Etsy Love: Dr. Kennedy Jones

Tennessee artist Dr. Kennedy Jones has an adorable Etsy shop filled with imaginative collage work. I love the way she combines vintage found imagery with her colorful illustrations. There's a great video on the Etsy blog that explains her wonderful process. You can watch it here.

Encaustic Works

After learning so much about encaustic painting over the last six weeks, I was sad to have my last class end. I was hoping to combine some of my photos with beeswax, but that didn't' really work out. Instead, I played with circular textures and Band-Aids® dipped in wax.

Lulu's Photo Booth Series

We created a makeshift photo booth at Laura's birthday party in Jersey City. The results are so much fun.

A Day in the City

Feifei and I walked all over the place when I visited her earlier this month in NYC. My favorite things from the day where:

1. Bagels from Zabar’s, a Jewish Deli in the West Village

2. Seeing Feifei’s office at Time Magazine

3. Shopping at Top Shop, a new store from England

4. Sushi at Oyama, where everything is 50% off and delicious

5. Pumpkin frozen yogurt at Pinkberry

6. Record shopping in Brooklyn. My best purchase was The Dirtbombs' album Dangerous Magical Noise

7. Visiting fellow SCAD grad Liz Goff at Haute Hippie's sample sale

8. Finding a cute black and white dress from Beacon’s Closet, a fabulous Williamsburg vintage shop

High Relief Encaustic Paintings

This week's encaustic workshop was ridiculously fun. We learned how to build up layers of wax on the surface to create unique and colorful textures. You can't really control how the wax will build, so the results are full of surprises.

New Prints in the Shop!

I added a few more Detroit and San Francisco prints to my Etsy shop. You can check out the rest here.

Zooey's Miscellany

My slight obsession with Zooey Deschanel has just grown stronger now that she started her blog Zooey's Miscellany this week. You can also follow her on Twitter here.

Happy Birthday Laura!

dearest laura, here are 10 reasons why i’m so happy you were born:

1. you tell AMAZING stories. the simplest occurrence can be so memorable and hilarious after you tell it.

2. you were my first dear friend at scad. who would have guessed that a wisconsinite and a jersey girl could meet and become besties in the south?

{image: laura & i acting fabulous in 2004}

3. you’ve traveled the country to visit me all over the place and i truly appreciate it.

4. you showed me how to cook and continue to be a stickler on following recipes exactly.

5. you have the LOUDEST, craziest, most fabulous family. i’m so fortunate that you’ve shared them with me and that they’ve shared their lady gaga impersonations.

6. you had so much fun at st. patty’s the first year, that you never had to go back for all the other years.

7. you hold the record for leaving me the longest voicemail messages. they’re always so funny to listen to and usually include some sort of laura sound effects.

8. you’re learning french for your boy which is the most adorable & romantic thing ever.

9. you’ve always been able to say, “no andra, i don’t think so” whenever i’ve wanted to do/wear/eat something terrible

10. you’re about to embark on a new adventure and i’m oh so excited for you!

Happy Birthday Lulu!

♡♡♥♡Black Swan♡♡♥♡

The art direction for this movie is insane. Natalie Portman looks absolutely stunning.

Shepard Fairey Print

Shepard Fairey is a fantastic artist and well known for creating the Obama "HOPE" poster. So I thought of him when I went to buy my first real piece of artwork, a Shepard Fairey & Glen E Friedman portrait of Cornel West. The detail in the print is amazing and I think it makes a great first piece to my little art collection.































{Shepard Fairey and Glen E Friedman signing the prints}

{Next to Fairey's HOPE poster at the National Portrait Gallery}


"Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope."
— Cornel West

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

On our drive back from Knoxville, TN we stopped by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The scenery was incredible and provided some much need relaxation.






















"The Smoky Mountains memories keep me strong." -Dolly Parton

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm off to Knoxville, TN to spend Thanksgiving with my boyfriend and his family. I can smell the mashed potatoes now.

Behind the Scenes: Encaustic Workshop

Blocks of pigmented bees wax and damar resin are heated to their melting point on an indoor grill to create our painting medium for the encaustic painting class I'm taking. We then use heat guns to adhere the medium to the work surface. Tonight I tried adding peacock feathers to the wax with different combinations of color. Next week, I plan to use some of my photographs and see how the wax responds. I'm learning a ton, thanks to my talented instructor, Lynda Ray.

Open for Business!

I'm so thrilled to announce that my Etsy shop is up and ready to go! I've been a busy bee this weekend preparing my prints for sale, and I hope that you will check them out.

If you'd like me to sell something that's not in the shop, contact me and I'd be happy to make it available.

Kate Banazi

I love, love, love, the new space-themed screen prints by Melbourne artist Kate Banazi. Kate's blog is also completely wonderful. She sometimes reveals her methods and gives her readers glimpses inside her sketch book. You can buy afforable prints of her work here: http://shop.katebanazi.com/

♡♥♡♡♥♡♡♥♡

First Encaustic Painting

I had my first Encaustic class tonight. I still have a lot to learn, but working with hot beeswax is a blast.

New York, New York

I just purchased a ticket to NYC in December! I'll get to see Laura and Feifei. Maybe between the two of them, someone can convince me to move out there!

Happy Halloween!

It may appear that we confused Halloween with Shark Week, but it was so much finding shark and and shark victim costumes. Even Buster participated by sporting a shark costume, though he was less excited about it.

Tim Burton's Magical Halloween Fashion Spread

I love this Tim Burton Halloween Fashion series taken by Tim Walker for Harper's Bazaar. Next year, I'm going to try and rock the Edward Scissorhands look. You can see more here.