Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Poem In Your Pocket Day!

Tomorrow is National Poem In Your Pocket Day.  It's part of the month long celebration of National Poetry Month every April.

I heard about this day last year and was looking forward to participating all year long. I'm a subscriber to the Poem a Day emails from Poets.org. When I would get one I especially liked I would flag it (well, star it is what Google uses). Today I went through and found my favorite of the starred poems and created a layout for it and printed it up.

My plans were to do the layout old zine style cut and paste, but the day kind of snuck up on me. When I realized it was tomorrow and I was actually going to be out and about tomorrow I wanted to make sure I took the time to make some poems for my pocket. People will be receiving the poem Detail of the Woods by Richard Siken. Here's a scan of my layout.

You can participate and print up some poems that Poets.org have all ready to go. Or you can print out one of your favorite poems. 

It's a great way to recognize poetry and National Poetry Month. Plus, you might discover a new poet you really like, like I did. Have fun!





Friday, April 20, 2012

Vintage Color Palettes - Wood-Lily


I'm extra fond of this color palette. I like these dusty army green colors that you don't see as much anymore. When they are matched with orange or red, it looks great.

This vintage card is actually a small trade card that came in boxes of Red Rose tea. Each is only 2.25" x 1.50". I got a number of them and the colors are all really great.

If you want the Hex colors, they are in order of top from bottom: fa4607, ff792d, ,405738, 90b285. Here's what the back of the card looks like:


Monday, April 16, 2012

well done

There's nothing I like more than a well done artistic project that comes wrapped in a beautiful package and contains a number of aesthetically pleasing (to me) items to create this one overall atmospheric theme. When it contains music, charming illustrations and zines - even better!

That is why I am such a fan of Frances Castle and the releases of Clay Pipe Music. Somehow I stumbled upon Castle's illustration blog and saw her posting about her new cd, The Hardy Tree. She posted some of the music and it was right up my alley - and something I have a hard time finding. I was immediately in love. I really enjoy some noise and fuzz mixed with melancholic melodies and pop. It seemed like the perfect winter afternoon cd. And it is (wish I could post a listen for you, but none are available that I could find).


Clay Pipe Music, is a London based label run by Frances Castle. Set up as a way to release her own music, and music by like minded others - and to indulge  her passion  for design and illustration. Each release comes in hand crafted packaging in very limited quantities.

The packaging and the mini zine that came with the cd was so perfectly done and added so much to the overall package. I was very happy that I ordered it from England - especially after I saw that they had sold out (a second pressing is now available).



Then a few months ago Clay Pipe Music co-released a compilation project called Tyneham House (in box shown above) that featured music from various artists they've worked for before, but who remained anonymous. The music on this release may have been written beforehand, but all of it evokes the feelings of being at Tyneham House - a large house that was part of a now ghost village. Tyneham was once a thriving community, but was requisitioned by the British Government during WWII for training. The village remained in possession of the military long after the war and the town never recovered.



Again, what came was so beautiful, the box, the little color zine and a bonus cassette.


And the music is perfect. Beautiful, easy, pastoral and melancholic afternoon music. Most is instrumental, a couple have words. The ones with words especially conjure Nick Drake for me.

Here is one of the songs from the Tyneham House cd:





In the notes that came with the box it said that many of the musicians were influenced by the music of The Children's Film Foundation. This interests me quite a bit and has led me to some interesting you tube videos. Today I was watching this one hour show from the 70's from the CFF about time travel.

Overall, seeing projects this perfectly done overwhelms me with desire to create something like this. Although truthfully I don't know that I'm capable. However, it's enough to have examples of the kind of perfect little worlds I would create if I could.




Monday, April 9, 2012

Vintage Color Palettes - Cape Cod


A sweet nautical pastel palette for today. Perfect for those spring Cape Cod days. 
The Hex code for these colors are, from l to r: 9dbbd3, ffc5a7, f49aad, 6888af


Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Vintage Color Palettes - Sincere Wishes


A lovely heartfelt postcard from the mid 1900's. Such a pretty muted palette.
This postcard is for sale on The Cedar Chest

The hex numbers for these colors are, from top to bottom: f587ae, 977f9f, c8a4a8, 818180


Sunday, April 1, 2012

simple joys

Here's one of my favorite things in life.

You're inside on a breezy, not too cold and preferably sunnyish day. You are perhaps on your bed or favorite chair, reading, writing or drawing. The windows are open a bit and the pretty curtains billow back and forth in the breeze. You hear birds and maybe some kids or cars far off. The air smells sweet.



The curtains fall flat and billow open, moving back and forth, sometimes swinging high and sometimes just swaying back and forth.



Sometimes you stop what your doing and just watch them.



Last weekend I did two things that I have been meaning to do for a long time. 

1. I finally found this fabric I bought a year or more ago and made the very simple alterations I had to do to them to make them in to curtains.  I don't really know how to sew. I took one short class when I was about 11. 

The window is quite big and the all white is kind of a lot. I am thinking about adding some trim to the sides - which gave me a great excuse to not hem them. But, I love white curtains in the bedroom, especially in spring and summer.

2. The other thing I did last week that has been on my to-do list for a couple years is make a video clip for my Dad's film.

I got my Dad's film on DVD in 2009 and last week I finally got into the hard drive that it's stored in and created a clip (it was much easier that I thought). Now people can see a bit of the film. This is really awesome as before now there was no clip of it anywhere on the internet.



I hope I can cross of a couple more things this week. It feels so good when you do something you've been meaning to do for a long time. And, trust me, I've got a long list!  Hope you all have a good week!

(This post is 100% April Fools free)



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