Pinky: “Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”
The Brain: “The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world.”

Plans for Global Domination: $9.50

Men. Women. Children. Children that are so young they can’t read yet and their parents have to open their gifts. (They’ll laugh at their own high expectations for their kid, and appreciate the sentiment.)

This notebook is for so many different kinds of people that it blows my mind a little.

To see more of our 2011 Etsy Gifts of the Day, click here!

eco

What is this acronym!?, you might be asking. Well, it’s a stolen acronym, that’s what it is.

ECIG stands for Eye Candy, Indie Genius. It’s a long-standing column that originated on our sister site, Broke & Beautiful. Every Monday, we’ll be featuring a new, fabulous, independent designer along with their wares & craftsmanship. And, of course, our drooling and ogling.

This week, we’re presenting to you a fabulous artist who creates beautiful, interesting items for your home. You know that we have a penchant for mobiles, so if you love them as much as we do, you’re going to love Kate’s Cranes.

A beautiful crane from the Peace Crane Mobile in Maps ($45).

Not only are these cranes beautifully constructed, but the paper used is so gorgeous, and varies with each crane, each mobile. The artist behind it, Kate (obviously) says that her children love these mobiles hanging in their room – and who wouldn’t? I’m 26, and I would put one up right now.

The Pink, Gold, & Brown Butterfly Mobile ($45).

It’s possible that my favorite aspect of these gorgeous pieces is the natural, found driftwood that serves as each mobile’s base. Each piece of driftwood is collected from the shores of the Great Lakes. (And props to her for actually making something with her driftwood instead of… just trying to sell it, right?)

Aside from the Maps mobile, this Peace Crane Mobile in Sheet Music ($45) is my favorite.

I don’t think I’ll ever be too old for mobiles. I can see at least three places from my seat before my laptop that I would happily put any of these. It’s always nice to have something to look at while daydreaming, you know?

You can view the rest of the products available at Kate’s Cranes. 

eco

Being one who often describes themselves as being “from the internet,” you might think that the idea of handwritten… well, anything is lost on me.

Not so!

I am an avid collector of stationery, notecards, and have a healthy obsession with office supplies and paper products. I have searched around and assembled my favorite earth-friendly notecards for every occasion, ready for you to reclaim the art of letter writing without eco-guilt.

Lulu Powers Stationery

Lulu is my new guru. She is a fantastic caterer, chef, at-home entertainer, and designer. I discovered her when I started following her curated shop on OpenSky (she has amazing taste!). She recently collaborated with Cocodot to create a beautiful, vibrant line on note cards that are perfect for invitations, thank you notes, menus, sweet messages, or place cards.

(Click the image to enlarge – these are so beautiful, it’s incredible!)

Cocodot’s services allow you to personalize and label your notecards, which keep the personal touch strong without sacrificing design. The cards are printed with non-toxic ink on 30% post-consumer content. You’re definitely sacrificing a little bit of eco-awareness for design here, but the aesthetic value of these cards is tremendous. See all of Lulu’s designs here.

Poo Poo Paper

Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t, but Poo Poo Paper is on the rise. This particular poo poo comes from elephants, and uses the grass and other fibrous materials found in their dung to create a pulp that then produces this wonderfully eco-friendly paper. (Saying “poo poo” makes me feel like a suburban mother! Weird feeling!)

Can you believe something so beautiful could be made out of poop? Seriously! Their range of stationery, notebooks, and journals are adorable. Plus, a portion of the proceeds go right back to elephant welfare & conservation funds, allowing them to get regular care and food, and you know what elephants + food equals, don’t you..? So the cycle continues! (Oh, and Poo Poo Paper is scent free, if you, um, catch my drift…)

Night Owl Paper Goods

A piece of light, beautifully grained Birch wood; a deep, warm colored slice of Cherry wood… these might not strike many as the perfect space for a sweet note, but for Night Owl Paper Goods, it’s the best possible spot! They buy wood from sustainable-yield harvesting companies, and create beautiful note cards, gift tags, and even business cards that will be sure to leave a lasting impression on their recipient.

(Please, oh please click to enlarge!)

