What is great design and why it matters

We often tend to look at trends in home decorating and fashion, and often confuse pretty with good design.

To me there is only one type of great design: it’s functional that serves a purpose, it lasts for a long time thus it’s high quality, and it is beautiful to look at.

If any of these elements is missing, it’s not great design to me.

When it comes to price tag of great design, yes, I admit, it sometimes is expensive to purchase, but it actually is often inexpensive in use. With high quality comes long term usability and with timeless design that goes beyond trends and fashion, you can have something that you will use for years to come. Great design matters for ecological reasons – we buy (and consume) less when we buy long lasting design. Great design matters for aesthetic reasons – we feel better when we are surrounded by beauty and what we like to look at.

Let me give you an easy example. The thought of buying over a $200 highchair for a baby is ridiculous to me, but when it’s great design, hey, I’ll take three please! One for each one of my kids. High chair that’s great design will grow with my child, is beautiful to look at and will go from dining table to office table and my kid will take her chair to college when she moves out and her kid will sit on it too. What a bargain!

Surround yourself with beautiful design

I was invited to participate to a fall refresh campaign with Dyson, and do some design spotting this week. I don’t personally own a Dyson Hot + Cool fan heater, but the Dyson Hot + Cool fan heater is a great example of great design. It’s high quality, it heats the room in winter and cools the air in summer for year-round use. Easy to clean and it looks awesome – so it was a no brainer for me to jump on the opportunity to work with Dyson, and do some “design spotting” and share some of my favorite design objects.

I have been out and about and taking some photos of design objects that I like and which would be perfect for refreshing my fall. I’ll feature some of the design items I’ve been spotting next week, but today I’d like to share some of my favorite design objects from my home. The photos are just my Instagram photos because I didn’t want to do any extra styling nor extra photoshopping – unedited from my home, because great design stands out even when I haven’t vacuumed, styled and propped and photoshopped.

When everyday items and things we use are not just functional but beautiful – you don’t need a whole lot of decorative items in your home. Let the great design of the furniture and the everyday items like lamps and light fixtures you have shine.

I admit, as a nomad who moves every 6 months to 3 years (yup, 3 years has been my record of living longest in the same place the past 18 years), I haven’t always decorated my home the way I would like to. We used to at least buy our houses and I would renovate and remodel them and make them how I wanted. Now we just rent. When we moved to a yet another rental house the past spring, I wanted to make this place look great with minimal effort.

We sold everything when we moved from New York, and we are leaving Sweden in a couple of years, and I don’t even know which country we will move to. But it didn’t stop me from bringing great design home, I just did it with minimal effort.

And you know what – sometimes that’s all we need: minimal effort to make our homes look beautiful. Often less IS more, and it is better to buy less of things you really need and want than surrounding yourself with clutter.

Our walls are white, our floor is wooden. It’s all very simple and no frills. Yet when we have surrounded our home with beautiful design objects that are beautiful look at, it has been quite easy to make a beautiful home that I like to spend time in, and I can feel good about. In fact, when picking only a few selected designer items and letting them shine our home can easily to give the illusion of being a well decorated.

We own less and less each move, and many of our furniture even now is rented (oh how I’ll miss you rented piece of a Barcelona chair), and I am very selective what I buy nowadays, and that’s why I much rather buy less but things I really like.

What can I say, even my design dishes just make me happy when I eat my breakfast on the mornings. What does great design mean to you? Are you refreshing your home with some great design this fall?

Fall refresh with Dyson

This post is brought to you by Dyson Hot + Cool fan heater. Dyson Hot + Cool™ fan heaters use Air Multiplier™ technology to provide the fastest even room heating in winter and smooth cool air in summer for year-round use. There are no fast-spinning blades or visible heating elements, so it’s safe and easy to clean. Learn more at www.dyson.com/hot+cool.

Disclosure: Compensation was provided by Dyson via Glam Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Dyson.

Happy Earth Day!

Hoping today and every day you take action to protect Earth. Small things like unplugging electronics when not in use, or recycling make a big difference when we all do it. Preserving Mother Earth for the next generations is everyone’s responsibility.

