Sumimasen!

I just discover Isabelle Boinot's sketch books and boy oh boy are they great. The water colour, the collage, the cartoons, the sausage dogs! She has two blogs, one focused on her travels to Kyoto, and the other on her Tokyo experiences. It tells you pretty much everything that Wikipedia won't, in the very best way.

Yesterday a fancy new macbook pro arrived in the mail for me, it was all rather thrilling. Ahhh technology. This means I can finally start putting up personal photos as they have been trapped in my camera for far too long. Watch this space.

Right now I am struggling to remind myself of the fact that so much goodness can come from pen, paper, scissors and glue, all because of my macbook giddiness. Thank goodness Boinots illustrations are here to remind me.

Sumimasen and Sugoi 

Enjoy!

blind dating is exciting

Who

If your art teacher told you that collaging could never be fine art they were wrong. Donna K shows us it is AOK and art doesn't always mean picking up the paint brush. Creating beautiful images through mish mashing of miscellaneous here pieces are balanced, beautiful and bizarre. She also has a knack for naming her works with titles such a 'blind dating is exciting' and 'don't get a tinkerbell tattoo'. In a world of cut and paste, it's nice to see something once considered appropriate for children on rainy afternoons with a pottle of glue and scissors, has taken on such exquisite form.

Push yourself

Make a flyer of your day

Create a constellation from freckles

Fix something

Make an encouraging banner

Recently I had the creeping feeling that I have been getting a little bit lazy in life. Apart from occasionally jamming my head in bus doors (prev post) I haven't been doing much to terrify and exhilarate myself, in the best possible way of course. Last night, in a burst of bravery I went to the movies alone. I have never done this. With an unfortunate sense of irony I picked 'Date Night', no judgement please. It had Tina Fey and I love her, alas the film was terrible. As I sat in the cinema surrounded by smoochy couples chewing on popcorn I felt pleased with myself. I had conquered a minor fear, I had pushed myself. The pitying glances and movie attendant who raised his eyebrows before saying "just one ticket the? just one...to Date Night?" didn't bother me at all.

I recently acquired Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July's book 'Learning to Love you More'. It came at just the right time. The two authors gave the public a list of assignments to complete and published submissions in book and blog form. It catalogues the mundane elements that every day life can sometimes bring but encourages us to look at it in a new light.Visiting the blog and reading the book is slightly a voyeuristic experience into the lives of others but it helped me realise that we all have fears and we all need to push ourselves a little bit more.

You can visit the blog here.

Simply delightful

Adorable. Amy over at One day creates these little treasures, I am super, super jealous.

Manu

Manu is derived from the Latin - hand made, which is an appropriate name for lauren manoogian's innovative jewelry line which she hand makes using paper clips, silver rings and electrical tape. Swoon.

Crystalline memories

Finding these was one of those uuuuugh, why didn't I think of that! moments ...
Lance Letscher trawls opshops and bookstores for used notebooks, diaries, handwritten letters, notes and books of which he then cuts into little shards of memories to piece together these kaleidoscopic quilt work collages.