Miseducated

Mise en Snap: I Love You Alice B. Toklas!

08/10/2010

It’s about time I did another mise-en-snap!

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas is a deliciously tacky film from 1968 that parodies the 1960s counterculture. I watched it once and didn’t really pay attention.. the next time I saw everything and couldn’t stop laughing. (I always get a little mesmerized by 60s decor, trying to find ways to incorporate the hippie’s lounge pad into a family home.) The film is directed by Hy Averback and stars Peter Sellers and Leigh Taylor-Young (in her film debut). It features music by Harpers Bizarre, including the theme song that I still cannot stop singing — haha!

The title is a reference to writer Alice B. Toklas, who wrote a recipe for making cannabis Brownies released in 1954. I had the pleasure of learning about Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein during a college Hemmingway class and trip to Paris — they were both pretty cool cats.

3 Comments

Japanese Magazine Clippings: Happy and Free

08/04/2010

I’m starting off Wednesday with another Japanese Magazine Clipping Inspiration Board. I’m really loving the 80s-kiddie style they’re bringing back in Japan (as well as Fairy-Kei!) — it’s really exciting for a candy girl like me.

I used to only want to have had kids if I could have them in the late 70s/80s (haha) because everything is so magical then. Don’t you agree?

I’m also so glad they’re re-releasing all the 80s character designs in Japan again, too! It’s like they took a page from the 90s-Miseducated book.. 80s nostalgia & rainbows obsession.

1 Comment

Thankful for Monday: Feeling Wonky

08/01/2010

Hello, candylanders! Fear not for I did not and could not forget you. *majorsensoryoverload* My time is much more precious with baby girl around, I feel she deserves every waking moment and I seem to have no problem at all giving them to her!

I’ve started a new artist project and have been scanning my old sketch/inspiration book.

Changes

Life always changes.. and the past sometimes seems amazing when you try to reminiscence about it.. but in reality you had problems then too. When you’re thinking about how wonderful things used to be you’re probably only focusing on the negatives now.. what what about the positives? I have to say I love changes because although I think I hate them and would want to be a child of the 80s forever — they’re amazing. Life changes all the time and you just have to enjoy each and every part… You only live them once!

A print I made for Colette before she was born.

Japanese Fashion Magazines

So I’ve been away from all of my goodies (aka: loot) for quite awhile now.. it’s all still boxed and labeled nicely in storage until we move. I miss it so much! I’m probably going to do an *obsessedwithjunk* post when we move and photo-shoot everything I always took for granted!

I again remember why I miss Japan and the life I had there.. so amazing and filled with health, good food and happiness. The magazines take me back to a time when I surrounded myself with everything adorable, bright and colorful so that I wouldn’t focus on the bad. I tried to focus on cute things that made me feel happy (my Hello Kitty and Sanrio goodies go back to 1981!) and squeal. Japan makes that world of cute lifestyle real to me, I feel so at peace and home when I’m sleeping there.

On a really materialistic note I miss the stores, clothes, magazines and food a lot, too. These magazines are like rainbow soup for my candy-lovers soul.

Sketching

I love sketching once more. When I started painting again recently for a show I found my sketching skills as shaky as ever and I decided to start perfecting them again for this artist feature I’m participating in. I cannot WAIT to show you because I have some great ideas!
😉 I’m doing a sort of a scrapbook in my notebooks as well.

Cotton Candy

I think that with a name like fairy floss this candy pretty much speaks for itself. It’s sweet and flavored (if you’re lucky) sugar melted and dried by a cooling fan. Usually it’s melt-on-your-fingers pink and lick-your-lips blue. I had to go to the local fair recently to snag a monster-sized bag, no questions asked!

FAMILY

The little family I have makes me happiest of all. If I didn’t have them I would be a lot crazier than I am now! 😉 Ben has always been amazing to me and Colette makes me smile more than I ever thought I could! Everyday with them is the best day.

Old inspiration sketch.

4 Comments

Japanese Magazine Clippings: Cute and Collected

07/28/2010

I went on another Japanese magazine rampage.. I do this once a year usually during the summer when I start to really miss summer in Japan.

I’ve decided that while looking at the magazines, when I see something especially Miseducated I’ll clip it out for you to see.

The magazines I collect from are CUTiE, Kera, Zipper, Spoon and assorted fashion features.

Did you know there’s a new Japanese magazine called I LOVE MAMA? I’m in love!

7 Comments

Tanabata, the Star Festival of Love in Japan

07/27/2010

Tanabata (evening of the 7th) is a Japanese star festival filled with sweets, wonder and a pride that cannot be explained.

