Decor · Eco-Chick

Browsing all posts tagged with decor

Tin Parade Vintage Party Goods for Your Perfect Holiday Fete

Tin Parade offers custom-designed, all-inclusive packaged parties for dinners, adult and children’s birthdays, baby and bridal showers. It is the inspiration of two women with a similar love of great design, fun events and good, old-fashioned attention to detail. Kristen and Ryan met at the mom’s version of a single’ s club—the local park.

They soon realized they had a lot in common, not least of which being children of about the same age. Besides being devoted moms and avid runners, they both had jobs in creative fields. Kristen was an accomplished advertising art director, where she produced print and television ads for high-profile clients.

Ryan is a celebrated wedding and event designer, and owner of Savoir Flair Weddings in Los Angeles. With plenty of birthday parties and baby showers on the horizon, they found themselves commiserating on the lack of beautiful, stylish, cartoon-character-free party décor on the market. As they created Tin Parade they realized that their mutual love of vintage style and detail came with a fabulous side benefit: a lot less of the paper products that pervade modern-day parties.
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biodegradable, decor, entertaining, green recyclable, parties

Last Minute Eco Halloween Decor for Your Spooky House!!

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by Starre Vartan · 10/28/10

Guest Post by Ellie Smith

If you are planning on having a party or a small get together this Halloween then obviously you’ll be thinking about preparing your house to suit. Instead of buying plastic decorations that will only languish in a landfill after the Halloween celebrations get creative and use everyday extras to spook your place out. You’ll save money and have more fun making your own scary (or just silly) decor.

If you have a traditional house with hardwood flooring and wooden beams this will set a great canvas already, aiding the mysterious and eerie atmosphere. You can build on this using recyclable materials and handmade creations. If your house is newer, turning the lights down, and covering the walls with dark-colored sheets can lend more atmosphere.

(Super) Natural Lanterns

Light your room naturally by carving out a pumpkin (or several) and lighting it on the porch, front steps, or in a window. You can be as creative as you like with these, see this site for great ideas. Light dark coloured, organic beeswax candles and burn intense sticks to add to the ambience and mood.

Wicked Windows

Paint recycled newspaper black and use it to black out your windows, placing it next to each other in a collage formation. This will create a haunted house effect and darken the lighting of the whole of your house. You can also drape glittery string or white silly string over them to create spider webs, adding to the spooky Halloween atmosphere.

Ghoulish, Ghastly, Ghosts

A quick and simple idea is to take unused tampons and turn them into ghostly decor. I’m not kidding! By simply flaring out the edges of the tampon and attaching googly eyes you can achieve a quick result in seconds. Hang them around the house with the already attached and most convenient piece of string.
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decor, eco, green, Halloween, Holidays

Repurpose or Reuse Common Household Items in Your Home Decor

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by Starre Vartan · 08/27/10

The following is a guest post by the contributor of DIY-Guides.com, where you can find other useful decoration tips. Photo by suzette.

If you have an old household item that you just don’t use or maybe even don’t like any longer… why not give it new life and use in your home? It will be more eco-friendly – by not filling up our landfills, and help on the pocketbook at the same time. It’s a win-win situation.

So don’t think of a piece of furniture or household item as “old” or “useless” – repurpose it into something useful that will fit and even enhance your home decor.

While searching for some ideas, I found some great ways to repurpose some old items I have hanging around the house. One of them is on how to make new pillows. I happen to need new pillows for my guest bedroom – without having to trash the old ones and spending more money.

I fell in love with this first idea. In fact, I’m working on the pillows right now. And plan on giving these other ideas a try, too. Maybe you’ll find them useful as well:

Turn a Shirt into a New Pillow

As I said, I was looking for a way to make new pillows, so this idea was up my alley. My husband had several button-down shirts in his closet that don’t fit anymore or have had small stains on the sleeves. Perfect. And my guest bedroom is blue and white so blue, white and white/blue striped dress shirts are just what I’m looking for.

Here’s the easy to follow instructions to make your own button-down pillows at MarthaStewart.com. I also ran across another idea using old blankets. So I’ve decided to use one of my son’s baby blankets to make a special pillow as a keepsake. Here’s an easy how-to at DIY Guides.
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craft, decor, DIY, Home, reuse, upcycling

Brooklyn Designs 2010: Frameicarium’s Ant Farm Art

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by Starre Vartan · 05/28/10

FRAMEicariums are the brainchild of designers Katie Vitale and Hugh Hayden, and they are seriously one of the coolest pieces of affordable art I have ever seen. They are ant farms reimagined as wall art, literally living sculptures made by the hard work of the ants enclosed in them. Using repurposed frames (some with and some without paintings behind them), these framed ant farms are reusable over time – just add more ants!

Check out the video below made at Brooklyn Designs, where designer Katie Vitale explains how the ant farm art works and where she and her co-designer got this crazy-creative idea from.

art, decor, eco friendly, video

Endangered Species Print Project: Adorably Hip Eco Art

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by Stephanie Rogers · 02/07/10

They’re cute. They’re modern. They’re affordable. And, they save animals. What can’t these awesome art prints do? The Endangered Species Print Project is a range of limited edition art prints featuring animals like the Panamanian Golden Frog, the Seychelles Sheath-Tailed Bat and the Madagascar Fish Eagle, and 100% of the sales are donated to conservation organizations.

Artists Jenny Kendler and Molly Schafer (below), who bonded over a mutual love for animals at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, have been collaborating on projects that combine art and the environment since 2005. The super creative pair started the Endangered Species Print Project so they could use their talents to have a positive impact on the natural world.

In an interesting twist that highlights just how dire the plight of each endangered animal featured in the series really is, the number of prints available for each animal corresponds to the number of animals left in the wild. For example, only 45 prints of the Amur Leopard will ever be created, because only 45 still exist outside of captivity.

Animals, decor, eco art, Shopping