The Upstart Crow

The Upstart Crow is a creative scholarship project, and it's my new favorite thing. A dear friend of ours, Micah Coston, has been accepted for doctoral research in English and Shakespeare Studies at some of the oldest and best universities in the world (Oxford, Cambridge, and The Shakespeare Institute). But the cost to attend is staggering, so he's using creativity to beat the odds. A group of friends, including Cory and I, have joined together to create The Upstart Crow to help raise the funds.

Check out this video to learn more about the project:
(Art & Animation by Cory, Cinematography by J. Aaron Greene, Music by Micah Coston)

Please visit The Upstart Crow to learn more and to donate.

Also, please pass the video on. Every little bit helps!

Elderly Animals

I just stumbled across an amazing photo project by Isa Leshko, called Elderly Animals. It's such a sweet and touching tribute, with great stories told through her beautiful shots. Take a look at the video below for the inspiration for this project.


Elderly Animals: Photographs by Isa Leshko from Mark & Angela Walley on Vimeo.

Here's some of my favorite pieces from Isa's Elderly Animal's project, you can purchase prints and see the rest of the collection here.

Sweet Paul Wreaths

As usual, I love everything about the latest issue of Sweet Paul, but this time it was the DIY wreaths that really caught my eye. I'd be happy with any one of these beauties!

Source: sweetpaulmag-digital.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: sweetpaulmag-digital.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: sweetpaulmag-digital.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: sweetpaulmag-digital.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: sweetpaulmag-digital.com via Erin on Pinterest

Click here to get the directions for these and other lovely wreath projects!

Everlane

Everlane is a new shopping site that offers designer-quality goods for non-designer prices. I just finished the waiting period and gained access to the site, and I'm very impressed with what I've seen so far!

Here's a little peek:

Aren't their products just lovely? You can see what they have to offer too by using this invite link. Happy shopping!

All the Stars in Heaven

Did you know that all the photos collected by the Hubble telescope are in the public domain?  Thanks to Jordan's post, I've been pouring over the image galleries. You can access photos right here, and most files are available in hi-res. The images are so beautiful, an art poster or two would make the perfect gift for the space enthusiast in your life.  Quite simple and inexpensive!

Here's some of my favorites...

Be Good & Buy Handmade

I just love this little reminder from Indie Craft Parade!

The "be good & buy handmade" phrase was coined by the amazing Micah Coston, and the lovely graphic created by my very own Cory Godbey.

We want people to remember artists and makers this time of year, so feel free to share, reblog, or print this for your own personal use. Get the file at the Indie Craft Parade blog!

Lost Type Fonts

Even though I'm not a graphic designer, I've become quite interested in fonts and have started a little collection just for my personal use. Thanks to a head's up from How About Orange, I've been enjoying the lovely fonts of Lost Type. They put out beautiful high-quality fonts with a pay-what-you-want model. HINT: type a "0" in the amount box to get the font for free (since they state this helpful hint on the checkout, I guess it's ok. ;-D)

Take a look at Lost Type's lovely offerings, here are a few of my favorites...

From top:

Tommaso / Ribbon / Quaver / Mensch / Pompadour

Antiquaria Magazine

I just flipped through Antiquaria's e-magazine after seeing it mentioned on Design*Sponge, and wow, what a lovely issue! Great design and beautiful imagery throughout. Take a peek!

Flip through the Fall issue here,
and check out Antiquaria's shop while you're there!

Striped Storage

I am in love with anything striped and ombre these days, so these gorgeous storage baskets from The Container Store are right up my alley! 

They're on sale right now, so I just might have to snatch up that pink one! 

Rectangular here, round here.

Lay Baby Lay

I recently stumbled on a new blog that has quickly become a favorite of mine. Lay Baby Lay is a project by the oh-so-talented Joni, who posts about nursery inspirations and other child-related delights. She has an amazing eye for design, and even though I'm not in any need of a nursery, I just love seeing what she pulls together.

My favorite feature is the nursery moodboards. What fabulous combinations!

Neutral Niceties for a Boy, see original post for source list. 

Macaron Delights, see original post for source list.

