Doux Nid

Self-Archaeology: Excavating how your personal style has evolved over time

melissa — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:00:58 +0000

“It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.” — Claude Monet

To create a home that nurtures and inspires, we have to dig beneath the surface. Exploring our personal archaeology, or Self-Archaeology, is challenging, but it is definitely worth the effort. Remembering where we have been helps us find our way in the future. To make the excavation process easier, try making a timeline to show how your personal style has changed over the years from your early twenties to the age that you are today. Above the timeline describe where you have lived. Below the line, describe or draw what you wore at that time and what was in your room, apartment, or home. Use magazine clippings and family photos too. Have fun with the process. It will provide clarity and help you make design decisions in the future.

Here is a video that I show when I lead the Self-Archaeology exercise during design retreats.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-m0jd0ir0g

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Sur La Table

melissa — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:54:24 +0000

Creating tablescapes is a fun way to add beauty to everyday living , to explore new ideas, and to connect with nature. Instead of using artificial items manufactured in bulk, try using natural objects from the earth that are available at your fingertips in the grocery store. Here are a few of my favorite things:

Fruit

For the holidays, purchase a variety of fruits. Look for different shapes and sizes. Pomegranates, grapes, pears, lemons, and oranges have worked really well for me in the past. Coat the different fruits with egg white, roll them in granulated sugar, and then let them dry. Once the sugar has hardened, have fun arranging the fruit pieces on cake stands, trays, or in any favorite bowls. Tuck in sprigs of fresh evergreen to frame the fruit. Perfect for the holidays.

Grapevine

Grapevine wreaths are available at most craft stores in various sizes. Break apart the wreaths until you have long strands of grapevine to use. Feel free to cut the strands. Drape them around centerpieces, wind them around pillar candles in hurricane lamps, or fill a clear decorative bowl with grapevine and water and add a few fresh flowers. Grapevine also makes gorgeous garland on holiday trees.

Vegetables

Gather up artichokes and green beans at the market and use them to create beautiful tablescapes for entertaining. Try filling terracotta pots of different heights with artichokes. Simply beautiful and natural. I also like to use artichokes as candleholders. Hollow out some artichokes, place small candles in them and cluster them in your tablescape to add glow and texture. Green beans work well with candles too. Take a pillar candle and wrap a rubber band around it. Place green beans between the rubber band and the candle until you have a ring of green beans around the candle. Cover the rubber band with a decorative ribbon. Voilà!

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Serious Play

melissa — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:40:30 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjwUn-aA0VY

At the 2008 Art Center Design Conference in Pasadena, California, Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO, which is a firm specializing in design and innovation delivered a seminar entitled Serious Play. During his time on stage, Brown made a strong case for the critical connection between play and creativity. As kids, we are free to play. Taking risks without fear of judgement, exploring how ordinary objects can be used in fantastical ways, and seeing potential possibilities are what kids do everyday. Being a kid is being creative. Brown goes on to say that as adults we need to bring back play in the workplace to foster creativity. The key is to create environments based on trust that allow adults to explore divergent thinking through brainstorming to give full range to our ideas and to build environments that encourage thinking by doing, hands-on building, and role playing.

The ideas in Serious Play are exciting. The seminar got me thinking. Should we bring back play only in the workplace? What about home? Building fun environments based on trust to foster creativity in our personal lives could be very powerful. Just a little food for thought.

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Reverence

melissa — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:03:04 +0000

Living in the West, we are blessed with such material bounty even in hard economic times. Our standard of living is one of the highest in the world. Fabulous things in all shapes and sizes exist to satisfy our every want. Because the possibilities are so endless, our appetites for consuming become bottomless. Wanting more and more, we start losing our sense of reverence for life. The drive to fill our need to consume overtakes our sense of gratitude. Too busy acquiring and labeling, we start to look past the people and things in our lives until they disappear. The next acquisition takes all of our attention and focus. How do we stop taking people and things for granted? How do we come back into balance?

