The modest corner takes center stage.

Ralph Emerson said, “If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.”

Johnny Castle put it much more simply, “nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

What Ralph and Johnny mean to say is that corners are not exciting places. They’re dull, geometrical necessities unfit for ideas, innovations, and women who have been sexually awakened by a little dirty dancing. Considering the way we treat corners in our homes – jagged little spaces where dust bunnies mope behind unimaginatively angled armchairs and floor lamps – you’d think they were talking about our living rooms.

But corners are cool. And here are a few inventive, happening and inspirational ways to trick them out.

German designer Yvonne Schroeder created these corner frames for the retailer Details. They come in beech, black, white or natural maple finishes.

The Lorna Shelf by William Feeney is a custom-designed shelving system uniquely created for those bereft corners.

The Wrap-Around-the-Corner Frame from Photojojo is designed to hug the wall as opposed to snuggling into it. It is built to display twelve of your most corner-worthy photos.

Clearly, these dramatic corner windows are flashing “come hither” eyes. Hence the lounge.

This is how to treat a kitchen corner. Like a lady, who knows where her cutlery and her spices are stored.

A wall of sketches offset by a corner bookshelf really pulls this room together. It gives the impression of being lived in, yet worldly.

The Kulma, meaning corner in Finnish. It is designed to use the space inside of a corner or hug the outside. Made from oak, by designer Martina Carpelan.

A dolled up cozy eating cubby, perfect for brunching.

Postcards from the edge? Nope. The corner.

This corner is given a Moroccan edge, easy to mimic with plush pillows and a flea-market stool.

Images: Pinterest via Weekday Carnival Details; William Feeney; Photojojo; La Morbo de los Santos; Decor8; Modern Hepburn; Martina Carpelan; Skeppsholmen; Pinterest; Sorakeem

Ideal for pinning photos and other forget-me-nots.

Georgian-made from reclaimed roofing tin and scrap plywood, these frames are charmingly southern and aesthetically rustic. Created by Margaret Taylor of Dryads Dancing, the buttons (made from new materials) can be used to display old photos or hold memos.

Taylor also makes frames from antique bead boards and reclaimed crown molding. Her logic: why buy wood new and sand it to old worldly perfection? Kind of makes us go hmm, too.

Available for $25.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

Wall stencils are all the rage right now, and why not? They’re 99.9% dummy proof.  

If you’ve ever tried to DIY and failed miserably, applying a wall stencil is a sure fire way to give your crafty self an ego boost. Look at this woman, care of Cutting Edge Stencils.

That looks totally DIY-able, doesn’t it? From what I can tell, she:

1.) Purchased a set of stencils from people that actually know what they’re doing, i.e. Cutting Edge or Stencil 1. (To ensure success, splurge on the more expensive pre-cut ones. Otherwise you’re going to have to use an actual craft knife.)

2.) Applied a base color, patiently allowing it to dry overnight (FYI, impatience has felled every DIY project I’ve ever attempted.)

3.) Measured (like, with a ruler or tape measure, imagine that!) the wall to determine how many times the stencil should be repeated.  Here’s another tip: don’t guess-timate. Try marking each spot with a pencil.

4.) Attached the stencil to the wall.

5.) Poured a small amount of paint – not all of it – into a saucer.

6.) Picked up a small roller and painted.

If you can master the six steps above, just imagine the possibilities. You could stencil yourself an aviary:

A harem straight out of Marrakech:

A butterfly zoo:

Perhaps even a real zoo, not that butterflies in and of themselves aren’t thrilling:

A disco for your baby:

A half-price chandelier:

A diner:

A coat rack:

You could even stencil a (bath)Room of Your Own:

That, dear friends, is crafty rebellion.

 ALSO CHECK OUT:

11 DIY Alternatives to Traditional Christmas Trees

12 Free Green DIY Projects

5 DIY Alternatives to Holiday Gift Wrap

12 DIY Projects for a Green Geek

Images: Cutting Edge Stencils; Stencil 1; The Stencil Studio; House to Home; Apartment Therapy; Kristen F. Davis Designs; Design Amour

While it would be uncouth to wear white shoes from now until Memorial Day, when it comes to dressing your home in floor-to-ceiling white, go ahead and stick it to Emily Post.

Welcome back to your life. The Labor Day weekend is over and unless you are getting married next weekend (like a certain younger sister of mine), you have closeted your whites. That is, if you have more etiquette than Patty Hearst’s character in Serial Mom.

Etiquette experts have their reasons for this rule, which is relegated exclusively to fashion. Thankfully, we have our own panel of fashion experts who can further iterate the whys and how to’s of sustainable style. In shelter, meanwhile, we’re not quite ready to bid farewell to white, flowy things.

Like this gorgeous canopy bed offset by the wall-to-wall white drapery on the windows. The effect is stark, yet touchably soft.

This black and white motif, from Danish company Day Birger Et Mikkelsen, works because it’s deliberate without looking like a chess set.

I took one look at this and told my bride-to-be sister, “you must do this in your honeymoon suite.”

Black and white photos in an all-white room. Gorgeous.

