Design*Sponge

Your home for all things Design. Home Tours, DIY Project, City Guides, Shopping Guides, Before & Afters and much more

biz ladies by Stephanie 30

Biz Ladies: How to Use Networking to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings


Today’s Biz Ladies post comes to us from Felicia Ceballos-Marroquin of Acrassy Marketing. Felicia focuses her marketing services on creative businesses and assists in creating intelligent and viable brands for her clients. Today she shares her expertise in the online world by offerings some useful tips on how to get your website noticed in search engines.  Thank you Felicia for tackling this important topic! –Stephanie

Read the full post after the jump…

This post is brought to you by MailChimp, an app created to help you design, send, and share email newsletters. Discover their tools for bloggers here.

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products by Grace Bonney 12

Our Top 25 Watering Cans


Last weekend I hit up the incredible plant sale that Saipua had to support their new flower farm upstate. In addition to checking out some crazy beautiful plants and awesome cacti, I brought a few begonias and ferns home with me. I’m hopeful that my track record with these particular plants will mean they thrive in my apartment, but I’m already thinking about watering cans, natural fertilizers and other techniques I might need to keep them alive. Because I will inevitably make a mistake that requires a little nudging to bring them back to health. So to kick off my dedication to all things green thumb I thought I’d round up some great watering cans to get spring gardening season started. These are my top 25, but if you need a few more options, my full research roundup of 50 watering cans if right here on Pinterest. Happy gardening! xo, grace

Image above: Galvanized Watering Can $16-$29


Image above: 1. Red Watering Can $7 | 2. Orange Watering Can $57 | 3. Lemon Watering Can $34 | 4. Green Watering Can $10 | 5. Copper Watering Can $19 | 6. Blue Blossom Watering Can $30 | 7. Blue Watering Can $13.19 | 8. Purple Watering Can $13 | 9. Rose Pink Watering Can $13 | 10. Coral Watering Can $10.25 | 11. Yellow Watering Can $10

More watering cans continue after the jump…

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biz ladies by Stephanie 19

Biz Ladies Profile: Susan Gregg Koger of ModCloth

Susan Gregg Koger, ModClothPhotos courtesy of ModCloth

Today’s Biz Ladies Profile features the retailer-extraordinaire Susan Gregg Koger of ModCloth. As a lover of vintage fashion, Susan began to curate her own vintage collections to sell online through her own site.  Using social media in a way other retailers hadn’t thought of yet, Susan was able to expand her business and eventually turn it into the powerhouse ModCloth is today.  I’m thrilled to have Susan with us today to share a bit about her business journey.  Thanks for offering this glimpse into your world, Susan! –Stephanie

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city by Stephanie 29

Missoula, MT City Guide

Today’s Missoula, MT City Guide comes to us from Rachel Stevens, a multimedia designer and blogger based in Missoula.  Rachel is currently working on her masters in Media Arts at University of Montana and is channeling her love for this town into a new project called WHEELHOUSE // MISSOULA. Today she shares with us the many wonders this rising metropolis has to offer in the way of dining, shopping and entertainment.  Thanks Rachel for giving up this glimpse into Missoula! –Stephanie

Read the full guide after the jump…

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Instagram Challenge by Grace Bonney 2

April Instagram Challenge + Guest Pinners!


If you missed the update yesterday, this month’s theme (and the blog’s in general) is not actually cats. As fun as the feline fling was, this month we’re actually focusing on all things GREEN. From the great outdoors and earth-friendly products to gardening and eco-inspired DIY projects, we’ll be sharing ideas and inspiration all month. To kick things off this month we’re dedicating April’s Instagram Challenge to GREEN RESOLUTIONS. Whether you’re hoping to cut out water bottles, drive less and bike more or just want to spend more time in your yard (or on the fire escape) cultivating a vegetable garden, we’re hoping you’ll share your goals with us on Instagram. All you need to do is: @designsponge and #DSGREEN and include your resolution IN the photo*. We’ll choose our favorites and post the three winners on Earth Day, April 22nd. They’ll receive a special package from us in the mail and hopefully we’ll all be inspired to be a little greener this season (and going forward).

*You can add your resolution by writing on the photo in a photo editing program, putting a piece of paper with the words in the photo or by using an app like Over to include the text.



In addition to our green resolutions, we’re thrilled to welcome the team from one of our favorite home & garden store, Terrain to our Pinterest page! They’ll be our guest pinners this week, rounding up beautiful garden and outdoor inspiration for anyone who needs an extra dose of green. So click here to check out their picks and all their favorite garden pins! xo, grace

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miscellaneous by Grace Bonney 11

Pssst: Happy April Fool’s Day!


I have to say that today has been one of the most fun days to come to work ever. Every comment, tweet, Facebook message and Instagram note that thought we were seriously turning into a cat-only blog made my day. Thanks to our new editorial calendar and the ability it gives us to plan and work ahead, we actually had time to plan and execute a little April Fool’s Day prank, complete with a revised version of our logo, ribbon banners and an updated “I Want To” link guide on the right. While our entire team is indeed cat-obsessed, you can rest assured we are not changing over to an “all cat” formula. Tomorrow we’ll be back to regular posts and 100% design all the time. But thank you for you indulging us in a little cat-ertainment today. In all seriousness though, that cat music playlist is on heavy rotation here. Those songs (Janet Jackson’s Black Cat? Guster’s all meow singing?) are actually good- and funny to boot. So to all of the dogs, birds, pigs, chickens, lizards and other beloved pets- we love you just as much as we love our cats. Rest assured all animals will have a home here at D*S, but it’s back to normal tomorrow (and I’ll announce our real April theme tomorrow morning). xo, grace

*PS: The little cats all over the site will go down later today. I wanted to leave them up for a few more hours out of selfish enjoyment.

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