Little feature with The Black Apple + My Paper Crane = Superpowers!
I didn't even know about this! I mean, I knew that Tim from HelloIndie had written to me a bit ago, but to be honest I had kinda forgotten about the write up.
But how cute + wonderful everything looks! Hurrah!
These beauties are now for sale in the Black Apple shop, here. They're
hand-cut silhouettes of my bird's nest hair girl, and they very nearly gave
me carpal tunnel syndrome yesterday! But they're lovely and definently worth it.
The green gal has sold, but the rest are available (for the time being!)
Whew! All four sold today. Maybe another batch will turn up soon :)
I've had a very blissful weekend so far, which started with a fun movie date with
my friend Jenny on Friday. We went to see "American Dreamz", which was pretty funny. Anyone who has ever seen even one set of preliminary auditions for American Idol would appreciate the satire. Not great, but kinda fun entertainment.
I find it hilarious, personally, how my standards for movies I'd like to see tend to plummet the closer we get to summer, and the further we are from the "golden months" of movies (october-december).
This weekend, I truly was up for going to see "Friends With Money" (featuring all of the aging, quirky looking ladies of hollywood...Catherine Keener, Francis Mcdormand, Joan Cusack and (the exception, I suppose) Jennifer Aniston). I was also up for "Silent Hill" (cough of embarrassment). I cannot wait until Art School Confidential & The Notorious Bettie Page come out...then I won't have to be embarrassed (for about a weekend)!
I also went to Borders for my monthly magazine binge (it's my only real vice). Holy Smokes, has anyone seen the newest issue of Selvedge? It is so incredible. So incredible in fact, it deserves a blog of it's own.
I did buy the new Giant Robot, though, and I am a little smitten with the work of the cover artist, Jeana Sohn. You can see the great cover here , and her website proper is here .
The interview is kind of a bore, but the work is great. The low point is the uninspired way in which she tells of how she "got her style/aesthetic" so to speak, which was that she went to see a show at Giant Robot (ironic) 2 years ago and liked that (dare I say trendy?) superflat-illustrationy-Mary Blairish stuff (ie, Seonna Hong who I love) that so many folks do these days, and decided to parrot it. This girl's visual sources are her contemporaries, other "flat" painters, not the actual 40's, 50's and 60's children's book illustrations and films that really created & popularized this look. As someone who has always been inspired more by fashion/textiles, music and film than by painters, illustrators, or photographers (my own mediums), I don't really understand people who take all of their visual cues from a contemporary who's doing something just like them, and in the same medium. I don't mean to be hard on this person, her work is lovely, it just loses a little bit of...something...for me when I think about people's work being so trendy. Like, mexican wrestlers are the new bigfoot are the new deer...(if you get my drift).
The high point, however, is when she tells the stories that are actually straight from her childhood. The best is one in which her father killed a crow, and brought it into the house. Their house was immediately surrounded by throngs of other crows, who knew what was inside (She speculated that maybe he was the king). The murder of crows went away when the dead crow was buried elsewhere. A great story. I hope so much that it's true!
Last night was paper cutting, fun sushi dinner with Clint at our usual Saturday date-night place, and then chai and lots of magazine reading (and a great conversation about Hello Kitty and handwriting tablets at the coffee shop with my friend Mary + her boyfriend + Clint).
I have high hopes for the rest of today, so I better unplug myself from the internet now!
The view from where I stood yesterday was too good
not to share.
So, the snips and snails...well, that's all about Mrs. Suzanna Snail right here (created in the same movie watching frenzy as all of the other little cuties from yesterday). She just needed a little cape, a riding cape to be precise. Clint suggested a cape, and I think he was thinking more Superman...but with me, you ask for superhero, you get Jo March.
Also, 2 new little paintings added to the Black Apple shop:
wooden bunny + glasses girl and fox baby
So I think it's mostly pictures today. Not too many words to say...
ooh! Except that my blogging is coming to you directly from my new, new-smelling computer!
Hooray! Double hooray!
I've been running on the dreaded "Windows ME" for the last 5 years, every day fearing
the destruction of my un-backed-up everything. So here we are. It's super fast and super...works. Which is astonishing enough!
Happy Friday!
I think I'll be back with another installment of "People that I want to Marry" later today....Just a feeling.
The postcard sets are up in the shop, now! They're my "featured items" of the day.
I just gotta add this in. My new computer (hooray!) just came via UPS. And you know what I realized? My UPS man looks exactly like John Doe. The singer from X. Exactly. Except for maybe more handsome...in that vaguely alchoholic way.
I spent yesterday being a total lazy layabout with my sweetie, which entails lots of movie watching, which equals little projects that can be done in front of the television. I paint alot while we watch movies (a habit that sometimes can be annoying, I know, especially when it comes to foreign films...Clint says "If you can't even listen to the movie (as I can with movies in English) why are we even watching?!" In my defense I have my methods of knowing what's going on in the movie. I look up sometimes.
