2011 In Review

It was quite a year at Loomstate. There was the beautiful 41Strings event with Nick Zinner's original music for Earth Day, the energizing SRF+CTY collaboration with artists, designers and surfers, our first Zero-Waste garment, trips to Vegas, Paris, LA, Lima among other locales... but most of all, we made a ton of new friends and gained new fans.

As someone once said, "On your deathbed, you're not going to think you needed a bigger house." So we're thankful that you're still reading this, and we hope you'll join us in the new year, where very exciting things are going to happen (no, not that whole end of the world thing).

Here's to a rejuvenating holiday and a fantastic new year!

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Green Wrap

If you came to this post looking for a veggie wrap, let us clarify that this is not about food, though we do make a mean veggie hummus avocado wrap. This is about wrapping paper for all your holiday presents! We're not big on packaging unless it's recycled, so we took this attitude towards wrapping presents. Inspired by a friend's recent birthday pinata and our friends at Confetti Systems, we came up with this easy and fun idea.

All you need are:
- old magazines or catalogs
- tape
- glue (optional)
- scissors
- a fun playlist to get your creative juices going

*Dig up some old magazines or one of the many unsolicited catalogs in your paper recycling pile, and you'll find a lot of colorful holiday spreads. Choose the pages based on the color scheme you want.

*Pull them out from the middle (if there are staples holding them together) so you have larger full sheets to wrap with. Then wrap. The result is usually colorful enough, but if you want the ultra-festive pinata look, move on to the next step...

*Cut remaining sheets into strips. Fold these strips into itself by four or however many that makes it manageable to cut vertically (so you don't have to do the small cuts 50 times per strip).

*Make vertical cuts, unfold the strips and glue/tape onto the wrapped present (it's better to wrap it first before applying the strips). If using tape, conserve and use small pieces to secure just the middles of each side - no need to go all around. Make sure you're applying the tape or glue to the half of the strip that doesn't have vertical cuts.

*Wrap and tape/glue the strips all around until you get to the top, where you can really have some fun with the directions of the strips. You can place them like alternating boxes, or place them all diagonally, in the shape of your gift recipient's first initial, or stand them up.

*Gently brush your finger against the grain of the strip tassels to ruffle them up and give them life, et voila! The most striking and memorable presents your friends and family will ever see. You spent maybe that one hour between work and party, and you got rid of that old magazine pile. High five.

Happy Wrapping!

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A lovely song for the afternoon to a random arrangement of clips of cute animals and frogs. Fan made video for Zoo Kid's "Ocean Bed".

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For Green Thumbs' Eyes Only

These may be the sexiest gardening tools you'll ever see. Inspired by the Guerilla Gardening subculture where small groups meet at night to illegally plant greenery in neglected urban spaces, artist Vanessa Harden invented a series of tools that would allow these undercover green thumbs plant even more discretely. 

A camera-looking object can shoot out seed pellets, a briefcase reveals an earth auger, a generic leather purse opens at the bottom to drop flowers and soil. Guerilla gardeners are already actively using the seed pills Harden created. Gardening has never been so exhilarating. 

Check out more stealth planting tools here!

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