The Craft Begins

There’s something poignant about the missed connections section on craigslist, but I’ve never really been able to communicate exactly how it makes me feel.  I think that these illustrations do it for me.

See more work here.  Found via frolic!

I was in Seattle a few weeks ago and I happened upon this little store called Daiso.

I had never heard of it before, but I think that I’m in love.  The place was stuffed to the gills with all sorts of everything you could ever need, but with a Japanese twist (mostly meaning that it was cute and itty bitty).  Kitchen items, beauty products, hardware, you name it, they had 10 of them.  My favorite part of any store like that is always the stationery section, and they didn’t dissapoint.

It’s a little overwhelming walking around inside, so for those who don’t like feeling crowded (or aren’t lucky enough to have a Daiso store near them) they have a great online store.  Find it here, but be warned, almost everything comes in bulk (which isn’t such a bad thing, considering how cheap it is).  Happy shopping!

Not a terribly eventful weekend, all things considered, but still nice.  Saturday was too hot for words but the rains have started and now it’s mercifully cool outside.  Bought some gorgeous bougainvillea at the flea market, along with a really cool globe from the 1940′s.  French Indochina, anyone?  I think there’s about half as many countries on that globe as exist today.

Got to hang out on an alpaca ranch on Sunday – these guys are too cute.  The little mops on top of their head give them such personality!  Also got some cool pictures of the Boneyard here in Tucson – if you haven’t heard, it’s an enormous amount of planes scattered over the desert.  They’re all lined up in orderly rows closer than you think it would be possible.  And there are more planes than you can even imagine.  It’s not so easy to get a picture, as everything is fenced off, but I’ve found if you stand on top of an SUV, you can get a decent shot.  :)

I’m working on some super-secret crafty things around here, but I can’t wait to show off what I have so far!  The details aren’t fully fleshed out yet but here’s a little preview.

Oh and here’s another hint…it’s going to be called Clarke & Tangier.  Woohoo!  Having a lot of fun tromping through the woods taking pictures.  Can’t wait to share it all!

His work has always fascinated me.  When I was younger,  I remember being in Hawai’i with my parents and stumbling into an art gallery.  Here, on the walls, were these gigantic, fantastic abstract shapes that reminded me of corals and anemones and all sorts of interesting sea creatures.

I think that his work has moved on considerably since then, and I still find it fascinating.  All of the giant chandeliers with swirls coming out of them, and the installation pieces in botanic gardens.  I love how he pulls inspiration from the natural world around him and turns it into glass.

What I also find compelling about his work is the amount of people that it takes to make his ideas into reality.  One person alone can’t create all of the pieces needed for one of his large sculpture, and one person alone can’t even create one of the enormous plates.  It takes so much skill and commitment and teamwork to be able to make these things happen, and I find that fact to be equally inspiring.  I could hardly make a glass paperweight without having people helping me!

Who is one of your favorite artists, and why?

Well, I’ve done it again.  I’ve posted a video.  I apologize.  But this video is amazing – I love the song, I love her voice, I love the video, and I love the fact that she’s only…17.

I’ve been seriously lusting after some navy walls lately.  I tried to convince my sister to paint her bathroom walls that color because she has gold fixtures and lots of white cabinets and I thought that it would look cute and nautical.  Though that’s the typical design scheme I’d associate with navy, I find myself drifting more towards a vaguely ethnic approach.

First of all, I love the color of these walls.  It’s not quite navy, a little warmer, but close.  I also like how sparse the room is.  I’d do it with some good beat-up wood floors and a big ivory silk tufted headboard.  Add a timeworn Afghani rug, some interesting lighting and a good piece of art and you’ve got a room that’s full of style and nothing else.

Perhaps not the most exhaustive list, but a good place to start if you happen to find yourself in this big Texas town.

1.  You must find yourself a magnolia tree and then procede to breathe in deeply.  It’s the quintessential southern experience.  It’s especially magical for those of us who haven’t seen a real tree in months.  I’m always amazed by just how big the flowers are!  It’s also an especially nice place to find shade on those hot Texas days.

2.  One cannot describe how lovely the desserts are at La Duni (4264 Oak Lawn,  Highland Park, TX,  75219, 214.520.6888).  The drinks are good and the food is also very good, but the desserts are astounding.  And I’m not even a sweets person!  I had a quatro leches cupcake.  I actually wrote down the menu description because it was so delicious: “layered Montrecado vanilla sponge cake, soaked in cuatro leches sauce, topped with caramelized Swiss meringue and dotted with caramel reduction”.  Typically I would think that half of that was made up, but I would seriously write poems to this cupcake.  They also make beautiful wedding cakes, if you’re in the market for that sort of thing.

3.  Haven (3699 McKinney Avenue, Dallas, TX. 214-954-1515) is a very lovely little interior design shop.  It’s selection borders on austere, but is definitely unique.  The have an ever-rotating stock as most of their items are one of a kind or handmade.  It’s a very interesting place to stop by and have a look.

4.  If you can handle the inevitable long wait, Bread Winners (3301 McKinney Ave, Dallas, TX, 214-754-4940) is a great place for a Sunday Brunch.  They bring out great big plates of fresh baked bread slices, all different flavors.  The food is sort of typical brunch fare with a twist, but they do right by the old standards with some fresh additions.  I had a delicious chorizo-potato-cheese concoction that should have been split between two people.   The atmosphere is really great – the whole inside is an outdoor patio with pretty eclectic furnishings.

