
Danish design company VIPP and supermodel Helena Christensen have
teamed up to hold a charity auction of Vipp pedal bins that have been given a fashionable makeover by fashion, design, art, and entertainment leaders. The bins have been made over by the likes of
Bono,
Michael Stipe,
Mario Batali,
Michael Bastian,
Simon Doonan,
Frederic Fekkai,
Karim Rashid,
Jason Miller,
Todd Oldham,
Alice Temperley,
Mena Suvari, and more, and will be sold in a silent auction benefiting the Food Bank For New York City and Chernobyl Children’s Project International. An installation of the bins will be on display for public viewing and pre-bidding at The Conran Shop in New York through Thursday, Sept.

I love the balance of glorious, warm tones in Etsy seller
Laura Marie W's Maui Dozing (sold) oil on canvas painting. The combination of orange, green, lilac, and yellow is such an unusual one, but it really is breathtaking. The painting's landscape itself is actually what hit a soft spot in me, though.

Welcome to my new feature, Gifted, where I suggest home- and garden-related gifts that are chic, economical, and lovely. For my first post, I was inspired by my need to buy a present for some friends who just tied the knot. If you, too, need to purchase a present for some newlywed friends, consider buying them a piece of art.

Graphic designer
Tim Fraser Brown created a reproduction of Édouard Manet's "
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" entirely out of old Pantone chips. He painstakingly color matched over 5,000 chips onto a blank canvas over the course of four nights. The result is a bit Impressionism meets Pointillism, taking PMS to a new level of literalism.

ASB Workshop's
Graphite Objects, created by San Francisco-based artist Agelio Batle, are olive branches, asparagus, calla lilies, raven heads, shells, quills, and other delicate shapes carved from graphite. The art pieces double as writing utensils when you don't have a pencil handy. The small sculptures transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and the art collector into the artist, whilst serving as an elegant artifact in your home.

Maybe you really love boxed up bloody hands, and have been on the hunt for the perfect one to display in your foyer, right next to the photos from your family reunion. But my guess is that's not the case, and you wouldn't even
re-gift The Gift by Annalu ($12,500). So, what would it take for you to put in your home?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not one to purchase mass-produced artwork (unless it's a
Saul Bass poster), and I've never been impressed with it — until now: The new
West Elm Art Inserts ($14, $19) are quite good looking. West Elm is pushing customers to purchase all of their art inserts, which were made to fit their gallery frames, by suggesting they "create their own gallery show." Good sales ploy.

In Amsterdam, a Dutch couple based its décor on a range of noncolors, using blacks and whites, asphalt, variations of gray, earth tones, and light — skillfully (and daringly) playing with blends and mismatches. In the playroom, they used the dark colors but made a bold move by wallpapering with their children's drawings. Rather than letting their children
run loose with fabric markers on a muslin sofa, they made large-format, black-and-white photocopies of their children's artwork and adhered them to the wall in a repeat, much like traditional wallpaper.

Los Angeles-based painter Melissa Moss makes artwork that seems fit for a children's fairy tale. From her graceful, curtseying trees to her odd little nubbin creatures resting beneath the splayed gills of gigantic mushrooms, these paintings beg for a fanciful storyline. And her use of color.

I'm seeing spots, and I'm loving it. Marie M Vlasic's
Black Dots ($40) print is a somewhat disorienting play on perspective and light, but in the most pleasurable way possible. Perhaps taking
a cue from New York Fashion Week, Vlasic's polka dots may be trendy, but they also have universal, lasting appeal.