30.10.08

Troop Beverly Hills.

Image from Troop Beverly Hills. Jenny Lewis bottom left.

Troop Beverly Hills was one of my favourite childhood movies. I must have watched it at least 20 times, but our video copy of it (taped straight from the t.v. 80's ads and all) was no where to be found the last time I looked for it.

The movie made me love the Beatles song 'When I'm 64' and taught me the art of a good ghost story, as well as a whole lot more nonsense. It's such a gooden, or was. But, anyhoo, the reason for this post is that I just discovered that one of the stars, Jenny Lewis, is now a folk singer- and a not too bad one at that. Being a childhood star doesn't always bring out the worst in people it seems.

Jenny Lewis.

29.10.08

Vote.

Obama or Canada?
If only our election was as exciting/frightening.

Found through Simply Olive

27.10.08

Krafting.

Another fantabulous Kraftbomb happened this weekend- in the bigger hall at the Grey Lynn community centre. We could breath and move about and so could the punters, the buzz was great. Jess and I had a fun time on a the stall as always and here is a whole lot of Kraftbomb love pictures below for you to enjoy (I hope!).

Our full stall this time. We collaborated with more friends and filled it out nicely I thought!
Swonderful's new (and awesome) Diamond Sea knitted hair accessories. Ginny sent a bunch up to pop on our stall, we love them!

Our stall, again. (above)

Sharon and Nicola from Cardboard Box zine were out in force once again, with some great heart earrings on their table too and a pic of some of the greatest bow necklaces from Anna McCool's stall.

Anemone's bunnies & wild kitties + their beaut toddler sunhats.

Some amazing toys from two new Kraftbomb stalls. Velcome.
What would we do without Fred's lemonade!
And after an awesome morning I returned to this.

But looking at my purchases when I got home cheered me back up again. A 'Trollop' plate from Trixie Delicious and a Bag of Boogies (complete with hankerchief!) from Geek Freaks.

21.10.08

Poster purses.




Some purses that might rear their heads at Kraftbomb this Sunday (at the new time of 11-2!) Made from old posters. Whoops, I was hoping for a colourful picture- best to check the settings before snapping away.

19.10.08

Flying the coup.


Recycled Map Envelopes from Ari & Maya

Our flights are paid in full, so now it is official. Rosemary and I are finally heading off (in a few months) on a trip of a life time.

Auckland - Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires - Rio De Janeiro - Salvador and Sao Paulo
Rio De Janeiro - Los Angeles - San Fransico - San Diego and as many other places as we can fit in on the coast (I'm hoping to trek to Portland!)
Los Angeles - New York
New York - Reykjavik
Reykjavik - London
and on to as much of Europe as humanly possible!

Excited? Just a little!

16.10.08

Owls for dispatch.



Some very excited owls- flying off to Texan Art Schools (Ponsonby and New Market stores) tonight!

'Aren't we lucky', they said.


Boo.

Photograph by Kathryn Yu

Halloween is looming. Which means it's time to start thinking about a great costume (see above) and that the next Kraftbomb is right around the corner! And with a halloween theme! Look out for bats, sweets, skulls, pumpkins and other halloween treats on our stall. Hoping to post a few pictures of what we are working on soon, but in the mean time mark those diaries cause it's going to be a cracker! In a the new big hall at the Grey Lynn Community Centre and at a new time: 11-2. If you haven't had the chance to make it to a Kraftbomb yet this is the time to do it, as in the bigger hall there will be loads more stalls and things to see as well as a lot more space to browse and breath!

Hope to see you there.


See Kraftbomb's blog here.

14.10.08

Recruiting all Selfish people.


One of my good (and very talented!) friends, Fran, is working on a project for exhibition called Selfish.
She's is asking anyone and everyone from all walks of life to participate by creating a black and white self portrait of themself, to then be photographed with. No matter what your artistic level! As you can see from my pic above, drawing is not high on my list of talents, if on the list at all. No sniggering please.
It was fun and challenging to work on my own and I felt a wee bit proud of my retarded creation in the end, even if my BF laughed for 10 minutes solid after I showed him. He claimed he could do a better picture of himself so at least it got him involved too!




If anyone in the Auckland area is keen to have a go and participate- the project is planned to be exhibited in November- please get in touch with Fran as I know in cases like these it's much better to have more than less to work with!

Below are some of the other people who have got involved in the project so far.





12.10.08

Just charming. (2)


More charmlicious goodies. All in our Etsy shop and they'll be at the next Kraftbomb (Oct 26th) too if you like what you see!


Being on paper.

We made it onto paper twice this past month and I've finally got round to.. show off! hehe.





The new World Sweet World magazine is out in full force and Kimberlee from Anemone did an great write up about bloggers in NZ which she kindly involved us in. One of our owls made a full page in the article which was nice and Kimberlee also created that magnificant image to head the article. Thanks Kimberlee!


