Smashing Magazine has assembled a gallery of texture photos free for personal or commercial use. Browse the categories here and download to your heart's content.
Look what I just bought from Golden Fruitfly's etsy shop. I fell in love with the pattern. The underside says Spanish Crown Ironstone, made in Spain.
Julianna Smith, a Portland-based illustrator, has designed a couple of free recipe cards you can download. Get them here.
I'm all done communing with nature (and my bed) after a deliciously long weekend. The weather in Tennessee was so lovely I could hardly stand it. Too bad it's only 47 degrees in Chicago. News I learned upon returning: My mom read this post, decided to find out what Crocs are, became intrigued, and bought some just to spite me. (Okay, it wasn't just to spite me, but can you believe that? Reverse psychology truly works.)
Bye, guys. I'm going to a cabin in the woods until Monday night. (Monday's a holiday in the U.S.) Have a lovely weekend, everyone.
I bought this lemon paper ages ago because it matches our crazy fake lemon branches (see picture here). I guess I should say "faux" instead of "fake" to make stuff sound fancier. Anyhow, I bought it and then I couldn't think of anything to do with it until now: clearly the answer is more vinyl. I ironed it onto the paper, which worked great. (Except for the piece I ironed too long and the paper turned brown. Oops.) After vinylizing the paper, I stuck self-adhesive cork on the back and cut out squares.
Visit this site to create your own mini photo album. You can upload pictures from your computer or Flickr account, print out the page, fold it up, and carry it in your purse to show off your granddaughter to everyone you bump into. (Better buy some more paper, Mum.)
At the local fabric store I found some iron-on vinyl to play with. It's pretty neat—you can iron it onto fabric or paper. I tested it by making coasters. 
1) Cut out two squares of fabric and vinyl for each coaster.(I wanted to end up with 4" coasters, so I cut my pieces larger than that.)
4) Mark a square on the fabric with a disappearing fabric marker and sew the pieces together, following your lines. 
(This heavy-weight fabric is by Trefle, sent by my supplier in Japan, AKA Megumi.)
Stuff you can make:
For those of us who don't want to spend our life's savings on a real Hermes bag, there's a customizable, downloadable paper model on their site. (Find the picture there that looks like the one above and click it.) I guess this little bag could sit on your desk and hold a jellybean or something. Thanks, Tsh.
I'm not usually a big jewelry person, but I found etsy seller Wicopy the other night and had to share. I'm captivated by all the loveliness. Too late for a Mother's Day present, but wouldn't a pair of these be a nice gift for someone? (Or yourself?)
While procrastinating at my desk yesterday, I found myself staring at our letter opener and thinking how plain it looked. Clearly I couldn't keep using such an abomination. It must be decorated.
See? It's so.... white. And those clips. So black. No fun. I'd seen some lovely binder clips available for purchase here and here, decoupaged with paper, but I wasn't sure how fabric would work. Experiment time.
1) I tried three options: fabric pieces with iron-on interfacing applied, fabric with HeatnBond applied (not that I was going to iron it to the metal, but it makes your fabric sort of papery when you've pulled off the backing), and just plain fabric.
StatAttack has designed a compelling series of T-shirts illustrating life expectancy, poverty rates, and other alarming statistics in a handful of African countries. Twenty percent of T-shirt proceeds go toward financing the building of an orphanage in Mozambique. (Via Brand Appeal.)
Some mugs I drew on with one of these pens I got at the local Blick art store. 
You might have seen the Rather Difficult Font Game floating around the internet lately... have a go at it! But don't feel bad if you wouldn't know a Frutiger if it came up and bit you in the, um, backside.
I've added a little Etsy mini widget in left sidebar, in case anybody has spending money that's burning a hole in their pocket. I can't buy everything I like, but it's fun to window shop.
In the unlikely event you ever need to age a photo, here's a site that will do it for you. Upload your picture, press the blue button, and you'll get back a low res antique-looking snapshot. Via Photojojo.
It's like making paper snowflakes, only better! I made these cut paper frames with big pieces of origami paper (got them at Blick; they're 9 3/4" square. Not quite this, but close). On your bulletin board or fridge, you could frame postcards, photos, poems, you name it.
The photos I printed came from the Condé Nast gallery. They sell reproductions of all the gorgeous magazine images there. Have fun browsing.
