Connie Lim (whose biggest inspirations are Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh – no wonder I love her) is a fashion illustrator and designer living in Los Angeles.  She has thus far created fourteen of these beautiful playing cards, which can be purchased (along with prints) on her website.

Miss Lim has informed me, however, that the playing card project has been put on hold – so my grandiose dreams of a full fashion playing card deck for fortune-telling purposes may go unfulfilled.  I die.

Thanks to Trendland & Dazed Digital for the images.

We all know I love fashion, photography, tarot, and paper craft.  So when they all come together so seamlessly, my heart pitter-patters.

This tarot deck by husband-and-wife duo Phillip Valdez and Elisa Lazo de Valdez is as yet unfinished, but I’ve got an eye on some prints for my birthday.

For more paper sculpture and photography, visit Phillip’s website and Elisa’s flickr – or visit their blogs here and here.  There’s some really neat stuff.

I’m a little jealous of that chainmail bralette.  I’d like to divine in that.

With her primary materials of oil and wood, Kawasaki renders alluring, nymph-like girls at the peak of their sexual discovery in sensually innocent circumstances.  Heavily influenced by Japanese manga and Art Nouveau paintings, Audrey creates melancholic worlds in which her enigmatic characters struggle to come to terms with adolescence, prompting her viewers to do the same.

“Wood really lends itself to the atmosphere of the painting. . . . The tones and textures of certain woods are familiar and calming – even nostalgic, in a way.  I’m pretty picky with wood types (and so are the oil paints), but if I’ve found a perfect piece – I can feel immediately grounded, and pieces will come out with ease.  The specific grain in each piece definitely has a large part in beginning the line process, in a nicely organic and unpredictable way.  That might be what I love most.” (NY Arts Mag)







“The girls are like ghosts – real but not real,” Kawasaki says in a Vogue interview.  ”I paint them because they are distant, elusive, and unattainable, and slip right through your hands.  They are something I chase after, and that I grasp onto for a mere moment, and am forced to let go, and that is what keeps me painting.”

For more images and information, visit Audrey’s website and journal.

Paper shoes & cuff.  Holy crap I’m in heaven.  I’d hang these from my ceiling.

By Ndeur & Make a Paper World for stylist Heidi Ackerman (via Atelier 29)

And bam – the bag is the object.  Proceeds go to WWF to save the endangered animal.  Genius.

This is Origami by Magdalena Czarnecki (via The Dieline)

Pop-up sculptures (drool) by Masahiro Chatani and Ingrid Siliakus, respectively.

I could stare at these all day.  Available for purchase at Upon a Fold (via).

This makes me wish I drank tea.  Too bad they’re not for sale.

Origami tea bags by Russian designer Natalia Ponomareva

My future palace, created by Tokyo art student Wataru Itou (via Tokyo Bling).  The exhibition is called Umi no Ue no Oshiro (A Castle On the Ocean), and is situated – fittingly – in the middle of the ocean.  The castle took 4 years to complete.

I’ve been thinking a lot about value lately–partially in terms of cost-per-use (which is a lesson everyone should learn), and partially in terms of wastefulness.  When it comes to fashion, the two can go hand in hand.  Case in point: paper clothing.  (Click any image for more info & photos.)

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m of the opinion that this stuff is awesome.  I am a sucker for fashion, art, craft, AND paper (these are all things that define me in some way)–so I’m thrilled to behold such masterful mash-ups of these things.

Let me change gears for a second: I’ve spent my entire life purchasing inferior shoes (I’m talking primarily high heels, here).  To be honest, they look great, and I wear them frequently–but they’re cheap.  The result?  They fall apart.  The soles wear through after a few months of use, and while I used to re-sole them, it’s recently come to my attention that it’s often cheaper for me to replace them than it is to fix them.  Therefore, the shoes get chucked, and the cycle repeats.

I’m not really cool with this.  A) I get sentimental, and hate throwing anything away, and B) I just can’t stand wastefulness in general.  I recycle whatever I can, and actually cringe when people don’t.  Similarly, I always clean my plate, and can’t stand the thought of throwing away food–especially perfectly good food.  Restaurants do this all the time, and the idea makes me pretty uncomfortable.

The good thing is these are made of paper.  Hopefully most of the materials can go in the green bin.  But why would you spend all that money on something you could only wear a handful of times, at most?  Personally, I think these are wonderfully interesting, but that they belong strictly on gallery walls and mannequins (I can’t imagine most of them are meant for more than that).  What do you think?

Yellena James is an abstract painter and illustrator who was born in Sarajevo in 1977, and currently resides in Portland, Oregon.  James’s work features colorful shapes and lines which–via interplay of spatial arrangement and dimension–create dynamic, surreal scenes riddled with intense hue and detail (very much worth viewing larger).

“I try to create an intimate world that possesses its own ethos and its own emotional range,” James says.  Personally, I’m enamored with the color combinations and sense of movement.  To me these images have a magnetic field or gravitational pull that wants to suck me into a new dimension.  Here are some more of my favorite illustrations:

You can purchase prints of James’s art via her Etsy shop.  To learn more about her, check out this cool Etsy “Featured Seller” interview.  You can also see more of James’s drawings, paintings, and projects on her website, blog, or Flickr page.

So–what do you think?  I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

…and the clothes weren’t bad, either.  In fact, the entire show (including similarly-sculpted paper backdrops) was stunning.  You can see even more images/details here, and if you’re interested in what other hair projects Kamo has done, here’s a small sampling :)

P.S.  If you want your own floral headpiece, but aren’t so skilled with paper, there are many alternatives available on Etsy.  A select few:

Talking to Unicorns
The Bungalow
Twigs & Honey

Enjoy!

I forget where I first ran across Kelly Thompson, and I can’t find much about her online.  All I know is that she’s a 26-year-old illustrator and photographer from Wellington, New Zealand who (according to her MySpace profile) enjoys camping, “going to the flicks,” and spending time with her overweight cat, Furgus.  Oh, and she cranks out consistently high-quality fashion art–ranging from photography to life-like portraits to everything in between (including a seamless blend of sketch and reality).  I’m partial to her illustration, myself.  These are a few of my favorites, but you can view more on her website.  I particularly appreciate her variability in style–if I didn’t find these all in the same place I’d have my doubts they were drawn by the same artist.

If you can’t tell, my favorite things about her work are the execution of color and contrast, the attention to detail and contour, and that sort of sweet, seductive quality.  Very evocative.