Letterpresses and hand-drawn designs are the specialties of the two brains behind this “Owlabama” operation. One single log can produce thousands of these adorable cards – even more wooden cards than sheets of paper! Plus, these are fully biodegradable and recyclable – they can be included with your recyclable paper products. They’ll even custom print your design (um, even photographs) onto these cute wooden slabs. Snag a journal, scrapbook, blank business card, or the most unique wedding invitations your friends & family will ever see!

Cartolina

While the materials aren’t exactly as innovative as wood and poop, Cartolina‘s strengths lay in their design aesthetic. Woodblocks and classic imagery create the most amazing, intricate scenes on Cartolina’s cards. Using recycled wood that’s been certified by the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and vegetable-based inks, they have been named the Most Environmentally Progressive Printer in Canada for the last 5 years.

What I love about these cards is the antiquated feel of each card. The typography is beautiful, and the combination of modern flourishes against anachronistic images, covered in vivid hues makes my heart beat faster! Cartolina also offers notebooks and pocket mirrors boasting the same designs as their cards. Dreamy!

Any of these beautiful companies will offer you a product that your friends and family won’t soon forget! I love it when you can stand out from the crowd while doing amazing things for the environment by shopping consciously and creatively.

What do you think of these interesting note cards? Would you use them?

eco

I have such a busy weekend planned (full of dog baths and laundry, mostly) but even so, I’m ready for it. You see, we’re going to have one of those rare periods in Seattle where the weather is nice for three days in a row.

I’m writing this at 7am on a Friday, and the sun is already peeking into my windows, urging me to go outside and play. The sun has scheduled itself to be present on Saturday, and this Sunday it’s supposed to hit almost eighty degrees: the perfect no-humidity Seattle temperature for absolutely every “I’ve only two days to play” activity you can think of.

This kind of weather makes me feel…plentiful. I want to buy iced lattes for everyone, and kiss random strangers, and be silly like all the little animals that flit around on hot summer evenings.

So just before this weekend gets in full swing, I wanted to share some of my favorite Etsy pieces that, to me, invoke the gods of summer. Talismans of Plenty, if you will.

Bird Lovers Delight: $65.99

Honey Knuckles: $88

Finders Keepers: $32.50

Cloud Ring: $72

Vintage Bee items by petit paperie: various

What is inspiring your summer?

When I was little, I begged my mother for a loft bed.

Image via MC Woodworks, LLC

My tastes were not this refined and our ceilings not this high, but if someone had showed my ten-year-old self this photo, that ten-year-old would immediately place it in front of her mother triumphantly, exclaiming that this is exactly what she needed.

(It’s too bad that ten-year-old had just gotten a new bed frame and would use that same frame for years, until she moved bought a new bed that could accommodate more than one small woman and a cat. Sex: the killer of all twin bed frames.)

My obsession with loft beds – and lofts, and other layered sorts of things – had little to do with being up high, or having the privacy that comes with a bed out of an adult’s line of sight. I just liked the idea of using space to my advantage. I wanted to utilize as much of my bedroom as possible, creating rooms within rooms and neat little crevices. Who cares about floors and walls and ceilings when you have all this space in between?

Recently, I found out one of my friends is getting his very own loft bed. I’m jealous. I’m also excited, because his new obsession – decorating his bedroom and the space beneath his bed – has given me my own lofty ideas about utilizing and celebrating space, the most exciting of which is the idea of mobiles.

BookMobile: Plants

This is one of my favorites. Another friend (I have such cool friends) bought a book mobile from this Etsy seller, and I’ve been watching them ever since, waiting for the perfect one to come up for me. The one in the above photo just sold, but there are two others made from a vintage high school typing class manual and an 1800s biography entitled The Immortal Wife.

Sophie’s White Cloud: $20

This mobile would be so pretty hanging in a sunlit space. It features twenty-six clouds, and all proceeds of the sale go toward fighting leukemia in Australia. This mobile was made for Sophie, a nine-year-old sick with leukemia.

Origami Butterflies: $6

These butterflies can easily be strung onto a mobile, but I kind of love them pinned to the wall as this picture illustrates. The artist also makes paper bunting and airplane mobiles, and all three come in many different colors and styles.

