HAPPY JULY 4th!!

The extraordinary Heather Murphy created this video for a YouTube Type in Media Project, using text from this blog entry I posted last November after participating in the Breast Cancer 3-Day.  I am honored my words were chosen for this very special project.  Thank you Heather!

P.S.  If you are interested in supporting a walker for this year's San Diego walk in November, support my friend Ann! 

Pour yourself a glass of champagne and head over to Fashion.net, where you'll find links to sites about fashion, designers, art, photography, design, magazines, blogs, books, travel, shopping, music and more! 

More cool adhesive wall art, this with a kooky, pop art, Giant Robot kind of look to it...check out Pop Cling! 

Thief alert - I swiped the title of this blog entry from Vanity Fair, and their recent blurb about Butch and Harold's new line of peel & stick artwork.  So much fun!! 

The Architecture & Design Museum of Los Angeles has a number of cool exhibits going on right now.  This is definitely on my list of upcoming field trips!  "After The Flood- A Movement Performance Piece Based On The Writings Of Tennessee Williams And Andrei Codescu" on June 22 looks especially intriguing. 

I love Muji's Wall Mounted CD player, which is now available at Muji Soho in NYC. 

[Summer Bungalow by Liz Kalloch] 

The extraordinary Liz Kalloch recently opened Athena Dreams Shop over at Etsy.  Check out her gorgeous work, and be sure to bookmark her art & design blog as well.

Even if you aren't in the market for wallpaper, head over to the Nama Rococo website and dive into their world of color and elegance.  I want to sit in a room plastered with their creations, and drink champagne while I wear an outrageous hat.

My friend Keri Smith is speaking at this year's ICON5 Illustration Conference in New York City July 2-5, 2008.  Visit the ICON5 website for information on the schedule, speakers and more.  Registration is now open!!

"ICON5 will be held in New York City at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan. This year's theme, The Big Picture, is more than a slogan, it is the perspective through which we see our future – a future of limitless possibilities for illustrators as thinkers, story tellers and providers of creative content. The conference promises to examine and discuss the current creative and economic forces that our industry faces today.

The ICON continues to gather the industry's best and brightest talent to present and talk about their work, their business, their lives, and their passion for illustration. Our conferences have also grown to include inspiring, informative and topical pre-conference tours and workshops. ICON5 is going a step further with ambitious attendance goals, increased global involvement and more pre-conference events to make the ICON5 experience a must-do for 2008."  -ICON5 website

[Johanna Reed]

These are just a few images from This is That, a blog described as "...postings....about instances of beauty, intellect, hilarity, and/or oddity in my periphery."

[Estelle Hanania]

If you're in the mood to browse the websites and blogs of artists, designers, photographers and the like, this is your
one-stop shop.

[Adrien Missika]

I loved this LA Times article about Fette and Matthew Green, whose home doubles as a gallery space and exemplifies minimalist cool at its best.  Be sure to take a look at the photo gallery.

The coolest wall decals around:  "blik surface graphics are oversized, self-adhesive, removable decals that allow anyone to quickly & easily create decorative patterns or custom wall murals for home or office." 

 Can you imagine having a studio treehouse?  I would love one of these magical creations in my backyard.

Visit the TreeHouse Workshop and let your imagination run wild! 

I have been a fan of Lotta Jansdotter's work for as long as I can remember and love using these fun sticky notes whenever I can (although I admit I tend to save them for special notes.)  From stationery to housewares, Jansdotter has created her own unique look for a variety of useful items for more than ten years.

In my sleuthing this morning, I found Jansdotter keeps a lovely blog that I look forward to visiting on a regular basis, and there is also a fun, inspiring studio tour and interview right here.  I love seeing artists' creative spaces and hearing the stories of how they got started, so this was a great find. 

One area of creative expression that I have not explored a great deal personally is scrapbooking.  I have actually felt slightly intimidated and overwhelmed by the idea of it - about having to invest in a crate full of supplies and a whole new skill set for all the embellishments and tools that scrapbookers use to create their books and pages.  So I will admit right now I don't know more than the basics of it and I'm not entirely familiar with all of the rock stars of scrapbooking, but today I managed to find someone whose work blew me away so much that I'm actually thinking this might be something I can do.

I started this entry wanting to feature ScrapHappy, which is a series of scrapbooking podcasts that sound interesting, informative & inspiring.  From there I did a quick google search and stumbled upon Scrapbooking Magazine and Creating Keepsakes.  The Creating Keepsakes website has a wonderful Image Gallery, and it was there that I saw pages created by "Dagmar N".

I couldn't find a profile or any other detailed information about "Dagmar N" on this website and thought I would have to be content with admiring her work from afar, but curiosity got the best of me and I decided to keep digging.  As always, the internet is a powerful tool for us would-be detectives, because I managed to track her down within five minutes.

Dagmar N is a member of the Dream Team over at Little Dreamer Designs, a wonderful, colorful, inspiring scrapbooking website with an image gallery, shop, blog, freebies, contests and all kinds of other goodies.  I am absolutely nuts over Dagmar's luscious layouts and designs, and thanks to her I just might have to dip my toe into scrapbooking and see how I like it.  Any other fab scrapbookers out there you love and adore?  Send them my way!!

These are just a few of the desktop wallpapers available to download for free over at Pixelgirl Presents. 

From the website:

"Our award-winning site will allow you to snag the slickest Mac OS X, XP and Icontainer iconsets and desktop images as well as offering tutorials, articles and links."

Pixelgirl Presents was created by Shana Victor, who also runs the lovely indie shop Shana Logic.  Enjoy! 

Beginning today, the second part of a comprehensive retrospective on the work of Charles and Ray Eames is underway in Santa Monica.  Learn all about the event, as well as tours of the Eames House and the work of these extraordinary designers at the Eames Office website. 

T52 designed by Dieter Rams in 1961 for Braun.

I came across an interview with Dieter Rams recently and was excited to learn more about someone whose passion for design has found its way into millions of homes throughout the world for more than four decades now.  He was recently a guest editor for Wallpaper magazine, and in this issue they had a special feature highlighting his Ten Commandments for Design.  Read more about his life and his work here, and be sure to check out his portfolio for a peek at just a few of his most influential designs.  If you are curious to see more beyond this, do a google search for Dieter Rams and more than 15,000 photos will be available for you to peruse in his image gallery.

If I had $1400 to splurge on a lamp, this just might have to be the one.  Despite the fact that I will have to enjoy this whimsical creation from the comfort of my computer, the Lisa Fontanarosa website has all kinds of inspiring creations and delicious eye candy.  Click on "Collection" from the homepage for a list of artists and their image galleries, and savor all the fun these artists are obviously having with their work.