Efreeme Gems

Another roundup of some lovely items from efreeme (a new, free, handmade & vintage marketplace). It's so easy to go to the Stores tab and browse stores by looking at the thumbnails of their recent items. The results are random, so I can just look at the first page of 25 stores and find loads that I love!

So here are a few:

Vintage Lemon Yellow Rose Post Earrings by Ben & Oliver

Less than $10 for these sweet little beauties. Including shipping to Canada or the U.S. So simple and pretty and would look great with lovely dark hair. Check out more of their pieces in their store at http://benoliver.efreeme.com/

Crazy Leggins by Blim

$55 will snag you this sweet pair of leggings (including shipping in Canada). Blim is a great community arts facility located in Vancouver, BC that hosts workshops on DIY screenprinting, knitting, etc. If I could look like that in those tights, these would be mine. Check out their other unique finds/creations at http://blim.efreeme.com/

Squizzles Fluffy Pink Kitty Cat Plush Toy by MonsterBunch1

$30 for this little darling (includes postage!). Look at those pretty eyelashes! I'm a pretty big sucker for these sort of monster animal things. I just find them adorable! Check out MonsterBunch1's other delightful creations at http://monsterbunch1.efreeme.com

Citrine Nugget Pendant and Copper Chain Necklace by Arlene Marie

$15 gets you this pretty gem (including postage within the U.S.). I love big chunky stones and could see myself wearing this daily. You can find other fabulous jewelry finds by Arlene Marie here: http://arlenemariejewelry.efreeme.com/

Remember that when you buy from someone on efreeme they don't have to pay any sales commissions, so more of the money will go towards the seller. Also, the more people that use efreeme to shop and sell, the better chance I have of perhaps one day quitting my job to work on efreeme full time. Isn't that something we all want, hmm? 

So if you want to make dreams come true, please spread the word about efreeme. You can grab a button for your blog on the Happenings page, or follow us on twitter or facebook, and of course support these wonderful sellers who are obviously very smart people since they know a good thing when they see it! (And if you do a blog post about efreeme, please let me know so I can add the link to the Happenings page!)

What are your favourite items on efreeme.com?

Gail Armstrong Illustrations

Look at these beauties I found on the internet, at a place called IllustrationWeb. These are all done by Gail Armstrong, who obviously is very talented. She calls her technique "Paper Sculpture Illustration". I call it: "Pretty Good Stuff". Now, I'm no art critic (clearly), but I like to respond on an emotional level, in the same way I respond to panda bears and peanut butter cups. With my heart.

I think planes don't make any sense to me. How can they fly? They're so big and they can't flap their wings like birds. I don't really know how birds can fly either. I guess I don't understand flight. I'm no astronaut (clearly) or the kind of engineer that works with planes (goddamit I know there's a word to describe a plane specialist person!), but.... oh man, I don't know how to finish that sentence.

Ah, snow globes. One of my greatest regrets in life is not having a snow globe collection! Also, I wish I had worn more hats so I could have become a "hat person" and everyone says to me "you suit hats!". Wearing hats and having snow globes... that's the life I long for! My prediction for my untimely death will be: Me, My palatial estate Xanadu, and a snow globe with a hat in it, and as I die it falls out of my decrepit arthritic hands, and I whisper "chapeau...."

How cool would it be if this cardboard factory actually made cardboard? That would take a lot of cardboard to make a factory that makes a lot of cardboard! How would it not start on fire? Where would the bathrooms go? Oh man, this is a logistical nightmare.

This piece stirs up so many conflicting emotions. I loathe the wind and how it makes my ears feel funny, but I love how wind farms look and how slow the blades seem to move sometime. I like how she made these wind turbines look like they are growing from the ground like pretty blades of grass. I'd love to be a wind farmer, but I don't think that exists. Plus I live in an apartment.

I like this reindeer guy. It reminds me of that claymation movie Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, which I loved. I was always a little scared of the Abominable Snowman, but now I like him too! I feel like I've really grown up and expanded my horizons. I bet I could play E.T. on Atari now and not be scared of when the spaceship comes to get Elliot, or E.T. or whoever it was. That game made me nervous!

This paper giraffe is cool (I don't understand how that's even paper still), but one day I want to see a REAL giraffe, and do you know where I'm going to see it? Giraffe Manor in Nairobi, Kenya. I'm gonna see loads of them. And we'll have breakfast together, because that's what you do at Giraffe Manor. They peek their heads in the window and you have breakfast together. FOR REAL. I bet some of them could even play checkers maybe. Or, I could teach them. I think giraffes seem really laid back, like they could hang out in smoky jazz lounges, listen to Billie Holiday and smoke heroin or something. Is there a Disney movie that makes me think that or something? I guess that doesn't sound like Disney.

Anyways, all these retardedly awesome illustrations can be found here.

Birthday Story

The perfect day started in the morning. See, that's odd because sleeping in is probably one of my most favourite things to do (and would you know that not sleeping at all may be the next favourite. Funny, that).

But I awoke. Rather, I was woken. By Duncan, urging me to open presents. And another strange thing happened. I said No. TO PRESENTS. This was an eerie Friday the 13th, indeed! Up was down and left was right, and the whole world went all topsy turvy and I'm pretty sure my elbows were now my knees. Pretty, pretty sure.

But I eventually succumbed to peer pressure and opened my presents. Peer pressure is pretty great and I'd recommend it to a lot of people. Because do you know what I got out of it? A BOWLING PIN, muthafuckas! A sweet, beat up, bad ass, old bowling pin.