Paper Houses: $100

My favorite, hands-down. (The doors even open and close.)

Fade to Black: $50

This mobile is almost classic in its circular, put-together-ness, but I’m more inclined to put it over the dining room table than a child’s crib. This artist makes some really beautiful color mobiles, including a Queen of Hearts mobile and a Science Fiction-inspired mobile.

Feeding Frenzy: $75

I love the intensity of this one, its chaos. The Yellow Trio is similarly stunning, and I highly suggest you click through and take a peek.

There are so many more I could post that I must list a few more below. If you want to find even more mobiles (including a lot of mobiles made of origami cranes and stars, as well as color mobiles, which I didn’t feature here but are prevalent on Etsy), use this handy-dandy search feature!

• Lost Treasures, featuring recycled National Geographic pages: $26
• Free-standing origami mobile: $23.50
• Carina Spheres in blue: $75
• Scalloped mobile featuring Honor´de Balzac’s Béatrix: $15

What does your bedroom look like? Have you added anything beautiful to it recently?

The Book of Ephemera.

Its hand-antiqued pages are filled with “snippets of vintage paper ephemera, vintage ink stamps; a few pieces of this and that” – and bound with archival linen thread.

Available at Bibliographica, $90.

I love it when charity-related events entertain me.

Crowdrise, a crowdsourcing fundraising community launched by, among others, Ed Norton (who is my dream man and you can’t have him), is the most fun way ever to donate to, and run donations for, charity projects.  Case in point:

“Crowdrise is way more fun than anything else aside from being all nervous about trying to kiss a girl for the first time and her not saying something like ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’”

Yeah, that’s on their website.  And their slogan?

If you don’t give back no one will like you.

So, there’s that…

Anyway, I was emailed about a specific campaign going on until January 15: a chance to win the 2011 Pirelli calendar.  For those, like me, who had no idea what that was, here’s the deal: the Pirelli Calendar is a trade calendar (read: only given as a corporate gift to a restricted number of customers and VIPs) that has been published since 1964 and features, typically, glamour photographs and artistic nudes.  It’s swank, and you can’t get it unless you’re “on the list.”

Departures – a magazine published for select American Express customers – got one, and they decided to use it to raise money for Nothing But Nets, a UN Foundation charity that provides insecticide-treated bed nets to African men, women and children at risk for malaria.  Nothing But Nets also provides awareness, education and prevention training for malaria.

Essentially, this money does some serious good.

This year the calendar was photographed by Karl Lagerfeld.  His inspiration was Greek and Roman mythology, and the idea of goddesses as the “first liberated women.”  I’ve interspersed images* – the cropped-so-they’re-safe-for-work ones – to taunt you a bit.  Stunning, right?

I also set up a donation page** to make things easy: head in, create an account (or don’t – it’s not necessary, but it is worth it for the hilarity) and donate a minimum of $25 before January 15 for the chance to win.  Read more about Nothing But Nets here.

*All images were nabbed from the donation page.  Yet another reason to go over there, right?
**I get a big fat nothing, whether or not you donate.  No personal gain here – just love for those in need!

Love is such a fragile thing.

Paper Garland of Hearts by bookity

*made using recycled paper
*packaged in recycled cardstock
*inspiration from recycled words so you have something to say during those awkward silences
*or give each heart away (there are eight) to all those boys and girls you have spring crushes on
*keep one for you – everyone needs a little extra love sometimes

When I am faced with something upsetting, I don’t depress or crawl into a hole.  I ramp up; I stress out; I panic.

My brain is very, very good to me, however, because every time the winds change and I start to get anxious, I gravitate to calming influences.  I’m drawn to colors that flatter my mood – blues and greys and greens – while taking it down a notch, using cooler, sometimes paler hues and minimalistic styling.

As the new year brings with it some new snags and scares, I’m remaining calm…and a little melancholy.

 
Gathered Jersey Tunic by Emily Ryan: $88

Cotpic Bound Raw Silk Notebook by paperiaare: $57

Frost Colors Expansion Bangles by Bullfinch & Barbury: $25

 
Italy Olive Oil Soap by Savor: $5.25