The New Vipp Table

The folks that brought us the most beautiful trash can ever made,  introduces a new addition to the kitchen, the new Vipp Table. Now that Vipp has a whole Vipp kitchen concept, it seemed very natural for the Danish-based company to extend the collection with a table to complete the look. Made of untreated, recycled teak planks, the table frame is the same used for their kitchen modules, a powder coated alluminum frame ensuring stability and visual coherence.  The table is available with a frame in matte black or gloss white, and is sold in the Vipp flagship store in Copenhagen. Visit Vipp online at vipp.com.

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Professionally Designed Waiting Room Areas to Inspire Your Space

The waiting room or visitor area is the first place seen by most anyone visiting your place of business. First impressions are formed from this areas decor, style, and level of professionalism. Creating a stylish waiting room starts with an idea or inspiration. To provide that spark, this article will highlight several beautifully designed spaces sure to get your creative juices flowing!

Space 1: The Serpentine

Braden lounge furniture by Global Total Office highlights this space. The modular lounge seating set offers a serpentine shape that's sure to impress. Sets like the one highlighted here are perfect when space is at a premium. Braden's modular design and simplicity make it an easy to spec solution for almost any visitor area. The seemingly limitless array of Global upholstery solutions make interior designers dreams come true. This space is also accented with with a matching square coffee table and gorgeous tile floors. The marbled walls and blue fabric compliment each other nicely, while the whole area boasts a welcoming feel.

Space 2: Elegance On A Budget

The Mayline Santa Cruz collection of leather lounge furniture is hard to beat. This affordable line includes a variety of leather sofas, matching ottomans, and stylish seating sure to impress event he harshest of critics. In fact, all of the seating and items used in this room can be purchased as a set to ease the shopping process! Available in a choice of Almond or Black leather, Santa Cruz lounge furniture sets key on one of the hottest industry trends, light upholstery. Using white, cream, and almond colored materials show class and elegance without taking away from grandeur or the area it accompanies. Along with the seating, this unique visitors area includes full panel windows and contemporary wood wall paneling for an enhance modern appeal. The tile floors and retro side lamp pull this space together for an all around professional look.

Space 3: The Highrise

When it comes to waiting room furniture, OFM,Inc. offers one of the largest selections of quality products found industry wide. This fantastic modern office furniture manufacturer has built an excellent reputation based on customer service and awesome products that ship quickly. This space is a true testament to that fact. The highrise features a curved reception desk from the industry leading Marque reception station collection along with an abundance of sled based visitors chairs. As you can see, this area is all about the welcoming desk. The floors, natural lighting, tables, and seating are all geared towards bringing out the wow factor or the reception desk. The curved designed and plexi glass transaction panels truly make for an impressive space.

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Scandi patchwork cushion collection by Nina's Apartment, vintage furniture and Interior design, Aberdeenshire

I love Scandinavian fabrics. The simplicity of the geometrical patterns and the strong colours have been used for decades but are still so timeless and work well in most interiors - contemporary or traditional. Marimekko is an obvious name in the 'Scandi' fabric design world, but I have recently discovered Lotta Jansdotter, who makes the most stunning prints and whose fabrics I have incorporated in many of my cushions. One day I might try and design my own Scandi-style fabrics, but for now I source beautiful material already available.

Here are some cushions I have made recently using various Scandinavian fabrics.

(PS: If you like this style, I do take commissions and can make a set for your own home, based on the colour scheme of your interior. Just contact me for a free consultation!)

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Travel post: Sleeping in a Grand Design home: Dime House, lake Windermere, Lake District

We're just back from a lovely two weeks' holiday in the UK. I guess you could call it a 'stay-cation' since we decided to stay in Britain this summer, but with a long drive of about 1500 miles in total you can hardly speak of 'staying local'!

The good thing was that on our epic journey from the North East of Scotland all the way down to Cornwall we stopped for three nights in the beautiful Lake District. You could pick any of the many B&Bs dotted around this area, but we picked the Dome House, a stunning piece of architecture overlooking lake Windermere and a place that added a real bit of 'designer flair' to our trip.

It comes as no surprise that it featured in the BBC TV programme Grand Designs, and with its domed roof and facade of wood and glass it really stands out from any of the historic homes and cottages in Bowness-on-Windermere. Although very 'grand' on approach, the guest rooms have a lovely, welcoming feel to them, with their open plan living space, vintage furniture and view to die for. Our room, the 'Green Suite' also features a rather unusual and very large wooden bath, which was a real winner - even our 7-month old baby loved scooting around in it. Rather than having to rush to a communal breakfast room, at the Dome House you are provided with a well stocked 'breakfast hamper', which makes your stay even more pleasant and relaxed.

We really enjoyed staying here and would recommend this place any time, whatever the weather. A thunder storm and torrential rain shower never looked more impressive than from the window of this grand design house.


www.domehouselakedistrict.co.uk

View from our room after the storm

The fabulous wooden bath and my fabulous baby boy

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Free vintage printables for all your creations this Christmas season

Just something I made Great round labels.