I also got an old brass propeller, a pair of vintage silver candlesticks and a Diana camera adapter lens thing for our digital SLR (still pretty sure the bowling pin trumps them all)

So after the bowling pin excitement, I start to get ready for work and a day of drudgery. But HOLD UP, says Duncan (he didn't say that exactly, he can't pull it off). "ARE you going to work?" he asked nonchalantly and a little bit sneakily (which he can't pull off either). See, I'm pretty with it, and I think "this dude is up to something". And he was. I was free from my dull work duties. Now, a weekday full of pajamas and People's Court probably would've been enough for me due to my very high standards in life and everything, but instead we wound up in Coal Harbour, about to board a little float plane, Victoria bound.

I felt like a snaggly toothed, overly plump d-list celebrity, with my dark glasses and cute hand luggage.

I love float planes now. Even though it was one billion degrees inside before we took off, and I kept thinking about how fires and planes didn't go together very well, and how those tiny scratches on the inside of the windows were probably from people trying to escape this burning inferno.

Everyone else seemed so nonchalant about being on what's basically a flying boat, but I was going a little off the deep end in my head. I know it's not as fancy as even a regular plane but it's got a really classy air about it. I'm pretty sure that people who regularly fly in float planes have more exciting lives than people on the boring ground. Like Indiana Jones. So I played it cool, real smooth-like, like I was one of them, a float plane person. I also resisted telling everyone I saw that it was my birthday, especially after the lady checking us in told me I was getting wrinkled. She was referring to my bent driver's license, but still, POOR CHOICE OF WORDS LADY! Doesn't she know that I'm a swanky float plane person now?

And we're here. In pretty little Victoria town, at the very swank Empress/Fairmont. It's steeped in Canadian history, just like our tea, which this fancy pants place is known for.

So we splurged on this ridiculous $55/person tea and topped it off with champagne. It was too perfect to somehow be a part of my world.

I really don't know why he takes me to such fancy places. I spilled half a bottle of champagne in our bed. Doesn't he know me? You know the five second rule people have about eating stuff off the floor? I don't have that. See, who am I kidding! I'm no float plane person. I'm a ground dweller, a bottom feeder, a floor eater. It's just a matter of time before I'm able to remove all my teeth. But when I'm down HERE, on the ground, with the rest of you chumps, I dream of the sky and the stars, and that cartoon where that bear would surf on clouds. I COULD BE THAT BEAR. Goddammit, this is AMERICA, or close enough, and in America we don't give up on our dreams! This is the land of the free, the brave, and Pocahontas!

So for one glorious day, I was like these balloons here, floating gracefully towards the heavens, ever upwards and onwards, full of dreams, hopes and gas. 

But that's me now, the yellow one there, on its way down to the ground to rest in a heap on the floor, just like the rest of these balloons lying in a heap on my floor.

It was a perfect, perfect day though, and I'll probably continue gushing about it until I'm dead. Maybe even after that. It was that good. I can make that happen. 

To reward anyone who actually read this entire mess, I thought I would try something fun. I like fun! So, if you email me your address and up to 10 random words, I will try to write you a nice little card or something else pretty with those 10 words included. Then you get a nice little handwritten card in the mail. I'll even try to have it make sense. (I said TRY). Is that fun? I guess not really, but maybe it's fun to me, and that's what really matters.

Efreeme Gems

I am going to try to make this a regular little post to plug efreeme a bit. For those who don't know (shame on you), efreeme is a little old website I came up with to sell vintage and handmade items. And like JLo's love, it don't cost a thing! If you REALLY want to support all these talented artists and crafters and vintage vixens, then you really should be shopping on efreeme since more money will actually go to THEM and not some smug fat cats!

So here's my little roundup of some great efreeme stores:

Holly E Photography

These lovely photos are from Holly E Photography.(ignore those silly watermarks!) I bought some nature prints (the museum series) from her and I love them. I just need to find frames and then maybe a new, nicer, bigger apartment by the beach to hang them in. Why are turtles so cool? I think it's because they look sleepy.

Bambu Earth

These soapy delights come from Bambu Earth. Their store is awesome and their item descriptions are inventive and entertaining! Geniuses, these Bambu folk. The first is a Man Soap with Activated Charcoal, which makes me think he'd shower and shave with this soap, go outside his log cabin and then chop down some trees like a big ol' lumberjack. This black soap just looks cool and rugged. The next soap is a Spicy Coriander Shea Butter Hemp Soap with Orange Clove. There is so much going on in that soap! I want to join THIS party!

Temporal Flux

 And these pretty little pieces are from Temporal Flux. Judging from the store name, they're way smarter than I am, because although I've heard of  those words and probably even used them in my very own sentences before, I don't think I actually know what they really mean. These little charm pieces are very adorable though. Most things miniature are very very good - like ponies, pineapples and piglets.


Have a look at all the wonderful efreeme stores and let me know your favourites! Bonus points if you're a seller not already on efreeme and you open a store! More bonus points if you then tell other people about how wonderful and magical efreeme is and THEY open a store or buy from one of the efreeme stores. At the end of this week I will add up all the points and the winner will get a very sweet and sincere thank you from me, and maybe a handful of jellybeans if they live in Vancouver and don't mind meeting me at the beach. Also, I really have no way of adding or tracking these points, and they also don't really exist. But the jellybeans are real. And I am too. I promise.