Weekend wanderings

The Renegade Craft Fair schedule is still going strong this summer. This weekend's location: San Francisco! There's also the stop in Chicago on Sept. 12 and 13.

Would love to hear about your finds if you attend. Happy hunting!

Sprouting ideas

Love to go green? Meet Jenny Poon, an Arizona-based entrepreneur who runs Eeko Studio. It's little design boutique with big ambitions.

Eeko does Web design, apparel, editorial and advertising work with a twist: The company focuses on sustainable methods and materials, and donates a portion of profits toward local environmental charities.

Paper waste triggered the creation of Eeko. "I have never been a 'die-hard' hippie tree-hugger, but I am big on being non-wasteful," Poon said.

The budding company's blossoming goal is to rethink traditional design.

"Traditional design follows this timeline: think, design, create, print and trash," she said. "Design has a lifespan just like human beings. There is birth and there is death — and hopefully there is love in there too. You get a project and you design based on clients' needs and when it is completed you are done. The audience gets the printed piece and then it gets trashed."

Eeko also aims to rebuild design into a cyclical, sustainable process. "From the get-go we think about ways to lessen the waste, use recyclable material, from there we go into the aspects of HOW it will be used and think of alternative uses to prolong the life of the piece," Poon said.

There's lots of great green products out there. Here are a few of Eeko's favorites: D.I.Y. wine cork boards and recycled shipping container houses. Tree-hugging, indeed.

Link love

The design blog Seeds and Fruit has an interesting interview with furniture maven Maria Yee. Her work can be seen at Crate & Barrel and Room & Board, among other retailers. Check out the interview here.

Also out there on the Interwebs, The New York Times style section is featuring (their definition of) "up-and-coming" clothing designers, including Prabal Gurung, 30, who was born in Singapore and grew up in Nepal. It's a good read.

Kapow color explosion

Give me an afternoon to scavenge garage sales, flea markets or thrift stores, and I'm one content kiddo. Thus, I was thrilled to see that the wonderful blog "yes, please." can be counted among those of us who love digging through 99 cent stores for treasure.

The author, Kelly, pointed out an installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art called "Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists From Korea." I'm dying to check it out.

The LACMA exhibit reminds me a lot of the terrific series, Second Lives, that was at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. It's gone now, unfortunately, but CubeMe still has photos. Lucky!

This burst of butterflies that were laser cut out of records was my absolute favorite. Really though, the whole installation was energizing.

Meow!

Asics teams up with Sanrio’s Hello Kitty to create one heck of a pair of sneakers. This info comes via Highsnobette, which reports these shoes will be available starting Nov. 1.

(Sure, I'm grown, but I admit I was a wee bit enamored with the Hello Kitty store while at the Taipei airport earlier this year. So many memories of childhood!)

This is also a good excuse to post the *incredibly* artful stop-motion origami video about Asics. I was searching for a how-to on origami flowers a while back and this came up. Now, it's definitely one of my Vimeo favorites.

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

Slurp

Morning coffee just *might* taste better in this "forest monsters" mug. It was designed by Peskimo and is available for purchase on Poketo.

A night — or two — at the museum

The new location of The Museum of Chinese in America just opened last month at 215 Centre Street in New York City. Architect and designer Maya Lin is responsible for the Manhattan building. (She also designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Washington, D.C.)

It looks like there's lots to see, but I'm particularly interested in the exhibit on Hazel Ying Lee, an Oregonian and aviator who flew during the 1930s and 40s. She even flew fighter plans for the U.S. Army. (Plus, she wore kickin' boots.) How cool is that? Lee died young, at 33, but apparently you can learn about her life through photos, letters and memorabilia at the MOCA.




Upcoming events at the museum include The 32nd Asian American International Film Festival and a grand opening celebration on Sept. 22.

Admission is free on Thursdays, thanks to Target. Let me know if you check it out.

Raindrops are falling

Courtney Chu, of Chicago, creates imaginative clothing for kids using found fabrics that look as comfortable as they are colorful. She even incorporates silk screening into the CourtneyCourtney line. Each item is one of a kind. Totally giftable and adorable!

Squeeeeze

These awesome illustrations are by Anneka Tran, of the United Kingdom. Too entertaining to pass up. Via Penguin and Fish.

On whimsy

Life is too serious sometimes. Or at least mine is, unfortunately. That's why work like Kim Haller's is so necessary. We're talking whimsy to the max here, people.

Haller is a mom and a part-time high school art teacher in Milwaukee, Wis. (Also, she's a Korean adoptee, like me!) She has an amazing collection of illustrations and prints that she sells on Etsy.

Here's Haller — in her own words — on inspiration: "I spend a lot of time making notes of things that my husband, daughter and son say and do. We have post-its everywhere in our house. I also have a collection of them in my head. Most of my work is inspired by these floating phrases and pictures. I like to build them into the characters and patterns that I create, mixed with little bits and pieces of my own various collections, obsessions, quirks and childhood stories. I hope when people look at my work they can find a sort of familiarity, whether it be in a particular character illustration itself, a pattern, texture or color that I used or a relatable environment that I created."

An uplifting way to start the week, m'thinks.