z i n e . d r e a m

Hey all! Come say hello this Sunday at the 6th annual Zine Dream Zine Fair. I'll be sharing a table with the lovely Marta Ryczko, selling prints, stickers, pins, drawings, jewellery and of course, zines!

h i g h . h o p e s

f e e d . m e . m o r e

Since I've started cooking from scratch, I've surprised myself by falling in love with foods that I hadn't given much thought to previously. Red onions, squash and hot sauce are on my favourites list now, among others. 

*

Fried pickles with tatziki, almond breaded schnitzel with garlic mashed potatoes, garden salad with basil and olive oil, roast squash and potatoes. 

s k e t c h y

i f . i . h a d . a . h e a r t

While the rest of the world was going gaga for Game of Thrones (which I've incidentally started watching recently, and yeah...it's good), I was busy falling in love with Vikings. It has the same gritty, medieval feeling as GOT and in addition to being completely addicting, it had one of the most hauntingly amazing season finales I've ever seen.

A few weeks ago, I whipped up these portraits of Vikings two main characters, Ragnar Lothbrok and his wife Lagertha for Josh, the boyfriend's, birthday. (He's starting to amass a little shrine of my artwork on his wall!)
 

e l e c t r i c . g r e e n

Perhaps my favourite aspect of Toronto is its balance of urban and natural; paces away from bustling streets, there are quiet neighbourhoods of heirloom houses with sprawling lawns and lush gardens. I took a walk today down one such street, feeling peaceful and detached from city life (and reality).

g o o d . t a s t e

 

a r t i s t . a l l e y

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Button Factory's art market last Saturday! I had a great day: enjoying the warm weather, meeting new people and enjoying some excellent local artists and musicians. I'll be there again this Saturday as well, can't wait! (for more info click here).

(There's a chance that the show may be cancelled due to bad weather, so everyone please keep your fingers crossed for sunny skies!)

l a s t . n i g h t

Dreams — I love them.

In university, when I proposed a series of work illustrating dreams that I'd had, my professor shot me down; he reminded me that "no one is interested in reading about other people's dreams". I've heard that opinion more than once; someone likened the experience of listening to the dreams of others to flipping through snapshots that you aren't present in (initially mildly interesting and ultimately boring).

I can agree, to some degree; when someone exclaims:

"OH MY GOD, I had the strangest dream! I was shopping with Lance Bass and then he tried on this red shirt and then we were on a beach and then my grade school best friend was somehow there and wow...it was so weird..."

Stories like this are, in my opinion, boring not because the action centers around someone else but because the person relating the story is doing so in a poor fashion. When it comes to story telling, my motto is :

In my opinion, if a dream is told properly, it has as much potential (if not more) to be engaging. A narrative presented by the subconscious is free flowing and organic — there is no creative anxiety, no forced dialogue or counterproductive logic-induced pressure. I view the dream as a perfect self contained story, which when relayed properly, is vibrant, strange and unsettling; the dream is a skeleton to be fleshed out with jarring adjectives and sharp movement.

I'm adamant that dreams can be interesting; I'd like to share my own with you — I'll let you be the judge.

*
I'm a difficult night-time sleeper — my mind wanders and I find fear in every shadow. I've always needed ambient noise to unwind at bedtime and lately I've been sleeping with my television and fan on timers. When I slip away to dreamland, I'm surrounded by sounds and light; when I'm awakened hours later by nightmares, it's to silence and darkness. Within the dreamscape, I embody constant composure and uncharacteristic calm; conscious, I lie still, frozen with unease.

*

She's a monster masquerading as an elderly woman with immaculately curled, pale blonde hair. I see her smile sweetly with her pink lips pulled taught; her eyes are orbs the colour of slate. She's been living next door for years, and now that we're moving, she wants to come explore the house.

Our family is packing; I'm drawing glowing constellations on the rugs (paisley-patterned velvet) with yellow, iridescent paint. She enters the shadowy living room, paces slowly and poses before the bare window. She taps her long, pointed nails on the dark glass as her spectral reflection gleams back at me. She sneers; her teeth are razor blades, finely tapered, pearly daggers.

There's a struggle — she's vicious, despite her bony countenance and thin, veined wrists. There's a box of sharpened pencils on the mahogany table and she aims them at me, one by one: grey, yellow, orange.

