happykatie :: katie rocks out the interwebs

Cupcake Monday: Loving your Liners

This week's Cupcake Monday is going to focus on an aspect of cupcake love that you may not pay attention to all the time, cupcake LINERS!!!

Typically, I just cross my fingers at the grocery or dollar store when having to make a last second liner purchase for a cupcake project.  Sometimes I come across AMAZING finds, sometimes they are just so-so.  Don't get me wrong, I've got a great mom and set of pals that pick up cute cupcake accoutrement when they see it - but sometimes your cupcake cookery needs a very particular special something.

So what happens when you've got a drawer full of fabulous cupcake liners, but no cupcakes that need immediate baking!?  Oh yes, it's Cupcake liner crafty time:

Cupcake Liner Garland
Ingredients:  A needle, some thread, cupcake liners and a wall hungry for cupcake love
Resources:  happy.blissful blog + Petunia blog (where the lovely image above was found)

Kiddo project:  Cupcake Liner Fireworks Explosion! 
Ingredients:  Cupcake liners, paint, glitter, glue, scissors, little fingers and construction paper
Resources:  Not time for flashcards blog

Cupcake Pin Cushion
Ingredients:  Silicon cupcake liner, felted wool, needle, thread, stuffing
Resource for inspiration (or purchase):  Dottyral Etsy shop

Besides batter, icing and love - what are some unique ways you've used your cupcake liners?

Shepard Fairey at SXSW (I missed it :( )

Christmas gift countdown (9 days to go) - Dr. Sketchy

Counting down some of my favorite things until Christmas, the gifts I enjoy throughout the year...

Today let's talk about Houston Dr. Sketchy.  It's a local piece/chapter/arm of an international Dr. Sketchy movement out of NYC (founded by the AMAZING Molly Crabapple) that is all about connecting artists with out-of-the-ordinary life drawing models - with great music, drinks and cheeky socializing thrown in.

I started the Houston group in January 2008 (almost one year old - wowee!) with help from Ms. Monica/Cosmopolitician, Jaymac our amazing DJ, Tasty Tiffany and the Adam hippie.  We meet every month at a really cool venue (Avant Garden) with a model, a rocking set of beats and the occasional cheeky drawing prize and Sketchy shot.

What makes this event a gift to me is the Community that has built around it.  Every month I look forward to seeing familiar faces (and new ones too!), some of my favorite people congregate here. 

We get all sorts of artists (of all strengths and skill levels), a superb group of photographers (with a special hat tip to Groovehouse and Ed Schipul) and an extra-special set of models. 

I look forward to 2009 bringing even more fun parties, good conversations, tasty libations (thanks Joe!) and beautiful art (with the best lazy Sunday afternoon soundtrack ever).  And I hope very much to spend time with you there!

Both of these gorgeous images with gracious thanks to threeheartsphoto, a newcomer to the Houston scene but already much admired :)

Capturing the heART of Houston - one video at a time

I live in Houston and I LOVE it.  This city has a tremendous art scene, as well as restaurants, arts venues and talented people galore. 

In line with promoting this awesomeness, the Houston Arts Alliance (HAA) is holding a Houston arts video contest for Houstonians to submit artists in 6 categories (dance, visual, craft, music, theater and written word) that represent the heart of Houston.

They've got some really neat prizes up for grabs -- so be sure to jump online and vote on your favorites today.  Submitting a video is almost just as easy, record a simple 60 second video of your favorite performer, art piece or even yourself, upload and promote promote promote!

If you upload any videos, leave a link int he comments!  We'd love to see where your heARTs of Houston lie :)

HAA kicks off their heART of Houston video campaign

The Houston Art Alliance (discl:  a kick a** client) is kicking off their heART of Houston video contest campaign today with a grand old heARTy party at HAA's space125 Gallery from 5:30 - 7:30pm.

The heART of Houston contest is pretty rad - basically it's a chance for art lovers and artists to share their favorite parts/people of the arts Community by submitting a short video, voting on other videos and winning prizes.  Great exposure for artists and great artsy candy for everyone else.

There are 6 categories to submit a video for killer cool Artshound prize packages:

1. Visual Arts
2. Music
3. Dance
4. Theater
5. Written word
6. Craft

The instructions are easy, the voting is fun and the campaign will be tied into a lot of the coolest Houston arts events for the remainder of 2008.  Check out more at www.arttheheartofhouston.com and on the HAA blog at www.haablog.com.

Houston art scene showing the love at Dr. Sketchy!

Houston is a really great city.  We've got amazing food, fun random things to do, fantastic career opportunities and passionate, amazing people (*ahem*: Mo-Mo-Monica, Tasty Tiff and DJ Jaymac). 

