Thrifting Day! Come one, Come all

SO I want to invite you all to an event that is sweeping the nation - the i<3 thrifting event! Amazing blogger/ thrifter - turned TV star, (yes has made appearances on the Nate Berkus show!) turned blogging sensation - Mr. Goodwill Hunting has created an event to bring together all the design saavy looking for hidden treasures among the countries best (or existing) thrift stores. AND I am graciously hosting a New York City Chapter. (An excuse to go to thrift stores? didn't have to ask me twice!) You can read about the event announcement here.

AND if just thrifting wasn't enough - there are t-shirts for the event! Some of you may or may not know that in my other life I sell promotional products - so branded t-shirts? Right up my alley! - And yes I already got mine! (of course I got the pink one ;) You can order a t-shirt here if you want to sport one with me on our thrifting day - or if you just think they are cool!

SO I hope many of you can join in for a fun little Saturday of thrift store shopping NYC style! Our journey will begin at the strike of noon (I know hard core bargain seekers start much earlier - but come on - it's Saturday!?) at the Goodwill at 220 E. 23rd St. and venture on from there - you will be surprised how many thrift stores there are in NYC. Please comment on this blog post or on the Designing Jewels Facebook page if you are interested and lets start thrifting!

Brooklyn Renegade Craft Fair

This weekend I went to the 7th annual Renegade Craft Fair in Williamsburg at McCarron Park. It was like  Etsy in person! So much creativity flowing around - but it was cool to see everything up close and meet the people behind them. I found a few super cool things and lots of inspiration!

This is only one side of the fair - the booths went around the entire park - it was huge!

SO my first purchase was fairly early on at a booth by FluffyCo. They had these really cool wall mounted bottle openers. (Art with bicycles seemed to be all the rage at this fair - not sure if maybe it being in Williamsburg had something to do with that?) But can you guess which one I bought?!

I bet you all got it wrong. NO we didn't get the cats (the colors were a little off for my kitchen) AND well I decided to give in to my boyfriend on this one (plus the colors were better) and we got the first camera one. You can see how these were made here.

There were lots of art prints throughout the fair - I thought these were kinda cool - they had them for different neighborhoods in Brooklyn (too bad they didn't have Queens) but they were cool none the less.

Sorry for the blurry pic but I think you can get the idea. These were done by Rocket Ink

Another interesting item at the fair were these Moss Teraniums by Twig. Basically they are like little worlds inside a jar. Although none of these came home with me - they are def. something to look at.

My final purchase came at the booth of Fauney Yerby. She had these really cute photographs of childrens playing blocks with an animal figure (that corresponds with the letter) ex. M - the figure was a monkey - and so on. I got five of them to spell out the name of my friend's baby. I am going to frame them all together and she can hang in it the baby's room. I am sure she is reading this now so the surprise may be ruined but it's not framed yet so there will be a little surprise. Here are the letters.

This was only a sampling of the over 300 vendors at the fair. But looks like the fair is traveling all over the country so maybe you can catch one!

Paying attention and playing with Scale

Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius.

Scale in design is one of the most important principals. And it goes hand in hand with proportion. Human scale and proportion was the first step and well most furniture that you buy today has been proportioned for human scale. But in design we also need to be aware of the scale of our space in proportion with the furniture we choose. If you are designing a small apartment - getting a large scale, poofy sofa may end up looking something like this...

via apartment therapy

OK maybe not that extreme but it won't work - it will take up the whole space and in return you will have to get a small coffee table, chair, etc - and in essence the space will feel off balance. Paying attention to scale when you are shopping is important because when you bring it home it may not appear exactly as you expected when you were shopping. Case in point.... the gorgeous Antique bed I was searching high and low for in my Bedroom redesign and finally found. Because I was switching from a platform bed to an actual - boxspring/mattress - I under anticipated the scale effect that adding the boxspring would have on the bed. And it is now much higher than I was used to. See here..

I am getting used to the height of the bed (I am getting better at jumping up to sleep) and in fact I am kinda liking it (I feel like a princess). BUT what I had to do is rethink the other elements of the room. Like the pretty antique milk glass knob lamps I got to go on the night stands (which by the way are waiting to be painted so ignore the test paint you see on the nighstands). As you can see above the lamps are way too small for the space and look very insignificant - when in fact they are pretty fabulous take a closer look -

AND the other problem came on the piece of furniture I have opposite the bed.

We had to add a few books under the TV so we could actually see the monitor!! So yeah - I need to get a piece that is a little higher so the TV can sit comfortably on top. Also a larger TV is most likely in the future for this space.

Luckily the bed itself is a full size and fits nicely in the room it is just the added height that I need to account for and design around accordingly. So I am looking for lamps something more like this

Mitchel Gold+Bob Williams

However I think I need something even a little taller than that one, but it def has more of a presence and will help the proportion of the space. And I am going to get more of a console table like this

Or this

These tables are much higher and they have a lighter presence, the glass helps this, so they should flow nicely in the narrow space. SO as you can see scale can really effect your space and needs to be accounted for!
On the flip side - you can also use scale as a feature in your space and really play with it! See these where going off scale brings in a dramatic feature and makes the spaces unique.

A large scale picture next to a small scale chair, but the bright color of the chair helps it stand out and the play on scale becomes a feature!

Here the table is small but the layout of the frames around the table fills the space and it doesn't become overwhelming because the frames are empty -  a nice play on scale here too.

This foyer is huge, the large scale pattern on the floor is a bold accent and helps draw you into the space. And the furniture fits in the space perfectly. You can see the furniture along the walls matches the height of the French doors.

Here they are mixing lots of scale. The large scale of the table mixed with small scale chairs, but they work because the large scale artwork on the walls fills the space.

OK well good luck playing with scale in your space. Does anyone have any fun with scale they want to share?