love forever

And the winner is...

Erin of Buddy Rooster!
Congrats Erin! You win a (sort of) french mix cd! By the way, check out Erin's blog for pictures of her living room renovation! It's to die for!

A new CD, a new giveaway and a new place to make things

Ahhh...it's a good thing I have a few days off because all I want to do is craft in my new digs! It has been a dream! I can't believe how easy it is to get work done: I had my mix cds for my new cd mix swap done in a few hours. Here are all seven of them piled up on my work table:

The theme this months was "foreign" so I was inspired to make a french cd. Some of the songs are french, other's just have french names or the bands have french names. My cd cover is inspired by the french flag, with slightly shabby, vintage fabrics representing the colors of the flag.
Now normally I give away an extra cd to the first person who comments but lately that just doesn't seem fair so I am going to open it up to everyone who comments here by Saturday at 12 pm EST. Then I will put your names in a hat and pick someone! OK, I think that is much more fair, non?

Color Week - Green

Oh my god, I can't believe how many people are joining in on Color Week!
So, green...I only recently started loving green. I think when you are a kid, green only comes in one ugly marker color and you think that's all green can do. As an adult, I find green to be very soothing and calm. My last few kitchens have been green (one the color of jadeite and the other a pear) and since it is always the busiest room of the house, it helps keep the space less frenetic.
I also love the richness of emerald and the crisp preppiness of kelly green. What's your favorite shade of green?

On with the pictures...

Prepping green beans for dinner.

We found these weird fruits in Madeira- they are a pineapple-banana hybrid.

More of my containers sitting on a shelf over the stove.

Modern interpretations of florals. I would kill for this tea set.

This picture could just as easily be a "red" picture, but I tore it out of a magazine because of the amazing shade of green. It's so rich and saturated!

A gold doorknocker on an emerald green door in the capital of Madeira.

During some late-night sewing last night, this still life started to appear. I helped it along.

Mix CD #3 and a new giveaway!

Another batch of CDs for the mix tape swap! This month's theme was "clichés" so I chose the cliché of being a rock star; you know fame, fortune, sex, drugs, rock and roll, that whole deal. The covers are magazine collages sewn together on my sewing machine. As always there is one extra one for the first person who comments here! Get it while it's hot.

Please forgive the weird 70's lighting of this picture. I have absolutely no natural light in most of my apartment. It only gives me a small window to take "good" pictures and that window just wasn't open yesterday.

Mix Swap 2...and another giveaway!

I made these little cd covers for my mix cd swap group (yes I'm aware that I do an awful lot of swappage) and got a chance to play with the letter function of my sewing machine. I like how the sewing turned out, the letters are a little imperfect and the difficulty I have sewing a straight line actually worked out to my advantage for once. Oh yeah, and the theme was "the". All the selections had to have the word "the' in the title of the song or the name of the band.

Since I will be making a bunch of cds every month I figure, what's the big deal in making one more? So I will be giving away one of these cds to the first person who comments here!

The Anti-Cranky Mix, Part 2

A bunch of you asked for the track listings of the Anti-Cranky mix, so here it is:

Stupidity-The Detroit Cobras
Car Song-Elastica
Knock 'em Out-Lily Allen
Dead Disco-Metric
She's My Man-Scissor Sisters
Mine All of the Time-The Caesar's
Standing in the Way of Control -the Gossip (Le Tigre mix)
Satellite-TV on the Radio
Ch-ching-Lady Sovereign
You're Fit but Don't You Know It-The Streets
Pull Up the People-MIA
Moody-ESG
Pon de Replay-Rihanna
Euro Trash Girl-Chicks on Speed
The Fake-My Robot Friend
Motorcrash-Sugarcubes
Habitat-Mos Def
I Feel for You-Prince
Mushaboom-Feist (Postal Service Mix)

Soooo, I actually have one extra one with a lovely little cover for the first person who wants it. Comment and it's yours.

The Anti-Cranky Mix

One of my friends organized a themed CD swap recently and, despite my many other engagements, I just couldn't say no. I love making mixes for people especially when there is a theme involved. The theme for this one was cranky. I decided that most of us New Yorkers are cranky enough so I made the anti-cranky mix.
For this anti-cranky mix I needed a decidedly uncranky cover. I like sewing on paper and I usually have a big box full of scraps of wallpaper, paint chips, japanese food packaging and maps at the ready. This is what I came up with:

I think they turned out pretty well. I wanted to add some sort of typographical element but, in typical Loveforever fashion, I was finishing up these babies as I was getting dressed to meet the other ladies for the swap.