I love graphic design and creating blogs, postcards, posters, flyers, business cards and more. Not that I have any proper Photoshop or Illustrator skills, but by keeping things simple and using good quality images and type fonts I seem to get away with a lot! ;-)

Lately I have come across some absolutely gorgeous free downloadable images and photoshop textures, which I didn't want to keep to myself. I mean, what better finishing touch than a customised, vintage label to go with your hand-made gift?

So. Here we go! Have fun and do share links to your websites if you've created anything with them!

Fuzzimo
A great site with lots of vintage downloadable images including postcards, stamps and envelopes as well as polaroid frames, canvas textures and old sticky tape. Yum!

I-Do-It-Yourself
Wonderful website with lots of ideas and inspiration for weddings - but of course these great labels can be used for your homemade Christmas gifts too. Worth a look.

Demilked
I found a great selection of free downloadable Retro type fonts on this website, ready to be used on all your labels, cards and other creations...

Shadowhouse creations
More yummy type fonts! Which one to choose???

World Label
Heaps of great vintage labels to stick on jars, bottles, boxes, gifts, anything!

Miss Cutiepie goes 80s
Lots of free printable vintage Christmas labels and tags...

DigitalCollageImages (via Flickr)
Some more lovely vintage Christmas tags. Oh my - are those gifts going to look good this year or what.!

Lilybox Designs
Cover some tin cans in these vintage wrappers. You may want to keep some yourself as a home for your pencils, scissors and other bits and bobs too!

Maybemej
Great collection of printable paper scraps, including old maps, flower patterns and labels:

Hope this list has given you some ideas and inspiration! Enjoy!


***

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My new passion: sewing patchwork pillows

 

 

This post is a shameful plug of my recent sewing bonanza, which has resulted in a wonderfully eclectic collection of patchwork cushion covers which I am now selling online as well as at the Christmas fair I am taking part in soon. I have turned into a right pillow making factory since I got my new sewing machine and I love it! Finally knowing what to do with my scrap pieces of fabric that I don't want to throw out, I just sew them all together into unique combinations. I also use vintage linens and all kinds of upholstery and dress making fabrics I come across on my travels. If anything, they will provide excellent insulation for our home in the coming winter months! ;-)

Which one do you like best?

 

 

I am selling them for £25 ($40) each excl insert, with free shipping to the UK. Happy to ship internationally as well - just drop me an email on ninasapartment at gmail.com. Makes a perfect handmade Christmas present! I am open to make custom pillow covers, so if you're looking for a specific colour scheme just let me know.

GO TO THE SHOP

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A really cool, hip, modern design, at David Barton Gym, NY

Look Better Naked

The David Barton Gym slogan gets a workout at a New York branch by Studio Sofield

Article posted by

Craig Kellogg -- Interior Design, 2/1/2011 3:02:00 PM

Anderson Cooper, Nate Berkus, and this reporter can't all be wrong. The David Barton Gym rocks. And it's not just the Kiss and T. Rex tracks the DJs spin at the latest New York location while the three of us are working out. . .separately. At 37,000 square feet of smoky mirror and amber lighting, this gym stands out in a city where health clubs often resemble health clinics. "So many other gyms are about fluorescents and Clorox," Interior Design Hall of Fame member William Sofield­ says. Yes, he lifts here, too. Of his five David Barton Gyms in New York, Miami Beach, Chicago, and Seattle­, this one was always destined to be the most personal. He's lived in the neighborhood for decades, and Studio Sofield is based here.

Using a torch to cut a semicircular 
opening in a disco ball transformed it 
into a DJ booth. Photo by Eric Laignel.

To David Barton himself, the new location-four levels in a venerable cast-iron building-suggested 1980's punks squatting in an abandoned church. "I'm obsessed with scale and mood," he says, pointing out the window to the rusting fire escapes and heavy black shutters of an ancient courtyard. "I hope they never fix that up." Not that he and Sofield don't continue to "fix up" the gym interior, an ongoing dialogue. One mural has already been repainted elsewhere for greater visibility, and a pair of highly stylized skeleton chairs disappeared to make way for a snack bar.

Sofield proposed the "bat cave" concept for the men's locker room in the subbasement, where contractors ultimately removed truckloads of useless pipe and outmoded electrical equipment before painting some of the old brick foundation bronze and other parts brown. Both the men's lockers and the women's, on the next basement level up, are walnut-veneered and arranged in bays with vermillion-gelled fluorescents washing the ceiling and a tribal motif on the carpet. The glamour of onyx counters "undercuts the sleaze," he notes.