But sometimes there just feels like there's something missing and that's where Houston Dr. Sketchy comes in.  A divine combo of life drawing class, performance art, killer beats and well-mixed beverages.

I started the group at the beginning of the year in Houston with the amazing Molly Crabapple's permission in NYC (where the 1st of over 43 Dr. Sketchy international groups started it all).  This March marked our third monthly event and it was the best yet - we packed Avant Garden's 2nd floor to the gills with outstanding artists and sunshiney, smiley folks.

It's a little kitschy, a little cheeky and a lot of fun.  We have a big Houston Dr. Sketchy Art Show in the works for this year and are planning on bringing some actual drawing classes into the mix as well.  Join us sometime if you can!!  We'd love to ogle your drawings and ply you with special Dr. Sketchy cheer. 

Thanks to my Art Goddesses who make every event something look forward to and my Sketchy boys JayMac and Adamito who keep things on track bigtime.  Mad props to Groovehouse, our official photog who always makes us look skinny, and Ed Schipul who lets me use his great shots (like the one above) and is just an all-around great friend.

A paltry Halloween post about paper dresses

Since it's Halloween and I don't really celebrate Halloween (except for making hand-cut funky skulls out of origami paper and forgetting to hang them up or showing up to costume parties not in a costume), I thought I'd throw out something Halloween-colored at the very least.

Like this orange dress.  Orange, with black shading.  Halloween colors.  See?  Right?  Yes?  Anyone?

So anyway, I'm addicted to this fabulous 'Daily Dress' blog - a lovely painter named Liz throws up a different dress that she's painted every day.  And you get to 1) buy it or 2) wish your wardrobe actually had a cute dress like this that fit you and made you feel as girlie-great as these paintings do.

Happy Halloween.

Words you find on the things you buy

Chocolove
Originally uploaded by cknlomein

Packaging matters to me.  A lot. 

Unique touches and good design sway me greatly in my purchasing choices - I will be far more likely to spend a little more cash if a product is thoughtfully constructed.  Yes, I'm a sucker like that.

Here are 2 swell examples of unexpected packaging that made me sublimely happy this week:

~  A silk black strappy tank top from Talla (a birthday present from my mom :) ) had a nice size-card attached to it by a white silk cord that told me this:

'May you have enough happiness
to make you sweet, enough trials
to make you strong, enough sorrow
to keep you human and enough hope
to make you happy.'

~  A dark, dark Chocolove bar flavored with hot chilies and sweet cherries was housed in a wrapper that brought us the voice of Oscar Wilde, quoting his poem In the Gold Room:  a Harmony - full excerpt after the jump:

Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy.
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze...

I like it when my purchases speak to me, thank me, befriend me and joke with me.  That's why I'm also a huge MOO cards fan, Threadless lover and Jones Soda junkie.  Those brands love me; they tell me so regularly and that makes me want to give them part of my paycheck :)  There's a reason they call them Lovemarks!

Crowdsourced art goes mobile -- the TxtMeL8r adventure begins!

1. Take pic don't think, originally uploaded by txtmel8r.

Today we received our first assignment for TxtMeL8r - a camera phone project that taps into our collective mobile devices and creativity.  There will be an actual physical gallery show at the end of the project, but in the meantime you can keep up with the assignment entries on Flickr.

TxtMeL8r is an exhibition co-curated by Houston Center for Photography and Aurora Picture Show, Txt Me L8r explores the potential for distributed creativity through the use of cell phone technology. Combining crowdsourcing with networked communication, Txt Me L8r invites artists and the general public alike to adapt new technologies for spontaneous, geographically-dispersed collaboration.

Let me see your face - the new portrait masters

I greatly enjoyed this article on 'The New Portrait' from the American Photo magazine:

It's always been much easier for me to understand why photographers want to take pictures of people than why people want to have their pictures taken. For most of us, even the famous, it can be profoundly discomfiting to forfeit our power of self-deception, to put ourselves into the hands of a portraitist who has his or her own agenda. Richard Avedon once recalled that Henry Kissinger, a man used to authority as Richard Nixon's secretary of state, pleaded with him to "be kind to me" when he sat for a portrait. A master of realpolitik, Kissinger recognized an imbalance of power when he saw it.

I hate having my photo taken, but yearn for the courage to shoot more photos of people.  Old buildings, rust, graffiti and food I can handle no problem - but there is an element of fearlessness in photographers who can boldly look a subject in the eye to find (and photograph) their true face.  The above double portrait image is by photographer Mark Laita.