Joy Sikorski

Easter is comin up real soon - so here´s a How to Draw a Daffodil and a How to Draw a Rabbit by Joy Sikorski. Joy is the creator of 2 of my favorite books How to Draw a Radish - and other fun things to do at work, and How to Draw a cup of coffee - and other fun ideas for home and garden. If you don´t know this special lady please visit her website - or read this interview with her. For me personally she was a real eye-opener when I first saw hers books in San Francisco 10 year ago. I was so delighted to discover that there are people like her in this world and publishers like Chronicle Books brave enough to publish her, and a market big enough to appreciate her way of playing, drawing and dreaming. Mind you - this was long before the days of blogging - so finding a creative soulmate was more rare back then...

If you are looking for new creative soul-mates or blogs, then Creature Comforts has put together an amazing visual guide to all the best design and style blogs out there. Start here.

2 x princess

Just had to share these darlings with you - Fastelavn/Carneval was 2 weeks ago and unlike last year, this year nothing could stop Nanna from dressing up as a princess - off course... Here she is with cousin Olivia, and a cheeky birthday boy in the background...

I´m always a little paranoid about posting pictures of my daugther - but since friends and family are regular readers here too - I have chosen to do it anyway. What´s your opinion? What would you do?

Nice clients = Nice flowers

As I said earlier - last week was extremely busy at my studio - I designed/shipped off all in all 24 + 12 +20 + 152 pages for printing - and consumed far to much cola, coffee and cigarettes!! So today I stopped smoking again, signed up for yoga classes, had brunch with a wonderful group of women and recieved these gorgeous flowers from a happy client - so now I´m back on track! Watch more examples of the power of flowers here and here :)

DIY - Typecase

I´m still here and here´s the result of my lastest DIY-project - a modern take on a typecase - a tray or box for storing printer's type. In this case it´s for storing my 6-year-old nephew´s collection of cars and Lego-men and it´s inspired by these made with vintage wallpaper. I don´t have a huge collection of vintage wallpaper so instead I used a mix of wallpaper, wrapping paper, magazine clippings and some of my own prints - and I had a lot of fun putting it together. I´m making 4 typecases all in all - the next 2 are for girls and I´ll post some pictures later. It´s a fun and simple project to do - and all you need is a little patience, a typecase, some paper and Decoupage glue.

cool squirrel video

It´s a crazy week at my studio with lots of deadlines, so while I take a break from blogging please enjoy this little fellow that makes me smile a lot. Just click here - since I still can´t post directly form youtube.

Tide chandelier

Stuart Haygarths work has been been all over blogland lately - and I have to post about it too - because it´s so unique. The Tide chandelier is created from clear and translucent objects, primarily made of plastic -all found by Stuart Haygarth at the coastline of Kent.




DUNGENESS ( work in progress)



I have been collecting man-made debris from the Dungeness coastline in Kent over many years. I am sorting and categorizing the mass of objects and from each grouping creating a piece of work. The finished pieces take different forms such as sculptural & functional objects and photographic documentation.
So far I have completed two works. The first being ‘Tide Mark’ (2004) which is both an installation piece and a photographic work. Tide Mark is a collection of primarily plastic objects categorized by colour. Starting with white objects and ending with black, a kind of tide mark through the colour spectrum is produced.
The second work is the ‘Tide’ Chandelier (2005) which is created from a collection of clear and translucent plastic objects.

Kitchen revolution

I love this cover and the book promises fabulous recipes for busy women, wishing to eat healthy food. Well I´m definitely in that target group and with my birthday coming up it´s now on my wishlist - and you can buy it here! or read more from the author here at his blog.

Cammeo - by Campbell

Just love these new porcelain jars by multitalented Louise Campbell, produced by Kahler - they come in different sizes and each jar comes with a set of 6 coloured elastics. What a great combo - ceramics and elastics/rubberbands.

Sprinkleman

Sprinkleman, originally uploaded by Ben Pearce.

Don´t you just love this photo found at Flickr. Carneval/fastelavn is coming up and who wants to be dressed up like a pirate or princess when you can be a Sprinkleman!

Have a great weekend!

Nightjobs from my dinning table

Here are some more results from my dinning table this week - I got a commision for 2 collages and made the owl just for fun, since I´m trying to develope my style, so I can start making series when I get my new studio space soon. Since I plan to do a lot more collages and maybe open a web-shop please let me know what you think - and don´t worry I´m not quitting my dayjob... I just need to get away from the screen more often and play around and get paint on my hands.

The photos are taken last night at the kitchen table - sorry about the lack of light.

