Remember when I got all excited about American Apparel’s Circle Scarf because you can wear it a million different ways? Well, I’ve always wanted our dear circle scarf, but I never wanted to spend the dough, and since our economy is down the tubes, maybe you don’t either!

As you have probably already deduced, you could make a circle scarf out of any long strip of fabric if you just sew one end to another. Still, I’ve come up with something even more impressive.

A pillowcase!

Cut off one end (or take out the seams), and voila, you are done.

You can spend the rest of your unemployed day creating new costumes (as you can see I’ve already become a head trauma patient and a terrorist). I actually really like the simple scarf configurations. The bestest part of this is the potential for insanely designed scarves (if you have, let’s say, a Mickey Mouse pillow case!).

Yes, that’s seriously the end of the how-to. And, no, I wasn’t feeling very modely (if you want to know the truth — MANGO SKINS CONTAIN POISON THAT HAS REDUCED MY FACE TO AN ITCHING MASS, go to wikipedia if you don’t believe me about that crazy fruit!) so these aren’t my most stunning pictures. Errrr.

Thrilling Tips: (1) If you do have a sewing machine, you can hem the end you cut (I don’t, and my scarf prevailed nonetheless). (2) Use a belt to keep a halter shirt or a skirt from falling down. It’ll work best if you put on the belt and then flap some fabric over the belt after it’s tightened. (3) Add decorative pins. (4) Speaking of pins, the side-halter and the one that goes tight around the neck were created using a strategically placed pin. (5) I used a chopstick to keep together that knot on the bathing suit style top. (6) My pillow was made of stretchy jersey fabric. This made it more flexible for cool configurations.

Finished? Here are my other Unemployment Projects.

Hello, friends.  During the month we’ve been apart, I (unfortunately) have not been feeling well.  I wish I could report back with grand adventures to account for my absence, BUT I CAN’T!  Tragic.  Here’s a list of things that have been helping me maintain my sanity.

1.  I recently spent a delightful Sunday at Art Chicago/NEXT with my dear college/barista compatriot, Susanna Crum.  Overwhelmed by the amazing amount of work showcased by galleries from around the world,  I learned about many new artists that I had never heard of, including Edmund Law.

Based out of Toronto, Edmund’s never never land (shown above) is the most memorable piece I saw that day.  The sculpture features four pairs of joined fly wings that are arrested in a ceaseless flutter (thank you, wind tunnels).  And yes, they are real fly wings.  Edmund has a penchant for organic material such as his own sweat, and skin.

2. I adore clothing that is structurally eccentric, like Anthropologie’s Knotty Pine sweater (one of the best sweaters I have ever owned).  It’s no surprise that I love the chenin grape scarf from Ruche.

3.  In college, my friend Ali would occasionally play Miss Lily Allen at our gatherings, but apparently I wasn’t paying enough attention to the music.  During the past month, I have have been listening to her incessantly.  I even saw her live (Alone!  I stood in the back, sandwiched between prepubescents armed with PowerShots, and sorority girls!  Lily’s pretty and sings well in person!)  I’m convinced that no one else can mobilize an entire audience to wave double middle fingers, while melodically singing “Fuck You”s.  Her slow songs are okay, but her BOYS-ARE-FAILURES songs are superior.  Of course.  Oh, and I really like refried beans.  Which, I think, she’s eating in the picture above.

4. Due to recent health problems, I’m not really supposed to have normal coffee anymore!   TRAGIQUE!  “But, Tricia! Weren’t you a barista?!”  Yes (sad face).  Although it’s been a year since I last prepared a dry soy cappuccino, I could never ignore my visceral barista.  Thankfully, Intelligentsia offers a delicious decaf blend: Librarian’s blend!  This is the official Intelligentsia description:

A flavorful blend of Indonesian, African, and Central American beans, the Librarian’s Blend is named for that person who always told you to keep quiet when you were studying. This blend is representative of the soul of the librarian: steady, reassuring, and always there with that slight edge of eccentricity. It has a bold base with a bit of sparkle. Here’s to good reading.

How cute.  Testament to my love: I bought an airtight canister SOLELY for my bag of Librarian’s Blend.

5. Another singer I hadn’t listened to extensively until recently: Devendra Banhart.  OH, Devendra.  Devendra is an enchanting singer.  I normally possess a short attention span, and even though his albums are epically long, I find them both engaging and consoling.  He released his last album in 2007, however, he recently covered a cover of Kath Bloom’s “Forget About Him.”  It’s a lot of fun; you can listen to it here.

