A Log Handrail

photo: Grdley + Graves for Country Living

How fun is this handrail made from a found oak log?. I like that they left the bark in tact. Great for a summer cabin or rustic-inspired home. Via Country Living.

Cool Decorating Trick: Drawer Knobs for for Hooks

Photo credit: Carole Whiting who has a lovely shop in Australia http://www.y10store.com and her husband at http://whitingarchitects.com

Varied sizes of wooden knobs used as hooks.  Such a great idea for a bathroom or even entrance area.  Via Bodie and Fou.

Cool Decorating Trick

Jenny of Jenny's Hus mentioned on her blog this week that she finds it difficult to find nice wall lighting and I tend to agree.  Having looked for a while myself, there's not much out there.  But she solved the problem by making her own variation which now hangs in her hall.  The wall shelf bracket is from Ikea EKBY (although we don't get black versions here in N. America - easily solved with a slap of paint).  And the cord lighting is from a store called coop in Sweden.  One could always use the HEMMA cord set from Ikea I guess but not quite the same, or these from west elm.  I found something similar at Zangra (out of the Netherlands) but showed up to this post empty handed for a similar source here in N. America (anyone)?  The edison-style round bulbs can be found at west elm; however thought the Plumen lightbulb might work too. Cool trick Jenny!

Update:  Desiree of Vosges Paris sent me a link to another shop in the Netherlands that carries this sort of thing: http://www.snoerboer.nl/ - Thank you

west elm

20 Cool Decorating Tricks for the Home

Livingetc

I love decorating ideas that take something that is normally used for one thing and then use it for something else.  Or maybe it’s used for many different ways all at once.  Over the years I’ve gathered many of these what I call Cool Decorating Tricks and I thought it would be fun to do a slideshow along with some others I have found around online over at my daily blog posts at Babble today.  Check it out here if you're interested.

Cool Decorating Trick No. 5: Crate Pallet Plant Stand/Platform

A fun thing little idea I spotted today in my reader.  This crate shipping pallet used as a plant stand/platform from the Swedish blog, Lolita.  The greyish-black that it's painted contrasts well against the clay terracotta planters holding all those lovely cacti don't you think?  Cool Decorating Trick No. 5. Read Lolit'as blog here.

Cool Decorating Trick: Scrabble Shelves

Old wooden Scrabble racks make great display shelves for your finds. Simply glue to a wall & arrange your things! From the clever folks at Present and Correct. (Via @hidinginhere).

Hula Seventy: Great Display Idea

Since it's all about collections here at Poppytalk this week, I thought I'd share a fantastic display idea today.

My brother Nate (aka DJ Dust) found an entire volume of old 70s english school booklets at the thrift store. He was initially drawn to the bright colors, the vintage feel and strong graphics of the cardboard sleeves the booklets were housed in and couldn't leave without purchasing the entire set. Not bad for seven bucks.



After removing the booklets from each cardboard sleeve, arranging the sleeves and measuring them, Nate built three shallow wooden frames and painted them white. He attached the colorful school book sleeves to the frames with wood glue and voila. Instant awesomeness. These currently hang in Nate's Atlanta studio and I swear, they are my absolute favorite thing to look at whenever I visit.

Posted by Hula Seventy

Cool Decorating Tricks

Photo for Canadian Family Magazine taken by Michael Alberstat.

We noticed these cool decorating tricks coming from some Canadian magazines lately that we thought were worthy of a mention here this week. Whats great about some of them too, is that they're not too expensive to do. Above: A unique message board idea found in Canadian Family Magazine, featuring their editor, Jen Reynold's kitchen. Two yard sale metal trays are hung with wire wrapped from handle to handle. We found this one (below) at etsy, available through Tucson Vintage's shop.



Another piece we loved from the same photo shoot for Canadian Family Magazineis this Shanghai vintage spice rack shelf (below) from Greentea Design. This piece is a little more difficult to find obviously, however sources that come to mind are eBay or your local Chinatown. I also found this selection through Dibor out of the UK.

Photo for Canadian Family Magazine taken by Michael Alberstat.

And then from Wish Magazine, this featured home (below) of Liz Kingstone and family. A little difficult to see, but she knitted panels (for curtains) that hang like strings of cotton balls in her front bay window. She knitted them in a day with super-fat needles. Also her pink painted staircase in glossy hot pink brings lots of color and style, and so easy to do. Photo's by Michael Graydon.

Cool Decorating Trick #1

I saw this great decorating trick in the Summer/08 issue of Wish Magazine and had to show you guys! I remember we always had wooden blocks holding up our windows like this as a kid to keep the house cool in the summer or those screens that you can get that keep out the bugs. But since we're pretty bug free here on the west coast (except for the odd evening moth), this is such a brilliant idea. I'm imagining a stawberry & rhubarb pie now cooling there on that window sil. Image from Wish Magazine (bracket in image from Rizo Home, Toronto). Bracket samples shown from Anthropologie.

make a headboard and more from a photo

i just got back from visiting shine today and am all stoked for a cool d.i.y. project idea that was in a post about design ideas. the idea is inspired by these rooms from a beautiful hotel on the island of folegandoes in greece, the anemi. the rooms (by designer stavros papayiannis) in this hotel are really rather serene and modern in design, using white walls with grey trim in most of them. this allows for the large photo canvases (project idea) to really pop out when used as either bed headboards or large backdrops. writer, callie jenschke suggested using blowuplab.com to create this look from a blown up photograph and looking back in my library of old blueprint magazines (sniffle sniffle) i came across a few other resources as well. duggal and shutterfly to blow up your favorite photograph. (continued below).



here's a little how to (with some help from blueprint's may '06 issue):

1. once you have chosen your image (preferabley a digital one). if not, you'll have to take your original picture and scan it to make it into digital format. if you don't have a scanner, you can take it to a local office center such as kinko's where they can do this for you. they can put the image on a cd so you can take it to whichever printer you decide to take it to.

2. depending on the size of your original image and what type of camera the image was taken from, will depend on how large you will be able to blow up your image to. it's best to have this looked at where you will be having the image blown up at for them to assess. the one's in these images are at least 5' x 7', so your original image would need to be of pretty high quality in the pixel department.

3. for a matte canvas, ask to look at samples before you go ahead. according to my trusty old blueprint magazine, ask for heavyweight artist's canvas, pigment-based dyes, and an ultra-violet-protective coating.


(all photo's from the anemi)