Nature Inspired...and What I desire!

As I make a further attempt to get into the autumn spirit in endless summer LA, I’ve found that it’s a perfect time of the year to emphasize one of the most popular design trends commonly seen this year: nature and organic elements! I’ll tell you a secret: these themes have been around for quite some time in the design industry, but it was only this past year or so that the general public was made aware of the trend.  This season, nature inspired design has been apparent everywhere in the forms of trees, foliage, fowl, woodsy animals, lions, tigers, and bears…well, minus the lions and tigers…but OH MY how the list goes on! Owl drawings and sculptures of birds have become so rampant around me; I’m starting to feel like Snow White!

God bless the first designer who took nature inspired elements and ran with it because he or she (I bet it’s a she) definitely caught on to something. Nature opens up a vast world of design ideas and as humans we are naturally attracted to Mother Earth. Here are just a few of the nature themed objects I’ve found while searching in some of my favorite stores:



Nature Inspired Design

Stores include Anthropologie, West Elm, Z Gallerie, CB2, Crate & Barrel

Arterior's Home, Two's Co. and Lazy Susan

If I owned a home, how I would fill it up with all these glorious things! Next thing you know I’ll be seen on an episode of Hoarders. But at least I’ll have beautiful stuff and not something gross like trash and dead cats. Nature inspired objects gives the feeling of organic, clean, natural (duh), warm and cozy (think a wood burning camp fire or a lit fireplace in a log cabin) yet free and vast (think a flying bird in the open sky or a majestic redwood tree). And this is exactly what I would like to be inspired by while I work on my own design ideas for the fall season. So, if you can’t beat em, join em. I am jumping on the nature band wagon.

This past weekend, we took a spontaneous camping trip to Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. There could not have been a better place to become one with nature and because there was a heat wave in LA, this trip could not have come at a better time. (My next blog will talk more about the trip and the photos I took along the way.) During our exploration hikes , I made sure to gather as much nature inspirations as I can, collecting pine cones and leaves and photographing every type of living plant I saw.

Unfortunately the squirrels, deer, rabbits, and chipmunks refused to pose for me and say cheese (so much for feeling like Snow White) but I was able to catch a lady bug.

I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with what I collected…so many ideas, I’m starting to feel overwhelmed. These are the times I wish I can hire seven dwarves to help me or at least two dwarves. But hmmm…I wonder how D would look in a dwarf hat.