Monday, October 19, 2009

Sneak Peek II-Brooch Time...


A little somethin' somethin' of what I have conjured up with these new brooches to jazz up your lapel of wherever!





Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sneak Peek I


From the Steam Secrets Collection.

New.New.New.Newness
It's almost ridiculous how many new things I have in the shop and coming! Feel free to tell me what you think of these new designs. I have about four brooches coming out, London is a total brooch town, so my visit there was the catalyst for the designs. So here are some pics of stuff that won't arrive to the shop until a bit later this week.

xo xo xo xo
From The Secret Society Trust Collection


From the Voodoo Collection

Monday, October 12, 2009

Sunday Love- 624 Grand st. Brooklyn, NY, 11121



We had a DOPE time @ the grand opening of Sunday Love. I was excited I baked a damn carrot cake and made my famous tabouli pizza in like four different hummus flavors!! lol.

Anyway if you're in Brooklyn, you need to get over to Sunday Love and check out this haven of nostalgia and awesomeness. The Hand of Fatima jewelry is one of the artisan goods you will find there! Greer and Scott rehabilitate furniture and decoupage pieces into amazing home editions! Ned Martin, the third owner is a painter extraordinaire, and his work is on display @ the shop. Sunday Love is like a parallel universe, it will stand out to you, my favorite part of its history is that it was the long time tarot card reader's place...oh, how perfect that THoF is there!

I have some of my apocrathy line in there, and there is just love all around, no love like Sunday Love! So, go eat some banging Thai food accross the street and walk over to Sunday Love and get lost in time.
xo
P.S.- I bought that camera on the right, you'll see it in some ne product photos!


London Town I- BUST Mag Craftacular




I was so, so lucky enough to be chosen to participate in the London BUST Mag Craftacular. I have to say, BUST Magazine is an amazing monument to women, it has given indie designers and crafters and musicians such exposure and mad LOVE.
When I heard about this opportunity, I just had to try to be a part of it. London plays a role in my family history, when my family's country went into revolution, they became somewhat "stuck" in London. They were visiting my aunt at university in England, and word came over the radio that homes of government workers had been seized and all kinds of stuff, so they never returned. For about two years they dwelled in an apartment with friends on Edgeware Rd. I went to this place and stood looking at the building. How strange and far it must have been to have to call this European city "home". Edgeware Rd. is beautiful, I have dubbed it the "Middle Eastern Upper East Side". Anyhow, my wonderful partner and husband stayed behind on this trip, and I was accompanied by two people that might as well be blood family, my Renee and Alejandro. Renee also left her husband (my brother from another mother) Ayman with the baby (who is 3! lol). It was a blast, but something about European cities makes you want your man (or woman), they are designed with romance.
(Me, Shadia, Renee and Alejandro smoking sheesh on Edgeware Rd.)

My family there, Shadia and Baba Mansour took care of us one day in a beautiful house in Wimbledon. Wimbledon itself is green, hilly and quiet, it has an overwhelming English charm, and this gorgeous creeky old house the Mansour's live in is overflowing with character, Baba Mansour collects antiques and grows everything in the garden which is abundant with green vines, apples and even figs! Figs in London!! I felt like I was in an British mystery show in that house, I loved it. We ate in the garden and he told us all jokes and stories about is childhood.

Well, I love London, I love, love, love it. I went all over from Camden to Brixton, I stayed in Limehouse and invented different characters and we did comedy skits on a double-decker, it inspired us to dare, as people are less stressed it seems, more willing to just chill.

I have some pics to share from the most curious museum, the Wellcome Museum. Renee and I were waiting for the red line @ Tower Bridge station, where I spotted the add for the museum exhibit with a Victorian wax anatomical figure cut open. "We're going!" I told her...Renee, a nurse, was just as equally curios. This place has everything from chastity belts to Darwin's walking stick. It is a GEM!!!

(these were designed to look Madonna-like to be more accepted by people, can you see it??)

(c.1890 tattooed human skin)

I will have more pics of ridiculously cool stuff in blog II of London! xoxox

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Grand Opening! Sunday Love- Brooklyn

Hey Everyone...I know, I know, no pictures from London yet...but I had to work like a maniac for that awesome show in D.C.-Crafty Bastards, which happened over the weekend and was exactly as expected...DOPE!!! We were put up by one of my fav girls, Katie of Catherinette, or as I like to call her..."McGiver Stewart", because she is what you would get if Martha Stewart and McGiver had a baby...she can do ANYTHING...sew you a jacket while painting a house....fix your car, while building a display...it's insane, shames me every time.
My neighbor was the ridiculously talented Margaux of The Black Spot Books...she book binds from antique leather, and even makes jewelry and raises a gorgeous, gorgeous baby called Søren, who will steal your heart away, and chase you with an antique hammer! I am amazed at not just the absolute beauty of this work, but the soul. I swear, each book has a soul, no joke. Here is a video of her studio and her process...which makes me go...."damn!" lol:


You can find her online here.
*Also, she has ghostly, unique photographs I really wish I had room for in my house, and her hubby Walter is a painter AND a woods craftsman with beautiful and SAFE toys for your girls and boys.

Now as for exciting, local news...Sunday Love is opening in Williamsburg, and the only jewelry featured in the shop is The Hand of Fatima!!!
I want to invite you! Come through for the grand opening 10-10-09 @6:30ish, food if you eat, drinks if you drink, and beauty everywhere, plus a DJ. You've gotta meat the super cool artists/owners Greer, Scott and Ned, who have made this beautiful place a new part of Williamsburg community.