In honor of the holiday season, I have compiled a few of my favorite things to share. Perhaps they will give you some inspiration for gift ideas!

Madsen Bicycles

1 Madsen Cycles gives us just one more reason to keep the current cycling movement going– these bikes are beautiful, practical and come in some delicious colors.

Optimist by Tracy Mewmaw from Zatista.com

2 Zatista.com has a new artist Tracy Mewmaw that I really like. His mostly abstract photographs have a great use of color and composition. They are extremely affordable and are fairly large in size.

Blackbird "Fly" Twin Lens Reflex Camera

3 Blackbird Fly is a vintage inspired camera that uses 35mm film from Japan’s Superheadz. They are inspired by medium format Rolleiflex cameras that originally used 120 size film.

Paulette's Macarons

4 Paulette Macarons makes the most gorgeous little sweet French Macarons. This is my latest food obsession to replace the cupcake craze a few years back.

domsai terrariums

5 Domsai Terrariums are hand cast and hand blown little planters that are produced in a small town in Italy called Nove. Planters disguised as space men, brilliant!

6 I am a huge fan of Korres products. Their formulations are among the most environmentally friendly and skin compatible, it smells amazing and the packaging is beautiful too!

7 Picnica brings you this portable rabbit shaped eco-friendly tote-bag. When you aren’t using the bag, it is stored in the belly of the rabbit, pull it out and its a bag. Fun stocking stuffer!

Eleni's Cookies

8 Eleni’s creates amazing finely detailed cookies for all kinds of occasions. Packaged beautifully for gift giving, they are not only lovely but also delicious.

Focus Line Art

9 Tracy Melton is a full time artist based in Knoxville, TN. He takes wood from dead elm trees and paints the tree rings with vibrant colors. Very modern and rustic at the same time! You can find his work on Etsy.

Share your favorites with us!

In my work as an art consultant curating art programs for high-end hotels, my clients are interior designers who have worked for months selecting everything for a room, from fixtures to furnishings, before the topic of artwork is ever mentioned. OK, wait. To be completely fair, the designer had selected a style of artwork early in the design process, but the actual works of art aren’t selected until the final phase of the project.

This is a world in which art is very much like an accessory that makes a great outfit pop into a WOW outfit. Not considered an afterthought, the artwork is indeed an integral part of the room, it has an integrity of its own, yet it is selected after the overall interior has been established. On rare occasions I’ve seen a hotel space designed around a piece of artwork or seen the art inspire the interior design, but this is not the norm.

My guess is the order mentioned above (first interior, then artwork) is how most of us live. Our homes are already furnished with pieces we either want to keep forever or need to replace eventually, the walls are painted and occasionally re-painted, and the collecting of original artwork follows sometime after we realize that the posters we’ve had since college just aren’t cutting it.

photo: borman818, Fort Lewis College

Whatever the reason, once you’ve decided it’s time to incorporate original artwork into your daily life and living space, start with the art.

You have already established your style at home, so get out there and shop for art for art’s sake. Go to galleries, shop on line, look around and get exposed to art. The more you see, the better. When you see something you like it will stand out. But I beg you, do not select artwork just to match your furnishings or your walls. That would be starting with the furniture. Let’s face it, people move from house to house, furniture gets moved around, and wall colors change. Start with the art and buy what you love.

If you start with the furniture and buy art to match or even coordinate, you will probably tire of the combination in a short time. This equates to buying disposable artwork, and we don’t want that! If you want to invest time and money into original artwork, and I suggest you do, buy artwork you love, don’t try to match the couch. You have a sense of style already and your tastes will draw you to certain artwork. If you trust your visual instincts, your furnishings and your artwork will naturally come together in the end.

photo: John Reed Forsman

I promise you will always find a place in your home for art you love and you will enjoy it for a long, long time. Isn’t that more satisfying than knowing you’ve matched the sofa?

I don’t want to squelch any creative ideas you may have when it comes to placing wall art in your home. If you are inspired to hang art in a specific spot, it never hurts to try it out and see how it looks.

On the other hand, if you’re new to collecting art and are looking for guidance, here’s an easy way to start thinking about where to place your artwork.

Pretend you’ve never visited your house before and take a brief tour. Start at your front door and walk through the entry, living room, and dining room to identify the ‘key wall’ in each room – the wall which is most visible as you enter the room. As you enter the bedrooms and bathrooms, identify which walls are most visible from each doorway. More often than not, these key walls are going to be good locations for your first pieces of original art. Down the line you will start thinking about placing art on your secondary walls too. But for now, if your art is strategically placed on those key walls, you probably need fewer pieces than you think to impact your surroundings.

Make a master location list of your key walls (include wall measurements) as you do your walk through. Take the list with you when you’re shopping for artwork so you know where you can place the art you will inevitably see and love.

Once you have purchased key pieces of artwork for your most trafficked rooms, then start thinking about artwork for hallways, transition spaces and secondary walls.

Prioritizing art placement in this way will maximize the impact of your purchases. Think about it, if you make the effort to buy original art but it only fits in your guest room or back hallway, the buzz you get from collecting original artwork is going to wear off faster than a New York minute. Try this approach to art placement at the beginning of your foray into art collecting. Knowing where you will put the art you love will help you feel good about your purchases. By the time your art collection rivals Herb and Dorothy’s, you can put your Motherwells on any wall you want and nobody will dare question your judgement.

Photo: Eric Plasecki

Sometimes I think the most interesting and expressive ways to display art are created by taking a chance and doing something unexpected. If you are somewhat creative, why not try using the way you display art on your walls as another way to change the way people interact with it?

This is such a great way to display many photographs and still have a clean uncluttered feel.
Photo from Martha Stewart

I love how the television blends in as another piece of art and how randomly the art is hung on the wall.

This one is a great example of how to tie accessories in with the art itself. The vase and flowers echo the colors and fiery bits of red in the photography. Asymmetrical and lots of white space.

This was a wall at the Paul Smith store in London (left from apartmenttherapy.com) and San Francisco (Right, shot by me). It fills every bit of space, using many different types of frames, art, styles, colors and dimensions. It would be a great way to combine a bunch of mismatched things on one wall in a home as a focal point. Just one wall though I would think, a whole house like this might be overwhelming!

Break some rules, hang things off-center, in a space too small, too crowded and mismatched. If there is something about the collection that relates to each other somehow such as a frame color, or the medium (ie: all b/w photos) it can be the thing that ties it all in together. Or perhaps that thing is the fact that none of them have anything to do with each other at all! The point is to have fun, be creative and play with it. It is art after all.