According to the precious legend, the Milky Way (a river made from stars that crosses the sky), separates the lovers Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair). They are allowed to meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month (July). This is the day of the Tanabata festival, when we can celebrate a tale of love in a festival or carnival setting.

My host sister knew I would love the festival so we decided grab our cameras and go.

Upon arriving I realized I was in the starry sky floating along the Milky Way because I was absolutely amazed with the lights, floats and bright colors surrounding us.

Take a look around.. I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself! I know we did.

I remember seeing a doll on camera here..
my excitement exploded into the bright colors you see everywhere.

Where should we go first??

Candy strawberries, candy Mickey’s and milky candy apples!

8 Comments

Don’t Be Controlled: Things You Should Do

07/13/2010

Speaking as one of the very last people in the world that one should expect to be able to control, I’ve battled my fair share of attempts. I’ve been asked to be silent, to restrict my speech, to limit my work. My work knows no limits. What keeps me going is the aesthetic obsession I have with art and design, the need to create the world around myself and around you. The world is your canvas, express yourself vividly.

As you see this is not a ‘Design Your Life‘ article — this is a ‘Visual Splendor‘ article and with good reason. I’m being silly and contradictory and I think you should absolutely do all the things listed below daily. Please feel free to make suggestions of MUST-DOs that you enjoy daily and also suggestions of new objects I might place in my mouth for nonsensical artistic amusement. Remember, this is Miseducated and sometimes being nonsensical purely for your own endeavors is many times necessary and often unexplainable.

EAT CAKE. Necklace by stoopidgerl

TAKE YOUR VITAMINS.

SMELL DELICIOUS.

4 Comments

Let’s Start Digital Scrapbooking

07/05/2010

Because I’ve never actually made myself finish a digital scrapbook page this feature gave me a reason to pick up the hobby as well! Why digital? It’s much easier if your photos are digital, you can scan and photograph favorite patterns AND you don’t have to keep a big box of paper and glue handy for scrapbooking~ this is especially important for minimal me.

My first digital scrapbooking attempt.

What do you need to get started with digital scrapbooking?

A bunch of patterned paper to scan or a collection (think of a theme!) of digital scrapbooking materials.
A digital camera, scanner or collection of scanned photos.
A photo editing program.
Creativity and patience.

Which photo editing program should you choose?
Are you a beginner or have you had experience with more challenging programs? If you are a beginner, you may want to purchase a first-time user friendly program such as Adobe Elements or Corel Paint Shop Pro. If you have more experience with more challenging graphics programs, you may want to invest money in a professional program like Adobe Photoshop.

How hard is digital scrapbooking?

It’s not hard at all! With a few design elements and a graphic design program just about anyone can throw together a scrapbook page, even a child. Don’t let it scare you away, it’s easy, entertaining and fun!

Digital Scrapbooking Materials

Kitschy Digitals
Two Peas in a Bucket
Jessica Sprague
Pugly Pixel Freebies
Designer Digitals
DigiScrap Boutique
Scrap Girls
Free Digital Scrapbooking

Your Style

In creating a digital layout from scratch, there are the same basic steps: add background paper, add photos, create photo mats or accent papers, add embellishments (if desired), and finish with text. You can use these steps to create your own personal style, whether it’s clean and streamlined like a magazine layout or contains drop-shadows and a more traditional paper feel. With digital scrapbooking there are about a million ways to go and it’s all up to you to define your own personal style!

by Nicole LeBlanc

Methods

Instant-Page
You can download or purchase a pre-made layout template for easy scrapbooking. This is a great way to begin if you’d like to learn the ropes and get used to the techniques. Simply add your photos and text for instant pages.

Build it Yourself
Once you’re ready to start designing your own pages using your own embellishments or downloaded embellishments you can follow this tutorial:

by Jennifer Johner

The Makings of a Digital Layout

The following is an outline of the steps needed to create a basic digital layout from scratch. Don’t get overwhelmed, it’s quite easy to follow along with your own design program.

Create a New (Blank) Image
Determine the size of the layout you would like, such as 8.5” x 11”.
180-225 dpi is a good resolution for inkjet printers; 300 dpi is professional quality.
Enter the settings in your software’s new image dialog box, including a white background, then press OK.
At this point, and frequently throughout the design process, save your layout as a TIF so all the layers remain intact and you can go back and make changes to individual layers whenever you wish. Choose File > Save As and then save as a TIF.

Add Photos
To add a photo to a layout, browse your file system to find photos or drag them into your program (Mac).
Click and drag photos into the layout or use the edit/copy and edit/paste commands to paste them into your new layout.
Move and resize the photos as you desire, there’s no glue involved so you can always change your mind later!