6.  I’m pretty late to declare my support for Mona and Holly’s Spring 2009 line, but it’s glorious.  The collection is based on “smart and tidy service uniforms of decades past.”  The entire line is impeccably bright and well-tailored, and reminds me of the pleasant aspects of Spring.  Tulips.  Just tulips.  No allergies.

7.  I received my new issue of O magazine, and I haven’t flipped through it all, but I did spot these neon Sperry Top-Siders.  I have normal Sebago Dock Siders, but you know, Oprah wants me to get neon boat shoes.  And of course I have to do whatever Oprah says.  Of course.

Remember when I claimed Ray Fenwick was my boyfriend? Well, he still isn’t, but he does happen to have a library show tonight in Toronto (1086 Queen Street West, 6pm). If you can’t get there by plane, train, or automobile (or bike, we’re trying to save the environment!) then you can check out the whole library collection here. Then you can check out his awesome coordinating letterpress print (at least it looks letterpressy to me).

Finally, I was just re-surfing his GLORIOUS web-page, and found this painting set about finger & toenails,

which reminds me of Maira Kalman’s beautiful, rambling Op-Art in the NYTimes. Maybe these two should get together. (Sigh. Always a bridesmaid!)

I’ve written before about my inspiration binders and inspiration boards, and the resulting outfits such projects inspired. But now that you’re unemployed (see all unemployment projects here!) you have time to go crazy with your inspiration binders and achieve something else equally important — getting rid of all of those magazines I know you’ve been saving.

I had stacks of Print, Oprah, Real Simple, Nylon, Teen Vogue, Good, and ReadyMade (between Oprah & Teen Vogue, try to guess my age!) piling up in my shelves and taking over my life. I am a packrat, so I couldn’t just throw them away.

I made multiple binders with the following categories: Fashion (with tabs for: hair, makeup, professional clothes, socks, and awesome outfits); Recipes (real food, desserts); Crafty Inspiration (Cool Page Layouts, DIY, and Home).

Here are some excerpts from my fashion binder:

Here are some Tips & Tricks for your binder making:

• In my fashion binder, I chose to cutout my fashion inspirations and mix them together on blank white paper under clear sleeves, but because most of the recipes I found took up entire pages, I just hole punched them and put them directly in the binder (with a blank sleeve at the front so I can take one to the kitchen and not ruin it).
• For my fashion binder, I only put in items I could feasibly make with my own wardrobe, this way the binder would be really useful when getting dressed (its purpose!).
• But I was too sad to leave some awesome fashions in the recycling bin, so I labeled one clear sleeve “Love Em” for outfits I loved but couldn’t see making with what I already owned.
• I also made an “Archives” sleeve to stuff in things that started to get old. This way, I can cycle through inspirations as my fancy strikes.
• I actually use my binders for reference! And you should too! Sometimes, I take out something cool and put it on my inspiration board (ie bulletin board hanging in my room reserved for inspiring things).
• If I like something on both sides of a page, I don’t use a white background in my sleeve. If something takes up too much space, but I think I might like to see the whole thing or if there is more info I might want to reference, I fold it instead of cutting it out. Sometimes I’ll tape extra info about a product onto the back of the picture if I think I’ll want to reference it later.
• Yes, you can probably do this project while watching reruns of everything you already watched reruns of on Hulu.

Finally, a crafty reader named Ann sent me the funniest email and an awesome project. While you’re going through your magazines, cut out little squares of solid colors and use them to make or decorate something you need, like a CD rack. I’ll give you her instructions:

“After many rounds of somewhat lame cross-stitch projects, I needed something different to do, so I decided to attack my mysterious Vogue subscription (mysterious because I have no idea why they’re being sent to me because, obviously, I can’t afford anything advertised there) collection. I needed a storage solution for my cds and whatnots, but since I couldn’t find a cool box that i liked from target, I decided to grab my scissors, magazines, and glue and get to gettin.”

“First, I cut down my Quaker Oats jumbo box to about 5″ high. Then I started ripping out pages from my magazine, focusing on those pages that were mainly of one color, or of fun pattern (stripes, plaids, and flowers). Then I started cutting out 2.5″ squares from those sheets of paper. THEN I folded in the four corners, glued, flipped over, folded in the four corners again and glued, to make mini squares. THEN I sorted them into ROYGBIV order, then glued them onto the box. I cheated a bit on the long sides, but I like the finished product well enough.”

