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Origami Boxes Cover Coloured LED String LIghts - Casey Phaisalakani

Make Easy Origami Cubes For String Lights

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Easy to make origami boxes add depth, elegance and fun to LED and other string lights.

Origami Boxes Cover Coloured LED String LIghts - Casey Phaisalakani

 

BEAUTIFUL & EASY | We’ve used a combination of origami light cubes and bare LED bulbs (in a ratio of 1 boxed light to three bare bulbs) on every Christmas tree we’ve decorated in the last dozen years. The origami boxes produce beautiful, diffuse squares of light, something you don’t normally see on a Christmas tree. Some years we’ve chosen to box only white string lights, but mostly we box multi-coloured ones. To make our boxes, we worked with vellum squares (available at art supply stores or online) that deepen and intensify whatever colour light they cover. Read more

Anthropologie

The Look For Less: Anthropologie Home

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How to get an Anthropologie free-spirited, lived-in bohemian interior without the Anthropologie price.

Anthropologie

SHOPPING AROUND | What do French flea markets, mom-and-pop vintage furniture shops, Mildred Pierce’s kitchen, gypsy caravans, peasant-made pottery and every fabric bazaar in India have in common? Nothing, really—or everything, if you’re the man who shops the world to create the “look” associated with American megabrand Anthropologie, the fashion and furnishings lifestyle chain.

While Anthropologie is foremost a fashion emporium, its home décor products—which include furniture, lighting, hardware, rugs, curtains, wall coverings, bedding and housewares—have such a cult following the company opened a number of “decorator concept shops” in select U.S. stores to help customers put together “a signature Anthropologie interior”—a look that, despite its “free-spirited, lived-in bohemian overtones,” doesn’t come cheap. Read more

Hunting For Ghost Chairs Repro Or Real

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High or low, original or repro, there is more than one way to track down Philippe Starck’s iconic chair that isn’t there.

 

SHOPPING AROUND | If asked to select one chair to represent the first decade of 21st century design, a lot of interior designers would point to the instantly recognizable Louis Ghost chair. Designed by Philippe Starck and introduced to the world in 2002, this elegant item, made of high-impact thermoplastic, is a cleaned-up contemporary take on another icon, the ornate 18-century French Louis XV chair. Read more

Undecorate Interior - Melanie Acevedo

It’s Time To Give Undecorating A Shot

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Today’s most fashionable interiors reflect the quirks and passions of the people who live in them. Welcome to the world of undecorating.

Undecorate InteriorDÉCOR TREND ALERT | In the world of interior design, undecorating is enjoying a moment. Undecorating, for the uninitiated, is what happens when stylish people forgo convention in favour of fearlessness, expressing their own eclectic, eccentric, creative, adventurous sides in the way they beautify their homes. The bible for the movement, published this past March, is Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design by Christiane Lemieux, a Canadian expat living in Manhattan. She is also the creative force behind DwellStudio, an immensely successful online emporium for modern décor that includes Lemieux’s own covetable textiles and bedding. Read more

Missoni Ballet Flats

Target + 400 Missoni Products = Good Stuff

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Premiering at Target in September, the Italian fashion house known for its knits puts its signature on everything from onesies to two wheelers.

Missoni Ballet FlatsSAVE ON CHIC | Not since Liberty London for Target launched in March 2010 has the big box emporium fallen so head over heals in a huge way for a luxury label—right now Target is madly in love with Missoni. Debuting September 13, Missoni for Target will include a mindboggling array of 400 products bearing the kaleidoscope of colours and unmistakable motifs—chevrons, zigzags, flame stitching and abstract florals—synonymous with the 58-year-old-Italian knitwear giant. Read more

Why Reupholster When A Nip And Tuck Will Do

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Why flat out reupholster your old, classic sofa when a nip and a tuck may be all it takes to give it a lift.

SERVICE ALERT | Although home décor and design are all about modernism right now, I’m still in love with the George Smith-inspired scroll arm sofa and chair I bought on sale at Conran’s in England when my now-teenaged son was small. One thing I appreciate about my pieces is the way their fabric has faded ever so softly over the years in that endearing English country house way. It made me sad to think about completely recovering them when two of the arms frayed, one each on the sofa and chair, but what else can you do when your living room starts to look more shabby than chic? I had pretty much resigned myself to an expensive upholstery redo when Susan Poling walked into my life. Read more

Barbara Barry & Peter Block Architects

Stage Craft: How To Sell Your House Quick

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If you want to cash in on the current real estate boom by selling your house, here’s what you can do to sell it quick.

Barbara Barry & Peter Block ArchitectsTIPS & TRICKS | The real estate market is so white hot across Metro Vancouver right now that I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you were  thinking about selling your place—or knew at least six other people who are contemplating selling their homes, too. But when there’s a plethora of properties to choose from, how do you make your home the one shoppers need to buy? Read more

PS Maskros pendant lamps

These 3 Paper Pendant Lights Are Must Haves

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Nothing makes a unlit corner or a dining room come alive quicker and with more personality than a show-stopping pendant lamp (or three). These inexpensive paper versions are more than up to the task.

PS Maskros pendant lampsCHIC + CHEAP | It is not a stretch to attribute our current fascination with exotic pendant lighting to the return of the chandelier. After years of living with residential lighting programs dominated by invisible pot lights or tech-looking track, the glittery old-as-Methuselah chandelier showed up a decade ago to re-bedazzle the design world—and rekindle our interest in ceiling-hung light fixtures of all sorts, including these delicious ones made of paper, priced from $5 to $99. Read more

Fiam Caadre Mirror

Luxury Lovers Will Heart This Moving Sale

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Livingspace Interiors is having the mother of all moving sales, and the prices for high-end merchandise are surprisingly low.

Fiam Caadre MirrorSALES WE LOVE (11.05.11) | It’s rare to read the words “deep discount” and “luxury brand European furnishings” in the same sentence. That’s because retailers that sell furniture by recognizable high-style manufacturers, like Minotti and Paola Lenti for example, are more interested in showcasing sublime design at a warranted price than they are in unloading merchandise at bargain basement prices. High-end furniture retailers do put their products on sale but seldom at the blowout prices of the Livingspace Interiors everything-must-go moving sale. Read more

Swimming Pool With Infinity Edge

Home Upgrades That Really Don’t Pay Off

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Renovation projects that experts say aren’t worth your time (or money).

Swimming Pool With Infinity EdgeNEVER DO THESE | Not long ago, the website real simple.com ran the headline we’ve republished above. When I first saw it, I jumped on the story, only to find myself disappointed when some of their suggestions didn’t seem to compute: like never changing a bedroom into a home office because people won’t be able to imagine reconverting it into a place to sleep. Or that you shouldn’t install a concrete patio because it can crack and is too harshly reflective; hello, concrete done right should hold up—oh, and it can be repaired btw. Or the idea that you mustn’t waste wads on tennis or basketball courts, as if these were popular additions.

In the spirit of the realsimple idea, we decided to create our own Never Do List. Here are three reno projects local realtors say aren’t worth the time or money.

What Not To Renovate Read more