One of the things I do is to think every single purchase I make and think of the product cycle and I ask myself these questions:
1. How long will I be able to use this product?
2. What will happen to this product when I no longer need it? Can I resell it, donate it, recycle it or do I have to trash it?
3. How is this product packed/wrapped? How can I dispose or recycle the packing material?

And it is much easier to make purchasing decisions when I only try to buy products that I can use for long run, or they can be reused after I’m done. I also use many packing materials for various crafts or think of alternative uses for them. I buy jelly in pretty glass jars that can be used to storage small craft supplies – or I wash food cans and make containers for pencils or plant flowers in painted cans.

What are some of your small ways you save the Earth every day?

Find more great Earth Day posts at Look who Found the Marbles and don’t forget to read the interview with Jessica Cohen, the owner of Found the Marbles.

It’s no new news that going green also saves you green. But if you really want to see some numbers and how much money you are saving by making eco-friendlier choices each day, click the picture to see the entire infographic. For example… It costs $75 a year to power one regular light bulb, but if you switch to CFL light bulbs you can save about 300 bucks a year. Get the entire picture how http://www.skimbacolifestyle.com/going-green-at-home/" target="_blank" alt="save money going green">going green is also saving you green.

Source: Reusable Bags

I prefer cloth napkins to paper ones any day. Not just that they look better, and make your party look more festive, but they are also eco-friendlier and come less expensive in the long run. Cloth napkins can get expensive though, especially if you are buying for large parties and want a different look every time.

My solution: I often sew them myself.

When you are picking fabric for napkins you want it to be heavier and thicker so the napkins will be easy to fold and they’ll look better and also will stay looking good wash after wash. A few times I’ve been buying too thin fabric, and it just doesn’t work as well. For my backyard makeover I found this beautiful sheet set, that almost looks like hand printed, and I wanted to create napkins that would continue the “hand made” look with fringe edges.

I bought a full size sheet set for $29 and saved the flat sheet and pillow case and only used the fitted sheet for the napkins. Usually flat sheets are the easiest to work with, but I needed them for other things in the backyard makeover, and didn’t want the fitted sheet to go wasted so I made these napkins out of them.

Usually I make sure I cut every piece of fabric the exact same size and spend a lot of time making sure I sew straight – this time I used a piece of heavy cardboard and drew the sewing lines to each napkin and used starch to stick two pieces of fabric together making it super easy project.

DIY EASY FRINGE NAPKIN TUTORIAL

Supplies:
Sheet
Thread
Yarn
Starch

Tools:
Needle, scissors, sewing machine, 13″ square piece of cardboard

1. Cut the sheet in approximately 17 inch wide squares. It’s ok if they are cut by free hand or not perfectly 17 inch wide. Cut two squares per one napkin. For examples, if you want to make 8 napkins, cut 16 squares.

2. Match two squares together and make sure the direction of the fabric is the same in both, and the back sides of the fabric together so you will see the right side and the print on both sides.

3. Iron the two squares together using heavy starch. You want the fabric squares to be nice and crispy and sticking to each others. That way you don’t have to hand sew nor use pins to keep them together when you are sewing them together.

4. Cut a 13″ square piece of cardboard.

5. Place the cardboard in the middle of each square fabric pair and draw the lines with a pencil or chalk. These will be your lines to sew on.

6. Sew the two fabric squares together on the line you drew on.

7. After you have done all of your napkins, throw them in a washer or spray them wet and throw them in a dryer. The edges will start fringing and you will get the nice look for your napkins.

8. Cut the extra fringes off and even the sides of the napkin. It’s OK if they are sort of wide, they will get shorter on each wash and you will need to trim them after each wash. (I didn’t make mine wide enough)

9. Pick a contrasting color yard (I used needlepoint yarn, you want yarn that won’t bleed into fabric when you wash it) and stitch the napkins along the sewn line to give the napkins the hand made last touch.

10. You can still trim them the last time and iron them well to get them nice and crispy!

Skimbaco Home will start featuring easy entertaining ideas and party decorating tips every Friday.

I personally love last minute entertaining and making something out of nothing. While I like planning big parties and inviting a lot of people as well, the best parties tend to be the ones that are last minute, and with “use what we have” mentality, when the focus is on having a good time instead of trying to make everything perfect. This is often also the greener way of doing things and I decided to start my weekly entertaining tip feature with green party tips to celebrate the Earth Day.

