Jean Snow in Tokyo found this beautiful modern take on the traditional Japanese Kokeshi doll, from Pen Pencil Stencil.

The Ice Cream Sandwich Bench. Need I say more? This, and more new from Jellio.

Wondrous deals revealed every week. This week? All tees are $10. Get to it!

New Zenviorments silkscreen prints and other goodies. For the holidays, come on!

Last night (and early into the morning today) Quirky got crazy and developed a green product in 24 hours. What they came up with is called Petal Drops, a flower shaped funnel that fits on top of standard threaded water/soda bottles providing you with a chance to elegantly and easily capture rain water to water your plants. $4.50 and it’s yours!

Full Disclosure (Hat tip FTC): I’m an advisor to and shareholder in Quirky, inc.

My friend David is sailing from Los Angeles to Sydney on a boat he calls the Plastiki made entirely of recycled plastic bottles. What a nut case, right? I had agreed to go with him until I went on some sailing lessons and remembered how terribly (read: deathly) ill I get at sea.

Now I don’t even have to leave my bathtub to sail with this new toy Plastiki version though. Just in time for the holidays!

It’s made from cardboard approved by the Forest Stewardship council and printed with vegetable inks. Half the proceeds go to Sculpt the Future. The other half gets pooled into a life insurance fund for David. Only kidding.

Go read more about the Plastiki Expedition. And buy the toy. Awesome.

Megan Herbert has produced a range of five gift-wrapping papers created to enhance your gifts for any occasion. An Australian-born illustrator and writer, she is now based in Iceland. In the Summer of 2009 she and designer Sruli Recht (and our friend) opened their own concept store, Vopnabúrið, in downtown Reykjavik. Iceland’s beautiful desolation is a big influence on her work.

Love these, especially the bloody one, bottom left!

Felissimo – the design house on 56th street in New York – is opening a JAPAN BRAND holiday pop up shop from Nov 23rd to Dec 24th.  Awesome stuff!

One of the items is a limited edition series of extraordinary, exceptionally expensive chess sets (up to $55K) made of lacquer, silver plating and gold leaf. The sets were designed by world renowned media artist Alexander Gelman and crafted by traditional Japanese artisans.

The other is the bicycle above which looks absolutely amazing: As part of his foray into lacquerware, Gelman also created a custom, one-of-a-kind lacquer bicycle. To build it, he hand-picked the highest grade components from Shimano, the worlds’ leading bicycle manufacturer.

The shop is here in New York city at The Felissimo Design House, 10 West 56th Street.  Swing by for a visit if you’re in the area.

Look mom, no blades. The future is here. Silent velcro. Space travel. Fanless… fans. And one of them there doohickeys just miraculously showed up on my desk today. Should I dispose of it in a landfill? Should I convince people it’s a space beacon and I’m conducting a wild experiment communicating with aliens?

So, what’s awesome about it? It’s relatively quiet, easy to clean, and I wont chop my hand off reaching through it. What’s not awesome about it? I can’t do the Luke, you’re my father thing. Serious bummer.

The Dyson Air Multiplier™ fan works very differently to conventional fans. It uses Air Multiplier™ technology to draw in air and amplify it 15 times, producing an uninterrupted stream of smooth air. With no blades or grill, it’s safe, easy to clean and doesn’t cause unpleasant buffeting.

The Dyson Air Multiplier (or space beacon if you decide to call it that) costs $299 for the 10-inch model and $329 for the 12-inch. Smart dude, that Dyson guy is.

Nine out of ten music nerds agree, Warp Records is king. Since its inception and initial release in 1989, the label that defined intelligent electronic music has witnessed a wave of advancement in sound production, a rode it all the way to July of 09, marking twenty years of great tracks, cutting edge producers, and (more recently) experimental bands. Titled Warp20, the anniversary is being celebrated with a number of shows featuring acts like !!! and Battles, as well as a really dope T-shirt and a box set chronicling the history of Warp. There’s a whole lot going on with this label right now, and it’s spanning continents. Check out the site for full details.

