Treasures from Japan

As a birthday gift to myself I ordered a few items from (a couple of weeks ago) Hiki's store Uguisu the Little Shoppe. Hiki has the most beautiful assortment of goods and art from Japanese artists. My favorites are always the stationery, you can never have enough paper goods. One of my absolute favorite Japanese artist is Aiko Fukawa. Fukawa-sans delicate paintings are joyful, strange and a sheer delight to look at. I was fortunate to have found a few lovely pieces in Hiki-chan's shop including a wonderful notebook filled with Fukawa-sans work and still enough room to add your own notes. Plus, I'm waiting for a lovely 8 card set of Fukawa-sans's paintings which will hang in my home. Along with these treasures I bought a beautiful letterpress coaster set entitled "Squirrel Forest" also a gorgeous packet of origami paper by Cochae.


Beautiful wrapping by Hiki

special surprise gift inside from Hiki, lovely vintage stationery. Thank you, Hiki-chan! xoxo

Yayoi Kusama-I Who Have Arrived In Heaven

On Wednesday I stood on line for almost 3 hours to see Yayoi Kusama's exbition at David Zwirner Gallery. The line is for Kusama-san's installation "The Souls of a Million Light Years Away", an ethereal 3-D experience inside a small mirrored room with thousands of little led lights floating in the air ,reflected in the mirrors and the water surrounding the standing platform. Its like that game 7 minutes in heaven, except you aren't making out and seeing stars you are in a room bathed in tiny stars for 45 seconds. THe room feels like it stretches out into infinity, giving it its nickname, the Infinity Room. Kusama-san also has two other installations in the gallery plus a collection of brilliant paintings. The other to installation, one consist of Kusama-san in a self-video singing a song called "Manahattan Suicide Addict", also the name of the video installation. Kusama-san also has added giant mirrors making the video repeat into infinity. The third installation is called "Love is Calling" and it's another mirrored room this time much larger where multiple viewers can participate and its filled with giant psychedelic polkadot tentacles. This room was a little like a fun-house but slightly more disturbing. I loved the whole show including her paintings, I would recommend if you are in New York stand on line and see the installations its well worth the 3 hour wait. Show runs until December 21st.




Getting There:
David Zirner Gallery
525 W 19th St, New York, NY 10011
(212) 727-2070
Take the A/C train to 14th Street Sta.
Walk west to 10the Avenue, and hang a left at 19th street.
You can also cut through Chelsea Market (16th street on 9th Avenue)
and pick up a sandwich for your long wait on line.

Summer Give Away! Stationery!

Hello hello! Hope you have all had a lovely weekend.  I've been a busy little beaver, beavering away on my computer and pulling out all my vintage ephemera to be inspired to make stationery for you lovely folks. I've put together two cute sets and I'm doing a summer give-away in celebration of the Summer Solstice approaching this week. The first set is called Shimokita Vintage, this is a collage of vintage airline ephemera, and one of my most prized vintage finds in Shimokitazawa a ceramic 60's pup. Plus a watercolor drawing of Calpico I did while in Japan and polkadots. You'll get the set which includes two notecards, two envelopes, two gift tags, and 3 sheets of giftwrap. The second set is Tokyo Triangles which is all pretty pastels in triangle, polkadots and stripes. The envelopes have the signature fox from the Usagi Por Moi logo and pretty bunting. This set includes, two envelopes, 2 notecards, 4 sheets of giftwrap (If time allows for me to finish designing the tags this week they will also be included, but they will definitely be available when they go up in the shop next week).
Both sets will be available next week (June 24th week) in the shop.
Ok here are the details. Leave a comment below of which is your favorite, plus your name and email and I will announce the winner next tuesday, June25th.

New Mini Houses in the Shop!

I've started posting my mini house pins/brooches in my shop, Usagi Por Moi. I will continue making them as long as there's interest. You too can learn to make them in my Art of Sewing zine also available in the shop.

Sakura Festival in Brooklyn

This weekend was the Sakura Matsuri festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens where they have a great collection of Cherry Blossom trees. There were lots of cosplay kids, Japanese bands, Taiko drumming, and sooo many activities. The Cherry Blossoms were just starting to reach their peak but have a couple of days to go. There were long lines to get the special hanami bento boxes, with a special pink daifuku that had a lovely flowery taste to it. We had a very special treat in the herb garden a tiny baby usagi was having his own celebration nibbling some strawberry leaves, scream!!!

A Good End and New Beginning

I've been fortunate enough to have a lovely end and beginning of year. First up, D and I tried the new Danish restaurant in Tribeca, Aamanns-Copenhagen a smørrebrød shop by Danish chef Adam Aamann. They prepare delicious tiny smørrebrød (you'll need to get two), an open face sandwich, with combinations like roast beef sirloin with, crispy onions, remoulade sauce and freshly grated horseradish. They also make their on aquavit. Afterwards we walked around Soho for a bit, such a lovely area of NYC.
Next up, I great night out at Village Yokocho in the East Village, a fun izakaya, then drinks at Decibel a wonderful Japanese Sake bar, reminiscent of bars in the Golden Gai. Lastly, we headed to St. Marks Place for a sweet treat at the Spot, a Korean dessert place where I had an amazing green tea tiramisu.

On Monday I had a great surprise I met up with lovely Jenna and her husband, from My Life as a Magazine. We had tea at Cha-An, my favorite Japanese teahouse and we walked around a bit in the EastVillage. Jenna also gave me sweet gift, a copy of this months Frankie! She knew I had a digital subscription but there aren't any hard copies to be found in NYC. Thank you Jenna, it was lovely to meet you.(that's tea smoked salmon on toast)

Yesterday we started the year with a great art installation at the NY Armory on Park Ave by artist Ann Hamilton. The show had beautiful silk sails floating in the middle of the room and it had swings attached to it with cords and when people sit and swing it creates a dance of fabric. The only part of the show I found disturbing were the poor pigeons kept in tiny cages that are released at the end of the night into the armory at the end of the show. The pigeons seem distressed and I don't believe animals should be used in any art, they're living beings not objects. But other wise the show was pretty spectacular.

Hervé Morvan, Fog Linen, and MT Tape

Last week was a good week for getting some really awesome stuff. Since I was working near the Kinokuniya in NYC I took a break and went shopping in the bookstore and came home with these lovely tapes and this wonderful book filled with French Poster art by Hervé Morvan. Of course no trip to Kinokuniya can be without some washi tape, I bought the thinner tape three packs. I also ordered from the heavenly linen store, Fog Linen, their fabric swatches and tapes which make great mini projects or just wonderful gift wrapping ideas. Plus beautiful linen kitchen towels, the two scandinavian blue towels, in gingham and stripe. Thanks to Beebee for sharing.

Tissue Case-à la Americaine

I love all the lovely tissue cases in the Japanese craft books and other crafty friends' blogs, but unfortunately these pretty cases aren't made for the bulkier and top opening American tissue packs. Fall arrived and my allergies went hay wire (no pun intended). I started carrying my little packs of tissues and the packs always start to fall apart at the last two tissues so I said enough! I drafted a little pattern to make my own pretty cases and now my tissues have a lovely hidey home of their own. The how-to will be in my next zine which I mentioned in my last post. The zine will be mostly simple sewing projects.

International Paper Love Swap II-Mail Outbox

Hello, hello, hello...Here we are again with the International Paper Love Swap hosted by dear friend Kelly Zarb. Here's a little sneak peek at my packages going out. One is for my swap buddy Magdalena in Singapore and the other is for lovely Kelly, who's birthday I missed and I want to send her a late birthday surprise!