i’m digging this super mid-century modern home tour over at leah’s website this morning. it belongs to dave at grain edit and makes me want to pack up and move to california right this second. click here for the full post.

the first time we got a sneak into joslyn taylor’s home was with her before & after bar transformation. it was a huge hit, and we were all dying to see more. lucky for us, today is the day! she and her husband are in the high-tech industry, but consider themselves “closet creatives” (joslyn into decor and design, and bryan dreaming of woodworking and organic farming). set in their careers, their home has become their creative outlet. see what their creative juices have cooked up, and click here for more images. as always, you can find all the sneak peeks here. -anne

[Our house was built in 1978, and when we moved in a couple of years ago we joked it had a sort of ‘Boogie Nights-meets-Brady Bunch’ vibe with loads of foil wallpaper, shag carpeting and DARK wood… Retaining the spirit of the house while making it modern and family friendly has been our biggest goal, as ultimately the space is a place where our two little girls Audrey (four) and Millie (one and a half) can run wild, create memories and express themselves…]

We painted the wall behind the bed three times before we got that eggplant color. The first two attempts were crazy…think grape, think Prince Purple Rain, think Barney…not good! The pillows on the bed are Jonathan Adler…I recently moved them in here from our living room and they completely changed the feel of the room. The Chinese panel is something I found in the “chip and dent” bin at Horchow for $8.00…perhaps my greatest. find. ever. I found the lamp and table is actually one piece. I found it at a garage/sample sale that an event designer in town had. It was a pretty cool find….I’ve never seen anything like it.

The Woods wallpaper in the little nook between the kitchen and the breakfast area is my favorite space in the house. I’m so happy with how that project turned out, as it’s a perfect backdrop for my collection of white dishes. I’m pretty obsessed with white dishes… especially “strays” — I can’t resist picking up the odd white serving bowl or tray every time I hit an estate sale or thrift shop, but my favorite piece is my Heath casserole. I love Heath ceramics so much…it’s becoming an issue.

The tongue-in-groove ash paneling in the living room was by far our biggest challenge. When we moved in it was stained dark walnut and was pretty depressing. We had it completely stripped and re-stained natural, which was an improvement but still not exactly right. So on a lark (and out of complete desperation) we bought a can of liming wax and experimented on a few hidden boards. It was a total success. So now in every single spare moment we lime the walls…we’re about half-way done with the room and hope to have the rest done by the end of the year.

Like most of the wood in the house, the cabinets in the kitchen were originally stained dark brown. We were determined not to replace them, so we slapped on several coats of Benjamin Moore Decorator White, which made the sort of Mondrian pattern on the doors really “pop”. That same motif is on every single cabinet in the house as well as on our front doors….

I was determined to make the dining room a place we’d actually use since so many people…don’t. When we moved in, this was the most traditional room in the house. The “fancy-lady” chandelier was the first thing we took down. We replaced it with a drum shade that we had custom-made by Moon Shine Shades to fit the space. I drew the lamp, and they made it in two weeks + they were really affordable.

The starting point for the guest room was all those National Geographic magazines. I’m sort of stuck on yellow + kelly green, so I painted the wall behind the bed that great green featured in Domino a few months ago…it’s a lot brighter than it seemed in the magazine, so it freaked me out a bit at first, but it really worked with all the yellow. The light fixture is from IKEA and the painting over the bed was a gift from my best friend. She’s the queen of thrift shops and estate sales and we’re always unearthing crazy stuff together. Groovy estate sale art is the best…you can find great 60s/70s pieces that straddle the line between totally awesome and a smidge scary, which is usually the best combo!

our first sneak peek has been dubbed mid-century modern meets Japanese pop culture meets flea market chic, and is the home audrey romano. based in central, pa, audrey is a web designer and coordinator by day, and clearly has a knack when it comes to home interiors as well. thanks so much to audrey for opening up more of her fabulous home to us. click here to see more, full-sized images, and as always, all the sneak peeks can be found here. stay tuned for another sneak peek at 1pm! -anne

in audrey’s words: This is our (my husband, Jamie, and my) first house, owned since June 2006, set in central Pennsylvania (State College, PA), best known as the location of Penn State University.  It’s a 3-bedroom, 2 bathroom,  ~1,662 Sq. Ft. split-level house, built in 1969 in a neighborhood called Park Forest Village.