ECO-FRIENDLY INVITATIONS:

· Make invitations out of recycled paper or other recycled material.
· Send an email invite via Paperless Post.

GREEN PARTY FOOD TIPS:

· Use organic and locally sustained food.
· Serve finger foods to skip using plates and utensils, and use cloth napkins that can be washed and used again.
· Make dishes that don’t require the oven or electricity to prepare.
· Be creative with food, licorice ends can be cut off to make edible straws for the kids.

GREEN PARTY DECORATING:

· Use recycled soup cans as flower vases.
· Use what you have: use coffee table books and stack them as a centerpiece, add a small plant on the top.
· Potted plants and flowers are eco-friendlier than cut flowers. You can also buy small potted flowers and fill your party space and tables with them and then give them as party favors.

ECO-FRIENDLY PARTY FAVOR IDEAS:

· Have a recycled book exchange for the kids and adults, instead of favors.
· Decorate canvas shopping totes or brown bags with eco-friendly paint, old buttons, etc. as a party activity and a party favor bag.

Creatables’ OLD NEWS eco-friendly magazine rack gives your old newspapers a stylish home. Old News can be used as a magazine holder – or a stylish recycling bin for used magazines, which will be easy to carry out for the recycling. This stylish magazine holder is made in Gothenburg from excess felt from production of indoor tennis courts and is available in four different colors; Roland Garros-red, Wimbledon-green, US Open-blue and Södertalje-gray. OLD NEWS is designed by the Creatables-team together with designer Jonas Forsman.

Stay tuned for more home decorating posts and never miss a post – subscribe to Skimbaco Home feed.

Coffee filter pom poms / flowers are inexpensive way to decorate your home, and they are great for party decorating or seasonal decorating. I have to admit though, that this DIY project was much more work than I anticipated, but they turned out beautiful. We made several different colors, and the pictures are from two different pom poms – just so you know that it didn’t magically change color in the middle of the craft. I like these the best hanging down, but we have two story high vaulted ceiling, and I just found it the easiest to create this center piece for our table with them and add them on the fireplace mantel. We added aromatherapy fragrance oils to these paper flowers so they also give out nice fragrance to our home!

Supplies needed:
Large Coffee Filters (40 per pom pom)
Watercolors
Cotton Yarn
Additional: Aromatherapy Oils if you want the pom poms to have fragrance

Tools:
Scissors
Large Needle

1. DYE THE COFFEE FILTERS

You can easily skip this part if you want to make white pom poms or if you buy natural color coffee filters and want to make natural colored pom poms. You can use fabric dye and color the coffee filters even in the wash machine, or in large buckets, but I was doing this craft with my children, so we used watercolors. If you are making more than one pom pom, I recommend additional methods than individually coloring them. We painted and then we dipped 10-15 at the time in the colored water to speed up the process.

2. ADD FRAGRANCE

Add fragrance when the coffee filters are still wet. I used The Body Shop home fragrance oils and added about 20 drops in about 40 coffee filters stacked. You can also mix the oil with water to prevent the oil making dots in the coffee filters.

3. DRY THE COFFEE FILTERS

Dry the coffee filters. You can lay the coffee filters flat and let them dry, but we used a dryer to dry them. Sears sent us a brand new Whirlpool Duet dryer and I wanted to test it for all of the purposed we used a dryer, and I have to say it worked beautifully for drying coffee filters. If you have an old dryer, I would start very carefully, with 2-3 minutes at first on low setting. Be extra careful if you used the fragrance oils. But the Whirlpool dryer can be easily programmed to dry on super low heat and 13 minutes. After I was done drying the coffee filters, I wiped the dryer drum with damp towel and then dried it.

4. FOLD & CUT

Fold the coffee filter first in half, then again, and again, until you have folded it four times. This way you will be able to get a flower cut of 1/8 width petals. Cut the petals but cutting a half circle on the top of the coffee filter. Don’t unfold the coffee filter. I used 35-40 per pom pom flower.