Suddenly, she's suicidal, dragging me towards her body and grinning madly as she beckons for me to impale her with one of the sticks. I strike; blood wells up from a tiny hole in her skeletal shoulder. She sighs contentedly, and reclines onto the floor. In the dim moonlight, I stab her in the chest, struggling to push the pencil through a fountain of red and into the stiff muscle of her heart.

Eyes closed, she's wriggling her head side to side like a puppy, searching for a comfortable position in which to die.

s p i n

c o m m u t e

g o o d . a d v i c e

Good advice from the most handsome existentialist.

b u b b l e . g u m

Those were the lyrics of my three year old self's song; I had learned it from two older girls --sisters-- at my babysitter's house. 

(I fully understand the appeal of teachig a little kid to say something borderline inappropriate, so I can't really blame them. My cousin Shelbey, who was, for a time, the youngest of our group, used to be able to speak in this great creepy voice, halfway between a gremlin and an evil henchman; my cousins, siblings andI used  to coach her to say things like "I'm going to run you over with my tractor" or "I'll cut you up into little pieces and hide you in the walls". We found this endlessly amusing.)

For whatever reason, I loved this disgusting song. My grandmother would despair of me singing it, asking in a sweet voice "Samantha, isn't there something else that you would like to sing for Gramma?"; nope, I knew what I liked, and I liked Bubblegum

My grandparents once made an audio recording of me at that age, and it's there; my baby voice sings slowly, putting emphasis on noooooose and BUM and stretching out bub-ble-gum! (It's pretty adorable). I also sing Happy Birthday to my mum and my tiny voice rumbles progressively lower on "dear mommy".

I'm so grateful to have that evidence of my former self.

•

There was another song, possibly by Sharon, Lois and Braham* about "sticky, sticky, sticky, sticky bubblegum".

I learned that lesson first hand the night when I decided to save a piece of chewed up gum by sleeping with it in my hand. Palming a wad of gum seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but needless to say, come morning my leg was covered in a sticky, pink mess. My mum threw me immediately into the bath, and I'll never forget the pain of trying to pick it off my skin.

•

*This trio was a favourite of mine growing up. The first three things that come to mind are:

Being sick late at night and being allowed to lie up on the couch and watch tv; the one thing on for me was (maybe) a concert featuring Sharon, Lois and Braham in a train station.

The Elephant Show theme song.

The Halloween episode where the children went trick-or-treating in broad daylight and were given eggs and vegetables in lieu of candy; they had UNICEF boxes and seemed estatic about the whole situation (which as a child, made me sad).

f l a s h b a c k . f r i d a y .

My brother Dylan (up there on the right!), once told me that I dressed like a clown ( and possibly that I was an embarrassment). At the time, I had been wearing a bright orange coat, green, patterned canvas boots and knee high socks, so maybe he was right.

*

My mum's parenting theory was always "as long as it isn't morally wrong or physically threatening, let your children make their own decisions"; this applied to clothings as much as anything else. I often tease her about the outfits that I had access to as a child (there were a lot of leggings, how ironic), but really, I think I looked pretty cool. Thanks mum!

s u m m e r . c i t y

a r t i s t . a l l e y

I'm excited to announce that I'll be participating in Artist Alley, an outdoor market in Kitchener Waterloo presented by The Button Factory! The market will feature local artists and is open select Fridays until October, as well as the Saturday dates listed above; it's located adjacent to The Button Factory, across from the Waterloo Parkade between King & Regina Street. For more information, please visit The Button Factory's website.

I've been a busy bee the past few weeks gearing up: pouring resin, framing drawings and packaging products. I'll be featuring rings, pins, stickers, original drawings & paintings, prints and magnets. If you're in the area, stop by and say hello!

Hope to see you all there!

r o l e . p l a y

This past weekend, one of my dreams came true.

I have to confess: I've always secretly wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons. Growing up, my favourite books and movies were always ones about medieval magic and dragons (see: serendipity) and I loved to pretend that I was a princess going on quests. I also played out intricate storeis with my toys, all of whom had elaboratly constructed  histories and interpersonal relationships.

I don't remember the first time I heard about D&D; all I know is that it sounded mysterious, magical and elite...and that I wanted in. Thus, when Josh (the boyfriend) asked me if I'd be interested in starting a campaign (that's long, multi-session game playing for my fellow n00bs), I was pumped. 

I had a lot of fun playing, but there were a couple draw backs to my D&D initiation. 