This is of special note because it was the first large suburban development near State College (started in 1956). “This neighborhood won several national awards for its design, which moved away from the straight streets and clear cutting typical of post World War II suburban developments. The use of gracefully curved streets and the retention of trees established a pattern for future developments everywhere.” (source: http://twp.patton.pa.us/Default.aspx)

This house is our first and while it’s far from perfect, I’ve really enjoyed living in it so far. What I really love about the layout is that the rooms flow from one to the other making it feel open, yet still distinguishes between rooms and levels of the house.  Since it was built in the late 60s, keeping with the mid-century modern vibe seems to compliment it well.  While a couple of our pieces of furniture and decor have come from Crate and Barrel and IKEA, I’ve been super lucky to have found a bunch of mid-century scandinavian and american solid-wood pieces on Craigslist and at yard sales.  No one around here seems to appreciate these pieces as much as I do!  I also have a couple depression era pieces that I’ve inherited from friends of the family.

My decor is pretty heavily influenced by the design sites and magazines I keep up with.  Some of my favs are Apartment Therapy, Design*Sponge, Decor8, and Flickr.  As well as artist sites and blogs (like Camilla Engman, Lisa Congdon, Ashley Goldberg, Lena Corwin, Heather Moore, and Etsy) and shelter magazines (like Domino, Cottage Living, Blueprint, and Dwell). I am always on the search for creative decorating ideas and inspiration, as well as practical and DIY projects. I love finding out about lesser-known indie designers and artists that have different creative perspectives. There’s so much inspiration out there!  I constantly find myself rearranging and weeding out decor on a regular basis.

I love colors, pattern combinations, quirkiness, and unique handmade crafts.  I try to aim for personality, comfort and functionality, quality and affordability.

when i started d*s four years ago the last thing i thought about were parties and events. i’m a pretty big homebody so the thought of getting out of my pajamas and into uncomfortable heels late at night isn’t exactly my cup of tea. but despite not being a big party person, i am a big party-planning person. i may not be a big-event type of gal, but i do love having people over for drinks, dinner and brunch. planning details like tableware, place cards and food presentation always makes me happy. so when our summer intern christy and i got to meet event designer extraordinaire david stark a few weeks ago we left feeling like we had met event royalty. and considering david has designed events for clients like rachael ray, conde nast, target, and nicole miller he really is the king of event design.

but what sets david apart from the crowd is his growing commitment to keep event planning as sustainable as possible. when we sat down to talk the other week one of the things he mentioned to us was trying to work with materials that are either reusable or recyclable. i never really thought about all that gets thrown away after a party (let alone an event for 4,000) so to hear about david’s ideas for eco-friendly and thoughtful event planning was really eye opening.

one of the events that really caught our attention was david’s design for the robin hood foundation’s event at the javits center. as part of the event, large corporations donated products like sneakers, bottles of water, computers and towels that could be given to those in need. david was committmed to creating a design that would not only use the raw materials/gifts as the actual design, but would leave them in perfect condition so that they could be given away after the event. some of the ideas he used were incredible so we thought it would be fun to show you how something like the robin hood event, shown in its final form above, comes together from start to finish.

to read the rest of this post and see david’s idea for a giant chair made of water bottles, a house made of towels, centerpieces made from computer screens and of course, the shoe tornado, CLICK HERE (or just click “read more” below)….

our second sneak peek is into graphic designer/illustrator michelle armas’s patterned atlanta home. michelle is yet another of our talented finalists from the lena corwin printing by hand contest. it was great seeing her submission photos, but so much fun getting a deeper look into her home. planning to buy a home - when the real project begins - in the next year, her goal was to make the place feel homey (on a budget), keeping purchases simple, sticking to craigslist, thrift stores, vintage and floor samples. i do say that she succeeded with flying colors! [thanks, michelle!] -anne

Dinning room: Dinning chairs were such a score! 50’s woven leather and chrome chairs, 6 for $150 on craigslist. I felt kind of guilty paying so little for the, that girl just didn’t know how cool those chairs are…Our table is from DWR, we bought that in Brooklyn, it was my work desk and took up half of our living room, crazy.

Living room: our couch was ridiculously cheap, a sample at a boutique around here. The back cushions are not great quality so we replaced them with down pillows, much better. Green pillow from Pottery Barn, red pillow from Lena Corwin. The side tables are actually night tables from Victory Vintage, my favorite place to buy anything in Atlanta. The coffee table was a sample, not my favorite, but hey, it was cheap! I also printed the striped curtains in the living room. The home had these horrible, cheap blinds, and I wanted to replace them, but not spend too much, and be able to re-use whatever I went with. I ordered the fabric from my favorite discount wholesale fabric shop, made the print, and put them up with book binding rings, I can always use those, and you can’t tell. Later on, I can use the fabric to make something different.

I love all the windows in my office, they all look at the back of the house, with several 100 year old trees, actually it is kind of a jungle back there, and high up. At my desk I have an “office” phone because my actual day job is doing Spanish language sales for O’s business. I have a cute boss :)

We have a malm bed, and I hate to make it, actually, I hate making any bed. I make sure that we have interesting sheets, all mis-matched, but l like that. I dont fight my bed-making phobia, I work around it! I just throw out the sheets and the bed cover that was a gift from my mom in the morning and let them fall where they may, I kind of like it that way.