Being the “favorite uncle” isn’t as tough a job as, say, being the father, but there’s still a responsibility to bring my new nieces/nephews awesome gifts. For instance, I spotted Isabel Roxas’s Chibi Warrior branded merch at the Brooklyn Flea this past Sunday. I had already bought this onesie from her Queens studio for my sister-in-law’s ninja-themed baby shower (complete with toddler-safe throwing stars), but Isabel also has items beyond baby clothes, liketees, stamps, and notecards with the lethal-yet-adorable assassin. Just something to think about if you don’t want to concede to the Dora the Explorers or Thomas the Tank Engines of the world.

The gift that keeps on giving is sadly underused. I’m not talking about a puppy. I’m referring to what might become a relic if people don’t start having obsessions with receiving things in the snail mail again: Gift of the Month Clubs. In particular, Zine of the Month Club is one such variation, which should rank right up there with Beer of the Month Club or Cigar of the Month Club. For $75 a year, Mark Price Is a Factory will send off a zine each month by various artists published by them (or rather, him). Of course, you could just buy them individually, but that’d take the fun out of getting a neat-o present buried among the credit card statements and cable TV flyers in the mail. You canceled your newspaper and magazine subscriptions long ago when you bought your BlackBerry or iPhone. Now’s the time to start up those things you used to like before they went old school. Just make sure the Hot Sauce of the Month Club doesn’t come in the same delivery as these zines.

Related: Six Months of TEeA Party

To most of us, DJ Shadow is a mind without a past. Everything he touched became a timeless piece, the demonstration of his powers beginning with 1996’s Endtroducing, an album that quickly became the soundtrack to the lives of many. While we often consider it his first full excursion into sampling production (in fact, it was the world’s first album composed entirely of samples), there was once a young Shadow; one who idolized influences and struggled with his own expressions just like any other artist. Over the past couple of years, we’ve had glimpses into this tape-deck past through The 4-Track Era series of radio mixes. Today we get the entire musical youth of DJ Shadow packaged in box-set entitled The 4-Track Era Bundle, featuring early noise through a now defunct medium that we all still love deep down. Pre-order now!

With Mother’s day fast approaching, those of us who won’t be able to make it home to present mom with a box of chocolates and some fresh flowers to show how much we care in person have undoubtedly started feeling a dash of homesickness setting in. Sure, mom might not be able to hug us and let us know that everything’s going to be okay this year, yet there’s still a way we can revel in her warmth though distance may beg to differ. The caring folks at NYC Creative Agency, Mother, have come up with Mother-scented candles, so no matter how far apart you are, as long as these babies are burning bright, you can feel as though she’s in the next room preparing to tell you just how much she loves you…and how you desperately need to get a job and stop asking her for money. What does your mother smell like? Was it this good?

Check out the spot they did for them here. Because the sweetest memories, are the ones that burn. Funny.

Being an outsider sucks. We sometimes feature products on our site, like kicks, that are available only in Brazil, and we’re definitely guilty for making you salivate and yearn for them. Today we’re psyched to tell you about the launch in mid-May of MOMA’s Brazil Product Collection, a group of 75 Brazilian design goodies not found anywhere else in the U.S. One of the works featured is Estudio Manus, who we introduced here a while ago and has gone on to dizzying success since then. Also in the collection is a sushi bowl by design kings the Campana Brothers, a movable Centipede fruit bowl by Gustavo Engelhardt, Daniel Castelo and Diego Costi and a Dry Erase Wall Clock by Ricardo Saint-Clair (pictured)—MOMA exclusives, so ha, take that, Brazil, you can’t get these products over there. The products will be available super-close: at MOMA Design stores and on MOMA’s site. Which means for now, you don’t need to take an emergency Portuguese class to learn how to say “Can you buy these for me?”