20x200

For a while I have been looking for a print to go on the wall in my  bedroom and it has been surprisingly hard to find something right, so I was particularly pleased to come across the great site 20x200

"(limited editions × low prices) + the Internet = art for everyone"

Founded by Jen Bekman, 20x200 is a fantastic site which allows artists to show and sell their work to a large audience and makes collecting limited edition prints and photographs affordable and accessible to all. 

The design of the site is super user-friendly and there are ways to filter your search according to category, price and even colour. Pricing is standardised according to size which makes the process that bit easier and you can buy prints ready-framed too.

One print that I love, is this reproduction of a lithograph produced in the 1830s of A Map of the Open Country of a Woman's Heart. Although not quite what I'm looking for it makes me wish I had discovered it in time to give as a valentine!

There is so much on the site that I'm going to have to sit down and have a real good trawl but from what I've seen so far it looks like I might have found just the place to pick my perfect print.

Made in Iceland

This film by Klara Harden, found via Got A Girl Crush, documents her 25 day solo trek through Iceland and brought back such wonderful memories of when I visited in 2007.

                                  

         MADE IN ICELAND from Klara Harden on Vimeo

                                                                                          

An amazing achievement and so beautifully captured.

 I only had a couple of chances to leave the capital Rekjavik to see some of the amazing Icelandic landscape - it really is like you're on another planet. 

Rekjavic by night

Despite spending most of my time exploring the city the few glimpses of nature I did get have stayed with me since. Particularly the other-wordly colours - the vivid blue of the glacial waters, acid greens & yellows of the vegetation and the black volcanic earth. This film has definitely reminded me how much I would like to go back - this time in the summer, I visited in February - and see more.

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This lovely song is the soundtrack to today.

  (Lianne La Havas ft. Willy Mason - No Room For Doubt)

...

I have been pretty much house bound lately - this is for a couple of reasons, the first being that I need to find a job and until I do I need to spend less money, so restricting my movements has been one tactic to help with this! However more recently it is down to the seriously cold turn the weather has taken - temperatures in the minuses make strolling or even just venturing to the shops a bit daunting. Today's spirit raising-activities have included writing notes and thank-you's on some sunny stationary:

Eating a bowl of hearty and homely (read thrown together from the contents of the fridge: leeks, potatoes, peas, spinach and kale) soup:

Admiring the daffodils picked up on an excursion to the wintry wastes of Deptford:

This evening I am off to a 2nd birthday party so hope to be warmed by cuddles from little people. 

Thursday flowers

I love getting flowers for no particular reason almost more that the bunches given for Birthdays or Valentines - someone who knows me well came home from work yesterday with "Happy Thursday!" flowers in the shape of a bunch of pink ranunculas. It doesn't get much better.

My flowers have made a home with some tulips that were floating around and are now a corner of spring on the mantlepiece.

A dear friend is visiting so my Thursday was topped of with drinks at Hawksmoor Spitalfields where we sipped on amazing cocktails. I tried the Canterbury Cooler - gin, campari, elderflower and picpoul - garnished with chunks of pink grapefruit - quite in keeping with my bouquet!

Film

A Saturday afternoon spent wandering around the South Bank included a trip to the Tate Modern where I sat transfixed in front of Tacita Dean's turbine hall installation Film. I love the space of the turbine hall, a gallery setting where I don't feel at all inhibited, I lay on the floor and watched the piece loop round 3 times. The gang of kids rocketing around clearly weren't inhibited either!

Catch the installation before 11th March 2012

Murmuration

                                 
                                            Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

I discovered this beautiful short film today by Sophie Windsor and Liberty Smith who work together as Islands and Rivers. The experience of happening upon a flock - or murmuration - of starlings must have been truly amazing. Their website contains a portfolio of their other work, a stand out piece being the melancholic portrait of light house keepers Behind the Light.

Wild Love

One of my favourite sites for inspiration, Design*Sponge, has added a new flower column to their collection of regular features.

(Image by Julie Cope, courtesy of Design*Sponge)

With Wild Love, florist Mary Kathryn Paynter interprets great love affairs through flowers, beginning with musicians Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons.
This first arrangement embodies the romantic, vibrant and slightly ragged, rough-around-the-edges feel of the couple perfectly! Judging by the suggestions for further instalments, I think this feature is going to grow to become one of my most loved.

New Years Rulin's

The New Year Rulin' I gave myself for 2012 was to start blogging, so here I am. I thought my resolution would be a little lonely so I brought Woody Guthrie's collection from 1942 along for the ride.