We put excess dishes on the chrome metro shelf from Container Store, it works here, but later, it can go anywhere, those baskets hide pots and table clothes and I like the contrast with the metal. The oil above it was made by some guy in 1974, it still smells like oil, and I love how 70’s it looks.

The West elm parson’s desk was a sample, I love that lamp, I got it for $15 at Marshalls! I have lots of things from artist Lena Corwin, and that is one of her plates there, we put mail on it.

I got the wooden chair on craigslist for about $100 from a prop stylist, and that pillow is from Lena Corwin.

today’s first sneak peek comes to us by way of tianyi wang, owner of tiselle letterpress + design, nestled in atwater village, los angeles between the los angeles river and the dolly madison madison cake factory (supplying the sweet waft of freshly baked hostess twinkies). enjoy her sneak peek below (additional images here), and don’t forget to check out her super cute line of cards here. [thanks, tianyi!] -anne

[Above: Greeting visitors at the Los Angeles River is the famous Great Heron Gates designed by sculptor Brett Goldstone. All the buildings on our street are lined with charming rows of painted scenes resembling quaint apartments. Upon closer inspection, the little vignettes reveal a tad more than the typical picturesque setting. ]

The Clearwater Complex used to be a porcelain factory that has been gutted and converted into a gorgeous modern live-work space occupied by our landlords. Tiselle and another artist occupy the adjacent building, a barn-like steel structure. Between the main gate and front door of our studio, the owners created a lovely peaceful garden where we can relax. The garden encompasses a bamboo-lined pathway, beautiful succulents, a water fountain, humming birds and more.

My easel space and some of my old paintings. The painting on the easel is a self-portrait that is still a work in progress. A friend and fellow artist, Mike Phi, painted the one on the floor behind the easel. On the left you can see a sliver of my ideas board (also known as the sliding door) where I spend many hours staring at pending ideas.

View of my office. Since the studio is situated in a steel structure and can get very hot in the summers. I usually keep a fan on my computer and me while I work.

A sneek peek into my sketchbook.

This Perkins Brailler is what I used to create the prototype for our Dot Six braille cards line. . . This is Hopper/Scrappy, our interim studio cat. His name is undecided because he’s still waiting for a loving home.

our special tuesday sneak peek comes to us by way of jacqueline and george schmidt of screech owl design. they’ll be back this fall sharing their brooklyn home, but as summer slowing is making it’s way to a close, we thought it would be fun to show off their summer cottage in Michigan (which George’s great grandparents purchased in 1915- smart people!), as the perfect getaway from the hustle and bustle of city life. it’s pretty clear how this place influences their work (and it’s the screech owls behind this cottage that inspired the name of their company). check out the full set of images here. {thanks george and jacqueline!} -anne

[Above: This is a really old buffet in the dining room that is partly made of these cool old birch logs. The color is sort of a contentious point among various family members, and in the absence of any consensus on what color to repaint it it just stays the same. I like the color. The little chalkboard lets everyone know where everyone else is, and the photographs are of my grandmother and her friends, probably taken in the early 1940’s at the drugstore photo booth in town.

And yes, we are into classic cars and love our 1963 Ford Fairlane. We leave it in Michigan throughout the year and have a ritual opening of the garage where we check to see if it is still running. It usually starts. Sometimes.

Here is our constant companion in the dining room. An ancient teddy bear I found for Jacqueline at a rummage sale. He’s sitting on my baby chair, and was the inspiration for one of Jacqueline’s cards for Screech Owl. On the floor you can see a cool diamond patterned paint job that I did a few years ago. The blue and yellow have almost equal color values, so it’s nice and bright. . .Out on the porch we keep a bowl of things we find on walks. We’re both really into finding bones, and are constantly on the hunt for them. But any interesting bit of driftwood will do. I think all these kinds of things are about a search for history, and connection to a place. This place is full of objects that are embedded with this kind of significance for both of us.

It all really starts with Lake Michigan. A huge freshwater sea. The perfect place to comb the beach for drift wood, sea glass and interesting stones and to restore ourselves from the bustle of New York City. Pictured is the path off the bluff to the beach. It is a really special place for us, as it’s an old resort community, where luckily, my great grandparents bought a cottage around 1915.

This is the Studio where I work in the summer. It’s pretty much my ideal studio. I sometimes have to just slap myself, on account of how lucky I am. It’s really just a little barn down by the side of the lake. It’s got these skylights that I put in, and two big doors which face east, so I usually work in the mornings. Mornings are my best time for being creative.