A brick wall painted white that takes the edge off urban.

Again, with the painted brick. But what I love most about this white room is that the wood floors and primitive coffee table make it both earthy and minimal – thus livable.

Images: Home Improvement World; Elle Décor; Apartment Therapy; From the Right Bank; My White Room; Message Note; Atlantis Home

A sleep well-traveled.

These bright and worldly pillow cases are handmade by artisans in Southwest India using Batik, the traditional Indian art of creating patterns on fabric. A set of three pillows spans the globe from the Americas to Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. At $95, that’s a much better bargain than an around the world ticket, in coach.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

These vibrant fair trade baskets are available care of Indego Africa, a non-profit that aims to end poverty by empowering women.  

It’s hard to choose just one lust-worthy basket, so we snuck in three handmade Plateau baskets: in black, green and white; white and brown; and a zesty green/tea. These hand-crafted home décor pieces were crafted with needles and imigwegwe plant threads by women of the Covanya cooperative in Rwanda. Each takes up to seven days to weave and a great deal of skill and technique.

The baskets retail for around $30 – $45  and can be purchased here or found through the organization’s website. Regardless of your basket-buying intentions, we highly recommend a visit to the latter.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

While they might want to reconsider the air miles it took for them to find it, this bamboo vase from Phillips Collection gets a sky-high rating.  

Designers Mark and Julie Phillips of Phillips Collection specialize in what they call Globally Sourced Home Décor. Hmm, sounds like a mighty big footprint to me. Nevertheless, this abstract-modern vase is made by hand from pressed bamboo. Let’s hear it again for fast-growing, durable and pliable bamboo.

To give them some leeway, the Phillips Collection is a traveling duo that has been traversing the globe over a period of 30 years. Taking them all over the planet in their relentless search for talent, innovative production techniques and globally inspired organic décor.

What do you think of their globe-trotting ways: a forgivable means to an end or not so cool, even if it is bamboo?

The vase retails for $147.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

A clever DIY idea for refreshing a chair with quirky charm.

Dipping in general is a good thing: skinny-dipping, ice cream cone chocolate-dipping, and now, chair-dipping. You won’t need to drain a hot tub and fill it with paint to dip your chair, of course. Just mask off your chair fittings with painter’s tape as deep as you want your dip, and paint. (Sand first, seal with a primer, and two coats recommended). White, black, teal, chartreuse, gold, plum, cherry red – and how fun would a low-VOC lacquer in this year’s Pantone color, Flamingo, be?

- Pinterest via Casey Bond via Brooke Shepard

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com.

An architecturally stunning stool that stands in as a basket.

“Beautifully delicate in appearance, unfathomably strong in construction,” the Kaktus Stool ($250) from Artecnica is pretty much perfect. Use it as a stool, of course, or turn it upside down and it becomes a basket. Made from recycled aluminum, designer and Artecnica co-founder, Enrico Bressan, spent three years creating it.

The Kaktus Stool is currently in production and will be available in June at Artecnica.

Via Sara Ost.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

If you’re familiar with textiles and design, you’ve probably heard of screen-printing, digital printing, and maybe even sublimation. All three are printing technologies used to create pretty patterns and pictures on fabric. But I would bet the Eames chair and ottoman I’m saving up for, that you don’t know about the Lumi Process.

It’s a cutting edge process that allows photographic images to be printed onto natural materials, from silk to wool to cotton, without any chemical treatment. Jesse Genet, who began her research five years ago when she was in high school, is the brain (and brawn) behind the new technology. Now she’s a student at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and has teamed up with fellow student and designer, Stephan Angoulvant, to launch Lumi Co.

They’re young, energetic and with a clever self-promotional video, funded the launch of their business with money raised on Kickstarter. It took them only 60 days to raise more than $13,500. They initially aimed for $12,000,

“…the minimum amount of capital needed to allow us to continue R&D, upgrade our equipment for production, and have enough working capital to develop products and open our doors to collaborators in the first quarter of 2010.”

To everyone who donated, Genet and Angoulvant sent out a leather bag, art print, card wallet or coasters (image below), each printed with images using their technology. It got people talking, about the product and the process, and the talk has been nothing but positive.

Genet and Angoulvant, on the other hand, are not talking about the specifics of their technology, other than to say it is eco-friendly and will provide access to innovative products and designs in the future. The Lumi Process doesn’t require intense heat or the use of harsh chemicals. It doesn’t use filters or half-toning; the final images are vivid, true to the original, durable and won’t fade with washings. All their supplies and materials are natural. And the process prints perfectly on textured materials and over seams. Is there anything it doesn’t do?

Actually, no. And now Lumi Co. is collaborating with Cisco Home, a Los Angeles sustainable furniture company, and launching its first product line in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. The owner of Cisco Home, Cisco Pinedo, who’s been in the furniture business for over 20 years, had this to say about the Lumi Process:

“The conventional printing methods don’t have the properties of natural materials…this is an amazing technique, especially for a company like ours where everything we do is around sustainability.”

It’s quite the entrepreneurial, environmental success story. And it’s not over yet.