My outfit today, a navy polka dotted sun dress from Forever 21, was my inspiration for writing this post. This dress is one of my favorites because it is so light weight and comfortable – a perfect sun dress for the summer months. Let’s face it – life just wouldn’t be the same without sun dresses, especially when they’re polka dotted! My favorite part of this “I’m Lovin” is definitely the patterned backpack; I’ve been needing a new bag for months now, and I just haven’t found one that fulfills all my requirements – ie. big enough – but not to bulky, stylish, comfortable, and it just has to be me. For any fans out there who want to send me a surprise gift, you know what to buy!
Category Archives: Construct
Geometric Collection | Audrey Hepburn
My latest addition to the Geometric Collection is well known style icon, Audrey Hepburn. The vintage fashion of her outfit and the general cool attitude expressed through this photograph really captures my attention, even at first glance. Her sophisticated elegance must be the reason why this shot is so well known. I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I did making it!
Geometric Collection – Pearl Earring
The Girl with a Pearl Earring: a painting that – in it’s mystery – has inspired both film and novel, and caught my interest as a historic “Style Icon”. This piece is a bit less “flashy” then the first, Twiggy, however there is something so enchanting about her eyes that catches my attention. Some say that the pearl earring is the focal point of the painting, but personally I think that it is her eyes are the most mesmerizing feature.
Stay tuned to see the next piece in the collection! I have already started it, and I think it’s going to turn out really nice. Kudos to whoever can guess it – leave a comment with your thoughts!
Geometric Collection – Twiggy
A few days ago I was browsing Pinterest, relaxing after a hard week of school. Lately I have been especially interested in geometric designs and patterns >> check out my Geometric Board on Pinterest! While I was scrolling through a Illustrative board I came upon a painting by Tim Biskup of a portrait composed of geometric shapes. I was so inspired by his work that I thought I’d give it a try! I have decided to start a collection of portraits remade with geometric shapes of “Style Icons”. If you haven’t recognized her yet, this is a portrait of Leslie Hornby (Twiggy). I really love how it turned out and I am currently working on the next piece, The Girl with a Pearl Earring. Stay tuned to see how it turns out!
Dream House Anyone?
I was thinking about what my dream house might look like after reading many posts from Smile and Wave and her moving experiences over the past few weeks. So I decided to go searching for some houses that would be…well dreamy. I found an interesting interior design and architecture web-site called Fresh Home, perfect for home styling inspiration. So without further ado my dream home…
I love this view of the kitchen.. it is so bright and full of color!
What’s in There? — Dissection
I was inspired by a fellow blogger to do a little post on “dissections”. I decided that I’d try my hand at becoming a biologist. I once dissected a fish in my 8th grade science class, but now I’ve taken my skills to a whole different level. To start out I searched around my house to find some specimens for the operation. Today we will be looking at the skins and innards of a toy train, a My Little Pony, and toothpaste. First up, the toy train: Megan got this on a field trip at the Beijing, bullet train station. It served it’s purpose as a toy and now it has become a perfect patient.
Next is a more “life like” specimen for our dissection. Of all the delicate instruments and tools I used during the process, a small paper razor was the most helpful. As expected, dissections are far from tidy. Sadly, it was my blood, not the pony’s, which was spilled when my razor accidentally slipped. However, for the advancement of Science I think little of it! Though my hypotheses completely missed the mark, I still enjoyed the dissection.
Finally comes the toothpaste, my personal favorite. It never occurred to me that I had, in fact, never seen the inside of a toothpaste tube before this experiment- it was quite an exciting experience. At the local grocery store I picked up the Chinese favorite, green-tea-flavored toothpaste, as well as the American classic, minty Crest. To avoid stickiness I froze them before dissection, however the green tea toothpaste was more gel-like in nature, which was hard to work with. However, I think as a whole it was a successful dissection!
