The World's Largest!

I came across these images of the World's Largest Ball of Twine while I was searching around online just now, and they reminded me how much I love roadside attractions! We have a few ideas floating around for some spring and summer roadtrips, which include visits to state parks and definitely a few "world's largest" attractions. Can't wait!

Decorator Birds

We were watching David Attenborough's special on Birds of Paradise the other night, and were blown away by the segment on Bowerbirds. (Watch the video! It's amazing!) The male Bower Birds, who are native to New Guinea and Australia, create amazing habitats out of sticks and twigs ("bowers"), which they decorate with colorful findings from the forest in order to attract a mate. Acorns, berries, leaves, beetle shells... all perfectly arranged by color as any sophisticated decorator would do. Pretty impressive stuff.

New Favorite Item!

Yay!!! Charley and Todd's book is finally in the Shoppe!! We're so thrilled and excited and honored! If you're in the neighborhood you've got to come check it out. We'd offer it online, but the thing weighs a ton and we couldn't possibly do that to our delivery folks.

Here & There

I was out running a bunch of errands for the magazine today, and on my way to the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, I stumbled across...
and
which totally made me think of

and
and how much I love the work of Wayne White.

John G. Design

Our good friend and super talented graphic designer John Giordani just launched his new website, and it's amazing! His areas of expertise include web design, animation, print and illustration, all in a bold, clean style that fits in right next to some of our favorite designers/illustrators from the 60's. Go John! Check out his animated, interactive and ultra cute site here. You'll love it!

Antony Hall Cards

The other day we found ourselves in North Beach, so we made sure to stop by one of our favorite stores in the neighborhood, Eden & Eden. While we were there, we picked up these two beautiful silkscreened greeting cards based on folk-inspired paper cutout designs, which I am now obsessed with! They are by a British artist named Antony Hall, and there appear to be six designs in the collection, each one available in multiple colors. It was hard to narrow it down to only two! Since they are fairly large in size, (6" x 8") I have a feeling these are going to end up in frames rather than in the mail. Visit his site to see more!

Smarts & Crafts Makeover!

Welcome to new and improved Smarts & Crafts! Our lovely friend Christine Craven has been busy designing an entirely new site for us, complete with a music player so you can hear what tunes we've been listening to recently, a pinboard that shows all our current inspirations, and a "stuff we make" section that has images of all the fun crafty projects we've been working on. We love it!!

Have fun clicking around!

Oh, and ps: for those of you who subscribe to our blog via an RSS feed, please visit: www.smartsandcrafts.com to check out all the fun new stuff.

We Heart Museums

Now that we have made it through our first holiday season at the Shoppe, we are looking forward to taking the occasional day off to go museum hopping around town. There are so many good shows going on right now that we can't wait to see! Here are a couple:

The Art and Flair of Mary Blair at the Cartoon Museum.


Paul Klee and Devendra Banhart at SF MOMA.


The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson, at the De Young.

American Sampler: Corita Kent, at the USF Thacher Gallery.