PaperArt

There is paperart and then there is PAPERART.

It always makes me happy when I come across artists, that I had never heard about previously, but now can not wait to see future creations. Such an artist is Jeff Nishinaka more pictures can be found here.

A paper is not just a piece of paper - there are so many layers to it, and only imagination sets the boundries. Just thinking.

Thunder and Lightning

Source: http://www.dmi.dk/

This would be a dream shot picture from me, but the windows of my appartment does not offer a good photography view, when thunder and lightning is in the air. Lightning is one of Mother Nature's many wonders letting us know, that she controls Nature and not us.

Until I was a teenager I was scared when ever thunder and lightning was nearby, but it turned out that it was my mother who projected her fear into me also, which I did not realise until I was a teenager. Since that I also loved having a hot cup of cocao or tea, when thunder was around )we lived in the country side with lots of big trees al around, and bedrooms was on the second floor, so living room on first floor was a lot safer) just sitting and watching all the lightning and counting seconds to see how far away the lightning may have struck.

Think the tradition of getting downstairs goes back to the days, when a lot of houses had thatched roofs - but our dog was always barking so loud at the thunder, that we could not sleep anyway. Even now - living in an appartment in the city - I still get up and have my cup of tea but sadly without the good view.



World Wide News Clippings

Whenever I am shopping at IKEA, I swipe my IKEA FAMILY member card - everytime a member does that, a donation is made from IKEA to some preselected charity. I go to the local store 1-2 times a year, as they have great prices/selections on (tea) candles, napkins, baking forms (cupcakes/muffins), wrapping paper etc. Having signed up for the memebership - which by the way is for free - you get to receive the IKEA FAMILY LIVE magazine.

This photo caught my attention - first as "Why are they having a vacation photo in the magazine?!" Then I realised, that it was made out of the FRAKTA bag (yes everything at IKEA has it's own name). The magazine was mentioning Adrian's blog, so I ventured over there to have a peak.

She has also made a dress from a bag - what a fun idea :o) Suddenly my mind is wandering to episodes of Project Runway, where they have to make clothes of non-fabric items.

I own several of the FRAKTA bags as it was great at the time, before I bought my own washing machine hence having to go to the buildings laundry room to do all the washing of my clothes. 18 year ago I had the first encounter of this type of recycled bag, and luckily it has spread out, as I have getting a plastic bag at a store.

This makes me remember a blog that I follow, which mentioned receiving a tote bag made out of pet/bird food bags. It is made of the same material as the FRAKTA bag, but this lady mentioned that the creator, had saved the food bags, cleaned them thouroughly and made some nice tote bags. How many people would actually think of saving a food bag and make it into something that is usable and nice? Definately a person with a creative mind.

 

Words of Inspiration

Outside a Starbucks in Boston, MA (USA)

If you are cold, tea will warm you.
If you are too heated, it will cool you.
If you are depressed, it will cheer you.
If you are excited, it will calm you.

William Gladstone

Looking Down - Part 1

A lot of people (including me) say: "I learned to look up to find details, when I got my digital camera. Well in 2002 I started looking down too. Sometimes the sidewalks of the streets have small unique gems.

Motif: The Freedom Trail (marker)

Location: Boston, MA - USA

World MS Day, 2011

Today is World MS Day - if you click here, there might be an event close to your location.

A couple of years ago, I heard a spokes person for an MS organisations say, that she generally hoped that the organisation one day would have to dissolve itself. That it would become superfluous.

Her rationale behind this comment was of course, the hope of someday somebody would find the cure for MS - maybe through vaccination.

There is a collection of small change (money) going on in my country to support the scientific research for better medicine - yes even a cure. Today I will go to the nearest collection box and donate the change that I have set aside for the past month. Maybe a selfish act, but I too know people suffering from MS - I just happen to be one of them myself.

What's happening in your area? How to they mark the day?

 

A Day Like This

Tonight I am going to be somewhat "ship wrecked".....

Ship off Mumbai, India

Not because I have been using my body in extreme ways, not because everything has gone wrong, nor has my MS flaired up again (attack)...... But because I am extremely tired.

