Magic created with a knife.

Browsing through Rob Ryan's work brings incredible joy. His paper cut illustrations are witty, dreamy, filled with love and one can only admire his technique. He's a London based artist whose paper cut illustrations often include a text message and the cut out is done in one paper sheet with all the elements connected, creating that beautiful feeling of flow.

Rob also does commercial work : he's done window decorations for some quite big names, he's done some books, worked for some magazines, he even designed one of limited edition Lomo Cameras. Out of these commissioned works, I need to point out the one that I admire the most.
It is the paper cut dress he's done for UK Vogue.

Stunning, isn't it?

To see the process of making Ryan's beautiful designs and to hear what Mister Ryan has to say about his work, check the video below.

Mourir Auprès de Toi

Olympia Le Tan is a Parish designer that is becoming more and more popular in the fashion world. She connects literature with fashion in an unexpected way - by making felted "book bags". Her crafting skills are really worth admiring.

But what happens when Olympia Le Tan meets Spike Jonze? Quirky and adorable film called Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side) is born.

Mourir Auprès de Toi is a love story between the female character from Dracula and the skeleton from Macbeth—dead Macbeth. It's a stop-motion animation directed by Spike Jonze and Simon Cahn and all the characters were handmade by Olympia Le Tan out of felt. Olympia met Jonze few years ago. He loved her work and asked if he can buy her clutches somewhere and she agreed to a "trade" - her work for his work. So now we have this witty story which brings to life and humanizes things that are not human in unique Jonze's style. You can check the "making of" video below and for full Mourir Auprès de Toi  movie , just click here.

Washi love.

Believe it or not, this sculpture is made out of traditional Japenese paper - washi. 

Japanese artist Kyoko Okubo crafts her art pieces entirely out of washi with an incredible attention to details. Her figures are usually no more than 12 inches high and they all tell some story that wakes your imagination. She sculpts only female figures and animals which usually interact in some way. The author says it's because the figures are symbolic self-portraits that express her deep feeling for nature.

I personally adore washi paper. It has such a lovely structure and creates a feeling of warmth and softness in viewer's eye. Plus washi is famously receptive to light which makes it a perfect material for making lamps. Just take a look at this cloud shaped lamp made out of washi designed by DCS Corp. It gives a genuine feeling of floating, I would love one in my room.

Now moving on to another impressive use of washi.

Eriko Horiki is one of Japan's most successful contemporary artists who started experimenting with washi for fun and soon fell in love with it. She now uses this incredible medium for expressing herself  through installation art. Below are some of her works. Each gigantic piece is handmade, some took more than a year to be produced. Horiki partially throws water drops on the surface which creates the interesting texture and shade and enhances washi's appearance. She likes to experiment with lighting as the expression of washi paper dramatically changes as the degree of lighting gradually changes. 

she brings the rain.

I've come to realize that when I started writing this blog and deciding what it will be about , I kinda thought that its big part will be one of my main obsessions-food. But somehow the flow took me in various other directions and as I'm now recalling , I believe I have very few posts about food. Since this day has been mostly about food and music, I've decided to make this post very personal and mix some foods with some beats.

Below you will find links to some of my favorite food places on the web.

via Simply Breakfast

via Good Food

via My kitchen =)

via Bananagranola

And here are some of the tunes which have been in my playlist today.

I hope you got inspired a little.