jules and juniper

I have a friend. Her name is Laura. I used to see her all the time. Now I see her almost never. But, she is still a great friend.

Laura and Mike are engaged. This makes me think of wedding things. Laura gets it, and she wants her wedding to incorporate DIY/handmade goodness. So, Laura, this is for you…

Erin Rosenow, a San Francisco floral designer, makes the loveliest boutonnieres with many marvelous things, like miniature toys and vintage goodies.

SO, Laura, I think you could really get inspired here and maybe make your own. Star Trek pez dispensers come to mind. :)

Week five (or is it four?) of Alternative Materials – Sculpey! Yup, Jimin “taught” us how to use modeling clay to make jewelry. Actually, she mostly explained how to cure it and then told us to figure out how to shape it on our own. I stopped by PLAZA before class and $40 later I had a pile of fimo and a set of powder pigments *splurge* because fimo just didn’t seem to have enough… sparkle? I wasn’t expecting to looooove fimo. I thought Ok Jimin, I’ll humor you for one class, but really I want to get back to making *duh* resin cherries. All of this will make more sense when I post pictures of my class work someday. Turns out I LOVED fimo and I’m pretty darn good at it. At one point Jimin said How many pieces are you planning to make?! I think I was on my tenth…

On what I thought to be the most unrelated of notes, I have also taken to watching cake TV. You know, all those reality shows about bakeries that focus on making special or challenging cakes. There’s that Charm City Cakes one which is aight, apparently Elizabeth has seen them in the flesh. I don’t ever want to see people from TV in real life. Scratch that – I don’t want to see reality TV stars in real life. There’s some sort of double reality thing going on there that weirds me out. I digress…. SO, my favorite of late happens to be CAKE BOSS. I like that the show is about a regular bakery. Yes, they make the occasional fancy cake (usually one per episode) but they also sell all the classic flowery too much color in the icing kind of stuff that makes your teeth ache watching the show in HD. I love the guido (in that adorable sort of way) personalities of the family. It’s like the Sopranos, but with recipes. Anywho, I was wondering where all of this fascination with cakes (esp of the wedding variety) was coming from and then *BAM* yesterday in class it hit me. There’s not much difference between decorating cakes with fondant and molding chocolate and making jewelry out of fimo. In fact, I think fimo and fondant have the same consistency and I know for a fact that many of the molding tools sold by baking supply shops and jewelry/bead/craft stores are the same.

Yup, that means that all the time I spent in front of the tube drooling over pastry was actually preparing me for Alternative Materials and a career in *weird* jewelry.  So, it makes sense that I took to it so well and really enjoyed playing around with things. Buddy, the cake boss, taught me that in cake decorating, there aren’t any manuals on how to make exactly what you or the customer wants. You just have to get in there and improvise. Thanks Buddy, that’s exactly what I intend to do.

Here’s a particularly interesting cake from Cake Wrecks. I wouldn’t want this at my wedding, but it does inspire me to make jewels.

I posted on the Leisure Society back in March with a couple of youtube videos (one live and one produced). I adore their sound which seems to be of another era (decade) and reminds me of simple times with great friends in… a wheat field or something along those lines – all blurry and sunny and happy and warm. It’s the hippie in me I guess.

I have only recently gotten into the entire album which is, as a whole, almost as impressive as the first few singles they released. Prior to acquiring it (thanks Rayhan :)) I would occasionally search for them on youtube and awhile back I came across some interesting videos involving a stuffed duck and tweed. They are the work of Paul Mansley (jackandunion on youtube). He made the videos for fun and I find them to be very enjoyable indeed. Paul is talented with art direction and has worked with many bands (he is a friend of the Leisure Society’s Christian). He is also one of my first internet friends of sorts. It’s a concept I learned about at the Summit of Awesome and I guess it refers those people that we meet through blogging and such that we may never see in person. I enquired about his quirky videos and he responded with lots of info on himself and enthusiasm for the Leisure Society. I guess technology is good for some things after all.

SO, here’s a couple of the Leisure Society vids by Paul. I’ll also post some other works of his in the next week or so and will keep you posted on new projects of his and his website when it goes live. For now, I hope you enjoy his work!