I am just temporarily pulled out of the game and placed on the bench, because I had my monthly TYSABRI treatment - a little price to pay for medicine that is working for me (knock on wood) and I can plan, that I do not have any plans/appoinments this one night per month.

Most of my friends and colleagues knows that I am not depressed on this day, because I know exactly what caused this fatigue and hence I listen to my body's needs. Besides, days like this I can spoil myself with some of my favourite food and icecream which helps making the fatigue bearable.

I am simply just making the most out of it - keeping myself sane and giving me the strenght and courage to continue being one step ahead of the MS - and getting to bed really early tonight :o)

Words of Inspiration

I believe in hard work. It keep the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit.

Helena Rubinstein.

Green Light....Red Light.... Just A Suggestion.....

Frances: Does traficlights mean anything around here?
Marcello: Sure. Green light - avanti, avanti. Yellow light - decoration.
Frances: And what about red light?
Marcello: Just a suggestion.

"Under the Tuscan Sun"

Movie, 2003

Last week, there was a big accident in front of the windows in my office building: a car smashed into a truck, making the front of the car looking like a harmonika and being shortened 3 feet - the car's driver survirved and had to be cut of of the car - the truck driver was obviously in chok, since he did what he could, when the car came out of nowhere.

Two days after, I witnessed 3 teenage boys on their bicycles crossing a street with straffic. Their trafficlights had actually just turned red when they decided to cross the street right in front of a car, who started moving due to he had green lights. Luckily nobody was injured, and when bystanders shouted at these boys afterwards, the boys gave the bystanders the finger.

From that moment, the lines, quoted from the movie, just started to spin around in my head, and I could only imagine what went on in that driver's head afterwards.

This week, a friend from a country where they "love traffic rules" was visiting my city. If you want to cross the street in her city, you just start walking and the cars will stop and not hit you/run you over - that is normal there. We had to grap her by her t-shirt collar to prevent her from being run over, when she decided to cross a street - in my part of the world: she would have been hit by a car.

Incidents like these makes me think about: How different the world is. How fragile a person is, when moving around in the traffic.



Finding The Inner Child....

What is this? Well LEGO, getting back memory lane to my childhood, where only your imagination set the boundries of you creations and not the amount of building bricks. Most of my LEGO was hand-me-down from my older brothers, I did not care about that fact, because I had LEGO that entertained me for hours and hours :o)

LEGO invented in my home country and definately a household name in families with kids. Well it is not just in Denmark, that these bricks/toys brings out the inner child, as you can get these all over the world. A couple of years ago I ventured into one of the big toystores in NewYork searching for a LEGO set for my best friend's son - a set that was sold out in Denmark - the sales assistant asked me if I knew which country that LEGO is from, and when I answered, he looked confused "Not many people know that?!". The confusion went into a big smile when I answered "Well guess you do not have many Danish customers" which generated a gazilion of questions from him.

The LEGO pieces in the photo is not a gift to anybody but for myself.... They have started this Architecture series, and I could not resist this little package - I have already made suggestions in a survey on which building I think that they should include in this series.

The building I purchased as a LEGO set? Well, Empire State Building :o)

Flower Power

Hard to believe that the morning of the day, that these photos were taken, was one of those crappy ones, where you could see no light at the end of the tunnel let alone colors. Good that one's perceptions can change fast.

2000 Year Old Art

Well it is not an art piece but a technique, that is 2000 years old and still used in China. The crazy thing about this technique is, that it sounds so simple, but looking closer at the artworks and I am in awe and retracting the comment/thought of it being easy. "All it takes" is a piece of papers and a set of hands tearing in paper.

Wang Jiang, a Chinese artist is doing this type of art. You will find some of his artwork here but if you go to Reuter's webpage, you will find a news clip (video) of him doing the portraits of people, that is all over the news world wide. It takes him about 15 concentrated minutes to create a portrait like this - WOW!!

This underlines one of my favourite things about the internet: that I can constantly "meet" new artist and art forms, that I did not now was out there :o)

StreetArt Versus Vandalism

There is a huge discussion going on: Is StreetArt vandalism, or is it art?

