monterey

some of you may know that i've been a part of this wonderful online art community called ATCSforAll.com which is a forum run by some wonderful ladies. we trade atcs, chunky pages, we have tons of atc swaps in different themes, there are secret santas, and it's just a wonderfully fun, well organized online community.

the fun thing about it is meeting people from all over the world through their art. and for the first time i am going to a gathering in Monterey, CA to meet other members, trade art and just have a fun weekend away! hopefully i will take photos and share what happened during the event when i get back.

i'm also dreading writing papers and studying for finals. the end of this semester really snuck up on me...

you possess that rare ability...

here's one of the collages that i made as part of a series, incorporating photos of places in san francisco.

i'm happy to announce thatmy artwork will be published in a book that's a poetry anthology meets tour guide to san francisco. how awesome does that sound? some of my poems along with super talented fellow youth poets & my artwork will be published in this gorgeous full color book that will be 7 x 7" (san francisco is 7 by 7 miles) by WritersCorps which is a great organization that teaches creative writing to youth in schools, community centers & libraries.

i will let you know more about this book when it's finished. i've had a chance to see some sneak peeks of the layout and the cover. it's turning out to be an amazing project that i'm really proud to be a part of. besides art and poems there's wonderfully designed maps of the places we went to, shops and other places we recommend and it's truly a guide that is from poets who are passionate about their city.

as for the curious text i pasted onto the collage, funny typos and all, it comes from the magical antique arcade, the musee mecanique!

found: valet parking tickets

walking around at the corner of van ness avenue and market st, i was delighted to pick up these valet parking tickets that had fallen to the ground.

once i found one, i saw another lying on top of the gutter. i love that the tickets come in different colors...


the pink one is the odd one out. it doesn't have the image of the car.

and for fun, i went to musee mecanique awhile ago and took photobooth pictures of myself.

patterns of japantown

it's springtime. one of the prettiest things about a city full of blossoming trees is when the wind blows and the petals fly in the air, about to land on us.

on weekends sometimes i like to wander around a neighborhood. SF has several unique neighborhoods and japantown is one of my favorites.


i like looking out for interesting patterns on buildings.


a truck covered with brilliant graffiti

when i go to japantown, I love japanese dollar stores (which are modeled off of 100 Yen stores) and the wonderful kinokuniya bookstore that is has a ton of craft and design books as well as stacks and stacks of amazing magazines. kinokuniya also has a stationery supply store with a myriad of colorful notebooks, gorgeous washi paper screenprinted with floral patterns, file folders, notecards and art supplies. oh and sophie's crepes...i like to watch the guy make crepes from the window...

when i am taking photos of everything around me, i always try to remember to look down, up, sideways, everywhere. you never know what you'll see.


flowers fallen to the ground


i want a parasol just like this...

found: library catalog cards

i was up on the fifth floor of the San Francisco Main Library to do some research for a paper. from the corner of my eye, i saw a old library catalog card. it was handwritten in cursive and the paper was yellowed with age of course.

ive been known to raid the little boxes of scratch paper that are put out for people to write down call numbers and notes. sometimes the scratch paper has interesting images, i've found fragments of interesting maps, too. so i was thrilled when i saw a whole stack of library catalog cards! most of them were typewritten, but some also had little handwritten notes on them...

call me crazy, but in the future i will purposely go up to the fifth floor for more of those cards and since they are used for scratch paper, i figured they are free for the taking.. plus there's a typewriter there that anyone can use.

edit: if you are in the sf main library, be sure to check out the walls made up of library catalog cards. here's a photo on flickr & they have been written on by patrons with notes/drawings/etc that usually relate to the listing on the card. the walls are on the 3rd and 4th floors. in fact, i want to do a project sort of like that! except mine would be on a large canvas...

and really i think libraries are mysterious places. especially the big ones, you never know what you might discover.

sibella court/etc

images by sibella court/murdoch books found via daily imprint

i first heard about australian interior stylist sibella court through design sponge's sneak peek look of her home , which is wonderfully full of things found, creatively arranged and is intrigingly imperfect.

today it was a rainy day afternoon and i decided to wander around anthropologie, you know that emporium. it's is chock full of clothes, acessories and home goods that is definitely way out of my price range. most of the time i just like to see their amazing store displays, it could be antique keys attached to manila tags affixed to the wall, or sculptures of animals made out of plastic bags, and jumbles of giant metal letters artfully arranged. the store is like a museum to me, one you can touch and gain so much inspiration.

i keep an eye out of interesting books and among those that caught my attention was Sibella Court's book Etc. it's an interior design book, one that is brimming with sturdy pages, full of ways to arrange found/lost objects. think of preserved butterflies and old letters. bottles full of seashells and peeling wallpaper. every page made me amazed. really. her color palettes are gorgeous too...


i checked anthropologie.com to see if they carried the book online, unfortunately i didn't see it being sold there, perhaps check your local anthro store, because the book is sold exclusively through anthropolgie.

for more about sibella court check out her website the society inc, which is about her beautiful shop described as an "old haberdashery meets hardware store specialising in textiles, homewares and beautiful things."

double entry ledger

i've always wanted to find old ledgers. you know the kind with yellowing pages, the lines are pink and create columns for accounts. to stumble onto a ledger filled to the brim with cursive handwriting would be amazing.

a few weeks ago, i went to an estate sale out in the mission district. the house was an old one, with beautiful wood furniture, a closet full of dresses and it had this air of being stuck in time somehow. it's hard to describe i guess but it was a lovely little home. i found stacks of old letters, a lot of them were written in italian which i immediately had to decide which ones to buy! and then i found a sturdy blue hardcover ledger. when i opened it, not a single page was written on. it was old but new.




and then i realized it would be a perfect journal for me. i had just filled up my beat up composition notebook and it was time for a new journal. the ledger has sturdy lined pages that lets my pen just flow. and the pages don't crumple, because it's quality paper.

because the cover was kind of plain i did some decorating. i gathered up the vintage envelopes i had collected from previous vintage paper fairs and some canceled postage stamps. i gessoed the covers first, so they would be rough and ready to take the matte medium, which is the glue i use for collage. i glued on the envelopes,arranging them carefully and then added a few stamps here and there. it still didn't look finished, so i created an airmail envelope border with this patterned japanese tape.