sneak peek time

sometimes I tend to be slightly not-so-patient, well, ok totally impulsive. the thing is that I’ve had those cubes in mind for ever.

so during my lunch break I cut four pieces out of a wood pole. this took quite sometime, and my thumb got lost in the battle - so sore and tender.
anyway, as soon as I got back home, I sat at my desk and started sanding, painting and glueing. yes, I did glue some scraps of beautiful vintage paper - maps, newspaper, postcards - onto the wooden blocks. and I think it looks very pretty.

here is block number eight. now I just need to brush the blocks with varnish, and we’llbe all set.

diamond mountains

love love jayne helliwell’s work. this piece is simply amazing.

le poster alphabet, part one: the font

font

currently working on an alphabet poster as part of the playground flavours series. and the first part was quite obviously to draw the font.

lower case. solid. letters.

next step will be to illustrate those little naked letters. I have already found what I want the l and m to be.

imperfectly perfect

those are the first two cubes I made for the alphabet wooden cube collection. and although they are highly imperfect, I can’t help but find them beautiful. I know the wood is cracked around one of the knots, but I decided to leave that part instead of sawing it out.

plus, the cube angles are so not 90°. but cutting 45mm thick wood with a handsaw is harder than I had imagined (and much harder than cutting through 15mm thick wood, like I did for the stamps).

basically, I just love the process; love how this very rough looking wood gets turned into neat little cubes. sawing, sanding, polishing.
the next part will consist in painting numbers onto one of their six sides. then smear on some matte varnish. because matte rocks.

ps. I initally put this vintage ten francs coin to show how big the cubes actually are: 45 x 45mm; and then fell in love with it.

old school, a book

oldschool

it always strikes me to see how people manage to replace one addiction with another. you see, I was quite the cookbook addict. and then, all of a sudden it stopped. oh yes, I do buy the occasional book, but my standards are very high (ie. I haven’t come across a terrific cookbook for a while now).

the fact that I had control over my cookbook craze made me proud, and left me with a couple of extra euros; which came quite handy to subscribe to lines and shapes, and purchase for the love of light. both in less than an hour.

and then, I spotted this sneak peek of Janine’s upcoming book: a collection of pieces artists made around the theme oldschool.
I think I might surrender and get this one as well.

oldschool

oldschool

you made my day

today was probably the best day ever. I got my morning off to pay my doctor a little visit (nothing serious though); and this gave me plenty of time to relax.

this, plus the couple of things I received from the postman totally made my day a perfect one.

first, one of the people I care the most about reminded me that all that really matters is to be true to yourself. which clearly means I can wear those adorable acorn earrings my best friend made for me (isn’t she the sweetest?).

then, I got this fil invisible, so I’m finally going to be able to try my hands at this. so exciting.

I also picked fifty beautiful welcome perroquet cards from the cirque savant series. the illustrations are printed onto thick recycled (and acid-free) paper, which makes for gorgeous little cards that can be used as notecards, postcards or even possibly as wall art (can’t wait to frame the ten illustrations from this series).

soon in the shoppe!

and the extra little surprise: two rolls of polaroid 600 film. I have no idea of who sent them, but I’m eternaly grateful to whoever she/he is.

as a side note, I really want to thank lucie and chris for being so awesome. love you guys.

on the subway

making stamps

it got really dark pretty soon in the afternoon today. and as soon as I hit my flat, rain started pouring heavily.

rain

so I put those hours - I had planned to spend outdoors, running - to use by making the wooden cubes I’ll use as bases for the grow your apple tree stamp collection I’ve been thinking about of a lot.

thinking was all I did lately. I’ve had that terrible sensation. you know, those times when you don’t create anything new because you feel like all you make isn’t so lovely. I hate this and will try to overcome it by keeping creating and waiting to see how things turn out.

so far I’m really happy with those little wooden pieces. aren’t they’re cute?
I’m now thinking of creating my very own wooden cube alphabet (*edit* take a sneak peek!)

making stamps

making stamps

making stamps

making stamps

making stamps

making stamps

fancy braided hair

when I saw that girl on the face hunter, I couldn’t help but think about narcisco rodriguez’ beautiful ad featuring carmen kass.
I wish I could braid my hair this way. soon, soon. just another couple of months to wait.

don’t hate me

I’ve just bought the latest pair of those beautiful pink, green and brown boosted headphones, which I spotted earlier today at design milk.

love them so much I can hardly wait them to arrive here!

carsten höller