Justin & Christine Gignac from Wants for Sale have partnered with Threadless and UNICEF to create Good Shirts. Good Shirts are Threadless t-shirts where 100% of your donation goes to UNICEF. The cost of each shirt directly corresponds to the cost of the donated item. For example, the Insecticide Treated Mosquito Nets shirt cost $18.37, and the Water Pump shirt cost $500.00. Learn more here.
One large billboard or movie poster becomes 100 lbs of plastic waste materials in a landfill after as little as a month on display. ReMakes trys to avoid this by upcylcing old billboards into one of a kind placemats. Each set of 4 placemats is made from the same billboard, to give them a matching color scheme. Scan the QR code in the bottom of each placemat to get a daily conservation fact.
Beautiful, unique placements, that do something good for the environment, and give you a topic of conversation for dinner - what more could you ask for.
Available in black or color for $15.99 through Abe's Market.
Log & Squirrel is a super cute planter with training wheels. It is self watering (put the water into the bottom of the pot and it absorbs through an interior wall to the soil as needed). Plus, the squirrel disappears out of the hole to indicate that you need to add more water.
Visual designer Kyle Tezak successfully summed up a series of blockbuster movies into four simple (and wonderfully executed) icons each. Not an easy task. Prints of The Four Icon Challenge are available for $16.
My favorite is The Big Lebowski. The thumb icon just makes me smile.
ETSY shop Somethingblue, out of Athens, Greece, creates these great "It all began..." posters to celebrate how couples met. The poster also includes the couple's name and the date they were married (or the date they met, or any important date you want).
This personalized artwork is lovely celebration of a relationship, and a great conversation starter.
If you are one of the many people embracing the back to basics trend or just don't require the anything above a feature phone, consider Lekki. Lekki is a company that is giving a new life to old school cell phones. They are selling retro cell phones (yeah, I actually said retro cell phones - feel old now) with fresh paint jobs, turning them into modern fashion statements. Their line currently includes two favorites from the 90's the Motorola StarTAC and the Nokia 3210.
Ha! It is payback time for Portland artist Aruppel. She is getting her revenge on birds that have attacked her and her friends, through an absolutely brilliant series called "Mean Birds". She has painted a collection of beautiful acrylic bird portraits, complete with a well deserved bad name they earned through their actions. So enjoyable!
Prints available at @my ruppel's Etsy Shop.
Super cute A, B, C Onesies designed by Steve Denekas. The graphics are upside down so the kid wearing them can actually learn something. Of course, all the other kids at daycare will be totally screwed up - but who cares. Available at W+K Studios ($15 each or $40 for all 3).
HA! This new Threadless t-shirt by Julian Glandertotally cracked me up.
"NO REWARD. I don't even want my bike back. I just made these fliers to tell you that I hate you, bike thief."
Lifetokens is a social messaging concept that blurs the lines between online and offline, analogue and digital. Token senders select a sentiment and token that expresses their message. The recipient is sent a physical token with an online link to a personal message. An interesting mix of the tangible and sentimental. The tokens themselves are beautifully designed. Each token cost $5.
What would you do for $5? I'm serious. You must have at least $5 of skills that other people would want. If so, take them to Fiverr. It is a website filled with stuff people would do for a fiver. The creativity behind some of the offerings is priceless (or at least well worth your $5).
For $5 you could get someone to call your kids and read them a custom bedtime story featuring their friends and pets, OR get someone to write your name on their hand for a week, OR have someone give you an emergency phone call during a bad date. If you have $5 to spend and don't see what you need, just fill out a request and see what happens.
I absolutely adore this site. It gives me faith in the world.
I'm enamored by the work of Portland Maine artist, Josh Brill. He creates modern illustrations of birds and animals in an ongoing series he calls the Flora Fauna Collection which captures,
"The design identities of plants and animals from around the world. Examining the visual character differences and similarities of species. A field guide of discovery, beginning with birds."
Josh's website Lumadessa features a number of prints for sale ($10-$30) along with free smartphone wallpaper (my phone is currently sporting the colourful Western Tanager (above middle)).
Designer Albert Exergian, created this absolutely stunning series of TV posters as a personal project. He uses a minimal, modernist style to illustrate iconic TV shows, old and new. Exergian does an impressive job of capturing the essence of each show in a couple of simple shapes. The posters are humorous, smart, visual perfection. Search for your favorite show, I don't think you will be disappointed. The series is available through Blanka as A1 prints.
I just ordered a TweetNotebook. It's a personalized notebook featuring one of your own tweets at the bottom of every page. All you have to do is put in your twitter name and the system (supposedly) picks out your best tweets to line the pages with.
Part of what I like about Twitter is that things you say are momentary, small things go from foreground to background very quickly, very reflective of real life. The other thing I like about Twitter is that it captures moments in time, on an ongoing basis. To me, that is what the TweetNotebook is celebrating. It is kind of like a photo album, reminding you of passing thoughts and captured instants.
Ha! Turn your little one into a mini vampire with this Lil' Vampire Baby Pacifier. (Found through Outblush).
Omlet, the designers behind the Eglu, are now taking on the world of bees. The Beehaus is a product designed to raise bees in your back yard or rooftop. Because as they say, bees in your garden, honey on your toast! The Beehaus holds 24 frames, enough for two colonies. It is designed to keep both you and your bees comfortable. It provides solid insulation to keep the bees warm, and a raised design for a suitable working height for you.
Looks like a great learning experience. Let's just hope your neighbours also love honey more then they hate bees.
My favorite ragging lunatic/artist/author is at it again. Miranda July has recently come out with a set of pillow cases, to help you sleep better (or worse... whatever). They read "Here you will dream of endless kissing" and "Here you will dream of people you admire exposing your fraudulence". Ha.
To dry or not to dry. Artistic printed t-shirts have been hot items in the past few years, but can the same concept translate to tea towels? Enter To Dry For, a designer tea towel range which will surely enhance the creative vibe of your kitchen.
J'adore Baggu. I've featured them a couple times here on One Floor Up, I give Baggu bags as gifts to all my friends, and I use them at the grocery store all the time.
I just ordered the new Baggu Produce Bags. There is a small and large net bag to put your produce in, instead of the disposable bags that you usually use to group your apples together for weighting. I'm looking forward to putting them into action.
We've all been conditioned to compare ourselves to celebrities anyway, so why not just use that comparison as a unit of measure? Celebrity Scales are bathroom scales where the numbers have been replaced by names of celebrities. The scale was designed by Karl Toomey and is available for purchase at The Celebrity Scale Store. It also comes in different genres of celebrities (music, horror) or different units of measure (animals, cakes, new years resolutions).
