San Smith

fantastic art funnn

I hope you all have had an excellent holiday break this weekend!  I am feeling pretty content and all smiles due to the last few days - they were exciting, filled with friends and art. Friday, I had a few of my friends come over through out the day and we ate chips and dip, made crafts & craaazy cupcakes, and watched a movie later on in the evening over a dinner made by my boyfriend. 

It was quite fabulous - and I learned a new transfer technique that I have been going nuts over all weekend from my friend Laila.  As soon as my boyfriend gets in his new camera this week, I'll take some better pictures of the large wood block piece I'm working on with this transfer method and explain how to do it.  The above image is two small postcards I made with the transfer technique for my cousin and my friend.

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I installed the new shelves on in my studio area and then I went to an super fun cook out at Laila's. We ate lots of tasty food, celebrated her friends birthday, played croquet and set off fireworks.  She also showed us some of the lovely artwork that her and her sister had made over the years and it was very inspiring!

I'm going to end there for now and try to post again Thursday.  I have a long long week ahead of me and I want to get to bed early so I can have a good start tomorrow!  On a closing note of a lovely friend filled weekend, here is a nice quote from one of my favorite authors:

Each friend represents a world in us,
a world possibly not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
Anais Nin

sunday shopping thoughts

Hope you are all doing well! I’ve had a pretty nice relaxing weekend so far. This weekend I took the train to downtown Decatur and did some shopping. While its fresh on my brain – I wanted to share some neat things I discovered on my little shopping trip!

Mat & Nat brand purses
I discovered a really interesting brand of purses today in downtown Decatur. Matt & Nat – they were very gorgeous leathery looking soft purses in rich colors – extremely well made with lots of interior pockets. After closer inspection I discovered they were in fact not made of any animal bi-products – even more exciting. Also there was an inspiring “positivity message” printed on the outside of all the purses (See above photo). Their website states “the positivity message represents the choices that we are faced with in life.” They were a little high for what I was aiming to spend today, but I definitely adore them right now and wanted to spread the word of such a cool purse company.

Fly London Shoes
I bought the fantastic little black patent cuties in the photo above today at Eviva – it’s been a while since I got new shoes and they were exactly what I was wanting! After inspecting their website they seem to make lots of really cool well-made shoes. Go looook!

Other things I’m excited about right now:

Amaaazing mug rack my friend Julie pointed me to this on My Paper Crane – I am a coffee cup collector and this would be an excellent way to display my collection. I’m already scheming where I could put it! Somewhere in my studio maybe.

Agyness Deyn in i-D magazine  agghhh she is too cute. I normally don’t take interest in celebrities but saw this issue of i-D focused on her this weekend, and she’s excellent – very modern and reminds me of Edie Sedgwick.

DavisEyes  another small thing I read about this weekend – this designer seems very promising.

Tricky Threads I got an awesome handmade jacket today from this brand. Their website doesn’t lie when it says their clothing is “Love at first fit”. I’ll take photos of the jacket later – but its so unique, well made and fits PERFECTLY! I love good handmade clothes. The designs are very modern and sleek.  

Irregular choice sandals I’m not getting these any time soon, but I love the gigantic bows.  They are new residents on my dream shoe list!

I’m off to go figure out how to remove wine labels and read about making sculptures for our backyard.  Bye!

Things I love Thursday

Things I'm liking a whole lot right now:

- Lionel is a Vampire Cat" tshirt from Argyle Academy
- Anna Maria Horner's super cute handmade aprons - I saw these in person this weekend in Downtown Decatur and they are adorrrrable!  I really want one now.
- boygirlparty's cute prints and etsy store - My favourite is the kittens in the boat...I'm trying to figure out a place to put it in the house so I have an excuse to buy a print!
- Cups by Decole - ahhh I really want this for my coffee cup collection :) Strawberries + pink + cute handwritten text = wonderful for a coffee cup design!
- Shinzi Katoh's illustrations
-For Like Ever poster - another little thing I want to hang in the house but don't really need ;)

wonderful things that do not have websites:
- delicious mid day breaks for cinnamon scones
- walking to the train in the windy rain, almost being blowing away and laughing the whole time
- the organic chocolate chip cookies we bought the other night...which have turned out to be the BEST cookies everrr! I want to eat them all.
- cheap hotel like coffee in my new mug during rainy mornings (and with one cream!) so plain and nice

Artsy wednesday

 

This weekend the new Youngblood gallery location opened up! After a fun dinner with my friend Mary and her co-workers, I swung by to go check it out.  The location is over by some other fun places like the Atlanta Cupcake Factory, APB Bikes (where I got my pink and brown surly!) and San Francisco coffee to name a few...  The location is awesome, and the whole place was decorated really fun - the boutique is now in the front part and the gallery is in the back.  It was really exciting to see things for sale from crafter's I've heard about through the Atlanta Craft Mafia (Glue & Glitter's lunch kits and jewelry from A Bardis!) as well as lots of really really awesome stuff I hadn't seen before.  My favorite was the dinnerware by "Non Fiction Design".  The pieces were really cool diner style off white ceramic dishes that had random images printed all over.  After checking out their website, I believe this was their "Stream of consciousness" collection.  Definitely worth checking out in person at Youngblood, I was so excited about it I ended up buying a coffee cup and saucer.  I adore it so so much, and I love how on the bottom it says "Made better in Columbus, Ohio" instead of made in.  Very unique and fun.

The Art that was on display was really interesting.  I think my favorite was the handcut rainclouds that I believe was a team effort by both artists that were on display.  (Jessica Gonacha &  Valerie Taylor)

Hope you all are having a fabulous week so far!  I've been working on lots of art projects lately, and will be posting about that later on in the week.  For now - go check out some new photos I took of my paper journal, "The life pursuit"!  I uploaded them on my flickr.

hooray for walking!!

something awesome I forgot to mention last night:

- I've now been walking to work for almost two months
- I went an entire month on one tank of gas!!

I'm excited I have cut my car commuting in half. Hooray for public transportation! :)