!nkspiration: Anna Williams Photography

As a regular Martha Stewart Living reader, I've been coming across Anna William's fabulous photography but today I took some time to look over her website and it blew me away.

Her images are refreshing and so inspiring.. To see more of her work, you can visit her website..

(images via Anna Williams website)

Ballet Recital

 A perfect start to Mother's Day weekend this year was attending Z's ballet recital. Z has been doing ballet for a semester now and she loves it. She anxiously waits for Wednesday and is most sad at the end of her class. We were a bit anxious as to Z's stage nerves. She seemed excited in the week leading up to the show but with a three-year old, it's sometimes hard to tell what their excitement will translate to in front of an audience. She was awesome - she seemed to be enjoying herself on stage and actually performed, following her teacher's cues!

Her teacher, Jeanelle is super awesome! She is almost full term pregnant and still teaching a handful of classes and she put together an awesome show! I can only imagine what goes into hosting/organizing a performance with kids aged 3-8.

We celebrated with a sushi dinner and mango ice cream...

Modern Cave

Influenced by the '70s organic architecture, Alexandre de Betak created a modern cave home that he spent 10 years dreaming about, five years looking for a location to build it, two years designing it and two years actually building it. Located in a small coastal village in Majorca, it is modern yet warm.

I love it, aren't the tree bark bookshelves gorgeous?

(photos via T Magazine)

I spy...

Z's favourite car-game after her visit to Austin is, 'I spy'. Since spelling and alphabets is still a bit overwhelming for her; we play the 'colour' version of the game. On our drive home from my mom's last night, after sunset, we're (ofcourse) playing I spy and it happens to be Z's turn...

Z: I spy with my teeny meeny eye, something that is the colour yellow!

A: The lid of your milk bottle?

Z:  No.

Me: The bag holding your toys, the penguin's nose?

Z: No, mama, NO.

A: The street sign! OH, wait - I got it, the traffic light!

Z: No, it's the sun abba.. Wait, where did the sun go?

Have a great weekend!

Z is down with a flu so our weekend plans might go up in the air! I hope she feels better soon!

Meanwhile, here's a lovely video I came across earlier this week. It's a tribute from a man to a city he lived in and loved. He attached theatre tickets to balloons that he set free from a building top; he wanted people to enjoy, explore and love the city as much as he did.

 What a great idea; the video made me happy!

Bunny Finger Puppets

For Easter this year, Z and I made bunny finger puppets to give to her classmates along with mini chocolate eggs. I was inspired by a craft I came across on Purl Soho. The puppets were really easy and fun to make but it took a lot longer than I had anticipated which is why the puppets have no eye or tail. If I had managed my time better or realised how long it would take, I would have added buttons for eyes and a small wool pom-pom as a tail.

If you would like to make them; it's fairly simple.
1) For each puppet you will need two colours of felt (we used pale pink/white, fuschia/white, red/white and dark grey/light grey combos - our white felt had a lovely silver shimmer to it). We had some felt in our craft closet and picked up the rest from Fabricland.
2) Draw an outline of a bunny so that it's height from head to the base (without the bunny ears) is as long as your index finger (ours was roughly 3" and the bunny ears were an additional 1.5" long). Cut two of each colour for one finger puppet.
3) Sandwich one colour between the other (for example, I placed both dark grey bunny pieces between the light grey ones) and stitch around the body using a blanket stitch. To make the nose, use several blanket stitches in pink.

Easter Weekend Memories...

We took a short trip with A's family for a couple of days over the Easter weekend to the lovely town of Collingwood. The Blue Mountain village was festive; we enjoyed an outdoor concert, chocolate covered apples and Beaver Tails. Z had a great time with her cousins and enjoyed the music while basking in the sun.

Crumpled City Maps

Aren't these Crumpled City Maps just lovely? They would make a perfect gift for A. He loves to travel, has a lot going on, packs last minute and never folds his paper maps! Given that it weighs less than 20 grams and is 100% water proof, it's also great for parents!

Designed by Enanuele Pizzolorusso, an Italian industrial designer; each map proposes 10 SoulSights, places that are chosen to excite you. These are places filled with intense emotions that are brought to life by the people passing through or stopping off in them. I think this would be the most exciting aspect of the map! And would make a great Father's Day Gift!

(via NOTCOT, images via Palomarweb)

Art & Fear

 

I am at a stage in my life where I am overwhelmed and over-inspired. I have all these ideas floating around; bumping and slowly crowding the other. I realised today, that I just have to pick one to start and keep going; there's really no other way around it. There's an excellent parable from the book Art & Fear by David Bayles, that I came across in an interview I read recently and I had to share:

 

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”. 

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Pottery Workshop

A few months ago, a couple of friends and I visit spent a Wednesday evening  at the Gardiner Museum. I had been wanting to try the drop-in clay workshop for a while and finally, enticed by the company of two friends, I ventured downtown on a cold day.

We spent all our time at the potter's wheel, trying to get the right balance between shape and speed. I probably worked with five pieces of clay and ended up with two pieces (both bowls) that I was happy with. I have to admit there is a certain thrill attached to molding something raw and ugly into something beautiful.

I remember feeling a certain frustration at my inability to perfect the piece and I was told by the facilitator that it's all about getting a feel for how the wheel moves and how my hands work against the clay; something that can only be learnt with time and practice. For someone like me, who need short-term gratification ever so often, I really think these workshops allow me to realize the rewards of patience and work accomplished over a longer period of time...

 (images by nisreen halai for the inkpression blog)

Mid-week craziness

My list of things to do for this week seems endless to the point where I don't know where to start. I'm dreaming of sitting on the daybed in the picture, reading a good book!

Hope you're enjoying your week so far!

(photo via apartmenttherapy)

Bed-book

To resolve the issues of lack of space faced by a lot of urban-dwelling Japanese families, photographer and innovater, Yusuke Suzuki, created a 'fold-up' bed in the shape of a book. When the book is opened at night, it's pages serve as a duvet and pillows and it comes with large cut out shapes and illustrations. During the day it can be folded up and used as a playmat.

So very creative!

!nkspiration: Olimpia Zagnoli

One of my favourite illustrators Olimpia Zagnoli has art directed Timbuktu, the first children's magazine designed especially for the iPad. I've always loved the clean, crisp yet whimsically joyful feeling of her illustrations and so I am absolutely loving Timbuktu's modern design.

 (first three images via Olimpia Zagnoli)

(Timbuktu first spotted on SwissMiss)

!nkspiration: Nidhi Chanani

 

I stumbled across Nidhi Chanani's illustrations while browsing on etsy recently. And I fell in love with her joyful pieces; each conveying their own story... Originally from India, she grew up in California and currently lives in San Francisco. Her work is whimsically infused with references to her diasporic background and her everyday life.

I would love to get a piece for Z's room, but I have so many favourites, I wouldn't know which one to pick!