And secondly, the Cardboard Box zine was launched at the past Kraftbomb, I think I mentioned it earlier but here are some pictures of the zine and the our lucky placement on the blog review page along side Look Book, thanks Jess!


Hope your enjoying the new week xx

10.10.08

The little look sees Paul Paper.

Camilla Engman

My good friend Jess, over at The Little Look See, just did a post about the 'Could Be Me' project by Paul Paper and friends. It is most definitely worth a look. This one (above) is my favourite from the bunch. Actually make that two favourites (see below).


Tom Edwards

9.10.08

Nikki McClure says VOTE.


I really like Nikki McClure's work. Particulary this vote poster, relevant in many ways at the moment. But what I like the most about it is that the person in the rain looks to me like the could be a man or a woman, which is what I think makes this poster so clever. The posters are limited edition and silk screened onto woodboards.

Nikki's work is for sale on buyolympia and below are some of my other favourites from her.


6.10.08

That special feeling.


I've got a whole list of things that I've been meaning to blog about lately, I just haven't had the time to sit down and do them properly. So I'm going to tick one off the list today finally!


A week or so ago, Heleen from Ruby in the Dust (an incredibly talented doll maker/textile crafter), awarded our blog a blog award. We were suitably chuffed , thank you Heleen! So now it is our turn to pass the award on to 5 other blogs we enjoy (I agree with Heleen on quality not quantity, the original award asks for 8!).

Here is the text that goes with the award (a very rough translation!) and below it the 5 blogs we would like to pass the award onto.

'To translate the gift from Portuguese to English, it means:"This blog invests and believes, the proximity" [meaning, that blogging makes us 'close' -being close through proxy]". They all are charmed with the blogs, where in the majority of its aims are to show the marvels and to do friendship; there are persons who are not interested when we give them a prize, and then they help to cut these bows; do we want that they are cut, or that they propagate? Thenlet's try to give more attention to them!


So with this prize I must deliver it to 8 bloggers that in turn must do the same thing and put this text in their blog.'


Simply Olive

Swonderful

Little Ruby and the Sea

The Little Look See

Helga and her Holga (only one post down but I'm loving it already!)

All incredibly talented ladies doing their thing.

Rosette Lounge photographed by Milkaway

Abandoned.

I know this might sound naive but I never really thought there was abandoned cities around the world, sure there is in movies and Ancient ones, yes of course. But I didn't think their was anything from mine, my parents or even grandparents life time. Turns out I was rather wrong. After reading Helga and her Holga's post on a abandoned theme park in Korea and being suprised that the theme park had not been destroyed after 30 years of closure, I did a little research into abandoned structures.

And as it turns out there is a lot! This site is great if you'd like to mooch through them all, but below are my particular favourites and a blurb about each one taken from the Web Urbanist site.


'Rumors abound regarding this legendary abandoned pod city (aka ‘UFO town’) of San Zhi, Taiwan, which was supposedly built by the government of Taipei to be a luxury resort for expensive holidays on the water. Built in the 1970s or early 1980s the modularity of the designs has raised retroactive suspicions that perhaps these stacks were intended to be built vertically over time. Theories on the abandonment of this massively strange undertaken range from poor insulation in a difficult climate, the dissolution of business partnerships, the failure of a regional real estate bubble or even that so many workers died during construction that the place was abandoned as - unable to be destroyed out of a cultural taboo on interfering with the homes of spirits and lost souls. '


'Gunkanjima, Japan. Once known for having one of the highest population densities in the world (1.4 people per square meter) “Battleship Island” is now completely deserted. Known today as “Ghost Island,” this strange place stands out from other hundreds of abandoned Japanese islands for its massive concrete sea walls and omnipresent and ominous concrete architecture. Some people have snuck onto the to take photographs and explore.'



'Varosha, Cyprus. Photographing this city, fenced off by the Turkish military in 1974, is forbidden. These images show a rare glimpse inside of this eerie ghost town. The area was once home to thousands of Greek Cypriots who have been denied for decades the right to return to their homes. The photographer who took these images nearly lost his camera to a military patrol, and the slanted angles are a result of shooting from his side when he could.'




Abandoned Submarine Base. Balakava is a small town on the Black Sea Coast that was once the secret home to a Soviet nuclear submarine base. People with resident family members were not even allowed to visit the town without special dispensation from the government. Today, all of the submarines are gone but the base remains remarkably intact and can be visited by urban explorers from around the world.

5.10.08

Charming.


We got our hands on some super sweet charms this week and I whipped them into necklaces over the weekend. There's a bit of a food and travel theme (two things we love!) plus some extras.

I am hoping to pop a small bunch on Etsy this week and but am keeping a good few aside for the next Kraftbomb. Hope ya'll think they are just as cute as we do!
 
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