Firstly, D&D is HARD yo. Creating my character (a half-elf paladin, what up) took approximately two hours; there were reference books and a ton of math involved. I basically felt like I was writing an exam the entire time. 

Once I had crafted my in-game identity, things were more fun buy still pretty tricky. As the DM (aka Dungeon Master!) reads out the story, you have to choose how to respond to certain situations and each move that your character makes is determined by the die you roll (there's more math and more referencing.) Sadly, there were several turns where my character sat around like a bump because I couldn't manage to roll high enough.

Our story took place in a post apocalyptic kingdom, recently ravaged by civil war; we battled ghouls, rescued some pesants from an evil Barron and and got attacked by jerky ghosts (who hypnotized me over and over and made me walk into a ring of fire). 

Overall, the experience was fun, albeit confusing and challenging. Hopefully next time that we play though, I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing; can't wait!

f e e d . m e

Okay so, I'm a bit of a serious procrastinator. For the most part, the goals that I set myself for the summer have been on the back burner (it seems like there's never enough time!), but I can happily say that I've been able to get one going.

(Food is a subject fraught with different opinions. All I can say is that the following is based on my own experience, and regardless of anything, I feel better now that I've felt in the past two years.)

For the past few months, I've been taking my health seriously.

About a year ago, I went on a serious health kick; I was eating clean and exercising, and for a while I was feeling excellent. However, after a few weeks I was feeling awful: I had a host of stomach and digestive problems, I was exhausted, couldn't sleep...It was extremely confusing (not to mention frustrating!) to think that I was doing everything that I thought I should in order to be healthy and yet feel worse than ever. And so, I temporarily shelved my clean eating and weight loss plans (and subsequently gained about 15 lbs).

Fast forward to this spring: my mum recommended that I read The Plan by nutritionist Lyn-Genet Recitas, and it kind of changed my life. I had already begun to be more conscious about what I was putting into my body (reading ingredients more than ever and being quasi-militant about not eating chemicals), but this book opened my eyes even more. In the past, I'd considered that I might be lactose or gluten intolerant; I'd cut them out of my diet, hadn't noticed much of a change, and resumed consumption. After reading The Plan, I embarked on a twenty day elimination diet, and lo and behold, found that I felt AWFUL after eating gluten (and, surprisingly, corn!).

I've been gluten and corn free (with a few slip ups) since about May, and I can't believe the difference in how I feel; most notably, my mental state has done a complete 180. It's embarrassing to say, but I used to cry almost every day, and usually over the most insignificant non-issues; since I've cut out corn and gluten, I'm happy to say that this girl has ceased to be a weepy mess! I've also been sleeping at night (I used to have the worst insomnia), I'm free of brain fog, and I've been steadily losing weight. I also find that I don't crave junky foods like I used to, and I've stopped nervous, comfort-eating (YES!).

I've been making the majority of my meals from scratch at home, eating a ton of veggies and drinking about thirteen cups of water a day (one of my favourite meals up there is poached eggs on gluten free toast with spinach!).

People seem to always feel sorry for me when I tell them that I've stopped eating the aforementioned foods, but really, it's not so hard to stay away from foods that you don't want to eat. Yeah, it's a bummer sometimes when I think of how I can't just order a pizza or eat churros, but the positive effects really outweigh it. There are so many tasty foods out there to try that have great health benefits and I'm excited to keep exploring them!

f u n . g i r l

I wanna be a ...

*

Stay upbeat, keep smiling, make choices that perpetuate your own happiness!

Avoid anxiety triggers, be productive, put yourself into good situations. Be kind, mindful and true. 

m i n i

How cute are these little ceramic frenchies? 

I happened across them while garage saleing a couple of weeks ago; they were in a shoebox labeled "FREE", jumbled together with a host of other miscellaneous items. 

I've always been a collector of kitschy trinkets (there's just something about objects in miniature that I really can't resist!). One of the reasons why I LOVE garage sales so much is that they always have a plethora of random minis (and usually for a quarter or less). As a little girl, I brought home so many useless things: a tiny teacup and saucer souvenir from Florida; a pair of little ceramic ducks, adorned with roses; plastic Felix the Cat figurines in different poses. 

As an adult, I'm (slightly) better at resisting silly impulse purchases; some things however -- like the plastic dinosaurs that I picked up while camping on Victoria Day -- are too great to pass by!

*

Hope that everyone is having an excellent weekend! It's hotter than hades (to borrow a phrase from my mum) here in Toronto at the moment. Stay cool & be cool.