Home is a great way to start noticing the bounty in our lives again. Here are some of my favorite ways to practice reverence:

Start a gratitude journal. By writing down five things that we are grateful for each day, we focus more on abundance and less on lack in our lives. I think that it is a daily practice that could change our lives and fill that need to consume. Have fun picking a journal. I chose one that looks great on an accent table near my favorite chair.
At your next dinner party, think about putting inexpensive, little gifts at each place setting. It is a great way to practice gratitude and show appreciation, but it looks festive too. Friends love to take home party favors. Hunting for little treasures to give without breaking the bank is so much fun. Be creative.
Tie beautiful accent ribbons around favorite letters, postcards, and books that friends and family have given. Use these treasured piles on night stands, end tables, and bookshelves to enjoy every day. It is a decorative way to practice gratitude for the effort of others in our lives.

Balance

melissa — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:18:04 +0000

Every now and then go away,
have a little relaxation,
for when you come back
to your work your judgement will be surer;
since to remain constantly at work
will cause you to lose power of
judgement…

Go some distance away
because the work appears smaller
and more of it can be taken in at a glance,
and a lack of harmony
or proportion
is more readily seen.

Leonardo Da Vinci
(1452-1519)

Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the greatest minds in history, left a prodigious legacy in science, architecture, sculpture, painting, engineering, music, and mathematics. In order to live such a productive life, you would think that Da Vinci worked all the time, but his advice suggests something quite the opposite. To be really creative, he advocates taking relaxing breaks from work to gain perspective on endeavors. According to Da Vinci, you can see when an aspect of work is out of proportion or lacking harmony by seeing it from afar.

Beautiful interiors work on the same principle. Because we live with our rooms everyday, we lose perspective. We don’t see when things are out of balance. Try to step back and evaluate your rooms with fresh eyes. Practice scanning your rooms to judge if the visual weight of objects and color is evenly distributed. Do your rooms seem empty in some places? Does one side of a room seem heavier than the other? Is your accent color for a room used only in one place? By gaining perspective, we can create and maintain balance to live more beautifully.

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Feathering Our Nests

melissa — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:59:59 +0000

Design is a process of discovery. In our twenties and thirties, feathering our nests is done at a frenetic pace driven hard by biological needs and cultural conditioning. We go out into the world trying to build our identities. Fascinating objects, colors, and textures are all around us. It is intoxicating to bring treasures home that we have never possessed before. As time goes by, our nests become full, maybe too full, and buying more stuff is not as fun anymore. As disillusionment sets in, our false identities built through things gradually fall away, and we start feathering our nests based on other ideas such as love, reverence, sharing, and cooperation. Our homes then begin to serve as a place to nurture ourselves, honor our deepest values, and celebrate the people in our lives. We discover ourselves through design.

Serious Play

Magic Wand

melissa — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:26:54 +0000

A roller filled with paint is a magic wand. With wand in hand, you can bring a room to life. It all starts by taking a good, long look at your room. Is there a fabulous fireplace? Are the windows extraordinary? Is there an interesting ceiling treatment that deserves to be highlighted? Once you have identified the exciting features in your room, grab your magic wand, the paint roller. Paint the unique features a couple of shades darker or lighter than the wall color to make them stand out from the crowd. For a dramatic look, paint the features white to really make them pop. Welcome to the magical world of paint!

A Quiet Mind

A Quiet Mind

melissa — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:08:33 +0000

Beauty is all around us whether we see it or not. If we are too consumed with thinking about past events or future endeavors, our ability to recognize beauty is diminished. Most of us too preoccupied to notice would walk past a wall busy with peeling paint, but a quiet mind focused on the present moment would notice the subtle shades of color aged by the elements. Inspiration for a color palette can be found in the most unlikely of places. Cultivate a quiet mind rooted in the present and wait for inspiration to unfold.

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Breathing Life

melissa — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:07:59 +0000

Breathing life into an interior is a journey into ourselves. It is an opportunity to explore what motivates and drives us. Creating an interior is a chance to become conscious of our intentions. Do we create rooms that represent what we want our lives to look like or do we create rooms rooted in the moment that nurture who we are today? Let the questioning begin!

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Gothic

melissa — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:50:11 +0000

Gothic tracery punctuating the great cathedrals of Europe still speaks to us in the 21st century. The lacy stonework represents our ability to think about details in inspiring ways. Good design is all about the details!

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