Made in L.A. and available in other gorgeous colors including teal and red, from store-after-my-heart A+R.  $158ish

How do you spin aluminum, anyway?

That there is the Blu Dot Dodu bed, a $1,599 felt bed with French seams that I really frickin’ love. A few months ago I decided to email Blu Dot to say, Pretty please keep me in mind should one of these beds happen to fall off a truck and need to be discretely sold on the cheap. Their customer service specialist Joanna very nicely wrote back with a list of local retailers who may order, and (fingers crossed) drop, and need to get rid of such a bed. Cool.

Then I got their new catalog, and this scruffalufagus (in my bed) has a fascinating tattoo across his chest. Matthew and I pieced together the lettering from his various open robe shots and came up with “HOW MUCH A… CAN YOU TAKE?” What’s the A? Art or ass or analogy were my guesses, with money on art. Check it out:

How to know? Well, why not email my new friend Joanna? Here’s what she said:

Hello Carissa.

Thanks for your email and interest in Blu Dot!

You and your boyfriend are correct; the gentleman’s tattoo does say “How Much Art Can You Take?” Good detective work!

Feel free to contact is with any further questions or to place that Dodu Bed order!

Kind Regards,
Joanna
Ok, so the Blu Dot people may think I’m stalking them (they’re from Minnesota, and probably glad for it), but they get an A++ for customer service.

Case closed. Sign up for their catalog.

There’s a cool video of them assembling a cardboard chair–from salvaged pieces–here. It seems to go: Cut piece, apply glue, stack another piece, apply glue, stack, glue, stack, glue, stack, press down with something heavy. Repeat. I love cardboard for design work, it may just be my favorite material besides air.

Via I Love Typography

Oh lordy, it’s a marriage of two things I love: Cats and Twitter (I am a Twitter expert, after all). Twitcat, I shall call it. Happy Friday, ya’ll.

It’s too bad you can’t use it to feed your cat. That’s what I need, a contraption that dumps food in the bowl when I tell it to because I’m out dancing late and forgot to feed the furballs. The obvious flaw here is that you’d have to know the status of your cat to begin with: In, or out. Unless it tells you which way the door swings, which would be handy. If I had an open cat door, though, I would have an apartment full of neighbor cats and racoons in no time.

On Gizmodo. Thanks Bjamin, for sending it my way.

I’ve grown a little tired of the Tord Boontje laser cuts lately, in the same way I grew tired of the snarky writing in McSweeney’s. Both were original, even glorious, and my first encounters made me gasp…and then it was everywhere, imitated endlessly, touted by people whose tastes I don’t admire. But this Future Flora Lamp has me on board, just like how a visit to 826 Valencia won me back. You’re right, I love you, I need you, be mine.

$99 for non members at MOMA store, or $79.20 plus 20% off through Sunday if you become a member (regular member discount is 10%). Membership is $60 if you live more than 150 miles from NYC, $50 if you’re a student, $75 if you’re in the city (and can I sleep on your floor?).

Tangent: Does anyone else really dislike The Hold Steady? I like their quirky word choices, but little else. The Current just played their song Your Little Hoodrat Friend, and I could barely stand it beyond liking the word hoodrat. But then they followed up with Luscious Jackson’s ‘Naked Eye’ (you know it: “in my naked eye I saw, the falling rain, coming down on meeeee”, which is much worse. I mean, I know it’s midnight there, but they played David Byrne with the Dirty Projectors before that, so someone has some sense. *Update, they just said with windchill it’s 13* below and the high tomorrow will be around 15*. I’m sorry, Current dj, do what you need to do.

So call me a little behind the times, but I’ve been getting into vinyl decals on Etsy. They’re cheap, trendy, removable, and did I say cheap? Here are my top finds so far, which I had to sift through a lot of nonsense–think inspirations quotes in scroll lettering– to find.  And I’ll have to special commission that vinyl decal leopard skin, it seems.

Wallpaper $55

If the leopard skin rug doesn’t work out, I’ll put the above ones on my gray painted wood floor.

Street haunting $36

Owl $16.

Hi, Bye $9

Jackalope $6

Jackalope vintage $22

Task lamp $24

Paper airplanes $8

Squirrely $5

Fun and cheap!

Many of those are by Tasty Suite.

P.S. I should say that I’m a total cat lady, and would never covet a real leopard skin rug.

Add these cheeky references to trompe l’oeil to the list of personal projects I have been sitting on and thinking about and will likely never do. But it’s oh so cute! And I should add that my entryway is a crazy steep staircase where I put a pair of shoes on each stair, like gargoles. Beware the Campers guarding my hall!

I also like the idea of painted electronics and larger items that I don’t own, or whimsical critters that aren’t (thankfully) in my house. A painted gramophone? A mouse hole? A little bat on the high ceiling? Give me a can of black paint and a small brush and I’m off! Who has a steady hand and wants to help?

This is from some dressing room in Paris, I’ve lost the reference.

P.S. I have a real trompe l’oeil project (Franch for fools the eye, an optical trick) that is so tacky you’ll freak. Coming soon.

Three posts back I was debating what shelves to put on the wall that divides my kitchen from my kitchen nook, aka my home office (where I swear I’ll pen some poetry in 2009). As you may recall (what’s that? Oh, you don’t care? I know, but it’s my blog), MOMA has these nifty floating shelves at $15 a pop plus shipping.

Well well, Design Within Reach has answered with this set of five Flying Vee shelves which they call “classics,” marked down from $130 to $79 with free shipping thrown in:

So my yuppie (or bourgeois, take your pick) self is a little torn. Here’s the pros and cons and a teensy confession of the inadequacy of my education:

Pros of Vees:

• Create ledges to display things other than books
• Wouldn’t need to disrupt all the books to get to one
• That flap flap flapping away look
• Would display some of the cookbook covers

Pros of Floaters:

• Uh, floating
• No nasty visible screw areas like those Vees have
• Cheaper if I only buy two or three

So it’s five Vees for $79 or four Floaters for $70.95 including shipping.

Of course, I’m looking at both of these and thinking that there must be an easy way to DIY these. They’re like, bent pieces of metal. They look like pirated office supplies. Although, this is another chance to bring in the tag I introduced in my crocheted baubles post, ideas about things I would like to make myself and never will.

Like any good yuppie, I like to think my liberal arts background gave me the wherewithal to tackle projects like this, but the truth is that even if I got around to purchasing the supplies it would look like hell and probably fall apart.