 Joni also posts some great free printables and project tutorials.

 Bluebirds and Name Bunting

 And you've got to check out the nursery she put together for her baby girl, Vivi Charles. It's one of my all-time favorites.

Head over to Lay Baby Lay for more fabulousness!

Oh Happy Day Goes to Paris!

One of the coolest bloggers ever, Jordan Ferney of Oh Happy Day, just became even cooler. She moved to Paris for a year, and then decided to GIVE AWAY A TRIP TO VISIT HER IN PARIS!!!!! Sorry. I'm trying to reign in my excitement. I know my chances of winning this are slim, but if it can't be me, I would love it if it were one of my dear readers (Pssst. Take me with you!) Check out the details and enter to win over at Jordan's post!

Salt Water Taffy

I just had to share this lovely salt water taffy project from Vanilla & Lace (found via Creature Comforts). Doesn't she make taffy pulling look so glamorous? It doesn't hurt that this perfect shade of mint green is my newest color crush. Check out her post here for the full recipe and directions, and be sure to browse her lovely blog!

Forest Xylophone

So this video is a little off-topic for my usual posts, but it was too fantastic not to share. Basically, there's a giant xylophone made from thousands of bits of wood... set up in a forest. By rolling a ball down a continuous downhill track, the xylophone plays Bach’s Cantata 147, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. The whole thing is actually a commercial for some limited edition phone, but that aside, it's a crazy cool piece of art. Credit goes to Invisible Designs Lab’s Kenjiro Matsuo.

via The Fox is Black

Happy Weekend!

source unknown, please comment if you know it

Just a quick post to stay hello before I dash out the door... I hope you have a lovely weekend ahead filled with happy things and baby elephants!

Fairy Party

 photo by kevin coffey, via vintage rose garden

It's a busy day for me today, but I just wanted to pop in quickly and leave you with this magnificent image to start your weekend off right. I think it looks like a twilight fairy party, and I think they are having fun.

Happy weekend!

Pinterest

For those of you who haven't heard of Pinterest yet, prepare to have your mind blown. If you're familiar with it, you already know how awesome it is. From their site: "What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a social catalog service. Think of it as a virtual pinboard — a place where you can post collections of things you love, and "follow" collections created by people with great taste."

Basically, Pinterest is the coolest thing ever... you can "pin" any image, from any website. The best thing about it is once you pin something, it saves the original link. So say I want to pin a recipe... I just click my "pin it" button on my toolbar, select the image I want, what board I want it to save to, and I'm done. 6 months later when I finally get around to making that recipe, I just view my recipe board, find the image, click it, and it takes me back to where the recipe was originally posted.

The other best thing about it is that you can follow other people boards, and see what awesome stuff they found. If you really like it, you can re-pin their image to one of your boards.

I've found it's best to keep my board categories pretty specific. You can create any type of board you want, as many as you want. I've got 21 boards and counting, with topics ranging from DIY projects to pretty fireplaces.

Here's a look at one of my boards.. each image is a "pin"...

Here's a few of my boards, showing a preview of the pins I have placed on them.

And here's a specific pin... if I click this image it will take me back to where it was originally posted, a blog post containing DIY instructions for making that adorable garland.

Of course, it's not just good for saving pretty images, Pinterest makes a perfect shopping list. Save all the books you want to read this year, or a whole bunch of pillow options for your new couch. When you're ready to buy, you can go right to the store you saved it from.

Ready to get started? You can request an invite to join Pinterest (it's a free service!)... since it's fairly new there is a short waiting period, it took me about a week before my invite was accepted. Or, if you'll leave a comment on this post with your email address, I'll send you an invite and you can start right away.

Warning: Once you start pinning, you can't stop. I am so addicted to Pinterest, I'd rather surf their site than sleep. Remember on The Office when Michael said he didn't work for 5 days when he discovered YouTube? That's what I feel like.

Click here to follow me on Pinterest!

Free Gift Tags

Check it out! Going Home to Roost is giving away free downloadable gift tags just for you. Bonnie has created 4 great designs, my favorite being the sweet stag pictured above. Get them here.