You may recognise this type of house from my blogpost 2 days ago - it is grafitti on the wall of a Nyboder House, a house specified as worthy of preservation. This IS vandalism in by book. Had this just been grafitti on a fence surrounding a construction site or perhaps a wall, on which the owner has encourage grafitti, then it would have been a different situation. But on a  house like this?! Vandalism, and so is tagging.

This is a electrical box, one of many all around the streets of copenhagen, some more rusty than others....and therefore some have made their boring tags on them...but look closer, there is something, that does not prevent the electricity company to access the interiour of this box, nor does it ruin what is inside. 

It is a sticker, something that has become quite a collector's item, as they do not last long on these boxes, nor is it the electricity company, who removed it. This is StreetArt to me, as they do not cause any vandalism, and is often a motif hunted by amateur photographers like me - have missed many photos thinking, "Oh I can manage to get home and fetch the good camera to capture this", but only to return and find it gone again - need to remember, that my phone is equipped with a fairly good camera.

The discussion is a hair thin line between right and wrong, and interpreted differently depending of the persons participating in the discussion.

Last Words....

Lost an old colleague today, one that could always make me smile no matter if I was stressed, sick, sad or just in a bad mood...... The sad news made me think of this poem....

My Candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
Bu ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light

Edna St. Vinvent Millay

Words of Inspiration

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Kathleen Norris

The New Honouring the Old

A popular tourist attraction in Copenhagen, Denmark is Nyboder. Nyboder was build in 1641 by King Christian IV to house the navy personel and their families. The specific shade on yellow on these houses is called Nyboder yellow - most people (even those living there) do not know, that the original colour of these houses was red.

The houses still accomodate people affiliated with the Danish military, not so many naval people, as the navy moved most of the naval area away from Copenhagen in 1992. The houses have been classified as worthy of preservation so they are also there for future generation to watch and live in - it means that you are not allowed to alter the outside appearance in any way. They are in the midst of renovating the interiour of the house, as even I can not stand up straight inside because of very low ceilings.

This house is some of the buildings next to Nyboder - built in 1977 and honouring the old houses next door, for which it got a reward from the city counsil. The colour is the traditional Nyboder color, and the lower windows also have shutters though in a newer design.

No wonder that tourists are facinated by this area of the city.

One of My Favourite Things Turns 125 - Part 2

Had to take the picture with an angle as the postcards have a very glossy surface

Locally several of the retro Coca Cola posters/motifs are now available as FreeCards - if there is one thing Coca Cola has always been very good ad, it has to be branding of their product. Then there is the gazillion of different accessories with their brand also being sold.

On my first trip to New York, I remember their store on Fifth Avenue (it was closed in 2000, but rumour has it, that they might open a new store in New York) and buying some gifts to some of my friends, who were obsessed with everything Coca Cola.

Back to the postcards - they are actually advertising for their RetroPosterMaker, where you can turn your own photo into a retro poster, a fun gimick if you have children fond of CocaCola, as you can turn their faces into the characters of varios commercial pictures....

Again a darn good branding idea to keep their customers focus on them.

One of My Favourite Things Turns 125 - Part 1

I am talking about that little brown beverage .... no no not coffee.... Coca-Cola :o) Best thing I know, if my stomach acts up = medicine.

I forfeited the deposit on my 1½l bottle when tearing off this aniversary label on the plastic bottle - I just had to have it. Realising that Lisa Congdon was right - not aware that this is just another thing I collect even though I don't keep the labels in one place. It is mostly keept with travelling memorabilia or in scrapbooks next to pictures. For years I have kept the different labels with Santa Clause on them :o)

Even though you are travelling to a country with different writing than you, you are actually able to recognise the logo and turning the bottle you see the familiar "CocaCola" - I have seen the above both in South Korea and in China. That is the good thing about this brown beverage - you can get it everywhere you go, especially when the stomach just craves/screams for something familiar.

