BornRich: As bathroom fixtures increasingly blend elegant aesthetics with simple technology, it has certainly become more difficult to choose the one that offers utmost convenience in a graceful manner. However, the Zen static taps from the house of Sanitary Ware Co. offer distinctive luxury in your bathroom with their touch-control operation along with a light indicator flashing different colors according to high and low temperature.

Zen bath fixtures offer utmost convenience with touch-control operation [BornRich]

Swissmiss: The Boomerang Wok’s cupped edge is supposed to make it easier turn your stir-fry ingredients.

All you supposedly need is one simple movement with the spatula and voila! I definitely would like to give one of these a try!

Boomerang Wok [Swissmiss]

TheDieline: Kleenex recently took a very bold move, replacing their logo with the words ‘Feel me’. The UK firm Anthem was approached to create packaging that conveyed the softness of their tissues as well as generated new excitement and interest. Their solution was to flood the box with a luxurious texture- which is not only aesthetically pleasing, but drives home the softness of the product and stands out on the shelf.

Kleenex’s Bold Move [TheDieline]

TheDieline: “ABC Paper Cup puts an end to the boring design of disposable paper cups, which are easily confused with one another and thus users often have to take a new one. The ABC Paper Cup makes it easy to remember your cup, because it has a unique design in 14 variations, including the alphabet from A to Z. Apart from the cups with their colourful signs and letters in simple, cheerful designs there are also fun suggestions on how the ABC Paper Cups can also be used.”

Designed and sold by Seoul based IaM Design. More images of the many uses after the jump.

ABC Paper Cup [TheDieline]

Springwise: A splash of colour and design can go a long way toward beautifying a grey, ugly space, as Carspaze and Style-your-garage have already shown. Now aiming to do something similar for the slums of Rio de Janeiro through large, community-driven murals, the Favela Painting project also goes several steps further by incorporating training and employment for local residents.

The brainchild of Dutch artist duo Haas&Hahn, Favela Painting has already completed two community painting projects in Vila Cruzeiro—Rio’s most notorious slum—along with the first portion of O Morro, its current effort to paint an entire hillside slum. Some 34 houses and 7,000 square meters of Praça Cantão in Santa Marta have already been transformed through paint, and the project hopes to return later this year to paint even more of the hillside. In each of its projects, Favela has focused on recruiting local residents to do much of the painting, including training and paying them. In this latest one, local inhabitants were trained through a partnership with Brazilian paint company TintasCoral on everything from different types of paint to safety measures while working on scaffolding.

Transforming Rio’s slums through community-driven art [Springwise]

Born Rich: Most of us think that it’s a bit hard to find luxuries that suit the daily chores of our life, but the Swan Faucet with its elegant aesthetics and simple technology offers the utmost convenience in a graceful manner. Designed specifically for the modern country club, particularly for the club’s dining or ballroom restrooms, the Swan Faucet is skillfully sculpted in organic curves of a swan to make the water flow down its neck. The water flow is activated with a simple tap on the faucet’s head and a tilt of the spout determines the stronger water pressure and also allows the user to control water temperature by turning the water head to the left or the right. Besides adding a luxury touch to your bath space, the Swan Faucet’s form and functionality is bound to attract admiring comments.

Swan Faucet’s form and functionality invites admiring comments [Born Rich]

Inhabitat: Think the flyer boxes scattered across city sidewalks are uninspired? Check out these newsboxes transformed into eye-catching aquariums, terrariums, and even dishwashers by NY based The Street Is In The House — they might make you reconsider. We spotted these clever takes on the traditional newsbox at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair this weekend and were a bit smitten by the way they can bring a bit of the street right into your living room!

Artist Carlo Sampietro designed the repurposed newsboxes to provide a commentary on NYC life — a goal that we think he achieved. He sources each newsbox straight from the source that produces them and then retrofits them into fun and functional works of art fit for your home.

Newsboxes Repurposed Into Artsy Aquariums, Terrariums [Inhabitat]

Chocomize is the first company in the US that allows customers to create their ultimate chocolate bars. You start out with your favorite chocolate base – dark, milk, or white – and then add up to 5 of over 90 ingredients to your very own chocolate bar. It’s chocolate made just the way you like. There’s a large variety of ingredients ranging from the common, like peanuts or almonds, to the very uncommon like 23 karat gold flakes or beef jerky. More than 15 billion custom candy bar combinations are possible and you decide which one is perfect for you.

Born Rich: Known as the daddy of all motorcycles, Harley-Davidson motorcycles remain constant throughout the ages even with the varying styles and trends, however, for all those who are able to say “I ride my own,” this customized limited edition by the Catalan designer Custo Dalmau is sure to make your ride stylish and colorful. The designer has revamped the model Night Rod in the colorful style and combined with the dragster look to suit hand-painted bodywork. The bike will be auctioned this summer, and the proceeds from the sale will be donated to support children in Sierra Leone.

Harley-Davidson is all macho in flowery [Born Rich]

BornRich: You can’t judge a wine by its cover. But, when the bottles are as bespoke as these special creations by Massimiliano Corsi, entrepreneur, artist, painter with the use of resin, you probably would not be able to resist a purchase based solely on packaging. “The first project, designed within Bespoke is called ‘More Than a Bottle,’ inspired by the past reinterprets the bottle of wine in key innovative and oriented towards the future transformation into a work of art for eternity.” The wine bottles are made of precious materials such as gold, silver, bronze, diamonds, furs and fine prismatic paint, to make them look like a work of art beyond its content. Each bottle of Bordeaux artistically decorated hides the excellent red wine of the Tuscan Maremma Sangiovese aged in French oak barrels giving a fine wine, complex and intense. The bottles are made entirely by hand and it takes 75 hours of work and more than 12 steps to create a Bespoke bottle, each entirely different, unique.

Bespoke wine bottles are a work of art [BornRich]

We Are Handsome’s swimwear is not just your run-of-the-mill swimwear. Each piece is made by hand, with the highest quality polyester lycra, printed with high density inks using a placement sublimation process which is tedious to say the least. Each of the designs is limited edition. Some are sourced from 000’s of retro images and some designed by WAH’s in-house artist often using dozens of images to get the unique look and feel.

Vizun, a sprouting innovation company based in Toronto, Canada has launched Mug Hug to cafés, eco, gift, and retail shops nationwide. Mug Hug is a reusable, flexible lid for coffee mugs that easily presses on for a seal. It’s the first of its kind, and has international patents pending. Mug Hug especially attracts those who prefer their home or office brew and personal mug. They can now be mobile with Mug Hug without spilling.

TrendCentral: Fabric on Demand offers customers ten different fabrics to choose from, ranging from naturals like cotton and cotton/linen blends to synthetics such as polyester satin and Lycra/Spandex (perfect for making an American Apparel-style bodysuit that won’t cut off your circulation). Fabric designers need only to upload an image file, choose a pattern to be generated with that image, select the fabric, and specify how many swatches or yards they want printed. Fabric on Demand will send out a “proof” before the order is actually manufactured, ensuring that you’re not surprised with a bolt of purple star print microsuede when you really wanted blue.

Material Pleasures [TrendCentral]

Springwise: Shortomatic is a California-based company that invites consumers to upload their own art for a truly customised swim. All they need do is indicate their waist size and then upload the graphics they have in mind. They then position and size the art, choose their colours and add text for use on the waistband. Next, voilà! A unique pair of California-made boardshorts that’s customised for them.

Design your own swim shorts, earn up to $1,000 [Springwise]