Create Background
Use a paint-fill, pattern or downloaded background.
Creating your own is just as easy as photographing a favorite blanket or piece of paper.

Add Text
Using your text tool, pick the text color, font, and font size. Then click the mouse on the page where your text should be placed and type away. Try different sizes, colors and effects for differentiation between text elements — such as journaling and dates!

Add Ready-made Embellishments
For a punch of detail and splash of color, you can add ready-made embellishments (visit the sites above to download some!) that can be dragged onto your layouts.
While your layout is open, choose File > Open and browse your hard-drive for which embellishment(s) you’d like to add, open them, and then drag them into your layout. You can change their rotation, color, and size, if desired.

Save File for Printing and/or Web Display
Save the final image as a TIF — for a high-resolution print you can print from this file.
If saving to print elsewhere, save as a full-size PDF or JPG file.
To make your file ready for web, save as72 dpi, about 500-600 pixels wide and as JPG.

That’s just a bit of information to get you started, hopefully this sends you into a frenzy of creating your own scrapbook pages digitally. For more help with your graphic program view the instruction manual or search the web for more tutorials. There are many great scrapbooking blogs and forums for you to play around on and get more inspiration~ go explore the world wide wonderland!

Our own Wendy Rose tried her hand at scrapbooking as well and found a new delightful hobby to share.

by Wendy Rose

10 Comments

Thankful for Monday: Happiness Through Gratitude

07/02/2010

This is a new kind of project I’m forcing myself to do. Having a few scheduled posts a week really works wonders for my over-stimulated brain. I cannot mindlessly list topics and ideas forever, brainstorming over great articles and DIY-material until I’m suddenly too drained to write or publish any of it.. silly! As much as I love lists, I’ve recently realized I’m wasting a lot of time on them. And.. as you may or may not know, a new mother’s time is very precious and limited.

So I’m urging myself to again start keeping a gratitude journal which once helped so much with my positive outlook. I had been keeping one for months on my iPhone previously, another in a journal my doctor encouraged me to start.. I must say that although I enjoy journaling and scribbling nonsense, the gratitude thing worked best digitally because it was always on hand. I could attach photos in a flash and rate my days.. sadly when I updated my iPhone OS, however, my restoration went wonky and my gratitude journal -and all of the photos- were deleted. I had a bit of a melt-down -I’m lying, it was a full-on panic attack- .. I was so upset I couldn’t now see the progress I had made.. the once unhealthy things I was so grateful for and the realization of what I should be grateful for.. to which of course my husband reminded me, “You have what you are grateful for right here, it shouldn’t be hard to start a new one. I see the progress you’ve made and deep down you know you’ve made it.”

So, on Mondays I will begin to look back at all of the wonderful (and even not-so-wonderful!) things I should be and am grateful for. It is said that keeping a gratitude journal is very healthy, a great way to be open to all of the amazing things you have in your life that you might not be noticing. It’s also said to lift your spirits in a way that cannot be denied. I agree and I urge you to try it! Even if just for a month.

One

The sweet taste of a homegrown strawberry that I happened to rescue from the brink of death! We were in the grocery store and the fluorescent lighting must have left the shriveled plants with much to be desired. I instantly usherd one to the register and planted it in new soil and a large pot — now it’s branching out into my yard and attempting to spread sugary-sweet red fruit to all of the rabbits in the area. I did get to taste one berry, one very delicious berry, however when I watered it today I noticed my other three berries had been eaten. We have a cottontail friend roaming around now and again so I’m sure he was the one who experienced the delight of the fresh berries — at least someone enjoyed them!

Two

Every single coo and grunt my daughter makes. And the fact that I unbelievably have a daughter and can talk about her. It’s absolutely a trip and I never could have imagined how wonderful it would be. She’s been in my dreams for quite awhile so I feel very fortunate that she has arrived in my arms and left me with a scar I will never forget. I can’t to experience every new moment with her and I want to remember absolutely every day.

Three

Heart-wrenching memoirs of hardship and survival. I’m a dark, depressing memoir addict. I think it has something to do with being inspired by overcoming one’s past to become an amazing and creative person. Having been through a rough and tumbly past myself and having watched many of those I love fall to the negativity of their own past, it’s very enlightening to see what can be accomplished if you devote your life to overcoming it.

Four

My husband’s new-found appreciation for cooking. Not just because I get to taste all of his experiments, either, but because I am also passionate about cooking up my own creations and it’s double the excitement! We have yet another interest that we share and it’s the best kind of interest — the kind that tastes delicious. He keeps practicing on fresh Tilapia and I keep inhaling it.

