I was all set to post about a cute little crafting project that lets you make a ‘please remove your shoes’ sign because, hey, no one wants beach sand or road sand tracked all over their floors. But as I was poking around the Intertubes wondering what else I could include to flesh things out a little, I happened upon a much radder DIY project that is as cool as the other was country-ish.

I won’t say this is an easy DIY Pacman couch project — think woodworking and upholstery shaping, not Mod Podge and a couple of minutes with a cordless drill. But for those with the time, energy, space, and materials money to give it a go, I say try it! Then (whether or not you’re successful) send me a link so I can feature it here, of course.

Dressing tables. Vanities. Call them what you will, but I love them. You can put all your makeup or perfumes or kid gloves or gold watch on the dresser, but that looks messy and cluttered. Dressing tables give you a place to put the detritus of your day-to-day life.

Normally I’m not a huge fan of furniture made almost entirely from mirrors, but I’ll make an exception. Hard to keep fingerprint free? Sure. But with a Barcelona-style dressing table like this, every inch of one’s face will be visible. The luggage rack style seat is all right, but I’d pair it with an Alchemia Polycarbonate Chair.

For the lover of all things modern or perhaps even for the man… this simple, angular dressing table in subtle black can either fade into the background or pop depending on the makeup of the rest of your room. As for the stool? Ho hum. Looks more like a footstool to me.

You knew there’d be a clear chair in here somewhere! It pairs perfectly with the Orient Express dressing table that’s made to look like so much vintage luggage. My only beef is the bare wood that is revealed when the mirror is aloft. Kind of eh.

The Kay + Stemmer rose dressing table is dripping with mid-century modern style. I like the wave and the thin tapering legs, though I wonder how well one could integrate it into a decor scheme that wasn’t primarily mcm.

Basic and pretty, there’s nothing wrong with the traditional plain white dressing table. A little boring maybe, but easy to integrate into a wide variety of decor styles. Great for a girl’s room or a guest bathroom. I don’t love it quite as much as the others, but it will get the job done.

Clear and colored plastics don’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon if all these house and home rags I read every month are any indication. There are the various Ghost chairs designed by Phillippe Starck, and then there’s the polyhedron Alchemia chairs I mentioned a while back.

Here’s another, again designed by Starck:

The Mademoiselle armchair claims to combine two (or is it four?) aesthetic qualities: “solidity and space, materiality and transparency.” I like the fact that it comes in oodles of different colors and prints.

This is Starck’s chair in what is presumably its natural habitat:

I don’t particularly like the way it looks like it’s hovering in space, a la Dominar Rygel XVI’s floaty chair. Maybe it’s something about the wall the chair is up against, but the legs just seem to disappear. I suppose that’s the “space,” but I’m not feeling the “solidity.”