So I open my ticket master email today and am informed that Van Morrison will be coming to DAR Constitution Hall for two consecutive shows in August. The only catch is that the cheapest tickets are $95!!!! Are you kidding me?! I mean, that’s the cheapo seats AND DAR has pretty sucky sound quality. SO, I will not be attending the show even though I have always said I would like to see Van peform live before one of us dies. Bummer….

Feel free to post your favorite Van Morrison songs in the comments…

Famous (or almost famous) seems to be the theme of the day. Weird, right? I’m just gonna go with it.

A friend from high school who I haven’t seen since…high school… facebooked me this press on my last craft show which she found through, of all things, an Urban Outfitters email. Thanks Nichole!

Yes, it seems the DC Metro has it’s own fashion blogger a la Susie Bubble and her name is Brooke Kao.

Her blog is appropriately if not ironically named THE FASHION VOID THAT IS DC. She was most recently mentioned on UO for this weardrobe thing they do (see link for UO above). I don’t fully understand it but she looks fantastic in the photos and it seems pretty big to me. She attended the Handmade Mart in Silver Spring and posted some lovely photos of my work and said adoringly nice things. In other words, she’s on my awesome list for life. Brooke, if you’re reading this, we should hang out. Seriously.

The brooch-necklace she bought was a recent concept piece of mine and I was totally bummed that it sold while I was taking a lunch break. Glad to know it went to Brooke and that she even contemplated wearing the brooch in her ear. Again, awesome.

The second part of the “I’m famous (almost)” day is the news that I (should I choose to accept my mission) will be a hair model for a runway show on July 12th at Russia House. It’s being put on by Salon Cielo and I’ll post more details as I get them. In the meantime, just know that I have never before been in a situation where a faux-hawked hair stylist with a European(?) accent says “I want to see you walk… Give me attitude. Now, pose” until today. Hilarious.

The office on Ally Mcbeal had so very many things that, today especially, I wish were real. Maybe I would pass on unisex bathrooms but boy would I love a little dancing!

So, in honor of all that was wonderful about Ally Mcbeal, I’m going to shut my door and in the words of another favorite show – dance it out! Because I want to and because I can. :)

… a roommate with purple hair, piercing quests, tattoo envy and that rebellious angst of youth that seems all too far away most of the time. Those were my days of PUNK. We used to watch SLC Punk over and over and we’d quote the film at every opportunity and talk about dyeing hair with kool aid and dating guys with mohawks.

Well, tonight I’m gonna do a little reliving and maybe some drinking and remembering how good it feels to be a little (just a little) hardcore punkette for a night. Check out the lineup at DC9. Only $15 for you and free for me. 

There are so very many things that I have meant to write about, promised to write about, and yet I still can’t seem to make the time at the moment. At least not on any kind of a regular basis. I do apologize, sincerely, to all three of you who read my blog, and to all five of you (just guessing) who would read my blog if I actually posted more. :) 

I’m still super busy with a new class starting, moving on the brain, jewelry jewelry jewelry and paleo things and gym things, you get the idea. I am not however, too busy to share this. 

Lindsay (lindso) is talented with cameras and colors and many many more things. She took this photo of me during our trip to Philadelphia. I was uncomfortable. She told me to look down, she liked the background and my purple scarf with my yellow jumpsuit etc. I’m posting this in part because on many of the blogs that I follow, I appreciate it when the author posts a portrait ever so often. Lately I’ve seen some “just got up in the morning and took this with my web cam ones”  - I applaud the sentiments that accompanied these photos. That said, you won’t see a just rolled out of bed photo of me anytime soon. And I don’t even have a web cam. But this is something that reveals a little more about me, and though I often don’t like photos of myself, subject aside, I love what Lindsay has done and I love the colors and that is my favorite scarf in the picture and Lindsay posted it on her blog so it’s out there already. 

Lindso is also very talented with style and fashion and many other things. Learn more by reading her blog: Don’t Say I Didn’t

Photo by Lindsay Hart  <3