Wherever possible, he avoids plain painted plasterboard. Asked for a boxing area, he instantly thought: flocked wall covering. "David smiled immediately," he recalls. The fuzzy black-and-white brocade pattern also covers walls in the adjacent corridor, where a niche frames a life-size lawn sculpture of Michelangelo's David. Flooring in most of the corridors is engineered wood with a surface of carbonized larch brushed to reveal virgin springwood. The same planks extend into the basement Pilates studio that Sofield describes as a "Zen dungeon."


The David isn't the only kitsch trophy. Almost all Barton's gyms have a DJ booth, and Sofield suggested housing it inside a giant disco ball. "I don't know why I never thought of that," Barton replied. "I've got one in storage." This relic of the Tuesday parties that his wife, "Queen of the Night" Susanne Bartsch, used to host at the Happy Valley dance club turned out to be the perfect size to park on a stagelike platform left over from the gym's predecessor, Barnes & Noble. The platform is roughly in the center of the wedge-shape top level, by far the largest of the four.

A custom screen of laser-cut steel biohazard symbols separates the stairwell from reception. Photo by Eric Laignel.

One corner, the former children's reading room, now features the bench presses and free-weight circuits that Barton calls the "clanking iron of World War III." He explains that the steel ballet bar around the perimeter keeps the action a safe distance from the antique heating system set below the huge old windows: "So someone doesn't sit on a hot radiator pipe or fling a dumbbell out." Down the middle of the floor marches a row of structural columns supporting colossal mirrors with charred-looking Goth frames. Anyone standing in front of the mirrors benefits from theatrical spots that highlight every bulge, whether muscle or fat. "If you can't see it, you can't isolate and move it," Sofield argues. Gelled fluorescents, meanwhile, imbue the ceiling with the mystery of black light, even though the actual paint colors are aubergine and smoky cocoa.

He chose high-gloss ultramarine for the ceiling in the lofty lobby. You might not immediately guess that the point of departure for the lobby's industrial beaux arts aesthetic is the Park Avenue Armory, featuring interiors by Stanford White and Louis Comfort Tiffany. However, reverence didn't stop Sofield from wrapping the lobby's columns­ in hardware-store sisal rope or handing workers circular saws to widen gaps between 10-inch-wide oak floorboards reclaimed from a Virginia army barracks. Furnishings include an ornate­ antique sideboard from the Black Forest and a turn-of-the-last-century grandfather clock surmounted by a Russian vintage Father Christmas in a flowing red cloak. Year-round.

Photography by Eric Laignel.

PROJECT TEAM
gensler: architect of record. emphasis lighting group: lighting consultant. thornton tomasetti: structural engineer. emtg consultants: mep. cory-moschetti studio: woodwork. park east construction corporation: general contractor.

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Design trends of 2011...

Interior design trends of 2011: 'emotional austerity', 're-balancing'...

An article that appeared in the independent

According to experts, the big design trends of 2011 will stem from consumers reassessing what they need to live comfortably, seeking innovation, finding a local balance in a global world and searching for personalized products.

The book Interior Trends 2011 was recently released by IMM Cologne; compiled by the expert committee of the international trend board at IMM Cologne, this latest in a series of annual publications predicts that people are questioning what they need to live well, demanding innovation not re-imagination, addressing issues of balance and seeking products with personality.

The interior trends of 2011

1. Emotional Austerity

IMM Cologne believes that as a result of the financial crisis people are questioning what it is they need to live well. This is leading to the emergence of simplistic, formal or severe designs that combine the basic and old with the modern and the high-tech.

2. Surprising Empathy

Consumers are no longer content with re-imagined concepts and are instead forcing designers to push boundaries and create truly innovative new products. Aesthetically this trend is characterized by angular or folded structures and ash greys or blacks brightened with dashes of yellows or orange.

3. Re-balancing

IMM Cologne believes that consumers have grown tired of being bombarded by constant marketing and instead are searching for products that are personal and create a sense of home in an increasingly globalized world. Within this trend there is a preference for simple angular structures and soft natural materials such as wool.

4. Transforming perspectives

Designers are beginning to question the boundaries between art and design, the virtual world and the real world - leading them to propose radical new designs that experiment with archaic forms and nature. These designs are characterized by glass and metal complemented with hard and soft plastics that combine to form a changeable surface.

IMM Cologne is an international showcase of the latest household and furniture designs. 2011's event will feature a specialized section dedicated to young, emerging designers around the world.

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AG Home Goods Electronics... something for everyone..

New Electronics at Avant - Garde Home Furnishings, LLC

Please take a look at the electronics offerings on my sire.. They are absolutely incredible, present a great value from normal market prices, and we offer fast delivery.. Have a look.. We have something for everyone and new products were added this morning including Dyson fans at below Best Buy prices..

64GB Apple iPad - 499.00 - Only one left



Windows based Netbooks



Google based Android OS Cell Phones



Google based Android OS Tablets



Google based iPhone 4G



Have a look, its definitely worth your time..


http://www.shop.avantgardehomefurnishings.com/AG-Electronics_c36.htm

Until next time...

Alex

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