it seems to be that i'm a supermodel. or sartre.

Didn't fool you, did I?

I was checking out etsy forums (always good for a laugh) and found this thread about your celebrity look-alike. I'm taking a break from printing, so I check it out. What do you think?





It greatly amuses me that I got more photos of men than women!

free samples about pirates, animals, and much more.

This is the brilliant title that greeted me in my email box this morning. It's Friday, and that means the Dover Sampler is here! If you haven't signed up yet, do it here. And then you too can have Elvis paper dolls like these. I'm so excited about the "Caped outfit with beading"!

thrifty finds, and making your own stuff.

I've been avoiding working in the studio for the last few weeks--trying to recharge after the Queen City Craft Bazaar. And so, I've been obsessively hunting for a coffee table. I didn't want anything fancy, and preferably not new, but it's been months now and no luck. Until Thursday, when I found this silly little table at the Bargain Boutique in Waterbury. It was painted a hideous blue on top, and white underneath, and came with its own spiders. Luckily, I've been investing in spray paint lately, and this baby blue was perfect. Sort of.

To make the coffee table more at home, I rearranged the living room to make a cozy "living" space, and a more compact "studio" space. You can see my little red birdie from nquinn nesting on top of my computer, and my press lurking in the corner! That pile behind the coffee table is a stack of pillows-in-progress. I saw Amy Butler's In Stitches at the fabric store, and fell in love with these cushy floor pillows. And since this painting by mixandmingle has been the source of inspiration for the whole room, I decided to raid my much-too-large pile of fabric and make pink, red, and orange pillows. All at the same time. And someday I'll get to finish them, too.

who wants a love story anyways?

Okay, so sometimes I read Harlequin Romances. But only vintage ones--I don't read anything past 1974. I'm not really sure why, but I think the covers start to get trashy looking after that.

So this week, I've been obsessively reading, instead of dealing with the fact that my jobs totally stress me out and I have a craft show and only a week a half to prepare. And I'm turning thirty in seven days.

One new book, Lisa Lutz's The Spellman Files, I checked out of the library because I liked the cover. And I read it one sitting--I couldn't put it down except to make more coffee. I have a thing about books set in San Francisco, and girls who wear leather jackets. Izzy Spellman, the main character, rocks. And the author wears leather in her jacket photo.

One book I've had on my shelf for awhile, and reread periodically, is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It's a love story. And a sci-fi novel. And the Ms. Niffenegger includes poetry--a lot--which I adore. In real life, she's a book artist and college professor and I have such paper-book envy of her I can't even stand it. This weekend at Paper Source (after teaching a truly fun workshop) I browsed through a new book called The Book as Art: Artists' Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. It's totally drool-worthy, and for the first time, I was sad that I didn't live in DC. So that I could sleep on the steps of that museum to be the first one in the door every day. It was also a good inspiration to get off my ass and start making my own books again.

Snow? Spring? Whatever.

These pretty birds were making a ruckus outside my bedroom window--trying to pluck the crabapples off the tree.

i just can't get enough

It's true. I just can't get enough. Since browsing through my latest Smith Alumnae Quarterly, and discovering that Smith's radio station streams online, I put it on every day at work. It's good. Really good. And what's better than listening to beautiful, smart, strong women playing the Flaming Lips?

chronicles

I know it sounds dorky, but my favorite christmas presents were always books. The year I was eight or nine (it was twenty years ago, okay?) I received two boxed sets of books--The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Little House on the Prairie series. Both of which I read compulsively and repeatedly. Until I went away to college, and left most of my books at home. Recently I asked my mom to ship me some of my childhood books, and she replied that she'd sold them at a garage sale. I didn't know that I NEEDED the Narnia books until that moment. And so I've been on a quest.

I told my super housemate Christie about this minor obsession, and later that same day came home to an early birthday present--my birthday's not for another month--which was--ta da! The Chronicles of Narnia, BRAND NEW, never been read, with the box and everything. It's silly, because I know that there are many more beautifully bound versions of the series. But this is the one I had as a kid. Gold stars for Christie!