Happy New Year… blah blah blah

Imagistic reasons to celebrate the commencement of 2009, starting with my personal favorite:

(Awesome cards above may be found HERE)

(Lovely letterpress card above may be found HERE)

(Vonderfully vintage postcards above can be found HERE)

(Luscious letterpress card above located HERE)

(The tag above with undisclosed purpose (is it for a bottle? Happy New Year, Bottle! weird) may be found HERE)

(Is that dude on the left a cyclops? If you’re not horrified, you can check out the image above HERE)

(The brilliantly bright images above may be found HERE)

(Who doesn’t want a “Happy New Year” pendant? OK, me neither, but still… HERE it is)

(My token vintage Frenchie image above may be found HERE)

Christmas stills…

I went to Ohio to spend Christmas with my mom in her new house in a new town. Because Santa is brilliant and magical, He still found me. And He gave me these:

I made a family tree for my grandmother for Christmas (with a little help from Paper Source and my Scotch Craft Stick!):

And then my mom put Becky-dog in a dress. Humiliation ensued, and Becky refused to look anyone in the eye. 

Here ’s a mixture of things I made and purchased for my mom (note: NOT a doggy dress):

My mom lives a town over from where Thomas Edison was born (Milan, OH), so of course I was a nerd and had to go:

Edison wrote these really sweet/artful notes to his daughter, Madeleine:

The Edison’s kitchen was lovely and located in the basement of the house:

Meanwhile, back at Mom’s…Christmas ornaments:

Becky and I played Hide ‘n Seek . I won:

Although it’s been said many times, many ways…

(Image: Currier & Ives, 1876)

The end of another semester + the birth of my insanely cute niece & nephew + the holidays = an unfortunate-but-necessary break from the blogging action. I’m kind of suffering from Blog Withdrawal (BW). Cold sweats, twitching… it isn’t pretty.

 But I’ll be back soon… and I absolutely cannot wait to flaunt some of the wordsy&eggsy treasures I received from Santa! Santa RULES!!!

I hope you’re all enjoying the loveliest of holidays (and the yummiest of foods — especially cookies)!

Who knew?

I was browsing along a fabulously and hilariously informative (yet sadly retired) blog the other day, “The Nonist,” and I came across these intricately beautiful, vintage microscope slide collections. Clearly, I ain’t no scientist; however, if science were always to involve elegantly documented specimens such as the ones I’m about to show you, well… time to change my dissertation topic!

From the Nonist’s blog entry “Beautiful Specimens”:

Wikipedia tells us: “A microscope slide was originally a ‘slider’ made of ivory or bone, containing specimens held between disks of transparent mica. These were popular in Victorian England until the Royal Microscopical Society introduced the standardized microscope slide in the form of a thin sheet of glass used to hold objects for examination under a microscope.”

I’d like to add the following: Antique microscope slides, looked at from a strictly aesthetic standpoint (egged on by a design obsessed brain obviously) are some of the most elegant and perfectly beautiful human artifacts on planet earth. You can quote me on that. See below for irrefutable scientific aesthetic evidence.

I bet you’ll feel exactly the same way once you take a gander at the following images:

Tree Template?

Happy Tuesday, Everyone!

I have a favor to ask of all of you…
I’m making a family tree for my dear grandmother. I’ve decided to make the base of the tree, the branches, and the leaves out of uniquely patterned paper, and I am using a sturdier paper as the backing. Ultimately, I’ll be framing it. I plan for it to be just around 8″X10″ or 11″X14″ max.

My question to all my crafty readers is: do any of you know where I might find a tree template that I could use for the overall shape of the tree? I was ready to draw my own, but then I couldn’t decide on the shape (pine tree, large oak, etc.), and it was all downhill from there.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Merci à l’avance!

I haven’t posted any calendars in a while…

It’s almost 2009! As in denial of this fact as I am, it doesn’t make it any less true.

Cr@p.

But, if another year threatens to begin, well then, we might as well welcome it with designeriffic beauty, don’t you think?

I bet you’ll want all of these calendars, just like I do.

LENA CORWIN (this one’s my personal favorite, shh!):

 

SOMETHING’S HIDING HERE (what a great shop name, huh?):

 

SEESAW DESIGN:

Letterpress makes me more willing to ring in the new year, how about you?

 

HAPPIFY‘s postcard calendar (I find this incredibly inventive/awesome):

Four seasons letterpress calendar by ELUM DESIGNS:

Number and Letter Scarves From Little Factory

I have become absolutely infatuated with these scarves at LittleFactory.com, and I think you will too:

Number scarf:

Lowercase scarf:

Uppercase scarf:

Sample fabric of all three scarf options, in white (number, lowercase, uppercase):

 

French Friday!

One of my favorite photos that I took in Paris, the night of the Summer Solstice International Music Festival, back in 2007:

I have a love affair with bridges. Whether they connect left bank from right, an island to the mainland, or one country to another… bridges are what unite two distinct lands. And I find that terribly inspiring.

For this installment of French Friday, I offer you vintage representations of French bridges: