sock envy

happy december!
now that that's out of the way, let's talk about socks!
some people are really into socks. you know - they really enjoy warm fuzzy socks, like getting socks for christmas, etc. i'm not one of those people. i would actually prefer not to wear socks. but in the wake of the arctic blast that has hit pretty much everywhere in the country, i've had to change my tune.

not too long ago, coincidentally, i came across sock it to me, a portland-based (shocker) sock company that has the most delightful socks i've ever seen. it's better to show than tell, though, so let's look at my favorites.

first of all, elephant socks:

second of all, dinosaur socks. i really think i need these.

third, french socks.

fourth, oregon socks. i mean, really, there's a sock for everything i love.

while i like repeating pattern socks, my favorite ones are actually the ones that have one big pattern up the whole sock. like this:

OR THIS.

somebody call kristen bell.

i definitely purchased these. the loch ness monster is real.

and last but not least, a unicorn poo-ing a magical rainbow.

i've already purchased some of these as xmas presents for friends, so act surprised if you get one. 

in conclusion, it was really hard not to make a lot of sock puns in this post, but i'll leave that to the experts. if you're wondering what to get me for christmas, look no further (unless you're looking to buy me a computer or nike fuelband, then definitely look further). 

have i become a newly converted sock obsessor? no. but if i can get socks with magical unicorns on them, then i think i can get excited about winter weather just a little bit more. 

like i never left

So...sorry I left for kind of a long time. It turns out writing your dissertation, applying for jobs, teaching piano lessons, traveling for business, traveling for pleasure, training for a half marathon, working for your advisor, stress-eating, and grief-recovery-sleeping (seriously, it's a thing. 10 hours a night) doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging.

But don't you fear, because I've been thinking about you a lot, my cherry amours. I have loads of great ideas for new posts to write. You want a sneak-peek? Of course you do.

Things I some day plan to write about, probably pretty soon:
1) How to make your own earring holder
2) Guided painting classes: so fun!
3) Holiday gift guide, particularly useful if you're buying a present for me
4) Getting in touch with your country side (Luke Bryan not included)
5) Cyanographs: the most hipster art project I can think of
6) Birchbox: how do they make it so awesome?

In the meanwhile, to tide you over, look at what I'm obsessed with right now:
(okay it's nail polish, don't judge me)

Sephora recently came out with a new line of nail polishes and they're kind of great. They have every color and effect you could possibly want, and they last a long time. I put one of the Xplosive top coats over a L'Oreal nail polish and it lasted a whole week, which is a huge deal for me. And they dry SO FAST.

So far I've only gotten two:

I got this neutral for job interviews, because what if I don't want to wear neon yellow to a job interview? I may not. And so I can wear this:

And I got this one to put over my other nail polishes. It looks like splatter paint!! I think it's so cool.

But of course, I already have plans to get others. Like these:

Or pretty much any of them. At $10.50 each ($12.50 for the special ones), it's enough of a splurge to keep me from buying all of them at once, but cheap enough to use as treats (like, say, for not biting my nails...). Thanks, Sephora! For taking all my money.

Guest post #2!!

I'm excited to share with you a guest post from one of my favorite crafters-in-crime, Anna Moiso. These shoes turned out AWESOME and I can't wait to try them myself!! Enjoy!

Greetings! If you don't know me, I'm Anna, and I have the great pleasure of guest-posting on MCA! I am super excited about these GALAXY SHOES I made last weekend and can't wait to share! All the sentences so far have exclamation points!

Anyway....I originally got this idea from a crafting site I frequent, but if you google “galaxy shoes” you'll get many, MANY results. My basic plan was to take some old, cheap, black, Keds-type shoes and spruce them up in a space theme.  I began with:

• shoes (obviously)
• paint brushes/sponges
• acrylic paint in pink, purple, black, white
• newspaper (to protect the work area)
• painters tape
• black paper

I wanted to try out some color combinations/patterns before I worked on the shoes. I was going for a space clouds/nebula type look.

Ok, so the painting here is not very spacy, but I did get some ideas of how I wanted to mix the colors. It was also at this point that I decided I wanted to add a little water to the paint to make it slightly thinner. This turned out to be a good call :)
Next, I taped the soles of the shoes with painter's tape so I wouldn't get paint on the rubber edges. (also I took out the shoelaces!)  Then, I started painting the cloudy parts using a combination of colors and white. The sponge brush was great for this.

After I was pretty satisfied with the cloudy parts, I took a pencil and dotted everywhere with white paint in varying sizes (mostly small). I tried with a small paint brush at first, but the pencil worked better for me. Try both ways and choose your own adventure. :)

Things I would consider doing differently next time:

• Find some sparkly acrylic paint – I think this would be VERY cool
• Plan out my pattern of where I wanted to paint the clouds- the two shoes look pretty similar and I would have liked them to be a little more asymmetrical
• Some slip-ons (vans style) would be very cool for this project too!

Thanks for reading and have a great crafternoon!

