Stack up those glossy magazines you can’t bear to throw out, buckle them down with a pillow on a pale Nordic-ish birch wood base, and voila! you’ve got a dandy designer footstool, or extra seating for a party…

More than mere designer furniture, the Hockenheimer stool (by German design firm NJUStudio) is a personal objet d’art that makes a statement about who you are and your individual style:

National Geographic?

Martha Stewart Living?

Or will you show off your treasured Rolling Stone back issues?

Heck, you can even show off your lifetime subscription to the Wall Street Journal, if that’s your style!

The Hockenheimer stool comes with a stand of birch wood handmade in a youth workshop in Bavaria, custom-made leather straps with buckles and rivets added by hand, and a unique hand-crafted cotton/polyester pillow to top it off.

The wood base comes in two sizes: Magazine style 305mm x 250mm x 70mm (approx. 12″ x 9.8″ x 2.75″); or Newspaper style 415mm x 305mm x 70mm (approx. 16.3″ x 12″ x 2.75″).

Available at Connox with prices starting at € 128.50 (VAT tax included) plus shipping from its home in Germany.

If I were to tie 500 deflated balloons around a bright pink painted wooden stool, you just know it would look unbelievably lame.

At Unica Home, however, Natalie Kruch’s Balloona Stool Confetti is sheer brilliance — “making the ordinary both intriguing and beautiful.”

I first read about Natalie Kruch and her colourful creation last year sometime, just a little snippet in Canadian Interiors.

She was just about to graduate from the University of Alberta’s Departments of Art and Design, and the stool (which started out life as an occasional table) had been picked up by Umbra when it was exhibited at Toronto’s Interior Design Show! Now, that’s an appropriately uplifting story for such a funky-cheerful piece of furniture, isn’t it?

Tree stumps have long been a staple of casual — even impromptu — outdoor furniture.

Now they’re moving indoors.

It’s another aspect of the continuing strong trend for elements of nature in interior design and home decor.

In fact, tree stumps seem to be turning up everywhere, whether in their natural form or in a more polished version, even as a hand-crafted representation — and put to use as occasional tables and stools and pedestals and bases for glass-topped table… the possibilities are literally unlimited.

On the up-market end, Hudson Furniture shows a line of tree stumps ranging from a gorgeous natural teak stump to an intriguing collection of petrified wood stumps with colourful striations created by the passage of time.

Or mxyplyzyk offers hand-carved stumps from the trunks of discarded Chinese fir trees, each one a unique piece of functional art in its own right.

And DFC goes a different route, with a tree-stump-inspired ceramic version, hand-glazed in bold modern lime-green or sculptural white.

Having lost a huge old maple tree in the past year, I’m looking at these stump stools and tables with a special interest.

Instead of trying to compost that giant tree stump, perhaps I should be thinking in terms of a new coffee table — natural spalled maple with a lovely smooth hand-rubbed finish?

[H/T to Moco Loco and Kingdom of Style]

Blending Mid-century American Modern with Scandinavian Modern, Nurseryworks line of contemporary furniture for children can move easily from the nursery to fit in with adult decor as the child grows. New to the line is a Mini version of the Sleepytime Rocker, just 19 inches, to tuck into a cosy corner.

Like the standard size Sleepytime Rocker, the full-back upholstered rocking chair comes in a choice of upholstery fabrics include cotton canvas, cotton duck, wool/polyester felt, polyester microsuede, polyester microterry, and cotton twill — in a range of colours from alabaster to lime to sky to the sophisticated dark mocha shown here. Pair it with a matching Perch Stool for convenient extra seating that can double as an ottoman. Both by lawson-fenning for nurseryworks.

Nurseryworks furniture for infants and children is as safe as it is stylish, using only formaldehyde-free dyes and low-VOC finishes, lacquers, and glues. The products are tested to US governmental standards on a quarterly basis and are certified by the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association.

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