With both of these projects in hand, you should be busy for at least two days!

1. DIY Recycled Plate Cake Stand; 2. Tea’s Me Tea Set, from Rosana (which has more yummy yummy cups & things); 3. The Sweet Tooth Tunic from Mod Cloth (on sale!); 4. Kesera Tablecloth from Anthropolgie; 5. Girly Girl Gloves in Peach (not even $15! though you can only wear these types of gloves to: weddings, proms, tea parties) from Mod Cloth; 6. Alice & Friends All Dressed in Red & Ready to Mail, 10 folded notecards w/handmade envelopes from Time2Cr8 on Etsy; 7. Gourmet Tea from Tea Forte

Ah, I could not resist my cutsie title, I apologize! I love tea parties. You can have scones, cupcakes, little sandwiches without crusts, and at the same time wear ridiculously frilly dresses. As Napoleon said, “From the sublime to the ridiculous is only a step” and thanks to Alice in Wonderland, I think you can take that step while drinking tea.

To highlight two of my faves from the group above:

Why I like: Vintage Alice & Wonderland! Each card is different! Space for your thoughts, such as: “COME TO MY TEA PARTY OR I’LL CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD!”

WHY I LIKE: Vintage-y; contains cupcakes; has sleeves for those of us worried about the visual attractiveness of our upper arms; on sale; unquie; sweeeet!

First off, Happy Mother’s Day!

Okay, I just had to do this quick post. I was surfing over at the TOMS Shoes web-site (remember the vegan wrap boots? and that when you buy a TOMS shoe they give one to a kid who needs shoes?), and they had this crazy special where the creator of TOMS shoes has his mom INDIVIDUALLY doodling over plain shoes for Mother’s Day (yes, at first I thought they were designed by children — but either way I think they’re awesome)! They were $68, and you couldn’t specify the design, but they are all SOLD OUT now (maybe she is tired of doodling!).

ANYWAYYYY, that got me inspired. All you need to do is get some White Canvas TOMS (also in men’s sizes), and you can doodle-em yourself! DIY TOMS! It’s over $20 cheaper and you can coordinate them with your own style. Then when you are out-and-about you can be like, yeah, I designed these myself.

Have you heard of someecards?  Completely foreign to me until my high school roommate sent me a cheerer upper, someecards has silly e-cards that are fun to send.  The comics remind me of Married to the Sea.

My other favorite Mother’s Day-themed e-card?

Heeehee.

First of all, YES I made a Catcher in the Rye wallpaper / desktop background! YES I am still painting books. What are you going to do?! I read, write, and paint books. I can’t help it!!! (If you don’t like books, you can check out some various other Unemployment Projects here.)

Second of all, you can click on the above picture and you’ll get a much larger version, that YES would be *especially* perfect as a desktop background if you happen to have a 15″ Mac Book Pro, though I am sure it can be usable in other formats, especially if you just use the all-over design below.

Or, if you are unemployed, you can just go off and make your very own wallpaper, like me. The best part is you can tailor your paper to your exact needs and likes! For example, I started with the overall print (below) and then realized I HATE OVERALL PRINTS because all of my icons, which I keep on the right half of the screen, get visually lost. So, I made a new version (above) which has a clear side for my personal convenience.

Here is a larger version of the above wallpaper in case you need larger (just clicky):

Anyway, here’s a How To if you want to make your own book wallpaper like mine. As usual, I will stress that you can have very little drawing / painting ability to get something cool. For example, I have this brush which mightaswell be a collection of twenty bristly dog hairs. It’s horrible. And stumpy. No one should ever paint with it. Yet I do. Because I do not have another little brush. I actually cut it all up with scissors to make it smaller. It’s awful. Moral: Professionals need not apply.

You will need:

• Photoshop or other some-such program
• Scanner or possibly a camera
• Paint or artsy supplies
• Book you are obsessed with (must have simple background if you want it to be easy, dirty and creased is acceptable!)
  –
  

1. Paint a picture of your book. Ugly and miss-sized is okay. It will most likely look cute later. Let dry, then scan.
2. Scan the real book.
3. Use Photoshop to combine covers. For example, this is how I combined my covers. I used the Magic Wand Tool to cutout the background from the painted book, and then I used the Clone Stamp Tool to get rid of the words and designs of the real book. Then I put the painted book on top of the real book. (I did this in pieces, so I could re-size each piece.)
4. Fashion your layout. Make a page the same pixel size as your desktop. Group your combined book together (but save copies of it ungrouped!) and lay it out as you will, using different elements to spice it up as you like. For example, I used my rainbow in the upper corner of my first wallpaper and I also used the Eyedrop Tool to take the slightly-yellowed book-background for my wallpaper background. As I was doing this, I thought about all the awesome book screens in the Royal Tenenbaums movie:
   –
   

So, first I thought, I should do a round-up of the cool things I’ve found online lately. Then I realized there is a name for that, which is Google Reader. So, here, my (Maria’s) shared items on Google Reader.