Five

Thrifting for vintage, kitschy mugs. Thrifting is not only fun alone, it’s even more fun because of the people you do it with. I often go thrifting with my best friend or husband and we have a blast finding kitschy goodies, vintage magazines and trying on 70s bathrobes. It doesn’t get old! You don’t need a lot of money to have a great time combing through pop-culture memorabilia — just a lot of time and patience. Even a box of old records or postcards can become an exciting giggle fest. No matter what their selection, make sure you look through the mugs and vintage cookbooks — they’ll always provide you with some inexpensive, kitschy fun for your kitsch-en!

What are five things that you’re thankful for this week?

1 Comment

One Lovely Blog Award

06/28/2010

Miseducated has been bestowed the One Lovely Blog Award by Rachael from Glass of Win.

Of course I had quite a blast rummaging through new and old blogs alike looking for a great list a favorites that you would enjoy. I’m really excited about this award because it gets bloggers communicating with other bloggers and that’s always a great and positive thing! Hurrah for all of the wonderful ladies out there that are creatively blogging. This one’s for you!

Accept the Award

As acceptance of this award, the following criteria should be met
Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
Pass the award to 15 other lovely blogs.
Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Please take me.

Lovely Blogs

1. Thompson Family Blog
2. Twinkiechan
3. Shrinkle
4. PaperCakes Finds
5. Pugly Pixel
6. Print & Pattern
7. Retro Plants
8. Gnome-N-Birdy
9. Liefgeval
10. Pink Bow
11. Bakerella
12. Smile and Wave
13. Vol.25
14. The Pink Couch
15. Polka Dot Robot

4 Comments

Awakening the Divine Intuition

06/25/2010

When you first meet someone, your body goes through an entire system of processing input, long before you’re even cognitively aware of what you think about the other person. This process is a collaboration between your senses and your intuition, and it helps you “know” the most important things you need to know about a person within the first few seconds of an encounter. You’ve certainly experienced this before: someone introduces themselves, and immediately you feel your body either opening up to them, or closing itself off. This is due to your body interpreting all kinds of different input and making conclusions that tell you what kind of situation you’re dealing with. It takes into account things like the person’s walk, talk, smell, or eye movements, and decides whether the person is aggressive, shy, nervous, confident, and so forth. Theoretically, if you follow what your intuition tells you and don’t let the process go any further, you can know within a minute if you are in a safe situation or a dangerous one, and to what extent you can relax around this person, both physically and emotionally.

However, what happens after the initial data filter in your “belly brain” or intuition is that the information then goes to the next stage of filtration, in the brain. This is where a less accurate assessment goes on, where your habitual behavioral recognition skills kick in. It’s kind of like you have a database in your mind of all your past experiences and familiar patterns, and when you get in a new situation, your brain tries to make sense of what’s going on by comparing this situation to things it has seen, heard, or experienced in the past. It then tries to categorize this new person in a way that it can recognize and understand.

This is where the problem is. We have a lot of built-up defense mechanisms in place based on beliefs we have and stories we tell ourselves. We have learned and inherited a lot of prejudices that we use to apply to new people, regardless of what our intuition tells us. For example, perhaps when we meet a woman with fake breasts and a fake tan, we automatically assume she is shallow or insecure. Or maybe when we meet a guy with crooked teeth and a southern accent, we assume he is uneducated. When we let this second phase of filtering override our intuition, this sets us up for problems down the road.

Think of it this way: remember when you had that awful breakup, and then when you looked back on the relationship, you realized you knew it was going downhill long before it actually did? Knowing in your belly that things aren’t right is your intuition at work; deciding to ignore the bad gut feeling and continue as if everything is okay is your brain overriding your intuition. It’s strange that we have taught ourselves to do this, because it doesn’t benefit us in any way. Your body never lies, but your brain will tell you whatever it wants you to hear, whatever will protect it from pain in the short term. The brain is a wonderful servant, but it’s the intuition that is the better master. Your “belly brain” is a much more accurate connection with the truth, and the second-hand information from your brain, while useful in many respects, should never be taken as your sole source of facts.

So if the intuition has precision accuracy to lead us out of danger and into happiness, and the brain is flaky at best in this regard, then why do we do we so often override our intuition in favor of the brain? This is exactly what the divine feminine in each of us is crying out about, and it’s why it’s so important, especially in our complex culture, to reawaken her and let her do the job she does best. So much has been written about our systematic blocking of our intuition, but suffice it to say that until we learn how to reconnect and relearn to inner-view, we will continue to put ourselves in dangerous situations.

Sit down and make a chart of body versus brain, and find out which has led you astray more often.

3 Comments

Older Posts

Newer Posts