Photo Lantern
This week, one of my friends asked me to take a look at a blog post she found inspiring. The work displayed was an array of paper jewels-a giant installation made of paper. I agree, the work that she showed me was really inspiring. I really enjoyed the work of Kristen Hassenfeld and decided to try something inspired from her work. This project is very manageable-only taking me one hour to fully complete. I wanted to use some of the printed photos I had lying around, so I tried to re-create a jewel-like-lantern with them.
Here is my product and below are the instructions:
And here is how I did it:
Instructions:
1. Get your supplies. You will need a cutter, ruler, cutting board, tape, laminate paper, string and a marker. (and of course your photos)
2. Cut your laminate paper into a pattern that you will duplicate onto the pictures. I used a hexagon shape.
3. With the pattern cut all of your pictures. Perforate two lines onto the photo (making sure you do not cut all the way through), so that you get a place to fold the picture.
4. Tape all of the flat sides of the hexagons together, making a cylinder of hexagons.
5. Start taping the angled sides together. (Make sure to tape two together, then skip one and tape the next two together-and so on-refer to the above).
6. Take the triangle pieces that you cut off of the hexagons and tape the longest sides together.
7. Tape these into the remaining gaps between your hexagons.
8. Finish by taping these smaller triangles together at their tips.
9. Use string to hang.
Feeling Woody
Recently I seem to be noticing wood more and more and enjoying the beauty of the unpredictable pattern of the grain. Maybe it’s because in China everything is made out of concrete and brick; or it could be that I am tired of staring at my fake wood flooring and go crazy over the real thing. In any case, these pictures reminded me of the beauty of wood and how much I miss seeing it! I hope you enjoy!
Sources: chair, owl, shoes, pattern, buttons, tape, trees, carved door, flooring, wood texture
History and Theory: Design Past
Starting this new semester, we are going into a lot of History and Theory which is included in the shaping of what architecture is as a whole. Our studies have taken us from the debate of art categories-the fine arts as compared to industrial arts; all the way to the push for a violent revolt of the arts and society as a whole. In the first few lectures, we focused on what it meant to be “Modern”, and what that means for architecture.
With the start of the industrial revolution, the world moved into the modern era–but some would say this isn’t the start of the modern era. The real change that occurred what the explosion of new materials and machines that allowed for so many new and different artistic expressions and styles.
The Arts and Crafts Movement was one of the first reactions to the Modern era and its effects. The Arts and Crafts Movement hoped to return to the more handcrafted tradition of creating all utilitarian and decorative items uniquely and personally. This included highly intricate work by people-instead of machines. They created by hand their own furniture, houses, stained glass, fixtures, and even wallpaper.
Art Nouveau was the reaction to the Arts and Crafts Movement. They believed in the machine and the possibilities behind the machine. They praised engineers as artists and embraced new technologies and materials as ways to enhance their artistic expression. They started to use machines in art and created an evolved style based on these ideas.
The Futurists came soon after these two groups, in the beginning of the 1900’s-right before the First World War. They suggested that society should reject all previous styles and ideas-to move onto the next era of thought. This takeover and renewal of thought would be constant-reoccurring every ten to twenty years (in the minds of the Futurists). They imagined a new society based on the machine-and architecture which reflected this.
The Deutsche Werkbund was a group of German artists, architects, and thinkers who were set on changing Germany as a world power and bringing the culture of art and creation to the foreground of German life. They saw little distinction between architecture, art, and print. This idea started to infiltrate into industry and product design.
Image sources: Morris Grafton, Alphonse Maria Mucha, Peter Behren and Antonio Sant’Elia.
I’m Lovin’… Black & White
I have just started looking over Etsy now and then so I decided to pick out a few items that really stuck out to me to use as some sort of blog post Coincidentally they all were black and white so this post is dedicated to the lovely style of Black & White. The Black and white patterns are so great because it always seems to go well with any season, in every dress (like this dress!). When I picked all these items out I also thought about how perfect they would be for a day of shopping during the summer… I simply cannot get over that yellow mustache bag! Which item is your favorite?
