Maki Squarepatch

The 2 beautiful sisters, Xin and Enqi, of Maki Squarepatch just told me that they are doing a callout for old and unwanted toys to be recycled for an upcoming exhibition in Nov.

What they need are toys that are stuffed with fibre foam or cotton. They don't have to be in perfect condition just as long as they’re not too dusty. For every medium-sized toy donated, Maki Squarepatch will donate 10 cents to charity.

Collection ends: 9 Nov 2007. Here’s are the details if you would like to contribute to this exciting project with a worthy cause:

Maki Squarepatch is also having a sale at their beautiful new outlet at 111 Emerald Hill. From 12-31 October, you get to enjoy up to 20% off vintage apparel, belts and Maki Squarepatch’s older stock. And for those not in Singapore and would like to own somthing from Maki Squarepatch, you will be happy to know that they are knocking 10% off most items in their online shop.

I love this house!

I am so inspired by the colours and objects in this house. What a wonderful sense of style! The patchwork wall made up of vintage wallpaper is probably my favourite! This would be a wonderful way to jazz up a wall if you have stashes of odd-sized pretty paper and fabric at home. You can even try gluing the pieces on the wall like what they did in this project. (via Happy Cavalier)

Search for "Top 10 NEW Design Blogs to Watch"now officially.......CLOSED

The call for nominations for the Top 10 NEW Design Blogs to Watch is now officially.......CLOSED! Thanks again to all who nominated your favourite new blogs that have been around for less than a year! I cannot tell you how super excited I am to uncover so many new blogs I never knew existed and to share them with everyone!!

I will be doing a final count of the votes and unveiling the results together with The Home Rejuvenation's poll soon! Meanwhile, I will return to my regular posts at Laissezfaire.

Stay tuned, stay inspired!

Top 10 NEW Design Blogs to Watch

Thanks to all who have taken the time to vote for the "Top 10 NEW Design Blogs to Watch" and for the lovely people who have helped publicised this poll on their blogs so far!

If you are reading this and haven't voted, please vote now by emailing the new blogs that you think deserve to be watched to toptentowatch@gmail.com! The deadline is Oct 15th! Remember, the blogs have to be less than 1 year old!

For more details of this poll, click here!

Energy Bucket

Now this is one bright idea! Stefano Merlo is the brilliant Italian designer behind this cool illuminated bucket. It collects light via photovoltaic panels during the day and gives back at sundown in the form of a radioactive-looking bucket. It is not clear whether Merlo has any intention to create more of these light buckets but I really hope they do! Will be perfect to jazz up a garden or outdoor party, don't you think?

Deborah Bowness

I really like these wallpaper designs by Deborah Bowness. Think they are really unique, beautiful and inspiring. For more, click here.

Laure Kasiers

Unique and beautifully textured rugs by Belgian textile designer Laure Kasiers. Do check out more of Laura's beautiful designs here. (via siagrafica).

Annechovie

I love the work by artist Anne of Annechovie, especially this painting above. It is a drawing of a beautiful conservatory room in a Georgian estate created by interior designer Richard Keith Langham. I just love the floral and pink upholstery set against the romantic black and white tented ceiling and black and white tile floor. What a wonderful place to have tea with a bunch of girlfriends!

There are more beautiful drawings at Anne's etsy store. Do check it out!

Beautiful things for a desk

ohhh...I would love to have this Crosley desk phone sitting on my desk at home. Even though I don't have a land line, I could always pretend. It is available at amazon.com. The equally handsome carbon copy note pads are from Paper+Cup. (via The Scoop)

Socks for your chairs?

What a wonderful idea to inject some quirky colour and patterns to your chairs while preventing them from scratching your floor or making those terrible noises! By German design company taschide - tan und schiebe design.

Focus Fabrik

Ever since I started taking the "Print your fabric" class, I have been extremely sensitive to surfaces, patterns and fabric designs in general. I really love the fabric collection and display by Finnish brand Focus Fabrik which I got to know from Debi Van Zyl's wonderful blog. So fun, dynamic and inspiring!

Some interesting patterns and fabric designs that seem to be inspired by the urban environment below. Do check out more designs and products at their store here!

