An anonymous artist in Doncaster, Melbourne, has been decorating fixed-position speed cameras to make them resemble Wall-E, and adding the caption S-CAM. The rejigged cameras operate in a legal grey area, but are already getting a cult following.
This is the brainchild of German designer Thomas Schnur (who is, incidentally, a bit of a babe). But it would be pretty easy to make using el-cheapo drain plungers.
Think of the plain wooden handles that cheap plungers have. Get your local hardware store to cut you a piece of untreated wood for the tabletop (it needs to be quite thick or it’ll warp), and use wood stain to colour your tabletop and your plunger handles the same shade (or spray paint them any colour you like). Insert screws in the ends of the plungers and screw into matching holes in the underside of the table. Finish with a coat of sealant on the tabletop.
Admit it! If you, like us, slouched through your high school and university years wearing flannies and Blunnies, Chucks and Docs, T-shirts under dresses and skirts over pants, dyeing your hair bright colours and buying your jewellery from hardware and pet supply stores, you will find this blog post fierce and true.
If you’re in your early twenties and are toying with our generation’s aesthetics and pop culture as you learn to identify your own, this is a very practical how-to guide.
Would you believe this tip comes courtesy of Wikipedia? Apparently, a bobby pin makes a convenient roach clip. If you can get a couple of extra drags from a jazz cigarette while partygoers around you fear singeing their fingers, then that is a good reason to keep a bobby pin in your pocket… or in your hair.
Why should your ears have all the fun? Glam up your fridge by turning old clip-on earrings into magnets. Buy the earrings cheaply from op-shops, use wire cutters to snip off the clips (or simply pry them off), then superglue magnets to them.
These would also make a cool – and cheap – housewarming gift for a fancy lady who likes vintage stuff.
A friend of ours is growing her hair out. She tweets: “I’ve taken to putting a bit of coconut oil on my ends every day + a weekly all over soaking, and I swear I’m getting far, far fewer split ends, breaks and fraying than I’m used to. Hair growing like the clappers. Get into it.”
You can buy coconut oil at health food shops and Indian/Sri Lankan grocery stores (where it’s sometimes sold in a solidified form).
It’s also available at bourgie wholefoods organic places, where they claim it possesses all sorts of miraculous properties, from speeding up sluggish thyroid glands to treating thrush and being used as toothpaste and deodorant. We are skeptical. Also, they tend to sell it in giant tubs and it’s hella expensive. Still, if you want to support fair trade organic growers, that’s where you should probably buy your coc…onut oil.
Do you have long hair with a fringe (bangs, for those playing in the States)? Do you despair in hot, humid weather when your fringe starts to look all stringy and greasy, but it’s too time-consuming to wash, dry and style your hair?
If you have pale hair and are super lazy or pressed for time, revive your fringe by sprinkling it with talcum powder and brushing through. It won’t look shiny, but at least it won’t look stringy. (This only works for blondes, we’re afraid – otherwise, use a dry shampoo designed for dark hair.)
Better yet, shower with most of your hair tucked into a shower cap, but your fringe sticking out. You can shampoo and blow-dry it quickly and easily to give the impression of fresh, clean hair. If you’re worried about the rest of your hair looking dirty, just put it up in a ponytail or chignon.
If you’re into ‘atomic’ design – that Sputnik-inspired midcentury look that eBay sellers insist on calling “Eames era” – this is a really cute idea from Old Brand New. Just get your hands on this hanging photo holder. Instead of attaching photos (which is pretty ugly and dreadful, to be honest), attach Christmas baubles. They’ll be dirt cheap at this time of year, since all the shops are trying to get rid of them. Then hang the mobile from your ceiling. It’s an atomic explosion!
This is actually a couple of years old now, but it’s still good! It only takes a few minutes and it finds a new use for old clothes you can’t be bothered throwing away or donating. Here’s how!
1. Get an old T-shirt you don’t wear any more – maybe one with a stain that won’t come out, or that has lost its shape. The larger the T-shirt, the longer the finished scarf.
2. Lay it flat on a table.
3. Cut off the hem and discard.
4. Cut the shirt into 2-3cm wide horizontal strips all the way up to the armpits.
5. Grab a few strips at a time, and pull them until they stretch and curl at the edges. Do this for all the strips.
6. Put ‘em round your neck! You can experiment with draping, twisting, knotting and layering them until you like the look.
Mini and maxi skirts and dresses have got so popular it’s tough to find a knee-length skirt in the shops. But it’s a shame so many maxi skirts are cheap, tizzy numbers spoilt with busy prints, crochet panels, frills and such.
By contrast, aren’t these great? Bold. Simple. Almost sculptural. Keep your eyes peeled for skirts like these in op-shops, and for once in your vintage life, don’t chop them to mid-thigh using kitchen scissors. Keep ‘em long. Wear them with a plain top and say no to froufrou.
Images via Le Fashion.com
If you were asked what kind of shoes these are, could you say? Here’s a quick guide to the language of lace-ups.
Oxfords, also known as Balmorals, are shoes whose eyelets are set underneath the vamp (the flap on which the lacing is set). The laces look like they’re just emerging from holes in the leather.
Derbys, also known as Blüchers or Gibsons, are shoes with the eyelets visible on top of the vamp. Confusingly, in the United States they are often known as ‘oxfords’.
Monks are shoes with no laces, which fasten to one side with a buckle and strap.
Brogues are shoes with multiple-piece construction and decorative perforations and serration along the edges of each piece of leather.
Wingtips, also known as ‘full brogues’, have a curved toecap with a backwards-facing point and ‘wings’ that end near the ball of the foot. The design resembles a bird in flight.
Spectator shoes, known as co-respondent shoes in the UK, are wingtips in two contrasting colours. Usually the heel and the toecap are a dark colour, with a pale colour in the body of the shoe.
Semi-brogues, also known as ‘half brogues’, have a cap toe and decorative perforations on the toecap itself as well as along its edges.
Quarter-brogues have a cap toe with decorative perforations along its edge, but no other decorations on the toe.
Longwings, known in the US as ‘English brogues’ and in the UK as ‘American brogues’, are derby-style wingtips whose wings extend the entire length of the shoe to meet up at the heel.
Saddle shoes have a plain toe and a saddle-shaped panel at mid-foot in a contrasting colour. The laces usually match the shoe’s main colour.
Pic via The Sartorialist.com
Do you have the kind of landlord or real estate agent who takes frickin’ forevah to fulfil the most basic maintenance requests? One of our friends’ agents took days to fix a broken tap that was gushing water.
A merely dripping tap is not nearly as bad, but it can drive you mental. While you wait for your landlord to okay a new washer, and for the real estate-approved plumber to find space in his busy schedule, tie some dental floss to the end of the tap. The water will now run quietly down the string and into the drain, rather than annoying you every second.