I’ve just found out a lot about Google Reader. One, you can subscribe to someone’s Shared Items via RSS. (You are already subscribed to the feeds of other gmail users you chat with.) Two, you can use a bookmarklet to bookmark posts to blogs you aren’t even subscribed to. Dangerous I say! I spy a NYTimes monopoly.

Alright, so this post will contain several sections, possibly including but not limited to: introduction, children’s books, candy store.

Introduction

You heard it here first (unless you read my personal blog. or are my facebook friend. or follow me personally on Twitter.): I am moving. Yes, I am abandoning NYC, my home, my lovely lovely home, and making my way southward, all the way down to Virginia, where I am going to become a Writer of Stories and Novels.

But before I become said Famous Writer of Stories and Novels (yeah, I just added famous), I am trying to get my few-month, pre-departure fill of NYC. This, by the way, is impossible, but in my travels I have seen many things (Brooklyn Bridge! Purple Rice! Shelves of candy! Pastel-colored malls! Grassy knolls in the middle of city streets!). So here I begin “Places & Spaces,” one of the many columns Stickers & Donuts can never hope to keep up with on any kind of regular basis.

Childhood Memories of (Not Real) Candy Stores
(which then leads to childhood memories of other foods)

So, my Place & Space is a fantastic candy store which I’ll get to, but walking into it reminded me of the days of old when they seemed to have candy stores — no not pharmacies where you could purchase candy, but actual stores devoted exclusively to the selling of candy to children for a nickle — on every corner.

And if you are thinking, “Maria, you weren’t alive for that era” then you may or may not be right, but I was alive for the era where everyone from that era started making movies and writing books where said candy stores existed. I have always dreamed of going into a candy store with candies piled high to the sky. YOU MUST WATCH THE FOLLOWING PIPI LONGSTOCKING CLIP to get a full understanding of what I mean by the quintessential 1950s Candy Store:

Now, if you also read the same books and watched the same movies as I did in your childhood, you may not remember the candy stores and the food (but, come on, you would remember that scene, right? those bright flowery bags? all that candy?! the kid stuffing the frosted thing in his mouth?!!!). That is because, apparently, ALL OF MY MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD ARE ASSOCIATED WITH FOOD.

Examples:

The first and most obvious book I remember from my childhood is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I have a particular memory of the pancake over the school because it combined the joy of both food and a school closing. Unfortunately, I could only locate a picture of the glistening jello in the forest:

I had a lot of Berenstain Bear books. The only one I can remember is the one where they ate Too Much Junk Food. Suffice to say the point really passed over my head and my main memory concerns the double page spread of a table filled with the most delicious junk food you can imagine.

Then, of course, there is The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. Yes, Turkish Delight sounds delightful, but as I prepared for this post, I desperately searched for an illustration of what I had apparently deemed a memorable tea party at the beginning of the book. These were the only specific details I remember from the entire book which I read ten years ago. And here is the passage my brain chose to remember:

Great. Then of course there is Alice in Wonderland teas and I know I would be remiss without mentioning Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and even as an adultish creature my greatest memory of the movie Chocolat is this rich, creamy cup of steaming hot chocolate that looked like it was just a cup of melted chocolate bars. Oh, and Matlida. I know you are supposed to be grossed out by that giant chocolate cake. Me, not so much.

In Conclusion: Economy Candy is a Fantastic Store in Manhattan

The above tangential section leads me to my ideal place of joy, and yes, all of the above was required to explain just how wonderous it is. It’s not fancy, but it is stackedddd to the ceiling with candy and fruits and nuts and chocolates and CHOCOLATE COVERED S’MORES.

It’s called Economy Candy and it’s on 108 Rivington Street on the Lower East Side. Usually opened 9-6 (Saturdays 10-5). Check out some of these fab images I snitched off Yelp:

And that is the short story long, my friends. Now go to bed or back to work, either way, be sure those sugarplums dance in your head.