Send A Virtual Mix Tape for Vday!

Genius execution and idea! Thanks to Kim Genkinger for bringing this fun interactive valentine by Exopolis to my attention!

Pick a song from lots of fun ones (I prefer the Pixies song), label the tape and send it cyber.

Right here, baby.

Art with Heart (free downloads)

Free Photoshop Brushes for Valentine's Day from some super talented and generous designers!

Jason Gaylor of Designfruit commissioned some folks at Blacksuits Creative to help out on some designs for this Valentine set. There is quite a mix of ideas here. Thanks to Katie Canada, Dan Spencer, and Erik Rothrock for helping Jason put these together.


There are 15 Brushes in this set. The brushes work with Photoshop CS and above. Anything before CS will require using the PNG files also available here.

Thanks guys..and Happy Valentine's Day!

Gloomy Valentine Trailer

In Honor of Valentine's Day, a sneak peek at Warwick Burton's newest film (thanks to a correction from a reader!), Gloomy Valentine.



Learn more and download fun (or gloomy) wallpapers at Dead heart studio

Funky Find of The Week: The Jet Coffee Table

above: Jet Coffee Table by Lorraine Brennan

Lorraine Brennan’s Jet Coffee Table, inspired by those paper planes most of us made in elementary school (and occasionally flung at that cute little blonde girl when no one was looking), is one of those designs we can’t help but instantly fall for. Made from 2mm steel, it succeeds as abstract sculpture, functional accessory, and whimsical design element. And the best part is you can’t get in trouble just for having one … even if you had no intention of throwing it… we swear.

Lorraine, who used to have her own design company, now is responsible for the design, launch and on-going development of French Connection Home.

Sitting Pretty: Swarovski Studded Lounge Chair

A Little Bling On Your Furniture, Perhaps?
The Vendome Chair, an otherwise conservative piece in black wool, is tufted with buttons made of Swarovski crystals.

Now that's sitting pretty!

$3,390 at Sipure Design in Miami, (305) 940-4655.

Lowbrow Artists do Highbrow Charity

Thanks to Corey Helford Gallery of Culver City, today's most respected and popular "Lowbrow" Artists (see previous article on lowbrow art here) have culled together a fabulous show benefiting The Alliance For Children's Rights that takes vintage paint-by-number art and transforms it into unique pieces of low brow art.

Granted, this is not the first gallery to promote and exhibit the idea of paintng over vintage art. To be fair, The Wurst Gallery did this years ago, only not restricted to paint by number art.

With fun original creations by such well known popular artists as Mark Ryden, Shepard Fairey, Joe Ledbetter, Jeff Soto, Camille Rose Garcia and Gary Basemen, just to name a few, these paintings are available for auction on ebay with 100% of the proceeds benefiting The Alliance For Children's rights (see their mission statement below).

Available for purchase on ebay, the auctions ending on Friday, Feb 16th and prices are already rising rapidly, so you'd better get your bids in now.

Here are just a few wonderful examples of the original vintage PBN and the finished pieces. Click on images to enlarge:

Mark Ryden:

Gary Baseman:

Ana Bagoyen:

Shepard Fairey:

Jeff Soto:


The bids are moving up quickly on these works already, so if you'd like to see many more (and you should) be sure to visit Corey Helford Gallery of Culver City or check out the auctions on ebay.


above: Corey Helford Gallery

Nonprofit's Mission Statement
The Alliance for Children's Rights is protecting the rights and futures of abused and impoverished children throughout Los Angeles County, in hopes of creating a world in which all children are able to have a safe and permanent family, access to quality health care, a quality education, and all of the support and services they so rightfully deserve.

House & Garden Goes Goth With D.L. & Co.

Goth seems to be back in a big way. I don't know if tatts brought back Goth or Goth brought back tatts, but either way, skulls, knives, absinthe, hearts, snakes and vector art seem to be taking over the art and retail world, as well as flesh.


click on above image to enlarge

Bergdorf Goodman & House & Garden Magazine hired Douglas Little of DL & Co, who describes himself as a "modern alchemist", to create the Gothic Splendor Windows at Bergdorf Goodman for a special House & Garden Issue. The windows were breathtaking and it's only fair that you get a chance to see them too if you weren't able to see them in person :
.

Do It Yourself, But Do It Right.

Want to have complete graphic and design control over your world? Well, the following products and sites make it easy for you to design everything from your own postage stamps to the badging on your car to your athletic shoes.

Just click on the images below for more information and direct links to the sites or products.

Once upon time, the only creative DIY stuff available was for kids. Coloring books, mainly. But now, for those of us who fancy ourselves "creative", there are a million cool things on the market to which we can add our own sense of design.

From customizing your laptops with Mac Styles to creating your own messenger bag online with Re:load Bags. Stamps, placemats, nite lights, pillows, they can all reflect your own style or your own art and design.

Now you can be that complete control freak you always wanted to be.

