Well, I just randomly stumbled across the cutest little song. It’s from one of the Pixar shorts, and it’s precious as all get-out. I looked up the chords for my trusty tenor ukulele (which I can sort of play now!), and now officially have a new song in my repertoire that I can also sing. It makes me smile, and I hope that you also get a smile from it today too!
Hello readers! Long time, no see. I’ve been feeling guilty for a long time about the apparent death of my little art blog, and have finally decided it’s time to return to the blogosphere and bring my small but awesome audience more things that I find beautiful and interesting. It’s always fun having a space to share things, to spread the love, instead of just keeping it to myself. Art for everybody!
So I’ll go back to one of my original posts, almost two years ago, where I professed my deep and undying love for calendars. I rarely write anything on them, but I keep becoming more and more impressed with the offerings for beautiful, offbeat calendars on the internet these days. So I took to Etsy, my happy place, and thought I’d share some of my favourites for this year (I’ll probably end up with 3 calendars this year….I can see it now…)
Rifle Paper Company Folk Calendar
This first one is a cheat, because it’s not from Etsy but I DON’T CARE OKAY? I love love love love Rifle Paper Company. Such beautiful floral patterns (my favourite!), cards, and my favourite ever phone cases are just a few of the things I love about this company. For a brief and crazy moment, I nearly justified getting a new phone (mentally talked myself into how bad my sort-of-crappy-but-certainly-not-broken phone was) in part so I could get the good Rifle cases (as my phone is dated now). That’s how deep my love is for this brand. They have several beautiful calendars coming out for this year (Alice in Wonderland, Traveling the World), but my favourite so far is the folk art calendar.
Enough said! For fans of the Log Lady and beyond, by And So It Goes on Etsy.
Seasonal Beer Pairings Calendar
This calendar is super cute, and I can think of several hardcore beer lovers in my life (I’m from Vancouver Island, after all!) who this would be a good fit for. By Redcruiser on Etsy.
Birthstone Letterpress Calendar
I’m a sucker for gems, and also a sucker for letterpress. Maybe I’m just a sucker? But this is a beautiful, fancy little calendar by Mink Letterpress on Etsy that has a rough cut of each month’s respective birthstone as the art for the month. It’s gorgeous! I’ve ordered this one as my main calendar this year. ❤ ❤
By Modern Printed Matter on Etsy. Lovely, colourful, and includes some of my favourite animals.
National Parks Calendar (Two Editions)
Erin Vaughan on Etsy has two different editions of her watercolour prints of American National Parks. Beautiful and outdoorsy!
I could go on and on, with this search, but I still think the best thing about the internet is how it’s opened up so many things to everyone (who has the internet, I suppose). Gone are the days when getting a calendar for Christmas meant getting one from the selection of 6 at the local bookstore that was full of stock Golden Retriever photographs. Until next time, everyone!
Art for the sake of art is always a beautiful thing. We as humans are lucky creatures to be able to enjoy things aesthetically. But art for a purpose? That really floats my boat! Sophie Gamand, photographer extraordinaire, was tired of pit bulls getting a bad rap. They are the victims of misconceptions, and often sit in shelters for much longer than the average breed, and they are euthanized more often. They’re judged on misconceptions and general physical characteristics, and there are so many pit bulls out there that are little love bugs.
So the NYC-based photographer teamed up with several animal rescue groups in the city to do a glamorous photo shoot of pitties in flowered headdresses. They all look beautiful, like flower children of the revolution. Maybe it will change someone’s mind!
When’s the last time you called your grandmother? Gone to visit? Went out for a cup of tea? I’m as guilty as the next grandchild at not being in as often contact as I would like.
But Sacha Goldberger, French photographer extraordinaire, has pulled ahead in the doting grandchild department. Noticing that his 91-year-old grandmother, Frederika, was feeling depressed a few years ago, Sacha suggested that Frederika let him take a series of photographs of her, complete with wild costumes and fantastical situations. At first a reluctant participant, she did agree and from there, a superhero was born. The project is high-concept, cheeky, and touches me greatly; I work with a largely older client base in my profession, and nothing makes me happier than seeing older folks who are still feeling spirited and don’t lose their sense of self just because they’ve had a few more birthdays than the rest of us!
