🎨 nooks + colors + murals
ISSUE #171
MAKING
I am easily distractible — you know this about me. But my detours are always leading me somewhere. So yes, I am still organizing the kitchen – which has now bled into the bedroom, the studio, and the rest of the closets.
As part of the reorg, we moved the microwave from an upper cabinet to the counter, which left us with an open space we decided to turn into a coffee and tea nook.
Chris made a base and shelf from leftover bamboo plywood from another house project, including a little notch for the tea kettle to nestle into. I lined the back of the cabinet with vintage shelf liner I’ve been holding onto for years, waiting for the perfect project – this was it.
Now it holds jars and miscellany on top, the tea kettle below, and we keep the coffee filters inside an old Rx box — our morning medicine. ☕️
LOVING
PALETTE EXTRACTOR (AND LILY)
Chris (and his intern Claude) made a cool tool: the Palette Extractor.
Upload an image to extract its dominant colors.
Choose the number of colors in your palette.
Use the eyedropper to sample additional colors from the image.
Click any swatch to copy its hex code, or
Hover and click × to remove.
When you’ve created your perfect palette, download a PNG and hit reply to share it! I’d love to see what you create. 🎨
THINKING
Chris and I have been talking about painting a mural on the back fence in our side yard for going on three years. It’s a great idea. It would be super cool. But we never pulled the trigger.
Now that we’ve (finally!) had some good weather, we’ve been spending as much time as possible outside. And, once again, we started talking about the mural.
I had a specific idea in mind this time around, so I prototyped it in ChatGPT. I uploaded my artwork along with a photo of the fence. Less than 60 seconds later, I was staring straight at possibility.
AI gets a bad rap for replacing creativity. But in this case, it didn’t replace anything. It helped me see the potential – and it’s motivating me to finally move forward.