holiday craft fairs announcement!

after halloween rolls by, the holiday stuff is up. it is shockingly fast. i can't believe the clocks have been set back, november is here, the holidays are just around the corner! xlmammals will be participating in the gotcraft! holiday market december 7th at the cambrian hall on commercial drive, looking forward to our first ever  gotcraft event! stay tuned to see if we will be at the blim winter market on december 20th. must get busy! AHHHHH! 

for more information on gotcraft check out www.gotcraft.ca

anna maclellan

i had the pleasure of meeting this super talented local artist a few weeks ago and can't wait to show you her work. anna's mixed media art has a beautiful nostalgic quality, given that she has amazing hook ups with vintage paraphernalia throughout the city, and has this twisted appeal of the stepford wife meets cute furry animal. anna uses vintage paper dolls and mixed media to create her collage series. i especially love the fact that she's names all of her pieces in this series. her prints are great and i am looking forward to acquiring a few myself! she has some really beautiful one of a kind pieces built with found and saved treasures that resurrect these found pieces into solid art works.

where the colour is in toronto

ryan mcginness

while i was in toronto a couple weeks ago, i missed out on takashii iwasaki but i literally walked into this ryan mcginness show in the distillery district in toronto. i've been an admirer of his work since i began my career in design. i have always loved how intricate and smooth, simple and ornate his art is. i had only seen his work in books and to have been able to see them up close was such an awesome surprise. the show was called aesthetic comfort, lots of neon in his work and lots of large scale canvases. he also created these amazing scultpures, with his art applied somehow to each individual piece. 

swoon for takashii iwasaki

i am heading to toronto tomorrow for some quality time with my mama! so to make the most of our trip, i've been trying to scour the internet and friends to figure out what to do and where to explore! luckily, i came across a show at the LE Gallery in toronto featuring a solo show by takahii wasaki. he is a japanese artist who studied at the university of manitoba. i've seen his work before and was in awe at the whimsical nature of his art and even more impressed with a series of hand embroidered pieces each just as colourful and intricate as his paintings. i am so excited to be able to see these works up close. 

check out his website at http://takashiiwasaki.info

(images from http://takashiiwasaki.info)

the scandinavian eye

so one of my favourite blogs is emmas design blogg, an amazing photographer and eye based in sweden she's opened my eyes to some really amazing artist and interiors from her neck of the woods, here is the latest sampling of what i've learned and got out of visiting her blog.

check out jenny almen's fantastic line drawings adorning cushions. so inspiring, i love the simplicity and the boldness all at the same time.

camilla engman has been a household name for me that i've been aquainted with thanks to the internet, but a collaboration of her work and another artist named elisabeth dunker is new to me, and together they have created studio violet. i love these artists and their prints, to die for. 

so much coveting! is this bad?

(images from http://emmas.blogg.se/ & http://www.studioviolet.se/)

kitschy kootenays

my trip to the kootenays was fantastic, the area is surrounded by mountains and the changing colours of the trees was an amazing sight to see flying in. lots of activities including a traditional dhoukabour dinner with fresh perogies and russian bortsch, so delicious, wandering up and down the main street in nelson and in and out of alleys and small antique shops. 

one of the coolest things was finding all this random "alley art" there are definitely some artistic  people living in nelson for sure. one of the perks of working with an organization that has some contacts with bc transit, we had our own special city bus shuttling us back and forth from castelgar to nelson! this bus had a purple, seafoam and yellow colour scheme which was pretty odd, but added to the little quirky touches this area has to offer.

i am a little disappointed that i didn't just go for purchasing this vintage polaroid camera, it was $80 bucks and my frugal side was like "what's the point" but then when i got home, my boyfriend reminded me that polaroid is pretty much obsolete, and this would have been a jewel. bummer. oh well. 

nelson + castlegar

here is a little homage to the "alley art", the oddities and quirkiness that is nelson that make for some really interesting photographs. how random is the power ranger?

brand yourself!

one of the blogs i love to check out daily is swissmiss. such a keen sense of what's going on in the design/art/multimedia spheres, so inspiring. so today, during my usual peruse, i saw a link to this guy: christopher doyle who created a branding/identity guide on himself. so amazing and nerdy at the same time. love it. it's the ultimate combination in a dude: amazing+nerdy=love!

check out the entire post at johnsonbanks

read ! swissmiss

salmon punch-buggy no returns

heading to the kootenays tomorrow morning, been super busy with work, we moved offices (boo) from main and broadway and now are in burnaby, if you're out there, let me know. i have no friends in burnaby yet!

check out this amazing salmon coloured vw beetle i snapped in richmond last weekend. so sweet!

i am hoping for some sweet pictures of castlegar and nelson... and maybe some shopping finds as the scene in nelson for crafters/arts i'm told is 

a-MAZING! if anyone has any suggestions, comment me!

have a great weekend!