Ever lounging with friends at home and whip out coloring books? It’s a collective moment where everyone (no matter how dazed) can relax and focus on colors and (usually) cheerful illustrations. I enjoy doing this with my friends while listening to music or watching tv and also at parties. Coloring pages can be fun at any age~
Sailor Moon, Hello Kitty, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears are all copyrighted characters.
Today you can dye your hair almost any color of the rainbow, permanently, semi-permanent or just clip/braid it in for the day. (Lady Lovelylocks style) If you dig color, be creative. If you don’t, search the mushroom patches and cotton candy trees for some pixie tails to color your hair in a swirl of delicious 80s palettes~ To get a true POP of color be sure to bleach your hair white (this is tough so get professional advice or study it before attempting) first.
See an adorable video done by ‘bipolarbears’ on youtube — she shows the steps from dying your hair black to pink.
Let us take a trip
to a vintage land called Chi,
where the streets can tell you stories
and the buildings brush the sky.
Nestled near the center,
in a place called Lincoln Park,
you’ll find a little haven
where the 20’s left her mark.
As you journey through the courtyard,
please step lightly and with care,
for it’s in this entry garden
you’ll find bunnies with brown hair.
Once inside the building,
behind a door with printed V,
you’ll find a little nook,
home to M and feline Zooey.
The chairs are bathed in velvet
[they’re the best for kitty’s naps];
the hardwood floors are shiny,
one can hardly spot the cracks.
The walls are filled with pictures,
an homage to icons past:
Edie, Audrey, Norma,
with their style unsurpassed.
This space is filled with history,
years are painted in the walls;
braided wire o’er the doorway
was once used to import calls.
The gas stove, it cooks with fire
[such a cozy, retro feel],
tempting single Misses
to don aprons for a meal.
Though not much from door to window,
rays of sunlight kiss the walls;
and there’s one grand walk-in closet
just in case things feel too small.
Wonder fills this palace
[or so it feels to those within],
there’s nothing more like heaven
than to feel your life begin.
One upon a time the wonderful world of Jessica Borutski visited me through my tv set while I was enjoying one of my favorite past-times, watching independent toons! Imagine my amazement when everything that I love in a cartoon danced across the screen in a delicious display of cuteness, gloom and perfect electronic music. Did I mention LOLLIPOPS? I know you want to know that sweet girl behind the bunny (or panda!)!
You impressed the socks off of me when we met and you’ve never stopped. I knew you wouldn’t stop until you reached the top! What is a huge goal you are stunned to have accomplished? What goal (s) are you still striving for?
Thanks! (: XOX. A goal of mine that I have reached was when my designs were chosen by Warner Brothers for the new Looney Tunes show they are creating! It was a huge honor!!
The next goal I want to reach is to finish my short film called “The Good Little Bunny With The Big Bad Teeth”. I have been working on it in my free time over the last 4 years and I want to enter it in as many film festivals as I can!!
When faced with impressive corporations like Warner Brothers and Nickelodeon, what do you do to prepare yourself for success?
I have been lucky, I have always been approached by them to do work. I always just make sure the artwork I do is to the best of my ability. I give them drawings I like and just hope that they will like them too.
Did you ever expect to become so LOONEY (toons)?
Hahaha! I guess it just makes sense. I taught myself to draw by studying the short cartoons from the 1940’s,1930’s and a bit of the 1950’s. I have always loved the characters. So now that I actually work officially with characters like Bugs Bunny is sooo great because it comes very naturally to me to draw in that style.
Who is your favorite toon (not created by you)?
I would have to say “Oswald The Lucky Rabbit”. He is a black and white character created in the early 1920’s.He looks kinda like Mickey but cooler.
Who is your favorite toon (created by you)?
I think “Toaster Head”. He is always happy, and Toast pops outta his head so that’s pretty awesome!
Where do you find inspirations from the world around? What really inspires you to work?
I get inspired by cute animals, great music, good color combos and long city walks.
With artists it’s always scary to spill your soul about future plans and goals, especially since they may develop and change. Do you have projects for the future you can indirectly discuss?
