Bright Art to Chase Away Winter Blues

It may be a mild winter in MN as far as the temperature goes, but it's still dreary, grey, and the days are still very short!  I feel like we need some extra bright and cheery images to help get us through!  Enter the amazing neon art installations of Megan Geckler.  They are made from flagging tape used on construction sites.  Her large scale installations are architectural in nature and meant to be walked through for the full experience.

Late night musings...

Something got me thinking about A-Frame cabins late last night and I dug up some cool mid-century promotional designs.  Even though these buildings are pretty unpopular, even scoffed at today, I totally get their appeal.

High Fashion Halloween Bridal by Laura Whitney Couture & Artist Built!

Happy Halloween everyone!  Remember when I said I was working on a big photo shoot?  Well in honor of the best holiday of the year, I collaborated with the leather sculptors of Artist Built, as well as an amazing team of models, hair stylists and make-up artists to create an ethereal yet dark Halloween spread using gowns from the new Laura Whitney Couture bridal line (launching spring 2012!).  I also created a few special pieces for the shoot including an Elizabethan inspired bolero, dramatic millinery, delicate paper wings, and I even got back to my corsetry roots and made an enticingly wicked "Kiss Me Deadly" corset with matching origami panniers!  I must admit, it was such a pleasure to take a brief departure from the light romantic beauty of bridal to take part in creating deep dark imagery.

Quite possibly my favorite photo!  She looks like she's up to something!

Our images followed five themes to show dark spirits of many realms : A wicked Queen of Hearts, the vengeful Corpse Bride, an Angel with a devilish side, the jilted Flapper, and a Fetish Femme Fatale. With an impeccable team of models, airbrush techniques and makeup artist, talented photographer Sasha Landskov captured the feel behind the the collaborative vision beautifully!   Thank you so much to Irma & Sienna of Mixx Salon, Soraya Hatfield of Pinup Stylings, and Dede Franks of Salon George for all their fabulous work on the hair and make-up!  City Pages has also published a slide show of the full set of images so to see more, click here.

All the killer jewelry was provided my Rewind Vintage of Minneapolis!

Our amazing make-up artists painstakingly applied real gold leaf flakes to our fallen angel!

Artist Built did all the custom leather accessories!  Contact them for custom fetish pieces!

I so enjoyed making this corset!  I'd love to do more custom pieces like this! (hint: e-mail me!)

Isn't this mask just amazing!?!  It's like Cyborg crossed with Fetish!

Featured Etsy Seller: Cate Parr

Cate Parr is an artist/illustrator living in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.  She does the most amazing watercolor fashion paintings, which are for sale in her etsy shop!  The prints are truly works of art, worthy of any wall in your home or office.  I'm particularly impressed with how she's mastered the use of negative space in her paintings!  You can buy prints of Cate's work here. 

Vintage Album Cover Art!

So while I was visiting my parents this weekend I was digging through their records and found a cool Parisian one that I loved!  While digging around this internet for a digital download of the album I came across a really cool blog called Hooked on Stereophonics!  In addition to great vintage record reviews I had a blast looking at all the awesome, and sometimes very kitschy, cover art!  Here are a few of my favorites!

Happy Friday!

Bits of paper and other things I'm currently obsessing over....

All images source