Fountain mural

My friend Cait Irwin was back in town a little while ago. Her excuse was to do a painting on the side of the van used for the Mobile Farmers' Market, but she also graced the patio of my favorite coffee shop, the Black Cat, with this delectable mural.



Cait is an incredible artist who works at the speed of light. She's written - and illustrated - a couple of books on depression (check them out here), and is currently occupied with painting murals, studying tattoo artistry, getting her official art business "Reality Impaired, LLC" going, and generally being awesome. She also has a cafepress store that you should check out, if not to buy something, then at least to enjoy the art.

Hand-embellished shirt

Check out this shirt my friend made for me. (OK, well, I provided the shirt, and she provided the art.) All this is freehand with a fabric pen:

Back, left side

Front, toward the bottom

Front detail

And even this spiffy little detail under the right-hand sleeve!

I'm really hoping to see her work on Etsy or something similar. But she's going back to Pakistan on Sunday and won't be back in the States until next year at the earliest, for grad school.

She says her creative process when she's doing a shirt is meditative and free of thought — her only chance to really relax sometimes, she says. And I can tell you from experience that it's a joy to watch her work!

DIY bike saddlebag

Check out my pimpin' new saddlebag, kindly modeled by my steed, Huckabee.

Click for larger image.


Mm, beautiful.

Now that the world knows what brand of peanut butter I prefer... Want to make your own? It's as easy as... well, as finishing a jar of peanut butter. -LINK-

We are the music-makers

Someone (don't know who, but I've got my suspicions) (and no, it wasn't me) painted this onto the biking/walking trail that cuts through town and spans three counties. I use this trail every day, or nearly so, and this graffiti makes me smile each time:

(The quote, incidentally, is from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.)

Belly-rub

Summer's running out fast, and I feel like it's only just begun. We took Rufus to the park yesterday and threw a frisbee for him until he collapsed. A tired dog really is a happy dog.

Cardboard coffee table: In progress!

Coffee tables are, if not my favorite furniture, then at least in my top five. DIY and design pages are chock full of awesome coffee tables scrounged, scavenged, and brought to glorious useful life by people who are lucky enough to be able to find either old tables to refurbish or suitable materials.

Me, I had cardboard, a masonite(?) frame I found behind a furniture store, cheap plastic tubing leftover from a Big Box modular shelving unit, and some glue.

I'm in love with the built-in box, though. I only wish it were my idea originally; I first saw it on The Cartonnistes.

The legs are the weakest link, surprisingly; the cardboard top holds up extremely well, especially since I went around all the joined edges using hot glue like caulk and then sealing that over with tape, but keeping the legs connected to the table surface is tricky. A friend of mine suggested a solution involving pie tins that I'm going to try once I get my next paycheck.

I'm also going to decorate it using colored duct tape. Turquoise and blaze orange, anyone?