GLST

Yesterday I happened upon a documentary on PBS about Emile Norman, By His Own Design. Although I've seen Emile's work many many times, I'd never heard of him before, and after watching the documentary I was really surprised that I hadn't. Not only is his life story incredibly inspirational and romantic, he also created one of the most impressive works of art in San Francisco, the mosaic window in the Masonic Temple on Nob Hill (detail below).

Norman is a genius artist who was completely self taught, who, when he could not find the material he needed, invented a new kind of epoxy. That's the kind of innovator he was, and still is.
Also interesting to me at this time , since I'm taking my first Gay and Lesbian Studies class right now, is that he is something of a gay icon. He was born in 1918, and was out when people didn't do such things. He and his partner built themselves a house in Big Sur, where they lived openly (and happily) as a couple and he has been an inspiration to other gay artists. Since this is Gay (and Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered and Queer) Pride Month, I think it is happily appropriate that I have encountered all kinds of cool LGBT culture stuff in the past couple weeks, which I can share with you, like the Norman documentary, a really interesting (and kind of depressing) article about John Cheever in Believer magazine, a cute show on Logo called Exes and Ohs, and the upcoming movie Chris and Don: A Love Story, which I am looking forward to.
Anyway, the point really is that I highly recommend the Emile Norman documentary, or, if you don't have a chance to see it, at least visit his website to see examples of his amazing work, or, if you live in San Francisco, take the cable car up to the top of Nob Hill and check out the Masonic Temple in person. You could even make a little day of it; the Temple is right across the street from Grace Cathedral and the Flood Mansion and just a block or two from the Fairmont Hotel, home of the Tonga Room and their famous Lava Bowls. Yum.
mel

I'm Chuck Bass

Okay, I know this is totally unrelated to, well, anything really, but tell me: is it wrong that I am like 1000% in love with this outfit?If it's wrong, I don't want to be right.
mel

Fuzzy Notebooks

Friday night I ended up home all alone, which is the perfect set up for one of two things to happen; either I order takeout, burrow into the couch and watch degrassi and eat donuts all night, or I am super-productive superwoman. Luckily, this time the latter situation was the winner, and I tucked into a feast of bookmaking. I'd bought a bunch of felt rectangles a couple years ago with grand ideas to make a stuffed book about dinosaurs, but that never came to fruition, so I've been trying to come up with ways I can use all of it, and I came up with the idea of using them for notebook covers. I am pretty happy with my first attempts, so happy in fact, that they ended up in my etsy shop! Here are some pictures

Aren't they cute? I used some buttons that I had leftover from another project (knit ipod covers for my sisters a couple Christmases ago) because I know how to sew buttons. You should be able to see in the pictures that the stitches are far from even; I did all the sewing by hand and I don't sew, that's why it looks like that. I like it though, I think it works with the materials to give it a kind of "I made this in my kindergarten craft corner" look. Which is kind of what I was going for. I wish I could have used some of that gigantic yarn they always have in kindergarten classes. Remember that stuff? You probably have to buy it from teacher supply stores. I should get some, it would be fun to make necklaces with. Anyway, I'm rambling again. Right, the books are in the shop, check 'em out when you get a chance. A bunch more books will be popping up in there in the next few days, along with the drawings that I shared in the last post (plus more drawings that haven't been seen yet). Very exciting! I'm also hoping to have some more etsy artist interviews soon, there are a couple shops that I've been crushing on hard, I just need to get around to contacting the folks behind them, so look for those within the next couple weeks.

Oh, and I just realized that I haven't talked about my mom's shop on here yet! My mom is a real hand at the knitting needles and the crochet hook. She's been selling her gorgeous scarves at the elementary school she works at for a while now and I finally convinced her to get on etsy, and now she is! Check out some of the pictures (taken by me, featuring my mom and my sisters)

Totes cute, right?!? If you need a scarf, this is the place for you to go, I promise. The shop name is JillRoska and she has 11 scarves up in the shop now, including the ones pictured here, but she is a crazy prolific knitter, and I know she has baskets and baskets full of yarn just waiting to be made into something perfect for you. She does custom orders too! Seriously, you need to peep it right now!

mel

Marc Jacobs again...

