On Sunday, I attended Amy Azzarito’s event celebrating her new book, Past & Present. Part book-signing and part craft workshop, it was held at Terrain in Glen Mills, PA. If you’re unfamiliar with Terrain, basically it is a magical wonderland of handsome gardening supplies and rustic home decor with a 12-acre plant nursery and one of the best brunch spots in town. With a carefully curated assortment of items and enough plant knowledge to keep even me from killing plants, Terrain truly is special.
Based on Amy’s popular column on Design*Sponge, Past & Present focuses on DIY projects and essays that explore how the past seems to always resurface in modern design. To take it a bit further, Amy outlines the history of a particular style, and asks various creatives—such as David Stark, Grace Bonney, Todd Oldham, and Anthology‘s own creative director Meg Mateo Ilasco—to contribute related DIY projects. For example, an overview of 17th-century Venetian mirros leads to a mirror mosiac planter project designed by Grace.
During the workshop, Amy explained the history of Native American trade blankets and then walked us through the related DIY project design by jewelry and textile designer Caitlin Mociun. While sipping ginger lemonade, we fashioned napkin rings out of PVC couplings with brightly colored duct tape applied in geometric designs. The end result is a relatively simple project that you can easily update for different occasions. As you can see, some attendees got very detailed with their napkin rings!
Many thanks to Amy and Terrain for putting on such an inspiring event!
{photos by Joanna of Jojotastic}
With spring officially here, it’s time to consider your garden. Etsy is a great resource for small-scale gardening, with amazing finds ranging from plant markers to herb pots, even plant hangers! Here are some of my favorites this season.
Keep your seedlings organized with these color-coded markers from Paulova.
If neutral garden pots are more your speed, be sure to check out these stoneware planters from Persimmon Street.
Airplants are a great way to add greenery to your home in a super low-maintenance way! Why not hang them in these faceted planters from Janelle Gramling.
Another beginner-friendly option are succulents. They tend to look great no matter how they are planted, but I especially love the clean lines of this wooden planter from Andrew’s Reclaimed.
Last, but not least, terrariums offer a year-round way to bring the outdoors in. This faceted terrarium from Jechory Glass Designs looks like it could house a mini world!
by Alexis on November 30, 2012
One of my favorite parts of getting to work with creative professionals are the side projects that they’re constantly coming up with. It seems like everyone has a labor of love they’re spending evenings or weekends devoted to. Andrew Knapp’s Find Momo is just such a project.
In each photo in the series, Andrew’s black and white pup is peeking out from over a ridge, behind a sign, or the front seat of an old van. The beauty of the images themselves is enough to keep you scrolling through Andrew’s tumblr, but finding Momo is a bit of an addicting challenge, like a digital game of I spy. If you’re looking for a little distraction for your Friday, click over to Find Momo and search for him yourself. (Also, do you remember Maddie on Things, another photography/puppy side project Kate posted about last February?)
{Images from Find Momo}
{Image above from Brad Miersma}
As November rolls in, across the Bay Area the rain and fog of fall and winter seem to have come with it. On cool mornings like these, I like to bundle up with a warm cup of tea and enjoying the quieter pace the overcast weather brings with it.
Somewhere in the Swiss Alps is a hotel called Berggasthaus Aescher-Wildkirchli. It’s tucked into the side of a mountain with a towering cliff above. When I first saw a picture of this unbelievable hotel, I thought surely it couldn’t be real. But a little research led me to more information about the retreat. Accessible only by a combination of cable car and hiking, the modest guest house has been operated by the same family for years. And while it looks like I just missed my chance to visit this year (they closed for the season on October 31), it looks like a dreamy spot to bundle up on a cool, overcast morning.
{Image above from cmangum444}
Years ago, an artist friend introduced me to a small screenprinting device called Gocco. I liken it to the Easy Bake Oven of printing because it relies on flash bulbs to operate. In 2008, Gocco’s manufacturer, Riso, closed its doors. Thus, my foray into printing pretty much ended, too.
Which is why I was both thrilled and envious when I met Kate Roebuck—who works for Hable Construction and also runs her own fantastic site, Bowerbird (she and her sister-in-law make and sell limited-edition art and accessories). Kate’s Oxford, Mississippi, home was featured in Issue No. 8/Summer 2012 of Anthology. And while I love her decor—everything seems to have some personal significance to Kate and her husband—it’s the outdoor space and how she uses it that I can’t get over.
“My neighbors think I’m cuckoo because I am almost always doing a project of some sort outside,” she told us. Screenprinting is just one of those projects. And, when photographer Thayer Allyson Gowdy shot her house earlier this year for our print pages, she was also able to capture Kate at work. I hope you enjoy this peek at her process as much as I did. (Now I’m inspired to hunt down some Gocco supplies on eBay!)
