It’s Earth Day!

Which also means one more thing: It’s also my birthday.

And just like that, I’m 36.

THIRTY SIX.

Would you do me the honor to celebrate my 36th birthday by leaving a comment on what one thing is the favorite thing you’ve learned here at Daily Danny?

It would mean a lot to me on this momentous day.

Happy Birthd…er, Earth Day everyone!

Valentine’s Day is around the corner so I thought I’d share some cute ideas from my latest book Upcycling Celebrations with you.

I love this upcycling project because it involves old crayons and a silicone candy mold.    Just melt old crayons to make whatever color you want (of course, I chose brown to mimic chocolate), and pour into a silicone mold from the craft store.  Chill, pop and give in a vintage candy box.

This project actually came to fruition at Starbucks of all places: I ordered one of their protein platters that had some fresh grapes on the vine.  Took the vines home, glittered them and thought they made really pretty coral-like pieces.   Our brilliant stylist added some paper hearts and voila!  Glittery V-Day mini arrangement.

This one involves some plastic bottles from the recycling bin, stick on letters (or tape cut into the shape of letters) and plastic spray paint.

Just stick a letter on the front and back of the bottle (making sure they “mirror” each other), spray with two coats of plastic spray paint, dry, remove stickers.

LOVE bottles!

And my fave: take old styrofoam packaging (from when you buy something like TV) and a heart shaped cookie cutter.  Punch out heart shapes and stick into branches from the yard.   Display.

Before the Christmas holiday, I was in Los Angeles and San Francisco on a whirlwind of work.  Here are some snapshots of where I was, who I met and some things I’ve seen!

Love the oversized Japanese style lights inside of Gump’s department store in San Francisco.

Since Santa didn’t bring me these organic “etched” cocktail glasses for Christmas, looks like I’ll have to pick them up myself next time I’m in SF.

Interesting juxtaposition of graffiti and refined style at Restoration Hardware in Beverly Hills.    Plopped myself on the sofa a few minutes before the Stella McCartney holiday party.

In front of the Ford CMAX hybrid car at the Stella McCartney holiday party.  My friends at Ford graciously sponsored the party with proceeds benefiting the Hammer Museum.    I just got one of these cars and LOVE LOVE LOVE it.    Thanks to my pals Jenna Elfman, Holly Robinson Peete and Angela Lindvall for coming!

Speaking of Holly!!   She’s wearing vintage Stella too.

And at Anthropologie, saw this upcycled collage/painting/art installation using broken china and pottery pieces and paint to make this portrait.    Very Anthro, right?

Here are some of my favorite upcycled Halloween costumes from Upcycling Celebrations. This “bat dog” piece still ranks up there: cardboard, chalkboard paint, chalk and ribbon…. that’s all you need!

A butterfly costume any girl would love.   It’s cardboard from an old box covered in paint, stickers and glitter…

Popcorn boy!   Upcycled cardboard and old styrofoam peanuts to make the popcorn…

And the easiest one of all: Angry as Hell mask.    Cereal box painted black, wire, and an old pillow ripped open and twisted around the wire.

Yep, and that’s me.    But I’m not really angry as hell.

Last Friday, a photographer from the site OneKingsLane came to my home to shoot all of the items I will be selling on the site as part of their Tastemaker Tag Sale series they regularly do on the site.    I’ve done a flash sale before and since nearly everything immediately sold out, I decided to do one more featuring my collection of vintage and antique items from my own personal archives.

To get ready for a sale, you have to sort, catalog and ID each and every single item.

On the spreadsheet, each item is named, measured, given a real value, a sale value and any special notes about each item are also noted.     I added a pink post it note to each item so when we shoot each piece it can be easily found in chronological order.

Shoot!   This is called “seamless” backdrop to give it the product gallery look you see for all items on OneKingsLane.

It’s all digital, so we can immediately see the photo and if we need to re-shoot it or move onto the next.  I think this ship-in-a-bottle looks good and is ready to approve!

I’ll post more details on the sale… but this will be a good one when we launch!  You won’t want to miss it.