Farmin' and Paper Dolls

Ok, so the title is used lightly. Pretty much referring to a couple of things I'm into lately. The thing is, I haven't posted for some time. Sorry 'bout that. I noticed as I look through other Bloggers' posts, they always apologize when they haven't posted for some time. I suppose they feel that whatever audience they have built up, needs to be entertained so they'll keep coming back for more. Well, I'm pretty sure I don't have a regular audience, so, why am I apologizing? Huh?...

We recently picked up our household and plopped it down on an acreage basically in the middle of nowhere. Its been really fun, we've got room to play, and about 40 acres of pasture, but, I have to admit, we miss Target, Wal-Mart and Home Depot being within a 5 minute drive of home. If I forget a bolt during a project, I'm stopped. Its been an adjustment. Needless to say, we are growing and learning... The neighbors keep asking me what I'm going to do with the pasture, I'm a city boy, so, I ask them if they know of any type of animal that doesn't eat or poop, and that is what I'm going to raise in the pasture. They laugh politely and walk away thinking I'm a big idiot. Oh well.

On to the paper dolls. Its something else I've been thinking about lately for some reason. Farmin' vs paper dolls? Not sure what they have to do with one another. Anyway, I was checking out Instructables.com the other day and came across a great post by a paper doll enthusiast named TangMu. This Instructable is loaded full of directions for making your own paper dolls and links to other great paper doll sites. Take a look. Enjoy. Make your own Farmin' Paper Doll.

My Plastic Heart

Check out My Plastic Heart.com to buy all kinds of fantastic wanna be pop culture items. Make a wall of shelves and buy a bunch of figures. Relive your childhood, only in a less wholesome way. Go there... you know you wanna.

Dekor? Grudgingly Interested

As a rule, I have an automatic elevated annoyance level for anyone, or company, or product that replaces a letter in a normal word with a different but similar sounding letter in an attempt at being KOOL... (see what I did with "cool" there?), so, when I decided to visit the site of designer, painter, illustrator "Dekor", I was skeptical that I would be interested at all. It just seems that things that are hip, are sometimes too hip, and as a result not hip at all. Know what I mean? Ignorant hip in spite of itself, is way better than "hip because I know how to be hip".

I admit it might be a French cultural thing I'm missing here in his spelling of Dekor, but I doubt it. Poor guy. Regardless, my point is, I ended up liking his work. Shame on me for having preconceived ideas about this designer based on the nickname they decide to go by. (Queue background music for the lesson), "So Michelle, you should never judge a book by its cover."

Anyway, back to Dekor and his work. Good stuff. My gripe with his choice of nickname aside. Gary Baseman-esque with a little dirty Chris Ware mixed in. He's reminiscent of someone else too, but I can't place it at the moment. Regardless, I enjoyed looking at the stuff on this site. Check out Nicolas Tual... otherwise known as "Dekor", [do finger quotes as you say it!] French designer to French stars [who?] and soon... the world! Mu-ah-ha-ha-ha.

Nice Bunny Paper Dolls Updated!

A quick note: Nice Bunny has updated their site and added an obvious link to their very awesome Paper Dolls Artist's Series. Its art for the rest of us. Collect them all! Buy other stuff from these amazing artists!

Image credit to Matt Hawkins and Nice Bunny.

Cool Wooden Toys From the Future

"Yosegi-Mokuzougan, or joined wooden block construction, is a craft skill where combinations of original and unique colors and textures of different kinds of wood are utilized to express artistic patterns."

Takeji (Take-G) Nakagawa has taken this traditional technique and expanded on it, made it 3-D, and made it his own. Drawing from tradition and incorporating what can only be asian pop culture into his toys and sculptures. Check out the take-g toys site. This guy is amazing! Warm and futuristic, two words that normally oppose one another exist simultaneously in his work.

Difficult to purchase if you are not in Japan, hopefully, that will soon be remedied. Most of the site is in Japanese, but the work pretty much speaks for itself.