Oh Snap

60 - 70 hours of work =

Tedious much? but I do love the effect. might have to change up the centerpiece though. brb, dying.

also blurry sneakpeek for my newest prints/cards:

Someone asked why my art is so colorful.. what's a girl to do? I'm in a polychromatic phase and that's what the inside of my head looks like. Mostly. If I were to paint the other 10% like I used to, it'd legit make children cry. Also, manic depression is so last year.

Molten Sky

Your Love Never Fails

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, 
who have been called according to his purpose. ~ Romans 8:28

            

Nothing can separate
Even if I ran away
Your love never fails

I know I still make mistakes
But You have new mercies for me everyday
Your love never fails

You stay the same through the ages
Your love never changes
There maybe pain in the night but joy comes in the morning

And when the oceans rage
I don't have to be afraid
Because I know that You love me

Your love never fails

The wind is strong and the water's deep
But I'm not alone here in these open seas
Cause Your love never fails

The chasm is far too wide
I never thought I'd reach the other side
But Your love never fails

You make, all things, work together for my good

             

                You'd think I'd be sick of this song by now, but noo. nevahh! 

♬ July Flame

Forgot I had this most excellent of albums. kerplunk. Laura Veirs + b&b pudding = a very satisfactory afternoon. humm. When I was a kid I used to say pud-ding, not pood-ing. Puddles, pudding. Made sense at the time but the world has since laughed it out of me.

'July Flame' always makes me think of this magnificent passage from Ray Bradbury's spellbinding 'Something Wicked This Way Comes':

The wind flew Jim away. A similar kite, Will swooped to follow.

Watching the boys vanish away, Charles Halloway suppressed a sudden urge to run with them, make the pack. He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life. Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this, so the sadness could not hurt.

Look! he thought. Will runs because running is its own excuse. Jim runs because something’s up ahead of him. Yet, strangely, they do run together.

What’s the answer, he wondered, walking through the library, putting out the lights, putting out the lights, putting out the lights, is it all in the whorls on our thumbs and fingers? Why are some people all grasshopper fiddlings, scrapings, all antennae shivering, one big ganglion eternally knotting, slip-knotting, square-knotting themselves? They stoke a furnace all their lives, sweat their lips, shine their eyes and start it all in the crib. Caesar’s lean and hungry friends. They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe.

That’s Jim, all bramblehair and itchweed.

And Will? Why, he’s the last peach, high on a summer tree. Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they're not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it's not that. It's just, you know, seeing them pass, that's how they'll be all their life; they'll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? How can it happen to them? 

But Jim, now, he knows it happens, he watches for it happening, he sees it start, he sees it finish, he licks the wound he expected,and never asks why; he knows. He always knew. Someone knew before him, a long time ago, someone who had wolves for pets and lions for night conversants. Hell, Jim doesn't know with his mind. But his body knows. And while Will's putting a bandage on his latest scratch, Jim's ducking, waving, bouncing away from the knockout blow which must inevitably come.                                           

  So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim, Jim breaking two windows in a haunted house because Will's along, Will breaking one instead of none because Jim's watching. Gosh how we get our fingers in each others clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other..

Yeah yeah tl;dr but dang-a-lang! he's a kickass writer. *happy shiver*

*Sparkle Motion*

'Capturing Resonance' is a sight for sore eyes. The installation was dreamed up by sculptor Soo Sunny Park, working in collaboration with sound artist, Spencer Topel.  

The large-scale interactive auditory piece consists of clear Plexiglas squares, fastened within plebeian chain link fencing to form a vibrant multi-hued shell. It's currently hanging out on the third floor of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Massachusetts, illuminating the utilitarian corridors, just being awesome and putting disco balls to shame.

Photo credit: Peter Harris Studio via mymodernmet

Brings new meaning to 'Sparkle Motion'. *sideways glance at you Donnie Darkonites out there* In light, there are all colors. Life needs more Soo Sunny Park!

♬ Music to Paint by

Fleet Foxes: making lumberjacks fashionable

Fleet Foxes owns my hypothetical musical soul. Give me maudlin, shaggy haired granola-eating hipsters with voices that echo eternity all day, everyday.

 

 

Hope

               

                Hope is the thing with feathers -

                That perches in the soul -

                And sings the tune without the words -

                And never stops - at all -    

                                                                                                                  ~ Emily Dickinson

                            

Jesus Culture

"All Jesus, all the time" is the only life worth living! ~ Every Day with Jesus

If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. ~ Romans 14:8

Best four days of my life so far.. sky's the limit from here on out! Definitely gif worthy. 

Yay, God! 

 

  

 Yep, that about sums it up.

♬ Gotye Fever

 This song's been making waves (Sting 2.0?)...

...as has its inevitably rad cover

'  

Guitar exploitation! Taciturn bearded Chuck Norris guy staring off into the 
middle distance & deigning to grace us with his presence is cracking me up.
  

Worth a listen:

I'm sold! Need Making Mirrors right now.

Porcelain & Gold

Porcelain Goldtop Milk Bottles by Shan Annabelle Valla

Beetle and Flor Beaver Skull

Beetle and Flor Coyote Skull

I Held A Jewel

I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said, "Twill keep."
I woke and chid my honest fingers,—
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.         ~ Emily Dickinson

Oil paintings by the incredible Toronto based artist Carly Waito. Her exquisite renderings of glistening semi-precious gemstones and minerals in macroscopic detail are so life-like, it takes your breath away when you realize they're not photographs. This sort of talent tends to leave me in state of wondrous despair. Even her name has an elfin, birdlike quality to it. ♥

Amethyst. Oil on masonite.

Tourmaline

Barite

Vesuvianite

Bornite

Amethyst

Rhodochrosite

Candy Hearts

Three things will last forever - faith, hope, and love - and the greatest of these is love. 

 ~ 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NLT)

 

 spiffy new prints @ etsy 

Happy Day!

Walt Whitman - A Song of Joys

Just finished two new designs whee! Will post soon. I should probably spend less time doodling in my journal and focus more on painting. meep. Occupational hazard. Oh by the by, go watch The Descendants. You will bawl your eyes out. in a good way. Now back to the gulag!

P.S. Anyone else utterly obsessed with this song?

Q is for Quote...

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves — that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can't. They tell us that "beauty born of murmuring sound" will pass into human face; but it won't. Or not yet.

For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in." ~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Maria S.C. Test Tube lamp

Inspired by Nobel prize winning scientist Maria Sklodowska-Curie aka Marie Curie, Polish designer Pani Jurek at GangDesign created this versatile lamp out of plywood bands and wait for it.. detachable test tubes which can be dressed up with a variety of decorative fillers. Flowers, vines, sand, multicolor liquids, beads, crystals... your imagination is the only limit! Too clever. Definitely going on my 'Gimme' list.

 

all images via gangdesign