Inspiration « Crafter by Night

Manifesto

August 8, 2007 at 1:33 pm | Posted in Inspiration, People Doing Crafts, Where to Find Stuff | 1 Comment

Jonathan Adler Pottery No, it’s not *my* personal manifesto. But it makes me think I should have one.

The interesting design manifesto I want to share for inspiration or simply amusement is that of Jonathan Adler, originally a potter but now an all-around a designer who makes some interestingly quirky and sometimes ironic items. Such as the pottery you see here, right. This particular line of pottery, for example, is called Utopia. The tagline that accompanies it is “Finally, a functional family.” Nice.

Without further ado, the Manifesto:

We believe that your home should make you happy.

We believe that when it comes to decorating, the wife is always right. Unless the husband is gay.

We believe in carbohydrates and to hell with the puffy consequences.

We believe minimalism is a bummer.

We believe handcrafted tchotchkes are life-enhancing.

We believe tassels are the earrings of the home.

We believe in our muses: David Hicks, Alexander Girard, Bonnie Cashin. Hans Coper, Gio Ponti, Andy Warhol, Leroy Neiman, Yves Saint Laurent, and Madonna.

We believe in the innate chicness of red with brown.

We believe in being underdressed or overdressed always.

We believe in infantile, happy emblems like butterflies and hearts.

We believe celebrities should pay full price.

We believe in rustic modernism: Big Sur, A-Frame beach houses, raw beams, and geodesic dome homes.

We believe in Palm Beach style: Louis chairs, chinoiserie, Lilly Pulitzer, The Breakers circa ’72.

We believe our designs are award winning even though they’ve never actually won any.

We believe in Aid to Artisans.

We believe dogs should be allowed in stores and restaurants.

We believe in mantiques – suits of armour, worn chesterfield sofas, heraldic tapestries.

We believe you should throw out your Blackberry and go pick some actual blackberries.

We believe colors can’t clash.

We believe in blowing your nest egg on our pots.

We believe our lamps will make you look younger and thinner.

We believe in irreverent luxury.

Color inspiration, web 2.0 style

July 22, 2007 at 10:14 pm | Posted in Fabric-Related, Inspiration | Leave a comment

I really love this website. As a crafter, I’m often thinking about new and interesting color combinations I can try for all my different projects. I work in color most of the time, and I’m admittedly a color-o-holic. I’m a strong believer that color in your surroundings and on your person affects your mood and quality of life.

The COLOURlovers website was a wonderful find for me, the latest application I’ve found to help users with designing and finding unique color choices.. You can sign up and create your own color palettes. You can page through thousands upon thousands of color schemes with every inspiration known to human kind – pictures, websites, magazines. I haven’t seen a website before that showed you what the inspirations were for the palettes. It’s also interesting to see what colors people pick out of the inspiration photos. People don’t see the same colors in a picture. The website creators are also interested in tracking the color choices popularly in use today, which I find interesting.

My favorite set of inspirations so far has to be the list of the 7 New Wonders of the World. Website users voted for their top Wonders, and there are color palettes for each one. The list is actually greater than 7 because there are so many possibilities, but it includes such things as the the Great Wall of China, the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá, pyramids of Giza, Petra in Jordan, the Roman Coliseum, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, the Incan settlement of Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge, and Easter Island. WONDERFUL.

I’ve made a color palette for the picture I use in my header – the blues and pinks but also green. I also created a color palette for another picture that I took near her, as I was inspired to uncover the palette of local central Texas building materials – this one is the colors of granite, limestone and brick.

If you’re interested to know more about color palettes, you can also try Kuler from Adobe, which is an community-oriented online color tool. Something else I’ve tried with good results that’s a pretty inexpensive Macintosh tool is the Color Schemer software.