On the Business side of things I will be doing some work on a show for Disney. Some concept is needed for a new girls show. That’s all I can say for now! (; After I finish my short film I am making a children’s book with a friend who is doing the writing. I am excited to get away from animation and just do some great Illustrations. The story is about a young girl who is an outcast without any friends. She is a genius though when it comes to making gizmos and gadgets. She makes amazing things out of trinkets she finds in the garbage. She creates the ultimate friend with a Toaster as a head! That’s where the fun begins!!
What’s so great about today? .. and what do you do to prepare for tomorrow? How do you make sure each day counts?
The great thing about today is I get two days a week to completely work on my own personal animated film! The other three days of the work week I am working on Looney Tunes!! To prepare for tomorrow I always make sure I am not staying stagnant in my artistic development. I will be living in Paris for a month in November were I am going to study art at the Louvre! I want to draw and study all sorts of paintings and sculptures. Never stop learning!
Do you find your work taking time away from other hobbies and interests? Or is it your all-consuming passion?
Even though a majority of my life is spent drawing, painting or animating I don’t find it hard taking time from other hobbies. I love being out and about. If I am not working on art I am out walking the city, bike riding along the canal, watching movies, sipping wine, hanging with friends. I love just being out! (: I have to take a break from animation to get re-inspired to create.
How do you prefer your environment to look?
I love urban environments with old buildings, like Montreal and some parts of Ottawa. I also love beautiful parks in cities. Especially around dusk when the sun is going down and everything has a yellow wash to it and shadows become long!
Favorite music? and Why?
Lights, Crystal Castles, Ratatat, Broken Social Scene
I love this music because they use amazing sounds. I love anything cute and electric sounding. They are amazing to listen to as I draw.
Motto:
I like this one: Live without regret! (:
Are you Miseducated? What makes you Miseducated?
I’m miseducated because I enjoy drawing so much that I sometimes forget about the real world!! My education consists of colors, cuteness and fun. That would be considered a miseducation to some I am sure.
What do you want people to feel or understand when they look at your work?
I just want to make people feel good. I want them to feel the way I feel when I am creating the character. Pure happiness and fun!
Were you always a cartoonist? (kiddies sketching kitties in their notebooks?)
Always!! I have not stopped drawing since I was 3. My math teacher used to freak out with my math book being filled with bunnies and other strange rodent drawings.
What was your first finished cartoon? How did you feel when it was complete and ready for others to view?
My first finished cartoon was ” I Like Pandas” I felt nervous and very excited when it was first premiered in the Ottawa International film festival. I remember sitting in the theatre in my seat clutching my knees to my chest. When people laughed I was so relived. I was worried nobody else would find it funny.
Are your illustrations and ideas inspired by your life experiences and/or people in your life?
Yes I always try to take things from life. I see alot of my pug Lucy in the Pandas. I draw alot of my girl friends too.
MUST HAVE for any cartoonist:
A must have for any cartoonist in my opinion is to make sure you draw from life. Characterize all things you like. Be inspired by other styles and don’t completely copy them. If you do these two things you can really develop a great style.
Eeee! I think we’re about finished here. Do you have any diy goodies you’d like to teach us to make?
I have the Printable Panda paper toys I want to share! We have many more planned for the future as well!!
Everyone loves sweets right? But how long do those sweets last?
Well, I have stumbled upon a little secret to make them stylish, cute, and last forever; perfect for the sweet lover in all of us. Sprinkles, cupcakes, candies, and chocolates are so yummy, and look almost too good to eat. So now you can accessorize yourself with them and let the whole world know about your confection obsession. With all the colors, the textures, and the sugary goodness, who can resist? I know I cannot, so my inspiration is to make something that looks sweet enough to eat, and cute enough to wear.
My sweet goodies are kitschy art pieces of sweet eye candy. Mix together some sprinkles, glitter, crystals, and cast in clear or colored resin, and then you are good to go like the sweet diva you are! These yummy treats are made to be rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, pins, and everything, to make a scene.
These are the sweets that won’t go bad, won’t give us cavities, or even the calories. These are accessories we can put on to make us smile and feel happy. My goodies, can remind us of the fun times we had when we were just kiddies. Like the birthday parties we went to, the ice cream shops we visited, and the treats we’d get when we were good little boys and girls. These times are often forgotten in the fast paced life a lot of us live. These were the simpler times in our life, filled with childhood dreams, rainbows, and sweets along the way,
So you too can go back to that place and live out your childhood dreams, or just relive them and have fun. I hope my pieces can take you back to that place. One of my favorite childhood pastimes were playing with jewelry and dressing up, and here I am today living that dream. This is what keeps me going, I love what I do and have fun doing it. This is my chance, a chance to love and be with my family, while I live out my passion to create. It is all I ever wanted, and I going for it.