The photos I have rustled up are from a combination of photo shoots, some from the original, some from a shoot where a friend of Mamika Frederika’s was invited along, and a third featuring her friend and Darth Vader. Enjoy! (Oh yes, and there is even a Mamika book! Because, of course there is. The universe wanted to cheer me up today)
I’m a sucker for a good rainbow. Bright colours, contrast, interesting combinations. I actually think it’s more than that, I’m in love with colour and ready for a relationship with it.
Studio Floto + Warner (Cassandra Warner and Jeremy Floto) have a talent for stunning photography. In their project Colourant, they have taken water-based coloured liquids, and photographed them splashed in midair (against a natural backdrop), at a speed of 1/3200th of a second. The results are flowy and intriguing. They look a little different every time I look at them. Enjoy!
Who doesn’t remember those little green army men? With their little guns, feet moulded together like on tiny surfboards…..some of them had those little flimsy parachutes. I spent much time staging battles with my brother or throwing the parachutists from the top of the stairs in our split-level with my oldest friend. A classic childhood toy, no?
Yoga practitioner and entrepreneur Dan Abramson had an interesting idea, though. He created a collection of toy army soldiers doing yoga poses (he’s called the collection Yoga Joes). The project was funded on Kickstarter (more than meeting its goal). They’re quirky and fun. I would love a set, myself!
Chris Wood is a UK artist who studied furniture design at Middlesex University. She became fascinated with light, which eventually lead her to explore the properties of glass, and the aesthetic potential of light. The artist of many commissioned works, what caught my attention was a blog post relating to her use of dichroic (two-coloured) glass. This glass was originally created by NASA in order to protect against the harm of direct sunlight, and switches from being gold and mirror-like, to transparent, to coloured depending on the angle of light or the viewpoint of the person observing the glass. Favouring simple designs not supported by a lot of other materials, her colourful works have caught my eye! I wish I could have found more pictures.
Well, I’m pretty sure I just lucked into one of the greatest things I’ve seen in awhile on ye old internet. The creativity of others never fails me. I may have mentioned this before, but one of my favourite blogs is the Jealous Curator, and I think her title is perfect. I love things and also feel a flash of jealousy at the fact that people come up with such fun ideas. Where’s my creativity? But it doesn’t bother me too much, because I still get to enjoy everything. Art is the best.
ANYHOW, Jonathan Crow is fantastical. A history buff (as evidenced by this project), writer, and artist who works out of LA. He does a variety of work, most notably (to me), a series of portraits of every single U.S. Vice President, hand-drawn, with an octopus on his head. You heard me. I’m just going to leave this here, and start saving up the $900 CAD it will cost to get a complete set of his prints on Etsy.
Summer is basically over. It’s time that we face the gloomy, gray, drizzly music and just accept that fact right now. But before we say goodbye to my very favourite warm, sunny, unseasonably dry season of the whole year, let’s check out some photography. Aerial photography, that is, by Bernhard Lang. Most of the photos featured here are from an Adriatic beach resort, and when I look at them, I feel the sun warm on my shoulders and my feet in the sand. Join me, won’t you?
Wow. Wow wow wow. There are times that you look at photography and go, “oh, that’s nice,” or “oh, that’s pretty.” And there are other times that you are just captivated. I’m so glad to be making time to search out beautiful things again, and I stumbled upon the amazing photographer Richard Silver. I originally heard about his “Time Sliced” collection (featured at the bottom of this post), wherein he takes photos of well-known landmarks over time and splices them together, and those wowed me enough. Then I discovered that Silver is the master of “Tilt-Shift” photography, which makes the subjects and their surroundings look to be of a scale on par with an ant. I was collecting photos for this post, and just kept going and going and going. He sells prints through many different places (links are all on his website), and I wish I could afford one. My goodness, they took my breath away. Enjoy!
Graphic Design Love 