Inspiration: Made in the United States

Did you know that Mod Green Pod fabric and wallpaper is manufactured in the United States? Sadly, that's a rarity, especially in the textile industry. The United States was the global leader in textile manufacturing not too long ago, but most fabrics are now made in other countries, leaving the U.S. textile industry a shell of what it once was.

Please support Mod Green Pod's efforts to grow--and GREEN--the U.S. textile industry by buying our products and telling your friends about us!

This post was inspired by a story I heard on NPR this morning about a manufacturer who has been making flashlights in the United States for decades, even through very difficult times and when faced with a market offering cheaper competing products made overseas. Here's a link to the story; I hope you find it as moving and motivating as I did.

Color on my mind

The Anticipate Chair, named for my favorite new Mod Green Pod custom pattern, is currently gracing my living room so I can photograph it for various purposes and, well, just stare at it. Earlier today, It dawned on me that I was probably spending a little TOO much time absorbing its lovely chair-ness because the new palette I was working on was THE SAME: charcoal, white and gold. It's a fantastic, versatile combo, but I couldn't seem to break away from it.

So, as I have been doing more and more, I turned to my daily iPhone photos. On January 1st of this year, I began uploading my favorite photo from each day, sort of as a visual diary. I am a bit of an obsessive iPhone photographer and snap, on average, about 20 photos a day. Sometimes it's hard to pick just one favorite, but I force myself to stick to just one that best symbolizes an important moment in each day. Today marks the halfway point of the year so I took a little break during my long design day to review the previous six months and the 182 photos I've uploaded to honor and represent each of my days. I spent a little time rearranging the color grid I've created on flickr and miraculously, I broke free of my color rut, even if I just added some blues to the same grey, white, gold combo:

Inspiration: well-timed spring designing

Now that the new wallpaper is in stock, I'm back to fabric mode and prepping the new prints for the screen engravers. Here's the inspiration for one of the new prints:

Outtake from new home page photo shoot

New cutting lint at MGP headquarters!

Clearly, we're a little gaga over our new solids, perhaps to a strange extreme. But hey, it's Friday, our website was just updated in the wee hours to feature our new solids, and it's all making us a little silly in the head. So behold our beautiful new lint, produced by cutting a gazillion swatches (thank you, Susan and Crystal!) so you may see and feel the beauty we've been blabbing about all week.

Inspiration: Grandmother's quilt

Mother Nature always wins.

Inspiration: Green and Grey

I just returned from Savannah, GA, where, between decadent meals, I wandered through the thick summer air to take in every detail of my favorite southern gothic setting. As usual, I had my trusty camera in hand so I could record colors and patterns for future design reference. These are two of my favorites, partly because I'm eternally fascinated by plants dominating human-made structures (Mother Nature ALWAYS wins) and because I now have a new favorite color combo: charcoal grey and green. It has given me a new appreciation for the pairing of Atticus basil with Aspire peppercorn:

back in ATX!

I just returned from the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey, CA and I am fully refueled by reminders of why I started Mod Green Pod in the first place.  After 4 1/2 fantastic days of inspirational speakers, hallway chats and networking wine tastings (THAT is the way to do biz, my friends) I have so many amazing ideas bouncing around in my head.  

I'm more determined than ever to help the all-important mission of sustainability by continuing to make the cleanest, greenest products that we can make and to help educate consumers about how to create happy, HEALTHY homes.  

I've also ramped up my own personal commitment to live a more sustainable life and can't stop thinking about a quote by Charlie Parker from the end of one of the presentations (if anyone can remember whose presentation it was, please let me know so I can give proper credit).  "IF YOU DON'T LIVE IT, IT WON'T COME OUT YOUR HORN."  Right on, Charlie.

Inspiration: plum blossoms

Oh, SPRING.  **sigh**

Inspiration: lemons

Flea market surrealism.

The bear and mirror also need to live together.  Forever.  Unfortunately, they wouldn't fit into my Prius.  (There's a joke in there, I think?)

Inspiration: blue I want to live in

I had a hard time walking away from these chunks of melted glass at one of the flea market stands because I wanted to remember the watery, translucent blue.

Favorite flea market pairing of the day

The ultimate in Texas junque chic.  I hope someone buys both because they need to live together.  Forever.

Inspiration: flea market finds

I spent yesterday in Warrenton and Round Top at a HUGE semi-annual flea market.  I love flea markets not only because I cherish the thrill of snagging odd, one-of-a-kind treasures for my own home, but because I like to witness recycling at its best and I enjoy imagining each object's journey.

These bins of game pieces and sign letters were particularly gorgeous and it was fun imagining how many creative people will dig through them to spell out their names or to make beautiful new objects.  I'm also a sucker for alphabets and fonts and simply enjoy the forms of letters.

  

Inspiration: spring poppies

From mid-March through mid-May (when the heat begins its oppressive grip on this area) Austin is stunningly beautiful.  Spring rains transform the brown and grey winter landscape into a lush, emerald green paradise bejeweled with color provided by spring annuals, perinneals, and flowering fruit trees.  I don't get much done because I am sucked in by the sights and smells surrounding me.  I spend probably too much time each spring just staring, but I always rationalize it by knowing that I am busy storing away colors and forms that will appear in future designs.   

Poppies are probably my favorite flower, which is why I'm taking the time to honor them.  Poppies are also the inspiration for Mod Green Pod's popular floral, Bloom.  For a very fleeting moment each spring, poppies pop up seemingly out of nowhere and flaunt the warm colors of their delicate, papery petals.  The flowers achieve an impressive state of being both fragile and mighty.  Even their buds and seed pods are natural design wonders.  I think the top of the seed pod might need to appear in a future Mod Green Pod print. . . .   

(The red poppies in these photos are currently sunning at Boggy Creek Farm and the fringed pink ones are showing up the other flowers in my next-door neighbor's front yard.) 

Inspiration: Berthold Haas's grotto wall at Sparky Park

On Saturday, neighbors and design & public space fans gathered a few blocks from my house to celebrate the opening of Sparky Park, a recently decommissioned power substation-turned-public pocket park.  (You might recognize it from a photo I took for our website.)  The most beautiful corner of the park is the grotto wall designed by artist Berthold Haas (pic below), who constructed the wall out of an otherworldly combination of petrified wood, locally-found fossils, shells, recycled glass and found objects.  He also painted some of the flat plaster a simply mesmerizing blue color that I just want to step into and live in.

  

Inspiration: Shephard Fairey, part 2

As promised, here are photos of the finished wall. 

Inspiration: Shephard Fairey and crew postering a wall today

Stumbling across this moment amidst the hundreds of other SXSW happenings surrounding us this afternoon reminded me of why I love SXSW week in Austin.  We spotted Shephard Fairey and his crew working diligently to cover a wall outside Home Slice Pizza.  It was truly thrilling to watch him in action.

Check out his groovy OBEY wallpaper, still wet with glue.

We didn't stick around to see them finish, but I'll return tomorrow to snap pics of the completed wall.