If you should take anything from this piece, I hope you take with you the love and inspiration to live out your dreams. This is the very thing that will keep you going and not want to stop. It makes living that much more worth living. It is wonderful when you love what you do, and get to share it with the world. It makes living that much more sweeter ;o) and soo miseducated!!!
Does makeup matter? It matters as much or as little as you want it to. It can be as lovely, nude and natural as you like.. or it can be as out loud exciting as an lighting bolt. I like love it when people take things to the next level when using graphics and design to decorate their faces and bodies. YES PLEASE. YESYESYES.
Be sure to check out the step-by-step makeup tutorials in the Japanese magazine scans as well as some artist photos and tutorials below~
Makeup is a magic mask of color just waiting for you to get creative and change the rules. Wear it to a rave or, if you like to march to the beat of your own drum like most of us do, wear it to get groceries whenever you feel the need!
From all around the world, cartoon, model or artist.. we like our makeup loud and clear.
Merci to the wonderful Audrey Kitching for her own love of the Miseducated lifestyle. She makes us so proud we could burst.
Courtesy of the amazing Bethany.
This last colorful and creative makeup tutorial is by the wonderful Rebecca. Living a Miseducated life to her means, “Be yourself, never stop learning & never hold back on your creativity.”
Perfect!
It’s been quite a terrible week! What better reason than that to go shopping in Japan? Another department store no less, this one, tailored for us online shoppers! It’s a big stop for Japanese and Americans alike~
I’m a little speechless today because all I want to discuss is the features coming up soon and I’m trying to wait.. 😉 You’re probably not as silly as I am, but if you love toys, cuties, and more you’ll be happy!
Speaking of toys, cuties and more… let’s get a load of the goodies I found while searching high and low in the wonderland of Japanese whimsy splashed product. I’m certainly feeling the urge to go back to my heartland soon… Where do you feel you belong in the world? I’ve been questioning this a lot recently as we’ve been prepared to move for quite awhile and yet we find ourselves unable to make a move.. or should I say ME. Until very soon.
So to relieve my worries I’ve always found happiness in being surrounded in cute, lovely, well-designed items.. I’d love to hear your ways of coping with stress and anxiety as well! Feel free to leave them below — much appreciated~
Did I mention How Magazine added us as one of the Top 10 Sites for Designers this month? It’s funny because I *love* that magazine, always looking hot on the shelves begging me to dive into jumpstartworkmode.
A film by myself, Jessica Borutski.
The fun doesn’t stop there! Put some pandas into your own world~
Take a photo of your panda? Send it in so we can build a community gallery — the most creative photos will win stationary goodies from Miseducated & myself!
If I could just… if this was.. it still doesn’t *feel* right!
I’m often finding myself stuck when designing new layouts for Miseducated — it started so collage heavy as I was using tons and tons of popular icons.. then I started seeing the collage thing EVERYWHERE and it was feeling cluttered so I obviously cut it down… :p I always feel that deconstructing and ridding of any excess is a positive thing.
Now why is this?
My room was very cluttered as a child and I hoped for a day when I would have my own modern, minimalist house.
As you can see my minimalism kind of lost the battle with whimsical nonsense and fantasy candylands. Obviously I find my *greatest* satisfaction in cuteness, well-designed, minimal yet colorful homes (Jeu de Paumes went RIGHT UP my alley, didn’t they yours? ^_~).
.. but is deleting and deconstructing making it better really? Is it just my fucked up sense of things?
I *know* hoarding isn’t healthy, it’s very hard to overcome like any addiction… so does that mean that minimalism is the goal? We simply *must* know! I’m very familiar with hoarding regarding my own life and have studied it extensively in my obsession with psychology and helping myself and those around me.
(… and while we’re at it, why do you *insist* on using asterisks *everywhere*?!