5. SEW TOGETHER

Unfold the coffee filters one fold so they are heart shaped. Take a some cotton yarn and make a big knot in the end. Use a large needle to sew the petals together, it’s much easier. I broke a few smaller needles, so trust me on this one. I had my son sewing these together too, and I marked the spot for the petals for him. Since I was doing these with kids, I sewed them up in a bit higher spot than if I had been going them alone. You can go little closer to the corner than what we did. Keep sewing the coffee filter heart shaped petals together until you have 35-40 of them. Then tie the yard together, but don’t tie it too tight, make sure you can fit 4 fingers or so inside the loop. Even more if you added 40 or more petals.

6. START BUFFING – OPEN THE PETALS

You are almost there! Now it’s time to buff it up, open the petals and finish your coffee filter pom pom flower. You will have to open every single petal, and since they are folded 3 times, you need to open each one of them three times to get the entire coffee filter open. Once you have opened them all, you can buff it up and move around the petals a little bit to make sure you have them evenly everywhere.

Let me know if you will do this craft and if you blog about it, please leave a link below!

SchubLaden is a company in Berlin, Germany creating new furniture with vintage drawers. They have some ready for sale furniture, and in addition they offer customization. I love the idea of upcycling old drawers to new furniture. The vintage drawers look modern in schubLaden’s modern dressers designed by Franziska Wodicka, and each unique piece is signed and numbered.

The whole idea behind schubLaden is preserving the history and beauty of the unique drawers, while building a sturdy new structure around them making a new piece of furniture that will last for a long time. The furniture structures are mostly made out of varnished or oiled MDF boards or out of oiled solid wood.

I love this idea, and one day I will try to recruit my husband in helping me to create one of these myself…

If you live in the greater LA area in California, check out a new way to get a Christmas tree this Holiday season. The Living Christmas Company rents to its customers a live potted tree, which is kept alive all year long, so you can enjoy the experience of a live tree every year – and no trees are harmed during Christmas season.

The Living Christmas Company is a unique way to celebrate the holidays while helping the environment. This ecological Christmas tree is also economical – the prices are starting as low as $25 (plus delivery).

In addition to helping the environment, renting a tree from The Living Christmas Company will improve the safety of your home. Live tree is more fire resistant than plastic or cut Christmas trees. The cutest part – families are able to rent the exact tree from the previous year, adding another “branch” to your family tree for the holidays. What a great way to teach values for your children too!

I am a design blogger, but I am also a voracious reader of design blogs. Without question, my favorite posts are those featuring furniture makeovers. I diligently stalk Design Sponge every Thursday for their before and after posts, and blogs like Better After and Young House Love feed my habit daily.

I was always in awe, though, of how these people would manage to find such beautiful pieces of furniture on the side of the road or at thrift stores or yard sales. Before I knew how to look, all I ever found was cheap pieces made of particleboard. It didn’t dawn on me for a long while that this act of updating old furniture into brand new pieces was, in fact, a really green way to decorate. After you’ve scoured your home and found new ways to use what you already have, this is the next best way to think sustainably at home.

When we buy quality furniture and housewares that already exist, there are several green benefits:

• We eliminate the need for new, raw materials.
• We help reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing.
• Depending on the age of the pieces you buy, they have likely done all their offgassing and will have no impact on your indoor air quality.
• Giving old pieces a new life slowly helps to change the misconception that newer is better.

I found the desk shown above for sale on Craigslist for just $100. It is a quality mid-century, solid wood desk, and I couldn’t have bought a better piece brand new for that price. My husband and i refinished it to make it better match our decor, and we’ve never regretted the purchase. Visit Green Your Decor to see what the desk looks like now.

Here are a few tips for finding great pieces, no matter where you want to shop.

Yard Sales

I admit I’m no expert on finding great pieces at yard sales, but I’ve found my fair share of treasures. These are the strategies I use:

Plan which sales you’ll go to before you leave the house. I typically use yard sale listings from Craigslist. I’ll go through all the sales in my immediate area (within about 10 miles). If the listing includes housewares, furniture or other items I’ll be interested in, I add it to my list. You can do the same with classifieds from the newspaper or elsewhere. I use either Google Maps or Mapquest to create a house-by-house plan, generally starting with the sales that are closest to me and working my way out.

