Inspired.

Bring the Farm Indoors

There’s no secret to the enormous benefits of filling your home with live plants. They clean the air, uplift your mood, and increase energy flow into your space. But what if you went a step further and put a plant in literally every free space available? What if you grew kale in your couch or parsley in your desk? One artist imagined just that scenario at a new show at the aptly named New York gallery Mixed Greens.

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The New Camping: Clear Bubble Tents

I always love the idea of camping, a romantic night in the great outdoors. But I’ve found that the reality is usually a lot less fun:  pitching a dank tent and swatting off mosquitos while trying to get a fire going. PSFK alerted us to a new form of camping, which lets you be one with nature in your very own bubble tent. Designed by the Attrap Rêves group in Marseille, France, the bubble tents were created as a way for campers to get the most out of nature, while leaving as little of an impact as possible. They’re made of completely recyclable materials, and each interior is unique.

The tents are about 13 feet in diameter and can easily be packed up without leaving a trace of waste behind. The pods come in two styles, one completely clear style that allows you to basically blend in with your surroundings. Another style is opaque at the bottom for more privacy, but with also an awesome view through the clear roof. Telescopes are also available to get up close and personal with the Milky Way. Enjoy the night sky without the bug bites. A nearby restaurants allows campers to dine in luxury, no firepit necessary.

It’s easy for many properties to use the label “eco-tourism” just because they recycle. But it takes true innovation to use design to create new experiences that allow us to vacation with minimal impact on the environment.

Homemade Mother’s Day Gifts

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, the time of the year to honor the woman who gave us the most. Bamboo Wall Art makes a great Mother’s Day present. Just choose your favorite photo of you and mom and upload. Customize with a variety of sweet designs. In addition to bamboo’s wide-ranging green qualities, Paper Culture plants a tree with each order, so it’s a win win. Click here for details. But perhaps you want to go even more DIY and make something from scratch for mom. Here are some easy ideas that will be sure to put a smile on her face.

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The Ever Evolving Crib

We at Paper Culture are all about raising our children green from Day 1. Whether by choosing eco diapers or finding innovative cribs that grow with our children, we love finding products that make it easy. But what about once your child finally outgrows that crib? Our friends over at Lil Sugar have put together a collection of repurposed cribs from creative mothers and scavengers.

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Eco Origami Collection Wins Top Fashion Award

The London Design Museum Awards, known in the industry as fashion’s Oscar awards, honors the best of the best in the world of style. This year’s competition was fierce, with judges having to choose among contestants like Sarah Burton’s Alexander McQueen wedding dress for the Duchess of Cambridge and French label Céline’s sleek car-inspired fall collection. But when it came to awarding pure innovation, nothing could top Issey Miyake’s 132.5 collection.

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Monkey Around in a Pop-Up Forest AirHotel

Opening their doors for business this May in the UK is the AirHotel, part theater, part treehouse, all fun. Designed by the Time Circus, a Belgian artist collective, AirHotel lets visitors spend a night in the forest on the ground or in the air. This new type of Bed & Breakfast features tree-climbing room service staff, aerial hostesses to cater to your needs, and live performances throughout the night.

Like any nice resort, AirHotel features a Wellness Machine Room complete with sauna and bar. And one pod, the “Drop” room can be lowered down to the ground for anyone feeling dizzy up in the trees. We’re not usually looking for quite such a circus in our getaways, but the creative design and unique take on forest living has got us hooked. AirHotel is part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival and stays are limited to one night only.

Give me your hand!

Picture this: you are precariously pushing a grocery cart with one hand through the parking lot and holding your child’s hand with the other. Your car keys are in your mouth. Is this your worst nightmare or an every day occurrence? You can breathe now. The problem has been solved. The Reisenthel “motherchildbag” (from $11 – $20) gives you an extra hand, or really an extra handle for your kid to hold. And what kid doesn’t want their own special handle? [read more]

Happy Inspired Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day to our beloved readers! We hope you celebrated our favorite holiday in a way that was both inspiring and fruitful. Paper Culture has set a goal to plant 1,000,000 trees, one for each new Facebook like. Click here to get going, and dedicate your tree to someone special. We’ve planted 200,000 since Earth Day last year and are looking forward to the many, many more trees we’ll be putting into the ground through 2012 and beyond.

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SMS Texting Celebrates 20 Years with Paper

Can you remember a time before text messaging? The relatively new invention was launched in 1992, but it’s hard to remember a time when this wasn’t one of our primary forms of communication. To celebrate 20 years, notebook innovator Moleskine has launched a special edition analog SMS text message. The tiny notebook comes with a cover launching pad and tiny messages such as “I Love You” and “Call Me” which can be folded up and launched via slingshot across a room. For us it recalls the schoolroom days when we’d get busted for writing a note and passing it to a friend. It’s a fun idea to celebrate a form of technology we now take for granted, and a great gift for anyone in your life with a smartphone addiction.

Eco-Emi’s Green Goods of the Month Club

A slew of startups, from Birchbox to TestTube are allowing ladies to sample new beauty products monthly. You sign up for a subscription (anywhere from $10-$50) and get a surprise box with a selection of miniature or fullsize samples to try out monthly or quarterly. We tried out Birchbox, and were disappointed by the small size of the samples. (Why pay for free samples?) Although most people don’t need more toiletries to fill their beauty kits, it’s a fun service that feels like getting a surprise present in the mail every few weeks.

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