5.  If I could pack all of my hopes, dreams and asthetic taste into one store, it would be Gardens Dallas (3699 McKinney Ave. at West Village, 214-528-7770).  Tiny potted succulents, very modern teak and steel patio furniture and artfully designed little gifts grace the shelves of this little shop.  You can tell that a lot of attention has been paid to every. single. detail.  If you’re not a gardener, it might inspire you to take up the hobby, but will at least pull you in with its non-planted items.  And if you love to garden, well, you might have just found your Valhalla.

When I lived in Colorado, I had a Saturday morning routine.  I would wake up really early and start hitting the garage sales around 7am.  I had a typical path I would follow, and started to learn which people were there every weekend.  We made friends.  After that I would go to the Farmer’s Market before it got too crowded.  If you got there much after 9am it was a zoo (it was not a town of early risers).  That was definitely one of my favorite things about where I lived.

After I moved down to Arizona, I was a little sad that the only produce I could find was grown nearby across the border in Nogales.  People, this is where the majority of your produce in the store comes from, it’s amazing!  We just have sweet little Mexican guys bring up what’s left over in the back of their pickup trucks.  I figured that you can’t grow much here, as we are in the middle of the desert.

How wrong I was!  There were not too many booths but there was a lot if interesting stuff.  There’s lots of ranches and farms down here, so you could get all sorts of delicious meats.  I bought some ground lamb that was FANTASTIC – look for a recipe soon involving it !  There were also lots of little cute veggies that I think the retirees grow in their backyards.  The best find by far was a jar of pickled dilled garlic cloves.  I know that it sounds weird, but they were SO GOOD.  They’re like potato chips.  You eat one and you just can’t stop.

I’d really like to try to eat a whole week with only stuff found at the farmer’s market (plus staples).  I’d also like to go to these farms and talk to the farmers and take lots of pictures and really get to know them.  That might still happen.

What’s your favorite thing at the farmer’s market?

1.  This sign makes me laugh.  And it’s a really nice photograph as well.  There’s lots more fun vintage goodies and awesome photographs at Doe C Doe.  And hey, did you know?  Cookin makes you good lookin.  :)

2.  I’m still not entirely sure what I would use it for, but this gorgeous cotton ribbon from Angela Liguori is too good to pass up.  You could use it for bookbinding, sewing, wrapping awesome presents, or any number of things.  And it comes in a variety of colors and lengths as well, so there’s sure to be something that will suit your needs.

3.  As we all now know, I love little notebooks, especially when they are well made and have interesting covers and papers inside.  Pretty much everything in Erin Zam’s shop fits the bill for me.  Cute little notebooks, made with nerd love,  and adorable prints.  What more is there?

4.  I’ve always appreciated the work of Rachel Austin.  She has such a sweet sensibility and an awesome color palette.  A lot of her work features vintage maps buried deep underneath the painting.  I think that it gives it really interesting texture and depth.

5.  Words cannot describe how amazing the Timeless Vixen Vintage is.  They have the. most. amazing. dresses. that I have ever seen.  You can just tell that the quality is astounding, and the styles are wonderful, and it’s the kind of dress that you would save all of your pennies for and wear it a few times for very special occasions and then donate it to a museum because it’s a priceless work of art.  It may not be affordable for most of us but it really is some great eye candy.

Might as well hop on the bandwagon, eh?  As of right now, the news seems to be cardiac arrest, and no death, although who knows, with the millions of media sources out there.

We’re big fans of Michael in this house, so let’s just set that one straight.  Despite the craziness that seems to define the last 10-15 years of his life, he really was a) a great artist and b) a great dresser.

I mean, most people tend to pick on Elvis’ later years as being a stylistic train wreck, but I think that MJ adapted the gold-lame bodysuit and really made it into his own thing.  Make fun all you want – who among us who lived during the 80′s didn’t wear scrunch socks?  Thought so.  No one wore sequins and bedazzled quite like him.

• Oscar video

Have you seen the Collective Noun collages yet?

It’s a series of 8.5×11″ collages I did featuring various animals and their collective nouns.  All handmade and one of a kind, they are made with various papers, embroidery and ink.  I’m going to be going in a new and interesting direction with my shop, and so I’m clearing these out.  They’ll only be in the shop until Sunday, so if you’d like to order one, please click the “shop” tab above or click here.  The collages are already on sale, but as an added incentive, use the code FINSALE when you check out for an additional 15% off!

I think I skipped one in there somewhere – sorry for the mixup!

Every New Year’s Day, George Peters and Melanie Walker trek out into the cold Colorado winter to fly kites.  It’s a good omen and brings good luck for the rest of the year.  But they don’t fly just any kites – they fly giant, monster kites that they build themselves.

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to fly kites with them for the last two years.  Boulder is seriously windy, and we’ve found a good plateau that really exacerbates those wind conditions.  Many times, it will rip the kites out of your hand.  It’s fun being with people outside in the cold when it’s the last thing on earth you want to be doing, and it’s always fun to see what kind of crazy kites they bring with them.  They are known for their large-scale kinetic installations in buildings all over the world, and they don’t scale down just because they’re outside.  They create interesting shapes put together in beautiful ways.  One of my favorites is the “fishing pole” – It’s at least 20 feet long with a fish kite attached at the end, and it will fight you like a marlin in the wind.

The best kite I’ve ever been able to “fly” was a banner about 6 feet wide and 100 feet long.  You need two people to fly it.  It creates a giant arc in the sky that gets such lift underneath it, if you pull on one end you can literally lift whoever is holding the other end into the air.

If you’d like to learn more about George and Melanie, you can check out their website here.  There is also a great New York Times article that features them as well as some other artists working with scientists to illustrate the consequences of climate change.  In the interest of full disclosure, only the bottom 3 pictures are mine.  :)