The Life Pursuit: San Smith

Parker Posey's fashion in "Broken English"

This past Saturday while my boyfriend was out of town, I curled up on the couch to knit and watch the dramatic comedy, “Broken English”, by Zoe Cassavetes. (Chris and I had seen lots of posters for it in the Paris Metro in July, and after watching the trailer I bookmarked it for a rainy day.) It stars Parker Posey as Nora, a 30 year old single woman/ex-artist working in a boutique hotel, wondering at what point did she take the “wrong turn" and causing her to not be able to meet a decent man and find love? After a string of bad dates, she ends up randomly meeting a young French man at a friend's party and they hit it off fantastically – but he has to return to France by the end of the weekend...

I don’t want to ruin the rest of the movie – but it’s a very fantastic, slow paced movie about growing as a person and finding love. Aside from the lovely storyline, Nora has an amaaaazing wardrobe! In between gasps, laughs and tears, I kept catching myself pausing the movie to take screenshots of her accessories and outfits. (Whoever was the costume designer for this film did an excellent job!) There were lots of flowy, silky, simple but feminine pieces paired with unique necklaces (Many of them seemed to be  handmade!), and what looked like Marc Jacob purses. Tunics paired with cutoff shorts, printed tops with wide leg pants, really nice simple dresses. The clothing and accessories reminded me of what I saw women wearing in Paris actually, which makes me think a lot of thought went into planning the image of Nora’s character.

Since I’m still buzzing from the story and clothing, I wanted to show off two of my favourite necklaces she wore in the film (And where you can buy them online!)

Her Scissors necklace:  I didn't find the exact same one online, but I found two very similar versions

- Brass scissors necklace by Karin Hagen for $42.00
- Silver open scissors by Erica Weiner for $50.00

Princess Tina raincloud necklace: I was shocked when I recognized this! I adore this necklace, it was very cool to see it on Parker. After much searching, I tracked down a place that is still selling it online (most places seemed to be sold out)

- Available at busy-being.com for $160.00

If you liked Lost in Translation, I highly recommend this film to you – it has a very similar feel. The soundtrack pairs so nicely with the soft, vunerable images of the film and the character of Nora is very real and interesting to watch. I'm off to go get ready for the day and possibly play in the rain a bit. It is pouring here!! Eeee!

super crafty weekend zooom

1. Baroque Corkboard, 2. Jellyfish!, 3. Cupcakes & Gocco arrival,
4. Whale shark feeding, 5. New Shirt I customized, 6. Looking in the Mausoleum,
7. Otter Toy!!, 8. First Gocco Printing, 9. New Fabric! Yay!

Super fun craft explosions week I will refer to this as.  Eee!  Last weekend I had tested out some resin (Testing resin photo) on a heart necklace I gutted out the old imagery from, and it had finally dried.  (Success!!) It turned out pretty good, I filled it with pictures from an article on Les Shadoks - it has the Gibis on it and it says, "C'est tout pour aujourd'hui" which supposedly means, "That is it for Today."  I put on the back a picture of another Gibi and it says the phrase in english, and I poured resin on that tonight so in a few days it should be ready.  I'm excited about the possibilities of making jewlery and sealing things in resin, so I hope to expand on this after testing it on different kinds of paper! 

I also bought some cork board and cut out a shape in it to make my own baroque themed corkboard based of the idea from design*sponge.  I was on the fence at first if I liked it or not, but its slowly growing on me.  I think once my room is painted and there is a lovely color behind it, I'll enjoy it more.  The calendar I have pinned up on it is from Magnolia Moonlight, I had my eye on it for a while and it went on sale recently!  I definitely recommend it, it is really bright and fun.

Aside from Calendars (and cute fabric!) arriving in the mail, I also got another very exciting package this week - I recieved my Gocco printer from Japan!!  When I came home Friday from work it was waiting for me along with super delicious confetti cupcakes my boyfriend made. :)  I didn't dive into a printing frenzy until Saturday though because shortly after coming home we went to go see Charlie Wilson's War.  (Which was very good.)

