tons of taxidermy

Hell yeah. I hate the term “man cave” and even so, hell yeah. How about I just give you the ad:

tons of Taxidermy Vintage - $1 (Pipersville, Bucks county)

Reply to: sale-ahnuu-1228656089@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

Date: 2009-06-18, 8:53PM EDT

I am cleaning out my man cave. Lots of assorted skulls, horns, skins, some mounts. 40 years of collecting

from around the world……..rare and unusual…………very reasonable.

call me Louie 267 261 4715

• Location: Pipersville, Bucks county
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Side note: I quit smoking yesterday. If anyone has any info on where one might procure a fake cigarette, not one of those fancy electronic vaporizer ones, just a reasonable facsimile of a cigarette I can put in my mouth and pretend to smoke, for the love of god tell me where I can buy one. Any other smoking-quitting advice would also be appreciated.

I may also be posting more frequently about things that I hate, such as the term “man cave,” for the next few months. Bear with me!

Things you can do: Bowie bust

A few things that led up to the Bowie bust:

1. I cannot not buy crappy busts in thrift stores if they are under $5. I love them.

2. Since I continue to buy them, the whole “spraypaint it a bright color!” thing is getting a little overdone in my apartment.

3. When I moved into my apartment, I turned a large portion of one of the living room walls into a giant chalkboard for calendar/grocery list purposes. Every time I have a party, the chalkboard tends to get covered in crudely drawn penises. Like so:

4. To see if we could avoid the wall o’ dicks at the party we had a couple of weeks ago, my boyfriend came up with this idea, which is harder than you’d think:

5. The crappily drawn (I can say it, I drew it) cover of Aladdin Sane (far left, middle row) has therefore been staring at me for about two weeks now (I’ve found myself humming Ziggy Stardust while making dinner for no reason several times), so the obvious thing to do was glam old Napoleon up.

Materials:

1 crappy thrift-store bust

White spraypaint

Pink/lavender, red, blue and black paint (nail polish would probably work, too)

1 picture of Aladdin Sane (here, I’ll just give you one)

So if you did Warhammer as a kid… this would be the time to pull out the old teensy paintbrush. I do not have one; in fact, I have never even heard of Warhammer. I ended up using my smallest paintbrush and a needle for the detail work.

First you take that sucker and spraypaint it white. Be patient and use two or three thin coats, giving them time to dry in between, otherwise it’ll get goopy and drippy. Then get out whatever you’re using as paints:

First, give the whole face a light-pink/lavender coat, then shade in the cheekbones and eyes etc. with a darker pink. THEN comes the big lightning bolt, and save the black for last.

At first I was going to leave his eyes open, but it was too creepy and I just painted eyelids over them.

I was fortunate enough to have won a set of iridescent paints at Art for the Cash Poor last weekend, and they were perfect as a top coat. I’m sure glitter nail polish would work, too.

And now Napoleon Stardust may take his place amongst the other tchotchkes on the Anal-Retentive Bookshelf of Happiness!

P.S. Extra special bonus points if you can identify all the albums:

the coolest rugs on the planet

Simply put: It would appear that I have found them. Enjoy.

"the global warming rug"

"das rug"-- hey, it's honest!

"the felted river stone rug"

"grand, grand splash rug"

…annnd my personal favorite I’ve decided that I cannot live without:

"over easy egg rug"

Found on craigslist

Uh, someone with a car should get on this posting immediately. I would do something with them, but I’m a renter.

ceramic italian tiles (essington)

Reply to:sale-qqkdc-1201051354@craigslist.org

Date: 2009-06-02, 4:13AM EDT

probaly about 100 more or less tiles measure about 8×8inches ,4 of them make a pattern , they were pulled up off a floor about 20 years ago,they were an expensive tile at the time and my father saved them,there is some grout on the backs but not much pretty clean , would serve good for a small project or out doors type deal ,its a good deal , FREE . id hate to throw them out after all that time being stored . lol . thanks , just email me for address to pick up , i can leave them outside for you . 19029 essington, near philly air port

 

 

• Location: essington

 

• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

 

PostingID: 1201051354

Wrap your giant creepy bunny presents in this

Really liking the idea of these new wrapping papers from the drawing board of Shauna Alterio and Stephen Loidolt, who comprise Philly’s design duo Something’s Hiding in Here. We’ve mentioned them before for their mustaches…

Incidentally, the couple was recently featured on Etsy’s new home tour video series, “There’s No Place Like Here…” giving the internet a look at their enviable renovated Philly loft space. Including their globe collection.

