my love for you is a stampede of horses.

michelle blade.

michelle blade's paintings are gorgeous. each painting tells a story in a rich colorful palette. her subjects are often looking into bright lights, explosions, and fireworks as if patiently waiting for a sign. what i like most about michelle's work is how she so effortlessly captures a sense of hope. which, if you don't live under a rock, you may agree that it's something we need a lot of nowadays. her work leaves me with a patient peace, that i may chase fervently.

check out michelle's series eternal summer where everyday she creates something throughout the day and posts it. you can see her eternal series here.

yokoo.

although i crawl etsy a lot, i am not on there everyday...i have a peculiar way in which i gather info for this blog, but that's neither here nor there. i mean i love etsy! i often post about sellers i love that i have found through click after click, but i want to bring you fresh, right out of the oven blog posts. shoot, i know you girls are all over etsy. i think i have a good understanding of who you, my readers are, so i work hard to not glean info from a popular site like etsy and then just repackage it. but i would be remiss if i didn't blog about yokoo, the featured seller from last wednesday.

i'm a visceral person. i react. i feel. i relate. this is what draws me to style, ground floor trends and people i find intriguing. it's the gut reactions i get when i first see something. so when i first saw yokoo's subtley but impeccibley styled photographs of her knitted scarves and oh yes, dookie ropes (don't even get me started on how fresh her dookie ropes are. what. what.) oh and the cowls! the cowls! i already have a cowl picked out that i will be buying at the end of the week. it's no surprise that her work is flying out the proverbial doors of etsy. it only makes sense. it wasn't just her photographs and wares that got me, yokoo's answers were immediately magnetic. take for instance her answer to the very first question:

tell us a bit about yourself name, location, affiliations, personal stuff.

"i don’t mean to scare anyone here, but, to be honest, i spent a larger part of my childhood preparing for this question. i used to dream of being on Nighttime Talk Shows and having a host lean in and say, “tell everybody about yourself.” my father said that it was the type of question that meant you had finally become someone of note."

she ends the answer with: "i was yokoo, and i made scarves, some of which were chunky." simply brilliant. i'll save the rest of the full interview for you (if you haven't read it, which i if i know you, is doubtful) which you can find here.

yokoo's also a member of wardrobe_remix where you can check out her diane keaton-esque steez. the girl has mad style, she's crafty to boot and total talent all rolled into one. i'm positive we will be seeing so very much more from this young doyenne in the near future, if not sooner. keep up to date with her on her flickr page.

reader love: the tiny little girl.

i started this blog a little bit over a year ago to post about things i really loved and was inspired by. in that time my love for you has since taken on a life of it's own. becoming specifically an art blog, my love for you now focuses on low brow art, illustration, craft, D.I.Y. culture just to name a few of the main genres with lots of others.

as the blog changes and grows i often think of ways to make it more dynamic and to get the readers more involved. in the past year i have gotten so many sweet, encouraging and kind emails from people all over the world. it's truly heartwarming. as the blog has begun to be linked in many different places (thank you! thank you!) among the emails i have started to receive are 'submissions' from readers. which is such an honor...really, it's been such a great experience.

as a way to give back to the readers who make this blog much of what it has become, i want to start sharing these submissions as a regular feature on the blog. so to kick off the first installment of reader love i'm featuring beth wachla of the tiny little girl. beth makes skull brooches from wool felt. her skulls are brightly colored w/ lots of detail and bead work. i asked beth a few questions so we could get to know her right quick. her brooches remind me of day of the dead. they'll be a perfect way to add color to your life as we get closer to winter.

i'm delighted to have beth as the beginning of what i hope to be a great addition to my love for you. give her some love!

tell us a little bit about your work:
i design and hand-sew one of a kind skully brooches from wool felt, glass beads and teeny, tiny buttons and sell them under the label the tiny little girl. i'm only relatively new to the selling side of things, my business is just very small at the moment!

when did you start making your skull brooches?
i only started making them around 5 or 6 months ago, i made a little one as a jokey thing, then listed it on etsy and it sold! things just flowed on from there.

what inspires you?
i'm inspired by colour. i love to create using as much colour as possible! my flat looks like a rainbow exploded in it so i like to show that side of me in my work.

where do you live?
i live in perth western australia in a tiny bedsit flat with the only houseplant i could ever keep alive, mr. herbert greenleaf. he's a trooper.

where can your work be found online?
i have an etsy store - www.thetinylittlegirl.etsy.com and i have a new bunch of skully fellows available on www.shopmoose.com.au (a fantastic aussie online store!).

***if you have work you'd like to send to the blog for consideration to be featured in reader love, please just click on the envelope up to the left under the pic of our next president.***

lane collins.

having a dog myself and him being of the bully persuasion, i was fell in love w/ lane collins' photograph of a crowned bully mutt. and alas, his name is franklin. the name paired with that stoic white snout is ridiculously cute.

lane's photographs are lush and full of expectation. her portfolio is rife with magical blue skies, far off lands and places that could be your back yard. they speak to the viewer while simultaneously remaining pregnant with a deep silence just waiting to expolde. lane is currently working on a new group of images in her alchemy series and is involved in a group show of the same name that opens tuesday the 23rd of september.

yellena james and anthropologie.

yellena james just sent me a link to anthropologie's website where her beautiful, signature work is used as a backdrop in a 'wonderland' story. make sure you scroll down to the bottom where it reads menu and scroll along to see all of yellena's work. also, check out yellena's latest print maybe. it reminds me a bit of audrey hepurn.