Doll Houses

I have just been tagged by Kelly of Design Crush to reveal 7 random facts about myself. Since I was recently tagged to do this, I will nominate Ron of Lifeasashutterbug to do the honours. =)

While browsing at Design Crush's lovely blog, I found out about these magical doll houses by Anna Pfeiffer and Ulrike Rumpenhors. There are three different room sizes and 4 different wall colors to choose from. They also offer a Suitcase Kit - wooden box that comes with two small rooms, a medium size room, a salon and stairs. You can even get modern furniture and dolls for decorating and playing. Available at Hase Weiss, a Berlin-based kids toy and furniture company.

I also love another simpler dollhouse design by Designer Jeanette. The Constantine Dollhouse designs are handmade with plywood and Unica wallpaper. You can even make special color requests. Available at Kidsmodern.

I love this shade of green!

I am loving the vibrant green of these tea sets by Christine Misiak. The ornate silver parts have been taken from an old battered tea set which were removed, cleaned, filed, sanded and then soldered onto new bodies. For more gorgeous colours, click here!

via Designsponge

Duct Tape Wallets

I really think these Duct tape wallets are really cool. Started in the living room of a rental house in Canby (Oregon), Garett Croft Stenson and his friends have handmade nearly 30,000 duct tape wallets over the years. Made from 100% duct tape, this nifty wallet business has helped pay Garett's way through college, bought him a house, taught him the basics of business, and has allowed him to work with his closest friends daily . For the crafty ones out there, there is even a DIY kit where you get to make your own duct tape wallet with all the materials and instructions included.

Good news! You can buy duct tape wallets and the DIY kit in Singapore @ Woonderland, Wheelock Place.

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Silkscreened wedding invitations

I just helped a beautiful couple design and make their church wedding invitations using my new print gocco set. It was quite a time consuming process but I had lots of fun doing it. The design of the card is based on an oriental woodcut. The 2 birds are silkscreened in gold onto a piece of tracing paper which is placed over the card. I really like the fact that each card is individually handmade and unique.

Fabric Collages

I love these tactile fabric collages by Samantha Hahn. They are made from scraps of fabric, burlap, toile, string, velvet, silk etc. sewn onto small canvasses. You can check out Samantha's blog here!

Big Huge Labs

Sol left a comment on one of my recent posts on colour palettes telling me about this cool website she found called BigHugeLabs. This amazing site allows you to load picture you like and a palette of colours will be generated based on the colours of your photo!

There are lots of similar programs that allow you to do this but I like this one cos it is simple and easy to use. Perfect if you need help with selecting colours for your designs or home decor. I tested it out by with this magazine cover I liked and extracted these lovely colours. It's fun! Try it!

Thanks Sol!

Domestic Dystopia

Domestic Dystopia is a photo-documentary of six interiors of dilapidated houses in Singapore that have been abandoned and are left in a state of disrepair. Each photograph reveals the traces left behind by previous occupants, freezing the memories in a snapshot of time. Through this series, photographer Ho Hui May takes on the task of translating the deep sense of loss and nostalgia she feels when she is inside these houses.

This is Ho's first solo exhibition in Singapore and is one I wouldn't want to miss! You can catch it @ Kay Ngee Tan Architects Gallery, 16-17 Duxton Hill. The gallery opens Tues-Fri 11am-7pm, Sat 11am-6pm. For more information, click here

Print your fabric

I will keep it very short today as I am nursing an impending cold at the moment. Just came back from a course on "Print on Fabric" and finally got to meet Imeda. Nice to meet you Imeda! The class was lots of fun and it would have been more fun had I not been partially sedated by the medication I was taking. Anyway, hope to be back in action soon. Meanwhile, do enjoy this blog called "The Paris Apartment". It is one of the nominatees of the Top Ten Blogs to Watch poll and I just couldn't keep it to myself. Lots of beautiful interiors.

(image from The Paris Apartment)

Top 10 New Design Blogs to Watch

1. This is a search for the Top 10 NEW Design Blogs to Watch.
2. The blog nominees to be considered should be less than 1 year old.
3. Please email your votes (up to 5) to toptentowatch@gmail.com by October 15th.
4. More details below...
   