Here’s the video…

I was sure I’d seen that globe collection somewhere before, and indeed, the couple’s digs had been featured on Design Sponge, ReadyMade Magazine, Apartment Therapy Chicago and other big-traffic blogs.

But I’m confused, Apartment Therapy thinks they’re from Pittsburgh? It’s clearly the same space, and that issue didn’t come out too long ago… ah well, write it off to out-of-staters.

Something’s hiding in here etsy

There’s no place like here…

Apartment Therapy Chicago

What looks to be an awesome moving away sale

Bridget Pizzo, a Philly-area photographer and stylist, was recently featured on Apartment Therapy for the extremely awesome rehab she did of her grandparents’ old house:

And when you check out her flickr photostream, because she documented the entire rehab in photos, there’s also an album with hundreds of pictures entitled “Lots and Lots for Sale” in which you can find normal stuff like wireless routers and vacuums that people need to sell when they move away interspersed with several of the furniture pieces seen in the rehab photoset, including the black-and-white chairs above. Oh, man, I covet this mirror and chair:

Her contact information’s on her website and blog.

beezy.peezy’s photostream: “Lots and Lots for Sale”

Apartment Therapy LA: Bridget’s Before and After

Bridget Pizzo: Do It for the Story

via Peacock Feathers

Soft maps

I was so busy assembling, taking pictures of and putting together that enormous post about self-watering planters the last few days that I completely missed this neat thing they linked to at the Clog: blankets and pillows embroidered with a city grid.

Crib blanket hand-sewed with the Fort Greene map

Pillow of Brooklyn Heights

At the moment, all they’ve got on the a la carte menu are the Brooklyn neighborhoods most likely to buy a $600 blanket (hi, Park Slope!), but you can get one made of any neighborhood for an extra 10%. Hey, can I get those next to their respective google maps?

Arright, that’s pretty cool. Can someone get the ice broken on Philly please? Although I guess the icebreaker would probably be Rittenhouse, anyhow.

Haptic Lab: Soft maps

Beware, if you click on “About Haptic Labs” there’s an incredibly loud and annoying flashing image/background music thing that comes up. I’ve accidentally done it twice and it scared the hell out of me both times.

White on white on white

Have I mentioned that I love that the DC Apartment Therapy now has a Philadelphian on staff? Kristen gives me all sorts of stuff to drool about that isn’t located 200 miles to the north or south.

Photography by Trevor Dixon (for Philadelphia Magazine) and Todd Mason.

These are some photos of a lovely Philly loft done by Spring Garden’s own QB3, which is incidentally and not-intuitively pronounced “cube,” btw.

The pictures for this loft tour, which is a little sterile for my taste (it seriously looks like they got a cat to match their decor) but whose bookshelves I envy with a fire like the sun, can be traced from Apartment Therapy to Loft Life magazine to a slideshow at Philadelphia Magazine back to a slideshow on QB3’s website.

But what none of those places mention is which building this is. Help me out. I’m usually a pretty good googler, but I can’t turn up anything useful on this and I’m very curious.

Clues:

• It’s in South Philadelphia
• It used to be a window factory in the 1900s
• One window faces the Delaware while the other faces the Schuylkill
• The views out the windows in the pictures

Any ideas?

Colonial Wallpaper

I’m kind of obsessed with wallpaper, and I think it’s mostly because I know I’m never going to get to do it. It’s not something you really want to do if you have a landlord, and besides, most of the modern, non-hideous patterns can get really pricey. But I remain obsessed with putting patterns! On my walls! Someday!

I always wondered, walking by the Gyro offices at 13th and Sansom, where one could find such interesting wallpaper, if one was not pretty much resigned to renting until one was at least 40 (although I guess I can see why they would put this one in the entryway and not where Al Gore would constantly be staring at you while you’re trying to work. It’s more of an accent wall thing).

Down at 707 E Passyunk (which is right where Passyunk hits 5th, if you’re like me and can’t keep the numbers on diagonal streets straight), there’s a small place by the name of Colonial Wallpaper where you can get (or if you’re me, gaze mournfully at) beautiful, original wallpaper to your heart’s content.

The owner, Paul Sperling, has been in business since 1972, and offers custom paper design if you can’t find something absolutely perfect in the shop already.

They’ve got no website that I can find, which is unfortunate. But damn, do they have some pretty stuff inside. I have some more pictures for you after the jump (including arbitrary pictures of their golden bird spigot on the wall outside, which I envy greatly).

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Apartment Therapy Features Philly Windows

Apartment Therapy has a cool feature today on window bars in Philly. These stylish alternatives almost make me wish I had a first floor apartment so I could have cute window dressings too.