Thanks - and the final result...

Thank you for all your comments and emails - 3 was pro and 8 were against the type - and the final collage got type on it!!!! Well, who am I to ask advice and then act against it you may ask - but in this case the person who ordered the collage wished some type on it - but in the future I´ll resist from adding type and maybe just give the collages some titles that includes my little stories. And yes I´m planning to create series real soon.

Small survey

Here´s my most recent collage - and a quick question for you. If you were to recieve it or buy it would you prefer it with or without the text? And does the text makes sense to you at all?

Please leave a comment today - because I have to finish it tonight!

When I make these collages I can´t help creating little stories as well, and so this is the cat that dreams of being the first cat in space. And being a type fan it´s hard for me not to add type to my collages - let me know what you think, please!

Kunst For Alle

Tomorrow the local Art exhibition Kunst For Alle starts, and it´s always worth a visit due to it´s mix of artists - and one person worth looking out for is definetly Line Juhl Hansen, who made the painting above - I really like her big collage paintings, 80 x100 cm - and the fact that I will soon be sharing a studio space with her - I´ll tell you more soon...

GRIB - the crowd

Here´s a few pictures from the opening night - it was a great and curious crowd, and the gallery had the perfect location and size for the event. More pictures here

GRIB- the show

Here´s a few pictures from the exhibition- before it all started - I´m trying to get hold of some pictures of how packed the space was during the reception - we estimate that more than 400 people showed up and we were all quite overwhelmed with the response - it was such a great day!

You are invited!

If you are anywhere near my city, Aarhus in Dennark, you are hereby invited to the opening of our small group show, GRIB! - and if you decide to pop by, please come and say hello!

In short GRIB, which means catch, is a local project inspired by this project. It all started last september when I met the talented photographer Ida Schmidt and we started talking about our freelance lives and all the clever freelancers/designers/photographers we knew here in Århus. To make a long story short - we invited 6 persons/studios to take part, and each got a wildcard - so that we would enlarge our network and end up beeing 12. The project is now over and the result is a great group of people, a book that is now full of ideas and very diverse projects - and a great calender with all the final results displayed. You can read more about the idea behind the project in my blogpost here.

There´s also a blog in Danish - but I hope you will enjoy it just the same. I´ll post some pictures of the calender soon just because I´m so pleased with how it came out. It will be for sale at the group show - and I´m planning to organize a little give-away also...

And at this period of time, where everybody is focused on new year resolutions, I think it´s very important to celebrate all the things that one succeed in during 2007. And this project has been a succes and a wonderful experience, seeing how our first idea has grown and developed into something much bigger than expected. I think this is what happens when you start sharing ideas, dreams and passions.

Open the invite in Danish as a pdf.fil here

Blog Local Week - childrens drawings

My daughter´s kindergarden is another local spot where I get inspired! It looks very fancy from the outside - and inside it´s full of great childrens drawings that makes you smile. Nanna is more a painter than a drawer so I enjoy to snap mobile pics of the others drawings. Notice the cribs at the top floor it´s open air - since in DK most kids are napping outside in their cribs or prams.

Blog Local Week - Old Books

I´m not sure how local these patterns are - but they are from some covers of old books found in a local thriftshop - and I´m inspired by their texture and colour palette.

Blog Local Week - Windows

Here´s a glimpse of one of my local inspirations - window shopping. I often snap a photo with my cell phone when I see something interesting, like this wall at a local hairdresser, a Diesel dress, a vintage print and these wonderful glass shapes from the local museum of natural history. What´s your local inspiration??

Blog Local Week -please join in!

Due to the local GRIB-project and because I´m always curious to get a glimpse of other people´s lifes, I dedicate next week to be Blog Local Week. A week with focus on what or who inspires you in your local enviroment - like what does your favorite shop, bakery, dish, person, park, building, coffee, cake, libary, transport, book shop, museum, beach or neighboorhood look like. All the stuff that inspires you when you are offline! Grab a camera and give us a glimpse of your world and hood and local inspirations!

Join the fun - leave a comment, spread the word and add your pictures to the BLOG LOCAL flickr group.

The first person to join in and spread the word at their blog will recieve a Grib Calender 2008. So join the fun - I´m looking forward to get a glimpse of your world.

Here´s some inspiration, A City Guide Through Lomo Eyes, Fika with Sandra, A year of mornings

Happy raincoat

On a grey and rainy winter morning this raincoat, Pink Bird by Danefæ made me happy. Raincoats with prints are very popular here right now - and it somehows makes sense to wear something bright when the weather is grey. I´m wearing this today.