Clothes, Crafts, & Caillebotte.

So there are few things in life that really get my creative juices going, I am going to start sharing things that I find or remind me of beauty.

One is clothes, really cute vintage clothes. And now, I know that I don't dress like this, but at some point in my life I want to. Anthropologie is always a huge favorite of mine. I love EVERYTHING in that store. Recently I stumbled across Mod Cloth and well... they are awesome!! It took me a while to figure out their measurement system. I actually thought everything was made for "little people", but turns out they only measure one side of the garment to determine size. Once I got it and started looking around, well it was LOVE.

The other thing I stumbled upon as I was trying to figure out the whole wedding invitation design was The Urban Craft Center in Santa Monica. It looks amazing. So, one of these Saturdays I will be taking a trip out to see if it is actually good. Their website inspired me to start pulling out some of my sewing projects that have been sitting dormant for a while. One day. A dream of mine is to have a room in my home solely dedicated to sewing, glue, glitter, woodworking, buttons & ribbon, modge podge, and even a dark room in it. Of course this would be a room where anything creative goes....ahh to dream.

I leave you with one of my favorite paintings of Paris. I love Paris - it is one city in the world I could never get tired of visiting. and I love art. So there you go.
Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 Oil on canvas 212.2 x 276.2 cm
Gustave Caillebotte
French, 1848-1894



And of course for those of you really interested a little background:

Beginning in 1851, the government of Napoleon III transformed the old streets of Paris into a new system of grand boulevards. This painting abounds with evidence of the city’s rebuilding. Gustave Caillebotte selected a complex intersection near the Saint-Lazare train station for his subject, distorting the size of the buildings and the distance between them to create a wide-angle view that reflects the sweeping modernity of this capital city.

The artist’s family owned property in the busy neighborhood depicted here, which was populated by wealthy Parisians and workers of various sorts. In the foreground, a man and woman wearing fashionable clothes stroll down the sidewalk. Behind them stand the uniformly designed buildings that were added to Paris during the renovations overseen by French administrator Baron Haussmann.

The highly crafted surface, monumental size, geometric order, and elaborate perspective of Paris Street; Rainy Day (the artist used a gaslight to separate the foreground from the middle and distant views) are more academic than Impressionist in character. Caillebotte clearly intended these elements to underscore the power of painting to capture the momentary quality of everyday life. In this cropped composition, it is easy to imagine that in just a moment, everyone in the painting will have moved and nothing will be the same.