Anyway, the whole rigamarole about my movie watching rituals was to bring us to several actual points. One is: The Godfather Pt. Three is not that bad. After being told by every film-god-fearing movie buff that it is terrible, it was actually pretty good. It's only bad in contrast to the "eerie perfection" (-boyfriend) of the first two. And Sophia Coppola is an unbelievably bad actress. Everytime she came on the scene and had even the silghtest bit of dialogue, I was chanting "shut up-shut up-shut-up". I think it's her voice. It's a good thing for many reasons that she became a director....though, am I the only smarty pants girl (or boy) in the room who never really saw what the B.F.D. was about The Virgin Suicides? I really liked Lost In Translation, though, so it's all apples and oranges I suppose.
The other point (point two?) is my little felty hand stitched friends that were made yesterday.
Tomato Family/Potentially cruel pin cushion set
Appparently, baby tomatoes don't develop
mouths until later in life. Who knew?
Cranky Bluebird.
Sweet little Mushrooms. These are also going to
double as pincushions, I believe. Or they could.
They are my favorites.
Some of these guys are off to live in the The Little Moth shop, and a few are staying right here.
Oh, before I completely get off the subject of films for today, we also watched Broadcast News , which was great. A borderline romantic comedy about people with principals that are important to them! It's so rare that I see a movie, especially one from this unfortunate genre, that makes me feel like less of an alien. I love Holly Hunter something fierce...mostly because of The Piano , one of my favorite movies, but also because of her dexterity and realness (real in a witty, clever way, not a depressing way).
Happy Thursday!
New postcards for the shop arrived yesterday, and now they're all packaged up pretty in sets of 10 with 10 envelopes a piece. As mentioned a week or so ago, I chose "A Good Egg is Hard to Find", "Curious Birdplane" and a combination pack of "Snail Rider" + "Red Fawn Rider" (5 of each image). These cuties will be in the shop later today to meet all your correspondance needs.
Also, I finished a new painting last night, and here she is to meet you:
She's got a typewriter dress, people, a dress that's a typewriter. I'm telling you this idea had been swimming around and around in my head ever since I drew my little telephone girl.
She is quite a lovely lady. (I forgot to add earlier that she sold while I was asleep to the dear Leisl, who is becoming one of my best customers! Thanks, Leisl!)
Ok, well I'm off to watch the Godfather 3 (I had never seen 1 or 2 until last night, when a wave of guilt and alienation washed over me for not having watched them, as they are A.) Mega Famous and B.) My mother's favorite movies.
Two things were done this afternoon. Well not done entirely this afternoon, but finished this afternoon. One is the thrifted dresser spoken of...oh...a few days ago. It is now complete, and will from now on be referred to as "My Favorite Dresser Ever".
I painted it with a very pretty interior satin finish paint from Lowe's called "Well Water"...that's some very vivid water you've got there in your well, Mr. Lowe(s). The little floral design down there at the bottom (difficult to see) is actually wrapping paper that I decoupaged. The whole darn thing didn't really stand a chance until I added these babies, though. The knobs. These lovely, lovely knobs.
These are the prettiest drawer pulls that a girl could ever hope for! And it only made sense, since the dresser itself cost a mere 5 clams, to spend...oh, 14 times that on knobs.
To appease Clint, I did look at the hardware store but all had to offer was boring boring boring and then some ugly copper-look seahorses. No thanks. So I got them from here. Big suprise :)
I also beat it up a bit about the edges (with sandpaper) to make sure those knobs didn't make it too prissy. And because I like for things to look comfy and worn in when it comes to dressers and the like.
And the tote is super cute, too...and is in the Little Moth shop now. But it is totally eclipsed by the dresser! Exciting stuff up tomorrow...new card sets for the shop! Hurrah!
3 Black Apple Samplers available in the shop! Here.
Hooray for suprises! But no more for this week...more next Tuesday!
Those frisky paper bag girls...they're at it again!
They live here .
I love paper lunch bags, more than I can say. It's one of those irrationally strong object-loves.
Their dresses are fashioned from these incredible vintage paper placemats that were scored on Saturday at my favorite thrift store!
It was about time that I finally got around to trying my hand at the Freezer Paper Magic that has been sweeping the crafty-blog-ladies lately. This stuff is amazing! Freezer paper, what a suprise. If you want to stencil on clothes, I dare say this is probably the best method you could possibly hope for (at least the best cheap-y, attainable method).
What we have here are a lovely gramaphone reconstruct, a bird's nest hair silhouette tee, and a great stripey vintage vest with a rabbit + hedgehog friend meeting.
They'll be listed in the Little Moth shop for sale this afternoon (that is, unless, I decide to keep one or all of them !) so you can look there for some detail shots if you'd like to! I hope everyone had + is having a lovely weekend...I'm off to make a $5 thrifted dresser beautiful (probably tomorrow's post!)
