My friend sent me this link in an email, and I thought it was really cute. Beautiful textures!

I’ve had so much fun playing around with the images from my new book, パリのヴィテージ (Vintage Paris). Lots of amazing textures and pretty things in that book, and a bit sweeter and more pastel colors than 花とストロベリー (Flowers and strawberries). I think 花とストロベリー is still my favorite book with all the radiant colors (some of the stock images have been used to make the layout of sushibird.com), but パリのヴィテージ shares a good second place together with the Dover Sea life. I used to think it was a bit silly paying for stock images when you could find so many free resources on the internet, but it is like buying a huge package of inspiration, and it has been totally worth it. I think I have close to all the books I could want right now, but I still would love a resource books with gemstones and sparkles. I haven’t seen one that I liked well enough in that category to buy yet, so tips are more than welcome!

When I don’t have much time, I love fiddling around at Polyvore, I made a post with more pictures back in February. I know most people use it to put together outfits, but it can be used for other things, I love making little collages of sparkles and birds. It is really neat, and very quick to put together things as well. Above is the latest one I made, and here is a couple more:

Okokok, I know I should not buy any more resource books, but then I found this one, and I just had to have it. Beautiful, no? All the images in the book are ready to use high-resolution png and jpg. Instant love.

A couple of goodies I have found or rediscovered on the web during the latest week:

1. This amazing kinetic sculpture of San Francisco. You _have_ to see the video. It is absolutely gorgeous and incredibly impressive!
2. Earth at night. Wow. Look at how lit up Japan is over there!
3. Go make these cute page corner bookmarks!
4. Here is a rough guide about how to order food in Japan if you do not speak any Japanese. Usually I think various guides often contains a lot of odd tips, but this one seemed pretty straight forward and down to the point.
5. Melvin the machine! If you enjoyed playing with dominos when you were a kid, you will love this.
6. Japan has glowing green mushrooms! Maybe the radioactive levels are through the roof after all 😉
7. I generally dislike theme-restaurants and cafes, they are usually more expensive and the quality of the food is often so-so, you pay for the experience, basically. Still, I saw this Alice in Wonderland restaurant, and I almost, just almost, want to go once just to see what it is like.
8. I know I  have linked her before, but whenever I feel out of inspiration, I check out her site. The one and only Linn Olofsdotter. Love. I also like the way she describes her workflow, watching movies while she works, doodle instead of sketching. Sounds like the perfect workflow to me!
9. DaisyDisk is a great utility for mac to find out what files take up most space on your hard drive. Really neat info-graphics and very useful.
10. A bit old, but an interesting 12-minute video about “Japan – the strange country”. It focuses mainly on the negative points about Japan, but it is still an interesting little tid-bit of information.

Anyone who can make Bergen look this cute deserves a cookie and a hug. It almost made me excited about going there!

I have seen these really beautiful web forms floating around the various internet pages lately, and I absolutely want to make my own comment form more like this when I have some extra time! (Which means not right now, but I will get around to it!) Aren’t they beautiful? (You can click on the images to get to their sites.) It makes me want to contact them and leave comments just because of the beautiful design on the forms!

Every 4th of July I end up with this kind of eeire feeling that half of the summer is gone already, and I think this song by Aimee Mann describes my mood. I have so many thing to fix in the next couple of weeks it is almost making me dizzy. And excited. And a bit nauseous, all at once.

I had a wonderful weekend, we went down to an Onsen in Izu / Shimoda (pictures to follow!) , had an amazing Japanese-style traditional dinner, (really gorgeous food, but a bit freaky when they put things that are still alive on the grill), and not to mention the private onsen on the balcony! I basically spent Saturday evening in the little pool on our balcony after dinner, and the water makes your skin silky smooth! I got up really early yesterday morning, took another dip in the onsen, before I had to head back to Tokyo (about 4 hours away) to take my JLPT test. I have no idea how the test went, parts of it went wonderful and other parts were well, not so wonderful. I am just glad it is done.

Now I am well planted at home again, I’ve caught a cold, and I am trying to shake it of so I can update my blog and do all the housework which is waiting for me. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

A quick inspiration post! After I redesigned the website, I realized that all of the mish-mash on the top sort of reminded me of my favorite jewelry designer, Michal Negrin. If I ever were to start my own jewelry business, it would definitely be in this style. I love all the little details and trinkets! I own a couple of pieces, but they are not here with me in Japan, so I couldn’t take pictures of the pieces I own. However – it is all faux jewelry, but the quality is really good and long lasting.

// & I am going on a trip today, so no new posts until tomorrow night! Have a lovely weekend darlings!

Here are a couple of pictures from the book 花と苺がいちばん可愛い (Flowers and strawberrries are the cutest). There are so many cuuuute books filled with different themes of clipart, they have popped up all over the bookstores in Japan, especially over the two past years. There is at least 5 other books I want to get just because they are beautiful, but I hardly use these kinds of books. One will have to do for now, so I chose the ones that had birds, cakes and deers. It is just 100 pages of super cute clipart, and the CD that comes with the book, everything is in good resolution in both JPG and PNG. 本当に可愛いでしょうね？