See more of my DIY stuff for Frustrated Artists list at ThisNext.

Branson Offers Green for Green

From BBC.co.uk

Branson launches $25m climate bid

Millions of pounds are on offer for the person who comes up with the best way of removing significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson launched the competition today in London alongside former US vice-president Al Gore.

A panel of judges will oversee the prize, including James Lovelock and Nasa scientist James Hansen.

Sir Richard said humankind must realise the scale of the crisis it faced.

"The Earth cannot wait 60 years," he said at the news conference. "I want a future for my children and my children's children. The clock is ticking."

He said if the planet was to survive, it was vital to find a way of getting rid of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

He said he believed offering the $25m (£12.5m) Earth Challenge Prize was the best way of finding a solution.

Moral challenge

Overseeing the innovations are James Hansen, the noted climate scientist and head of the Nasa Institute for Space Studies; the inventor of Gaia theory James Lovelock; UK environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell; and Australian mammalogist and palaeontologist Tim Flannery.

They are looking for a method that will remove at least one billion tonnes of carbon per year from the atmosphere.

Al Gore, the former presidential candidate turned environmental campaigner, is also on the judging panel.

He said: "It's a challenge to the moral imagination of humankind to actually accept the reality of the situation we are now facing.

"We're not used to thinking of a planetary emergency, and there's nothing in our prior history as a species that equips us to imagine that we, as human beings, could actually be in the process of destroying the habitability of the planet for ourselves."

His recent film, An Inconvenient Truth, focused on global warming.

Stuart Haszeldine, professor of geology at the University of Edinburgh, commented: "Richard Branson is ahead of the pack in getting to grips with CO2 in the atmosphere.

"His decisive action places shame on the dithering of the UK Treasury, who will not let British power companies build CO2 capture plants, in case they are too expensive.

"I hope all other businesses, large and small, follow his lead. Yes, it's true Branson's company may benefit eventually, but we will all benefit, by a cleaner, greener planet. We all share the same atmosphere."

Carbon capture and storage is already a key area of research.

Scientists have been looking into removing the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and storing it in oil and gas fields, injecting it deep into the ocean, or chemically transforming it into solids or liquids that are thermodynamically stable.

However, these methods have raised concerns, notably because of the possibility of leakage from the storage sites and fears that C02 dissolved in large quantities in the ocean might harm marine ecosystems.

Other scientists are also looking at schemes that might "scrub" the air of CO2, collecting the gas for safe storage; but many critics say the energy required to achieve this would make such an approach self-defeating.

Sir Richard Branson has already pledged to invest $3bn (£1.6bn) in profits from his travel firms, such as airline Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains, towards research into renewable energy technologies.

Send A Custom Singing Telegram Via Altoids.

Altoids has always had a wonderfully fun website. If you haven't clicked your way around it before, you ought to. Filled with creativity and fun, you could spend a good hour on there!


And now, in honor of valentine's day, you can send a 'personalized' singing telegram to your loved one for free. Whether it's from a male or female and to a male or female, you can customize it (to a degree).

They actually sing the 'name' of your loved one, as long as it's on their list. If your significant other has a super unusual name, you can choose from Snookums, or Sweetheart.

Funky Find of The Week

The Easter Lily, left. Close up of flush, right

I once knew a guy who used to say that all well mannered men knew to "shake the dew off of their lily" once they had relieved themselves.
But to shake the dew into a lily?

That's what Chris Sorenson has made possible with his sculptural, but fully functional urinals.

Each is meticulously hand built and one of a kind - formed from high fire porcelain and fired to cone 10 (2300° F). These pieces are magnificent works of art but they are also fully functioning vitreous porcelain fixtures that can be plumbed and used in a bathroom. They are made of the same material as a commercial toilet but the similarity stops there. Clark hopes that his sculptures can be exhibited as art and installed as urinals in galleries and bathrooms around the world.

Most above are available for purchase. Prices start at $6500.

Click here to see more or to purchase.

Jelaine Faunce: Pick A Style, Any Style.

I first stumbled upon artist Jelaine Faunce's work on her page on the daily painters site. Her charming collage-like layered paintings caught my eye. They were unusual, had a sense of humor and were being sold in her etsy store for a more than reasonable price.



Well, this of course led me to further links and further exposure to this artist's gamut of work. And what a range she has!
I was surprised to see that the same artist who created the semi-allegorical sushi paintings also created realism paintings of striking photographic quality and interesting composition. These and many more are visible on her website. A far cry from her 'sushi' paintings but equally captivating.

click on images to enlarge



On her website she also has some mixed media work. Two examples are below.



She even has a photography section on her site as well.

With an ebay store, an etsy store, a cafe press store, selling original paintings and prints on Imagekind, even a blog, she's one busy artist. Her prices are still 'affordable' but I bet they won't be for long, So keep an eye out on this prolific artist because you never know what she'll be doing next!