===============

As you all know, The Home Rejuvenation came up with the brilliant idea of conducting an online poll to see who are the top 10 most influential design blogs today. While I think that there are many wonderful design blogs out there that deserve a place among the top 10, I am hoping that this poll will not simply reaffirm the already well-known design blogs out there. It will be great if through this process, more "lesser-known" design blogs could be uncovered and given the recognition they deserve. The irony is of course that many of these "lesser-known" blogs may not yet be "influential" enough to make it to the Top 10 of this poll in the first place! =)

I thus emailed Stan of the The Home Rejuvenation over the weekend to suggest that laissezfaire run a concurrent poll to find out which are the "Top 10 NEW Design Blogs to WATCH". These blogs need not be the movers and shakers of design blogland (just yet). The objective is to reveal the your favourite NEWbie design blogs (less than 1 year old) that we should all keep an eye on and encourage them to keep up the good work! To avoid this just being another popularity contest, I will take into account not just the number of votes I receive for the nominated blogs but also the quality of the content (from a design point of view) + length of the the blog has been in existence.

Really hope that this we will be able to get to know more wonderful new design blogs through this exercise. To nominate, please send an email to toptentowatch@gmail.com by 15th October 2007 . Each person is entitled to vote up to a maximum of five candidates. The final results will be posted together with The Home Rejuvenation's current poll . Lastly, do help spread a word on this poll so that we will all be able to uncover more great blogs together! Thanks!

Grow your couch

Here is a great idea for introducing seating in your backyard. All you need are some basic materials such as pieces of wood, dirt, sod and water to create this lovely design. For complete instructions, click here.

Get to know other great design blogs

Via The Home Rejuvenation, I found out about this traffic-building tool called blogrush. It is basically a widget to expose readers of a blog to other blogs with related content. It refreshes with every page load. Since this may be a great way to get to know many other related design blogs, I decided to give it a go and install it at the bottom right column of laissezfaire. Do give it a test drive and let me know what you think! I will leave it on for some time and decide it whether it is useful. Thanks stan for sharing this!

Stylish reusuable grocery bags

I was at a local convenience store a few weeks ago when I first saw these lovely prints on grocery bags by Envirosax. I told myself that I would check out the company who made these stylish enviroment friendly reuseable bags but somehow forgot about it. It thus came as a lovely surprise when Envirosax emailed me recently to tell me more about their newly launched eco bags in Singapore. First launched in Australia, EnviroSax has spread like wildfire across US, Japan, Canada & even Israel. Besides in local select convenience stores, these bags are also available in Takashimaya & OG at $9.90 (for singles) and $35 for a set of five.

Vote for the most influential design blog

The Home Rejuvenation is currently conducting a survey to find out who the influential bloggers (blogs) in our design community are. What a wonderful idea! Brilliant! Although I can guess who the strong contenders may be, I secretely wish the outcome of this survey would be an unexpected one. An relatively unknown blog that is somehow very influential in some circles, maybe? If you wish to execute your power to decide, just send an email to homereju@gmail.com and tell them which blogs you think is at the top of your list!

More ways to display your reading

Here are more great ways to display your books!
(above) the illuzine - a floating magazine rack that disappears under your magazines. A great way to create a feature wall of your favourite magazines!

(above) this powder-coated metal, wall mounted bookshelf will have people scratching their heads when they see your books levitating in mid-air.

Turn your books into an art installation

This is a cool way to turn your collection of books into an art installation. Not sure if it will make it easier to locate your books but at least it looks nice. This image is by chotda from the Rainbow of Books Flickr group. (via How about Orange and craftzine) I also like how ninahale turned her ironing board into a bookshelf for red books in the dining room by powder coating it red.

Colour inspiration #002

Pattern and colour palette inspired by the rich saturated colours of Orla Kiely's new fall/winter collection below.

Colour inspiration #001

I love the colour scheme of this room from Domino's gallery. I am hoping to start collecting colour palettes inspired by objects, rooms and places that attract me.

(above) Starting here....palette based on colours taken from this room.