My gocco printing went about kinda goofy the first time.  I drew out a little cat, scanned it in to clean up the black, printed it out, loaded up my Gocco to do its business - flashed the lightbulbs, lifted up the lid with excitement to see my new screen and...NOTHING!  Turns out, you cant use print outs from home photo printers.  If I had read the directions more carefully, I would have seen that... Oops!  I redrew my little picture with the recommended Riso pen, and that time it worked fantastically.  I printed my design on so much stuff, I kinda went over board with excitement.  I made some Valentines to send out, and then 10 to put in my etsy store when I set it up, 3 blue felt patches and one pink one.  I also decorated a CD envelope I'm sending to my friend Krysti.  If you are curious about how the Gocco works, here is a tutorial that was very helpful.  Most of the kit has english through out so it was pretty easy to work with, but its still a odd little mysterious machine which can be a tiny bit intimidating.  I'm so excited about it though and cant wait to buy more bulbs for it so I can make more screens!!

I also had finished up working on a little shirt I made waaaay back at the Indie Craft Experience this past November.  I had printed their little bird logo with craft paint on a shirt there for $5, and then saved it hoping I could figure out more to do with it when I got home.  I ended up painting little little pink hearts onto it, and stamping the letters "create" and then hand stitching floss around the print.  I like it a whole lot now, Its one of my new favorite shirts and I wore it to Yoga with Jenny this past Saturday as its first out of the house experience!  Zooom - I hope to maybe print and hand stitch more shirts now with my Gocco printer.

To wrap up this weekend up, this morning Chris and I went to the Atlanta Aquarium.  It was Chris' first time going, and he took some really good pictures, much cleaner and easier to view than the ones I posted on my flickr because his camera can capture things 10x better.  We saw an awesome leopard printed ray (I had never seen that there before!) and we also got to see a trainer playing with otters and teaching it how to sit and when to let her pet it.  After, we went over to Six Feet Under to eat Lunch, and then went across the street to explore the Oakfield Cemetary.  There were so many pretty tombstones and mausoleums, we both took lots of pictures.  I then proceeded to take a super long nap, and now I'm going to package up my new little cards, eat macaroni and cheese and prepare to make an etsy store! 

One last note - I recently got two new albums which I definitely recommend and want to share the word on: Janelle Monáe's Meteropolis and Stereo Total's Paris <> Berlin.  Stereo Total has been around for a while, but Janelle is a new artist who I think is fantastic and want to introduce more people to.  So check those out!

Hello! First post.

1. package for Lauren, 2. drinking tea in the snow, 3. gifts from Chris,
4. new little canvas piece, 5. cabbages in Cabbagetown, 6. ice cream graffiti,
7. front of package to Kelly, 8. back of package, 9. our new house!

A lot has been going on over here.  Chris and I just recently moved into a house together in Cabbagetown over the holidays and are getting settled in. I'm busy setting up my new little studio and I'm pretty excited about it.  Hopefully in a week or two it'll be painted and pretty close to being done, and then I'll take some pictures!  Until then, you've got the stuff up above.

Fun things I've been up to:  It snowed this weekend here in Atlanta!  Very exciting stuff.  I took a little walk around our area with a cup of tea and my rarely used purple snow boots to experience the snow.  It was fun, but super super cold.  I don't have too many experiences with snow since I grew up in Florida, so I figured it would be a good idea to go outside and check it out somewhat.  My conclusion:  Snow is very pretty but very cold.  (Well, Duh!)  I could only brave the wintery weather for about 30 minutes.  For the rest of the weekend we pretty much stayed in and hid from the cold.  Later on that night we watched the new movie Chris got me, "Who wants to kill Jessie?".  Its a Czech movie with subtitles about dreams coming to life, and it was pretty interesting. I definitely recommend it to people who like quirky foreign films.  On top of watching snow and awesome movies, I experimented with resin and corkboard this weekend, and ended the weekend with a hilarious game of scrabble and homemade pizza with Chris' friends. 

The snow brings in good times!