Anna

uh-oh spaghetti-o

oops. looks like it's been a month since i posted...that's troubling. 

well i know all of you have been lost and fashionless without me, but don't you fret. no more long hiatuses. hiati.

perhaps the reason i haven't written is because i haven't seen a lot of things this summer that i've loved. most of the fashion trends i see revolve around constantly looking like you're in search of a music festival and/or burning man...and as i always say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

but i can think of some summery things that i've really liked, and i'll share those with you.

first of all, i am loving this billow-y fabric trend. who doesn't love a good chiffon on a hot day? we all know i love clothes that can do double duty, and chiffon tops go so easily from work-appropriate to happy hour and dinner casual. h&m has a lot of these tops in different styles, but so do loads of places.

hm.com

the second thing i'm in love with right now are phone cases that double as wallets. or wallets that double as phone cases. something about carrying a big purse around on a hot day is a little unbearable, and i'm terrified of dropping my brand new iphone or leaving it somewhere (which reminds me, i could do a whole entry on iphone cases...). enter the iphone wristlet! there are lots of options out there, but my choice is the deborah dot wristlet from kate spade. and it's on sale at nordstrom!

nordstrom.com

if kate spade's not quite your speed, i'm also really in love with these. OTTERS:

bungalow360.com

and summer wouldn't be summer without a great pair of neon sandals. plus with the 40% discount happening at j.crew right now, plus your student/educator discount, they are kind of a deal!

jcrew.com

and last but not least, staying hydrated in the heat is a must. and even though i don't have one of these, i really want one. so in the event that you find yourself needing to buy me a present, look no further. this little buddy lets you mix fruits or veggies to diffuse into your water. science is amazing:

fab.com

d'accord! those are my favorite summer things right now. what's keeping you cool on these wonderfully hot days?

terrific terrariums

in this second round of crafting with colleen, we very successfully made terrariums!!

step one: pick your jar. there was a wide selection. i chose the fishbowl style.

there was also a rock selection. some people did a great job picking out their rocks. i made the mistake of overdoing it on the red rocks and had to go back and pick all the red rocks out when i decided i hated them. 

tim took his time really taking in the inspiration that other people were providing. 

rocks round 2.

this is when i was picking out all of the red rocks. it took awhile, but it was worth it.

there was a selection of succulents to choose for your terrarium. 

terrarium in progress!

this was my finished terrarium. i added an abnormally sized lizard (let's say it's a komodo dragon) and an army man stalking the lizard. let's look at this masterpiece from a few more angles. 

colleen puts the finishing touches on her terrarium.

 chris is finally ready to make a terrarium of his own. he starts by dumping in a handful of army men in the jar and then drowning them in red rocks.

chris was excited about his creation. tim finally felt he had enough inspiration to start on his.

basically, it was success all around. here's my recipe for terraria:

materials:

- white sand

- potting soil

- plants that don't require a lot of water

- toys

- rocks

- bowls

- moss

be sure to:

- plan ahead. it's hard to make edits.

- know when to stop. it's easy to overdo it.

- make it really awesome!!

i want to make a dinosaur terrarium sometime. with a volcano in the middle. for now, though, my wonderful terrarium is in my new office. it looks great and i really hope i don't kill the plant.

the end!

can't win em all

i've been having a few craft adventures with my friend colleen recently. some of them have been more successful than others. sometime soon i'll post about the terrariums we made at colleen's birthday party. here i'm going to write about a craft adventure that didn't work out as well.

the goal was to take jars and wine bottles and breathe some new life into them with spray paint. we had two bottles: one was a wine bottle we planned to cover in gold spray paint and one was a mason jar we planned to cover with chalkboard paint. spoiler alert: one of these turned out and one did not.

for the wine bottle, we first took a hot glue gun and wrote colleen's name in glue. i don't have pictures of this because i wasn't thinking about pictures just then. but suffice to say this was really hard. hot glue is really stringy, as it turns out. but we did it and took the bottles outside to be sprayed. we set them on some logs because that seemed like a good idea. and it was.

colleen vigorously shook the spray paint for two whole minutes. or most of two whole minutes.

and spray! our spraying technique improved over time. at first the glitter was just really runny because we were spraying in one place instead of waving the spray paint all over. clearly we were never taggers in our youths. 

the runny glitter was really pretty while it was dripping and glittering, but less pretty when it ended up streaked.

anyway this is how this one turned out. we weren't thrilled about it.

we added a few more coats, but still were not thrilled. 

next we turned our attention to the chalkboard mason jar. we kept it simple and just focused on doing a good spray paint job.

this one turned out really well, i think. several lessons were learned from this project:
1. hot glue guns are mostly terrible for crafting with any precision.
2. chalkboard paint is as awesome as it sounds.
3. simplicity usually wins out.
4. spray painting is not as simple as one would expect. who knew?

ode to stationery

allow me to say something very hipster right now:

people don't send enough hand-written shit anymore.

emails are dandy, but letters are sweeter. thank you cards trump all. pretty paper makes everything look sunnier. these are basic tenets of my existence.

luckily, i'm not alone. there are a lot of people out there making really beautiful papers and things so you can feel hip and cool while writing a card, even if your handwriting does not look like calligraphy.

my very favorite stationery company in the world might be rifle paper co. my office is slowly being taken over by rpc notebooks and notepads. i am obsessed with this vibrant florals and simple prints. observe:

i'm also a big fan of yellow owl workshop, not only for their stamp sets but also for their french-themed cards:

and of course, no stationery post would be complete without some recognition of the beautiful paper source:

those are just a selection of the myriad stationery sets that i've seen and loved. so go forth and send letters! and if you need my address, just let me know :)