Monday's Pick: Tuch for MacBook Air

I know a few of y'all remember this product roundup series I did for a while. So good news: after a bit of a hiatus, we're back and ready to scour stores and online boutiques for gorgeous/awesome/OMGINeedThis finds and report them back to you each weekday on "Daily Dash." Enjoy--and let me know if you have any leads on items you'd like to see featured.

And most of all: Happy New Year, friends! Looking forward to a fab 2012.

— My Macbook has been hinting around HARD for a piece of this action. —

MAKE A DASH FOR IT:

Visit tuch.bigcartel.com

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How PowerPoint made my home pretty

If I could have the pleasure of drafting a memo to the men and women who designed and built my apartment, I would say this: "Nice job on the flooring. Appreciate the spacious-ish bathroom. Enjoying the nook next to the closet. But for the love of all things holy, why oh why would you ever place the phone for the front desk almost smack-dab in the middle of a nicely sized wall that is just asking--ney, PLEADING--to be adorned with with beautiful pieces of art?"

This issue has plagued me for several years. And to be honest, I've just let it sit there and mock me, naked and white--unused, underutilized, and boring the heck out of me. So recently, when 20x200.com (one of my favorite art sites) had a sale, I decided to stick it to my big white wall (er, literally AND figuratively).

I purchased three pieces that I thought would go together nicely as a color series: "Squeeze" by Gary Petersen, "Curvilinear Time" by Jessica Snow, and "Shill" by David Corbett (as you may recall, I gushed over David Corbett in an earlier post). [Sidenote: At one point, I thought it would be funny to do a series on telephones. But then, I realized that I just didn't want to own several art prints of random phones. So that was out, and color was in. And color always wins.]

True my somewhat OCD-ness, I then got to work trying to decide how to hang those suckers around the annoying phone. And how did I do that? Digital photography + PowerPoint.



The above are some shots of my computer screen. I took photos of my white wall as well as individual shots of the framed pieces of art. I then inserted all the photos into PowerPoint slides, making the wall photo large and in the background, and re-sizing the framed art to how they'd fit on that wall in real life. And then I just played around.

I came up with several different ways to hang the pictures together as a series, and I am so glad I did. I originally thought I'd just hang them side by side in a long, horizontal line, with the phone acting as part of the series. But playing around with the photos on my computer showed me a better solution. Here's the final result:

I picked this option in the end because it's interesting, a little unexpected, a bit off-center, and, if you could see my whole studio, it helps reinforce where the kitchen ends and the living room begins (always nice in a small space). I also like how it looks like it's trying to sneak a peek around the corner at the bookshelves.

What do you think? And how would you have dealt with the giant white wall?