Dana Tanamachi's Studio Reveal!

A few months ago, I had the fun opportunity to help fellow Texan and friend Dana Tanamachi with her studio. Dana is an unbelievable designer who basically pioneered the chalk + typography movement. Her designs are all over the place from Time and O Magazine to West Elm and Burton. This girl has got it going on!  

All images taken from Dana's website. 

Dana lives a few Brooklyn neighborhoods away from us and had been sharing a large studio space in her apartment with a friend. Dana's business had grown so much that it made sense for her to take over the whole studio.  The studio mate moved out and I got to step in! I'm not sure you can tell by my terrible iphone picture below, but Dana has vintage posters, photos, keepsakes, design books and artwork sprinkled all over her studio. It was important to her to have beautiful and interesting inspiration throughout the space. 

Here's an idea of Dana's studio before, but PLEASE keep in mind, this picture was taken in the throws of transition in her studio! 

Our goals for the space were to:

- find a desk big enough for two people to work from

- make a fun bar area!

- present all of her inspiration and artwork throughout the space in a streamlined way

- create an organized, warm and creative environment 

Here's what we came up with!

We brought in 4 long aluminum shelves from CB2 to fit all of her fab inspiration and keepsakes. She had already purchased those 2 Eames chairs, so hello, we totally used those. CB2 had the best little filing cabinets in this minty robins egg blue that fit perfectly under our (find of the year) vintage desk! I don't know if you can really tell from the picture, but the desk was probably 12 feet long. Thank goodness Dana lives in a building with massive stairwells, or that desk would have met it's fate as street merch. The rug is from Sundance, a place Dana passed along to me. It's mostly clothing, but they have an AMAZING rug category online where we found this baby! I'll post more information on the rug in a separate post. 

Secret: Every year Ralph Lauren holds a mega sale where they liquidate tons of their furniture and propping from stores and show rooms. It's open to RL employees first then to the public. Brooklyn Boy was working at RL at the time so I picked up lots of fun things for clients . . . and ourselves!

I could look at all of these little things for hours. 

Terrariums and small compact plants are a great way to bring a little life into New York apartments. 

Had to show off these paperweights Dana did with West Elm.

On the other side of the room, we found a rustic console table that used to live under a bulky hutch top. We removed the top piece, updated the hardware with these Anthropologie pulls and set up her printing station below.

Dana had such awesome stuff, so we tried to find intentional little spots for each thing. Like these mini books above with their fantastic patterned covers! 

Oh....this chair. Man do I love this vintage oversized pinstripe chair! This was another Ralph Lauren Annual sale find! Floor lamp is Anthropologie.

The bar area had a spot from the start, snug in between these two large windows. We went mid century for this piece which I loved. The piece is actually a functioning bar with a shelf tha swelves out when you open it up! Crazy-weird-cool. The whole room is such a mix of woods and styles - Makes everything feel collected and interesting rather then a humdrum full set. 

Vase from Anthropologie. Glasses from Fishes Eddy and the tray from CB2 (I think!). Every Texan in the city needs a cactus.

Here's a more present day photo of the bar area, taken by friend and wonderfully talented photographer, Eric Ryan Anderson.  How amazing is that Burton snowboard Dana did! Fits perfectly above the bar!

Lets compare a few before and afters to give you some perspective of how the room changed. We totally rearranged the layout by moving the desk to the main back wall, making a very striking first look into the room!

Before we started, Dana moved a lot of office materials and files into a closet in another room. Sometimes a little editing can make the biggest change!

 Hope you enjoyed the reveal! It was one of my favorite projects to date. 

thank you note magic

Thank you notes are kind of magical to me. Mainly for two reasons:

1. Thank you notes force you to be thankful. Now you may think force is a harsh word, but I constantly forget to be thankful and need to be forced sometimes! When I forget to be thankful, before I know it, I'm down a rabbit trail of unmet expectations and selfishness. Practicing thankfullness gives me an opportunity to pause and reasses my (often totally wack) perspective. 

2. I LOVE printed pieces. Stationary, place cards, thank you notes - there will always be something special about tangible pieces printed beautifully! Crafting our wedding invitations with my friend/designer LeighAnn was one of my favorite parts of my entire wedding planning experience. Now-a-days, you can find fabulous options all over the place. Sugar Paper LA houses some of my favorite thank you note options! I'm delighted to have randomly stumbled upon the Sugar Paper LA gals on instagram a few months ago. I now covet everything (including the notes above) those girls produce thankyouverymuch! 

All this to say, after last weeks birthday celebration (I turned 28!), I plan to camp out tonight and get to writing those thank you notes!

New Series // Patterns to Pieces

I love a good series. Friday Night Lights, House of Cards, Homeland (can you believe the last episode!!! that bomb!! omg), Parenthood . . . Brooklyn Boy and I LOVE getting hooked on a new show and watching as many episodes possible in a night, and then talking about it. And then watching more. And then feeling like you're living in the show and maybe confuse your actual reality a little bit with your 'tv reality"? Wait, is that Carrie Matthison crossing the street with Saul? Have you gotten to that point in your series watching obsession? You haven't? Oh. Just us?

While we wait for Homeland to kick back into gear, we're launching a DIY series to hold us over! At the heart of most of my projects, you'll find a can (spray or reg.) of paint. Through years of street merching and redo's, paint is the simplest and most affordable way to totally change the look of something. So why not focus on replicating a handful of beloved patterns like leopard, greek key and ikat (the Missoni kind!) onto home pieces! 

First Up: Street merch vase meets leopard! A little before to get you thinking!

lets do this crepe paper

Getting my diy supplies together for a little HGTV something coming up. Can't wait to get my hands on this stuff! If my diy crepe project turns out HALF as cool as anything Oh Happy Day does, I'll be in great shape. I'll keep you posted!

easiest way to hang a gallery wall

I'm helping one of my close friends put final touches on her newlywed apartment in Tribeca. She and her husband did a great job getting all of the large basics in place. Now I get to come in for the really fun part and am helping with her empty walls and styling. This past weekend we rented a Zip Car and went running all over suburban New Jersey to pick up supplies. Driving a zip car from errand to errand is immensely easier then schlepping your stuff between taxis in Manhattan. You southerners and suburbanites (me!) living in the city know what I mean! Oh. But don't be late returning your zip car or people get very fiesty and you get charged an arm and a leg. Not like I know from last Saturday experience or anything.

Anyways, we stopped at a giant West Elm and picked out six matching 18 x 18 mirrored frames for a gallery wall going in her dining room. Y'all, do you know how easy West Elm, and Pottery Barn, make it to hang frames? They provide a template that makes a potentially frustrating and cuss worthy situation into no big deal! To be honest, I've thrown them away in the past, thinking I was too good for the hot pink paper template. But never again after the ease of last night's installation!

Here are the steps:

1. Tape templates into place (I'm an eyeballer when it comes to these things) // 2. Check spacing and orientation with a tape measure and level // 3. Hammer nails into small bullseyes provided on the template // 4. Hang frames! 

Geez louise that was easy. Thanks West Elm for being ahead of us on that one! You so smart. 

*This post is not sponsored by West Elm or Pottery Barn. I just love tools that help you work smarter, not harder as Brooklyn Boy always says :)