Plan to go early, but not too early. Or do the exact opposite. If the yard sale you’re most interested in starts at 8 a.m., plan to be there between 8 and 8:15 a.m., but not before. You want to give the hosts time to set up, and you don’t want to make them upset that you didn’t pay attention to their posted times. If you get there early enough, you’ll have first pick of the best items. Conversely, if you plan to go toward the end of the sale, there will be fewer items to choose from, but the sellers will be more likely to give you a good deal. I once got two photographs in gallery-quality frames for $3 total because the sellers were packing up.

Don’t be afraid to negotiate. I’ve never been big on haggling, but I will ask for a better deal if I see an opportunity or really want an item. But know when to let go. I recently bought the chair shown above for $7 at a yard sale. I wasn’t going to insult the seller by asking for an even lower price.

Take cash. This may seem obvious, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to backtrack to an ATM because I never have cash in my wallet. If you can, take smaller bills so you won’t be in a bind if the seller doesn’t have change. And if you plan to buy furniture, you need to budget according. The goal is to find deals, but don’t be offended if the seller won’t accept $20 for an antique chair.

Take your own bags. I have two sets of reusable bags: the smaller ones that I use for grocery shopping and larger ones that I use when shopping for clothing, shoes, etc. I take these larger ones to yard sales as well. They really come in handy when I pick up fabric and other smaller items.

Thrift & Consignment Stores

A lot of the tips for yard sales also apply here: taking your own bags and taking cash (since some stores don’t accept credit cards). Some stores are willing to haggle on price, but others won’t take anything less than what’s on the tag. There are a few tips that are specific to stores:

Location is important. What I’ve found is that the quality of the pieces in a thrift store tend to be directly related to the neighborhood its in. Stores near neighborhoods with larger homes and a higher tax bracket are more likely to offer higher quality furniture, in my experience.

Know your store. Some thrift stores offer sales and specials. For example, some Goodwill stores offer 50% off every item in the store on the first Saturday of every month. Other thrift stores will mark down items in a specific category, like furniture or clothing, on specific days of the week. Also, most of the consignment stores I’ve been to have specific schedules for markdowns. If an item is unsold after 30 days, it is marked down by 10-15%. If it remains for another 30 days, it is marked down again, and so on.

Find Freebies

I’ve seen too many posts to count where a person has found some gorgeous piece of furniture on the side of the road or near a dumpster. Here are my tips for finding freebies of your own.

Go online. In the “free” section of Craigslist can offer a bounty if you’re willing to wade through the offers. I’d also suggest signing up for the Freecycle group in your area, if one exists. Freecycle is a forum where people post items they no longer want for free pickup. I scored the chair shown above on Freecycle, and my husband and I plan to reupholster it.

Don’t be afraid to stop the car. Sure, some people look down on grabbing stuff off the curb. I say if someone has thrown out a perfectly good piece of furniture, why shouldn’t I take it home? I’m saving it from the landfill and giving it a new life. Again here, nicer neighborhood tend to offer better goods on trash day.

Get stuff from friends and family members. If your sister is redecorating, maybe she’ll be willing to give you the mirror you’ve been eyeing. And most of us have parents or grandparents who have garages and attics full of furniture, the likes of which you can’t buy today.

General Tips

Use the “For Sale” listings on Craigslist. Because I’m lazy, this is absolutely the first place I look when I’m in need of a piece of furniture. Most listings come with photos, and there’s much more variety than you’ll find at any one yard sale or store.

When shopping for furniture, buy only solid wood. Particleboard, even if it appears to be in good condition, won’t hold up as long and you may find yourself replacing it in a few short months.

Try to see a piece for what it COULD be, not for what it is. If you like the bones of a chair, but not the wood color, remember that you could always stain or paint it. If you don’t like the upholstery, imagine it with a fabric you do like.

Written by Jennae Petersen. Jennae is Skimbaco’s Green Living & Decor Expert. She is a mother, a graphic artist, a connoisseur of beautiful interiors and a purveyor of all things design. She also believes it is her duty to strive toward sustainable living. This means being more conscious about every aspect of life. She is the founder and author of Green Your Decor and Green & Gorgeous blogs. She also runs Hibiscus Creative, a successful, full-service graphic design firm specializing in branding and Thesis theme customizations. She designed the Skimbaco logos and blogs.