Blah blah blah, everyone knows I have a love hate sick haggy queen crush on Marc Jacobs (btw, I just watched the Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton documentary made for French TV and, if you haven't, you must see it.) So of course I wanted to share this video posted on Jezebel today where a young, fresh faced, 90s Marc talks about how nervous he is to be taking over as creative director at LV. It's cute to see him being all anxious and kind of spilling his guts on tv, and also kind of cute that he kind of looks like Stephen Malkmus, my other sick, grunge, 90s crush. It's unfortunate, however, that it has to be with Charlie Rose, because that guy is a douche (see: My Kid Could Paint That.)
Watch it HERE.

busy busy

Yesterday was a busy busy day! I took a half day at work, which was really really nice. Then I tried to buy some muslin for my sewing class on Saturday...but that did not work out. Then I did a million loads of laundry and got stuff tidied and then my friend Erin came over for some heavy duty crafting. It was super fun. I really like having "craft nights." I made ten more of my "gumball" sculpy magnets and for some reason it took me about three times longer than the other day when I made seven. But they turned out pretty nice. Ooh, and we watched the new Laguna Beach (which is now set in and called Newport Beach or Harbor or something), and it looks exactly like the first season, meaning awesome.
Oh oh! I bought a new digital camera yesterday! I'm so psyched! It's a HP photo M something or other. It was on a really good sale, and the reviews seemed mostly positive. It's coming in the mail, hopefully by next week. I can't wait! I am so anxious to get my Etsy shop up and running. Also, I bought some Crayola Fabric Crayons today, because...well, I don't know why, because I am a sucker for that kind of thing I guess. Novelty products. I am excited to try them out tonight though. I am envisioning an awesome big rig truck and one of those funny Toyota trucks, in red...I'll let you know how it turns out.
mel

i'm a Cutter

Well, the digital camera is still broken in that it will not take pictures, but not broken in that I was able to upload all the pictures that were on it! I was so relieved. I was already thinking about getting a new digital camera, and now I guess my mind has been made up for me. All suggestions are welcome, since I have little to no experience or know how. Let me know what has worked for you.

I went to IKEA today (I don't know why exactly I'm writing IKEA in all caps), and I got the cute little red cart drawer thingee, and I also got this which is really cool (and cheap!), you buy little bins to put in it (it holds 12), I think it will be perfect for storing paints and brushes and other supplies. Now though I'm tired from driving around in the East Bay heat (Steve's car doesn't have air conditioning) so I am blogging instead of putting my new stuff together. Organization may have to wait 'til next weekend.


Anyway, like I said last night, I was crafting all night long, so I wanted to share some pictures of that with you. Here is one notebook I made:

Note the clutter. I really like how this book turned out, I used all the same lined paper, it's about 100 pages. The paper is really thin, I was writing on it last night and it's really nice, especially for pencil. It's really smooth.

Also last night I tried out my Crayola Cutter that I got for my birthday. As soon as I saw the Cutter I knew I had to have one, my craft knife skills are so mentally challenged. With this you use it like a pen or pencil, it feels very natural. Here is a picture of me working on a cute little tag I made, and a picture of the completed tag:

The picture doesn't really do justice to how cute it is. Finally, I made another book as well, I don't have any pictures of the final product because it was completed after the camera was broken, but here is a picture of it in process:


There were a couple neat things about this notebook, one was that I used my corner rounder on it, which I've had for ever but hadn't tried until last night. At first I was having some trouble with it, but I got the hang of it after a while and it really made for a neat look. Secondly I used this vintage Laura Ashley wall paper as the binding (the pattern is the first picture at the beginning of this post). I am really excited about that wallpaper because I saw it at SCRAP (more about SCRAP later) a week or two ago and wanted to get it but I already had soooo much stuff that I passed, but I when I went yesterday and it was still there I had to snatch it up. It was only four dollars for the whole roll! I can't wait to use it more, it's so pretty.
The last thing from last night, I tried making a felt magnet because I had a bunch of felt and a bunch of magnets, so ... why not?



I'm not sure how I feel about it...it's kind of nice, but I'm not in love with it. I'm not really that into flowers, but I wanted to do something quick and easy while I was still experimenting. Maybe dinosaurs would be better...

Well, I feel pretty refreshed now so I think I'm going to go work on putting my IKEA stuff together. I have to hurry though because I'm seeing Superbad tonight! I am so excited. Oh, speaking of Michael Cera, if you haven't already seen this, seriously, you have to. It is genius.
mel