remind me.
Hello!
I keep finding these interesting web sites, or interesting designs, or interesting designers, or, just a small bit of culture or knowledge that is worth taking note of. I, of course bookmark them. The problem is I'm starting to get way too many bookmarks. AND, I want to compile a sort of road map of what I am interested in, from month to month, year to year. I'm curious what the common threads are... what is the common connection that links an interest to me? Frankly, it seems like I'm all over the place. I suppose good, is just good, but I want to try and figure out why, "it" is "good". Mapping my thoughts on "what is good," seems to be a good place to start.

Enjoy!

Sunday, January 27, 2013

$20 Cardboard Box? Worth Every Penny.

Having drawn my three year old nephew's name for Christmas, we, of course, began the search for the gift that was thoughtful, educational and a little bit creative. My wife found a gift in a mail order catalog called Uncommon Goods that we thought was a huge (thinking refrigerator box size here) fire station box that he could set up, play with, crawl around in and paint. It got good reviews. We ordered it up. It shipped promptly, and we were promptly disappointed. No crawling around inside this box. Maybe we should have looked a little closer at the dimensions, but honestly looking back at the picture in the catalog, it appeared large...in the end, the size was less than impressive. We paid $20 for a cardboard box! Needless to say, we decided against giving it to my nephew for Christmas.

Fast forward to February. My son turned three himself and since this "box of disappointment" had sat in the corner of our closet since December, we just decided that my son would get it as a gift from his little sister... Well, I have to say, we honestly didn't give this $20 box a fair chance!  My son and I spent a memorable Saturday morning painting away on this box together.  The cool thing was, the crazier he got with the paint, the better it looked.  I filled in some of the details and I have to say we ended up with a finished product we could be proud of.  We let it dry and my son promptly filled it up with his toy firetrucks. I guess the old joke about giving kids toys and they'll just play with the box holds true... even if the box is the toy!  Brilliant!

Here are a couple boxes you can paint with your child:
Imagination Box 4 Paintable Barn from Sturdy Double-walled Corrugated Board (Google Affiliate Ad)Imagination Box Paintable Schoolhouse (Google Affiliate Ad)