I have two Marimekko pieces… the bf got this shower curtain and piece of fabric for me for X-mas last year. My dad made a wooden panel and it’s hanging in our bedroom. They’ve been around for so long, even my mom had their fabric framed, hanging in her first apartment.

shower curtain

enormous wall hanging

Their Autumn fabrics are now out and I can’t say I like many of them at all for wall hangings, pillows, upholstery, anything. They used to have a lot of variety. You could get these big retro patterns but you could also find an intricate clean repeat. What do you think? I think it looks dingy, boring and old… and not in that good old way.

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I keep seeing these wonderful prints I want on my walls. I never wanted to decorate with small wall hangings. It starts to feel messy. A few large pieces were fine with me but now, I’m starting to justify a few groupings in my head because these prints are so great!

All from Little Paper Planes. Click picture to be taken to it.

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Someone is finally selling prints of particle tracks officially licensed from CERN. I am sooooo excited. I have been searching for so long. I even wrote to CERN to see if they were selling prints but they have bigger fish to fry. Media Storehouse has them in different sizes, framed and unframed.

I want to get a few of them in smaller sizes and hang them together. These are the ones I’m considering. Sorry about the watermarks. Nerds unite!

Bubble chamber particle tracks. Coloured image showing a collection of tracks left by subatomic particles in a bubble chamber. A bubble chamber is a container filled with liquid hydrogen which is superheated – momentarily raised above its normal boiling point by a sudden drop in pressure in the container. Any charged particle passing through the liquid in this state leaves behind a trail of tiny bubbles as the liquid boils in its wake. These bubbles are seen as fine tracks, showing the characteristic paths of different types of particle. The paths are curved due to an intense applied magnetic field. The tightly-wound spiral tracks are due to electrons and positrons.

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Streamer chamber photograph of 220 charged subatomic particles spilling out from the collision of a high-energy oxygen nucleus with a nucleus in a lead target. The picture was obtained by the NA35 experiment at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory outside Geneva. In addition to the 220 charged particles that leave a track in the streamer chamber, physicists estimated that a further 80 electrically neutral (& therefore invisible) particles were created in the collision. From a run in November 1986.

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No idea who nominated me, and it was most likely a joke but, being in the list of contenders for RVANews’ Class of 2010 as “most artistic”, is hilarious to me. Last year, my blog was nominated as “best kept secret”. I of course didn’t win that and I won’t win this.

If you want to check out what makes me so gosh darn artistic (other than my general love for amazing works by others), check out these posts of copy-cat art I’ve done on the cheap for my apartment. post 1, post 2.

This post will help you make your own.

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For a while now, I’ve been escaping into this dreamy world of soft focus pictures and an ultra-feminine aesthetic. I love my clean minimal apartment with all my heart but; there is another side of me that would be just as happy in a little country cottage, growing my own vegetables and making art.

I posted about the image bookmarking site called We Heart It a while back. Every few days, I peruse the pics and add a few more to my collection of these fantasy images. This is my latest favorite picture:

Outdoor party in the country anyone?

Yesterday, shoppher tweeted about this post which ended up turning into one of those internet perusing explosions where I discovered a few new blogs I think I’m going to love. You might too!

Habit

Dreamcats – if you love dreamy cats. I submitted some pictures of Nibbles when she was a kitten. Here’s one:

The Snail and the Cyclops – love this girl’s style

Fieldguided – a nice little life

Any recommendations?

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Last night, I was curled up in bed wasting time online and my google reader showed that a new post had gone up. It was Tara McPherson’s blog, announcing the release of a special project she had participated in with other artists to commemorate the ending of LOST. I’m a diehard McPherson fan, and an infinitely frustrated LOST fan. When I looked at the print, it looked so much like my boyfriend and myself and the love story of Sun and Jin is so tragic and romantic. Typical of McPherson, the imagery is dreamy and soothing. The price was right to finally own one of 500 of these signed Tara prints that will end up being sentimental for many reasons… and an investment.  

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I didn’t think it was going to be so soon since my last painting project that I would find new inspiration for another! Here is the newest piece that has struck me as something I would like to see on the wall above our bed, could see myself actually painting, and all the supplies cost $20! (You can purchase prints of Simon Page’s work here.)

