I love the wintry softness of Sarah McNeil's animal & people portraits. I know I've mentioned her here in passing, but wanted to do a more extensive post of her work & let you know that she's having a special in her Etsy shop -- all orders over $25 placed by January 5th get free stickers!

( More of Sarah's illustrations under the cutCollapse )

If you like Sarah's work, you can find more of it on Flickr. Sarah also has a blog hosted on blogspot.

So, today my boyfriend brought home one of my holds from the library: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, a collection of contemporary retellings of fairy tales edited by Kate Bernheimer. The collection features stories by some of my favorite writers (including Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Joyce Carol Oats, and Francine Prose), but what really caught my eye was the book's cover: a simple but eerie illustration of a girl's braid emerging from a cauldron accentuated by bold, beautiful, hand-drawn typography. The cover was illustrated and lettered by Julie Morstad, who also happens to be responsible for the beautiful artwork for Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood album.

So, without further ado, here's a selection of favorites from Julie's online portfolio. ( 18 images under the cut.Collapse )

If you like what you see, Julie sells archival quality prints via a Big Cartel shop.

This morning I watched the short documentary Skateistan: To Live and Skate in Kabul (accessibility note: the non-English dialogue in the video is subtitled, but the English dialogue is not) and while the doc isn't perfect (it definitely leans heavily on the construct of Afghanistan as a violent, politically unstable country where youth are in constant danger), I really, really loved being able to hear from Fazilla (pictured above), a 12 year old female skater who speaks eloquently about the ways in which she feels people question what right she, as a girl, has to skate.

Skateistan: To Live and Skate in Kabul was made by Skateistan, an NGO that serves over 300 young men and women living in Afghanistan. They offer skateboarding classes for able bodied skateboarders and skateboarder with physical disabilities, girls' journalism classes, art classes where students paint their own decks, and more. Their student blog section is full of amazing videos & stories (one of my favorite is the video of young girls learning to ollie!)

Skateistan: To Live and Skate in Kabul is embedded under ( under the cutCollapse )

Sorry for the lack of posts lately! For awhile I was getting back into it and then things at work got crazy and then things in my personal life got crazy (today I found out that I'm going to be moving again this summer and tomorrow I'm leaving for a Chicago vacation and everything just keeps coming!)

Anyway, on my friend Samantha's tumblr, I saw this amazing embroidery piece by Lauren DiCioccio and immediately had to look up more of her work.

Both of my parents grew up in families that were big on photography and who had their film developed as slides so that their pictures could be projected. I spent most of my growing up sorting through these boxes and holding the slides up into the light so that I could see the pictures they contained. Obviously I was drawn to Lauren's embroidered 35mm slides (which are actually done to scale!)

You can see more of Lauren's slides ( under the cut.Collapse )

You can see even more of Lauren's work on her official site.

So, I was trawling tumblr the other day, like I often do at my desk job, & stumbled onto these amazing paintings by Will Cotton via Anna Hell (one of my favorite tumblrs, by the way!)

Click through for more of Will's amazing candy landscapes & portraits of women lounging around in clouds of cotton candy with frosting hats. (Warning, one or two these might not be safe for work!)( More by Will CottonCollapse )

You can view more of Will's work (including paintings, drawings, and sculptures) at his official website.

Get Back in Your Book is a series of photos by Lissa Laricchia depicting literary characters being sucked back into the books they came from. If you're a fan, you can let Lissy know via Flickr. There are four more ( under the cut.Collapse )

I've been really into embroidery lately. I'm still very much a beginner, but each week I've set aside time to work on small projects and am getting a little better every day. Since I've started embroidering, I've been keeping an eye out for inspiring embroidery projects and am especially drawn to mixed media ones. Embroidering linen on a hoop is great, don't get me wrong (in fact, embroidering linen on a hoop is pretty much the only kind of embroidering I do), but I really like to see projects that mix a needle and thread with something new.

Doe-C-Doe (blog, etsy) does mixed media embroidery with old McCall's patterns that's totally eyecatching! You can see more of her work ( under the cutCollapse )

Alexis Anne Mackenzie crafts amazing collages out of illustrations from botanical and anatomical text books. Some of her work is just free form imagery, but my favorite pieces are the ones that spell out sometimes hard to decipher Jenny Holzer style truisms out of blades of grass and flower stems and muscle tissue.

Her latest exhibit, All the Colors of the Dark, will be open until May 22nd at ebersmoore in Chicago. If you live out that way, be sure to get over there and check it out!

I've posted some of Alexis's work under the cut here, but have resized it so that it loads a little quicker. If you want to check out larger, more detailed versions, you can head over to her webpage.

( More work by AlexisCollapse )

01. I've mentioned it before, but I want to plug it again because it went offline for awhile & is semi-recently returned... Naked and Angry is one of my favorite places for tiled backgrounds. If you're in need of a cute pattern, there's no better website.

02. The whole internet already knows about them, but I'm in love with Kate Beaton's Hark, a vagrant historical and pop culture webcomics. I'll never love another webcomic as much as I love Cat and Girl, but Hark, a vagrant is a very close second.

03. I am basically losing my mind over the fact that Go Sailor, one of my all-time favorite bands forever, will be playing the Athens Popfest this summer. Will any of you be there? I will be, for sure!

If you haven't heard of Go Sailor, check out this video for their song "Together Forever in Love":



04. My new favorite blog lately has been Threadbared, an amazing fashion blog with an academic slant. If you're interested in critical approaches to fashion, be sure to check it out.

05. If you're a fan of vintage photos and/or circus ephemera, you for real need to check out this NY Times article about Frederick W. Glasier who took portraits of American circuses at the turn of the century.

06. I'm giving away another record on my music blog! Comment on this entry if you'd like to win a free copy of Allo Darlin's Polaroid Song 7".

I know that updates have been few and far between. I actually have a bunch of stuff saved on my computer that I've been wanting to share here, it's just been hard to motivate myself lately. I'm still blogging via tumblr and my music blog, Side Ponytail, is still very active. I love lemonadepoem, but you'll have to be patient with me until I'm in the right place to work on it!

01. I'm really digging Madame Talbot's Victorian Lowbrow Pen and Ink Poster Prints. Especially this Undertaker's Cabinet one and this alchemy one.

02. Female Illustrators of the Mid-Twentieth Century is my new favorite art blog!

03. Now that it's spring, I've got skate boarding on the brain. This article showcases 100 different skateboard designs.

04. If you're a fan of animals doing people things, check out this Coilhouse blog entry about Teagan White's artwork.

05. Lastly, I know I plugged this the other day, but I'm giving away a copy of the Dum Dum Girls' "Jail La La" 7" on my music blog. It's not too late to enter! Just leave a comment here!