Because I often despise italics, use bold for other things and have a strange need to use the only flower on my keyboard over and over and over! As well as inserting random thoughts that have no relevance to the subject at hand –if anything this NEGATES minimalism–because of course, I am a crazy rambler. With all positives come negatives. ^_~)
Hoarding is the excessive collection of items, along with the inability to discard them.
Hoarding, also called compulsive hoarding and compulsive hoarding syndrome, can be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
People who hoard often don’t see it as a problem, making treatment challenging.
– Mayo Clinic
A twentieth century art movement and style stressing the idea of reducing a work of art to the minimum number of colors, values, shapes, lines and textures. – ArtLex
Funny thing is.. minimalism is many times regarded as ‘rejective art’ and I think of it as ‘perfective’ art — it’s a very tough thing to master correctly — it can be done both very right and very wrong.
A minimal lifestyle… now that’s exactly what I admire. When applying the rules of minimalism to your life and home it helps a lot if you’re moving (I was) or organizing absolutely everything — it’s good to do yearly (*spring*cleaning)!
1. Evaluate your possessions that sit on shelves.
2. Find a place for everything.
3. Enjoy what you have.
– Christian PF
Another design movement, but in Japan. Generally means improving your environment and seeing beauty in the mundane.
When I see zakka it reminds me almost of a minimalist cuteness and innocence, it is completed with the sweet kitschy illustrations and/or designs that are *just enough* to add color and sweetness into the room. It’s very natural and inspired by country lifestyle.
Which lifestyle do you lean towards? 😉
Merci: Landscape Online, Momoy, Christopher Coleman, Elidur, Homepic, SoSuperSam, BKK Home, Zakka Candy
What kind of gift do I give the girl who has everything?
I myself was one of those girls, so I knew what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of another kitschy collectible, retro design coffee table book, funky framed Jesus picture… I loved each and every item, but I was at the point where there was nowhere to PUT anything, and I was not organized or patient enough to deal with seasonally switching things up. I couldn’t bring myself to pack away older items to make space for newer ones, because I had a sentimental attachment to each and every one. They all defined me, defined my lifestyle, defined how I felt when I woke up in the morning. In fact, the only room that reflected who I was the LEAST, was my bathroom, which was fine, because how much time do I spend in there anyway?
Wait a second…
The bathroom…
I went to Home Depot. After much wandering around, lost among contractors and home-improvement-ers, I found it – the wall of toilet seats. The aisle seemed to glow as if I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. As if I had discovered the meaning of life, or who was buried in Al Capone’s tomb…
It was perfect.
And everything just took off from there.
Making art out of toilet seats is not a quick-fix type of project. It involves sanding, priming, painting, cutting, pasting, gluing, detailing, and SO MUCH WAITING. Every step involves the need for something to dry – whether it be paint, modge-podge, or acrylic resin. I had to learn how to pace myself (my mother always used to say, “You want everything to happen yesterday!”) and it’s true. But I finally discovered my ideal working environment – my living room (at this point I’d like to thank my husband for his unrelenting patience.) I’d work on two seats at a time – switching back and forth while one was in a drying stage – and the television would be tuned to a campy, cheesy horror movie. The only explanation I can come up with for that is that these particular movies are terrible enough where if I was in a working stage (painting, decoupaging, detailing) and my attention was elsewhere, I could easily tear my attention away from the television and not worry that I was missing some crucial element to the story, yet the movies were also amusing enough that they kept me occupied during any drying stages (which could take anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes.)
I have since changed our home office into a small studio (again, thank you, dear husband, for being supportive enough to my craft for agreeing to move your half of the office elsewhere, and for bringing home the 300 pound cabinet you had at work for me to store my seats in a small warehouse environment.) I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to show my work at Boston’s Bazaare Bizarre and Somerville’s ArtBeat in Davis Square. 75% of my business is from custom orders which has allowed me to step out of my comfort zone and create designs I never would have thought of. The Toiluxe Nude Collection started via a request from my landlord, for which I will forever be grateful.
My creation process is constant – I live, breathe and dream toilet seats. If I could eat toilet seats, I would probably consider it. Toiluxe has been the most satisfying creative outlet I have had in a long time. To be able to create and touch a piece of art – a piece of art that also provides total functionality – has an entirely different sense of satisfaction from the computer-based graphic design I have always done in the past.
I love what I create. My goal is to bring joy to bathrooms across America, and even beyond.