I purchased a 22″ x 28″ canvas for $15. Ben Franklin Crafts was having a great deal on craft acrylics – 3 bottles for $1 so, the bf and I picked out a ton of muted tones that we liked to use along with paint I already have.

The next step was to figure out the math. 22″ divided by 8 vertical columns = lines spaced 2 3/4″ apart. I carefully marked those out and marked each inch along the left and right sides. Then I started intersecting lines accordingly with a straight edge and pencil.

Well…. there was a minor problem. I hadn’t realized the canvas was 1/8″ of an inch off and after a few horizontal lines, I noticed things weren’t intersecting right. Yeah. Lesson learned – double check your base measurements before you start! I had to erase everything and start over again. I just about lost it and had to calm down and think for a second. I found the center (with 1/16″ off on the left and right) and started over again. Success!

Oh, and these clear grid rulers are THE BEST for stuff like this! You can line things up perfectly!

Time to paint! Here’s my messy grid with some color filled in. I found that with light colors, after I had picked which area I was going to paint, it was smart to erase the inner lines so that I didn’t have to put tons of coats on to cover up the pencil marks. Oh, and with cheap paint… you pretty much get what you pay for. We won’t go into how much I hated using those damn cheap craft paints. I also painted the entire thing with my most favorite 1/4″ flat brush. It allowed me to get into teeny corners and keep clean edges.

Here’s a crappy phone cam pic of the painting in progress.

Over three weeks later and here’s the completed project! (Sorry for the bad pics. I kept forgetting to bring my good camera and I’ve been sick as a dog for 2 weeks.)

So yeah, it’s all done and now I don’t know what to do with myself in the evenings.

So why go through all this trouble when I could spend over $100 more and just buy the print and have it framed (framed because I’m not a teenager and I don’t tack up glorified posters on my walls)? Well, I think I just answered that question. I’m cheap.  I’m also a glutton for punishment, slightly OCD, and I like having projects that are customized for my own decor. So there.

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I love embroidery. My grandmother, mother, aunt, and cousin all were extremely talented in this skill. I’ve tried my hand at cross stitch a few times for some small silly gifts but really don’t have the patience to see a large project through to completion. It’s a great way to pass the time, but certainly not as mindless as knitting, where you can knit a scarf over a weekend while watching movies. You have to pay attention to every stitch, the pattern, and neatness. Typically associated with women, it’s great to see a young guy like Aubrey Longley-Cook execute these amazing pieces. Check out his blog Spool Spectrum. He showcases his own work, other talent, as well as vintage pieces he collects.

Here’s some of his amazing work:

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Just saw this and had to share:

French artist Baptiste Debombourg creates installations with staples. Wow.

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There’s a big difference between being an artist and simply having some skill. I am no artist. I have a hard time coming up with original ideas and actually making them real. I come up with ideas all the time but something gets lost in translation from my brain to the canvas, unless is purely geometric. SO, I’m a really good copy cat. I can draw photorealistically from a picture and I can handle a paint brush if I have a pre-existing guide.

Over the holidays, I copied this Hannah Stouffer painting, with my own twist and color variations for our livingroom.

my version

Last week, I needed to run to Ben Franklin Crafts for some crafty stuff and saw they were having a huge sale on canvases. They always do. So, I swiped up three 11″ x 14″ primed canvases for $2 each to do a little series. I have had this Central Illustration pillow bookmarked for a while. I really like the design and well… I painted it!

Since the design is square and I was stretching it horizontally over 3 small canvases, there was some improv involved. I also didn’t feel like doing those precise stripes in the background. I sketched out a loose plan on paper and drew directly onto the canvas where I wanted the big sections of black and white to go. I filled in the black and white then that huge amount of grey and the rest of the fine leaf/root detailing was done freehand. Taking note of the layers and steps I had to work in was the only moment of pause. All was done with Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics I’ve had lying around for over 10 years from design classes, a white paint pen that I ended up using for the white skeleton part, and some old sable brushes. $13 total and some free time. Not bad.

Here’s a shot mid-way through:

Here’s the end result:

I did post a while back to help you make your own art on the cheap. Check it out.

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