Some places they even serve cola, claiming that it is CocaCola, but me, I can actually taste if it is a Coca Cola or not - been selected to to blind tests and have so far always been able to point out the coca cola.

Imagine that you could go into a time machine - I would like to go back to May 8th, 1886, when the pharmacist John Pemberton caried a syrup to a pharmacy where water was added and sold as mixture. Not to reveal to him, what he had actually created/started, but to get the feeling on how he perceived his invention.

Boy, did I just get thirsty writing this? :o)

Words of Inspiration

Most folks are about as hapy as they make up their minds to be

Abraham Lincoln

Going Bananas

Well not me, I am allergic and can not eat them. And whatever happened to "Do not play with your food!" ?? Same local newspaper as mentioned yesterday showed some of Keisuke Yamada's works.

Can you believe it? Made of a banana and a toothpick - and he eats it after having photographed it. That is art recycling for you  *LOL* :o)

BodyArt

Normally I do not like body art, maybe it is because I would never to it to m own body. That perception changed a little bit today, when a local newspaper had a tiny article about Paige Thompson.... her kind of body art makes me smile :o)

Click on her name above and it will take you to her photo gallery - and it is her own lips that she decorates and photograph....

Sherlock Holmes

You probably already know, that I am a big fan of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie - but I need to add another writer to that list: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In my teenage years, I always looked out for a book by either Christie or Doyle, that I had not read before - something about English crime novels that I can not resist - and those two are timeless.

First trip to London included a trip to the Sherlock Holmes Museum in BakerStreet - which is why I have one of his business cards: *LOL* that is natually a advertising gimick from the museum. Another London trip included  a In the Footsteep of Sherlock Holmes Walk, and afterwards I found this book at a Waterstones store, and it was a definate MUST-Have. By the way: wether you are a native Londoner or not, you should go on one or these walks or two, as they are worth every penny - been on 4 different walk now and all of them a very nice way to explore London.

In the 1980s British Television made the TV-series "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmen" with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock - for many years that was my visual perception of Sherlock as he captured that character soo well - still watch the re-runs on tv from time to time.

Never have I thought, that Sherlock Holmes would say the following to Watson: "I am lost without my blogger". But since they started airing the BBC series "Sherlock", it seems soo natural, that instead of writing books about Sherlock's cases, Watson is now blogging. This is an up-to-date version of Sherlock Holmes that is brilliant - it still has some gloomy touch to it, that you sensed when reading the books and none of those super brigt colours. Would it not be great if people reconnected with/discovered the old novels after having seen some of this new series?

A Little Sign With Many Names....

...but it means the same everywhere :o)

Weird how we perceive a sign like this as something we have always known - a thing that has virtually replaced a stamp on a letter or perhaps it is the address on a letter. Did you know, that it is no a new sign, but dates back to at least 1536 - some places have used this as a measuring term.

The sign has now found a place with MoMA in NewYork in the Architecture & Design Archive - excactly what the image depicting the @ looks like, I am not sure, as it comes in multiple variations depending on the artist.

Looking up the sign on Wikipedia, you soon realise, that it has a lot of nicknames depending on which geographic part of the world you are in. Here we have nicknamed it "elephant trunk-a", other places it is a snail, little monkey tail, cinnamon bun, ear, little dog or even little mice.... Well come travel with me, follow the above Wikipedia link and learn how countries around the world nickname the @.

Those Were The Days....

Where a button was just a button, that simple one used on your clothes - buttons that had a purpose. These days buttons also pop up in connection with other crafty things.

A local fabric store started publishing their own inspiration magazine a couple of year ago, and I started to pick it up a couple of months ago, since I realised, that it contained great inspiration for sewing, but some of the sewing ideas generated card ideas. The latest issue showcased the duck buttons, which is perfect for a baby card that I have to do...... Alas craft stores of any kind are always dangerous places, as more things find its way into the shopping basked - curse of the crafty mind I guess :o) The other buttons generated even more ideas for me to do.

The card project is pushed forware since the baby arrived 5 weeks early, and I have to sneak it into this weekends time schedule unfortunately dominated by extra work at my job that landed on my desk due to other people's bad planning.