Cherry Blossom Dream

I've just come back from a meeting at Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art In Haifa, where I met with the curator of my exhibition. Okay, for the sake of accuracy, I met with Moran, the Shop Manager where my jewelry is going to be exhibited on a shelf with other amazing items to be purchased in the shop museum, however it’s my humble beginning being presented in the museum.  A foot in the door of fame! ;-)

Here's one of the wonderful art jewelry pieces you can get at the museum, it's a cherry blossom charm necklace from my flower jewelry.

I was wearing the necklace on the train ride back home, remembering the train rides in Tokyo, in spring with cherry trees passing by … however the announcements in Hebrew kept getting in my way of daydreaming! Instead, I took out my notebook and drew this little cherry flower for the conductor's hat. 

Do you think they'll mind wearing it?  :-)

All my LoVe,

Hila.

My Top 7 Butterfly Gifts For The upcoming Holiday Season

For those of you who've been following, you already know about my fascination with butterflies. As the holidays are getting closer I decided to dedicate this post to 7 (because 7 is my lucky number) cool butterfly related presents I found on Etsy, and would not say no if someone would like to get them for me ;-)

The first – AMAZING! A wonderful print of Alice in Wonderland with butterflies, printed on an old book. The perfect present for a recycle loving fan like me. Hang it up on your wall for that added touch of color for art and recycle lovers.

A butterfly ornament made of metal wire and wood, simple beauty to decorate my garden.

Recycling again – this Etsy shop charmed me and I think I'm in love. They make all these cute knick knacks out of pop tabs! Beautifully colorful. 

Love your stockings? I definitely do. I have a whole collection and these will be joining it shortly.

For those of you who love D.I.Y here's a beautiful piece of leather printed with a colorful butterflies design. I'm sure you can think of something to do with it...:-)

A great present for the girly girls (me me!) to organize all your cosmetics stuff.

Beautiful and practical butterfly pot stands. Need I say more?

I'd love to get them all, I guess I have to choose the one I love…. Maybe two…?

All my LoVe,
Hila.

To ♥ Butterflies

"Living is not enough", said the butterfly. "One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower" - Hans Christian Andersen.

Butterflies! I’ve always been attracted to butterflies. I don’t know why, but something about that fragile being always touches me. Its colorfulness, its magnetizing beauty, its tenderness, and such a short existence make you think about life in a different way.

I find myself pondering about the butterfly’s metamorphosis, and all it goes through from the moment it hatches from its egg until it lays its own eggs and ends its life. From an egg, to a caterpillar, then in a cocoon and eventually the most amazing butterfly.

Here's one of my unique butterfly jewelry:

Achieving so much in such a short lifespan with so much beauty made me think about our life and how we too are like butterflies in some way. We are complex and amazing beings (and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), however our life too can go by like a flash and we should live it to the fullest like the butterfly does. That’s how life should be, meaningful, colorful, and full of beauty. 

I’ve created my butterfly album on pinterest, you can take a look :-)

All my LoVe, 

Hila.

So Fan To Edit Photos !

I'd like to share with you a cool new freeware I found for editing photos: http://www.picmonkey.com/

It's great fun for any purpose and can even be useful for professional looking photos, just take a photo, and start editing and adding awesome effects. Take a look at what I've succeeded in doing so far:

                                                   With frame

                                        (happy new year in  Hebrew)  

Overlays

Focal soften effect and overlay

So fan and cute!

Another great idea is to take some of these photos and create a scrapbook with a twist, combining all your own photos for great memories ;-)

All my LoVe,

Hila.

Cross Body Bags

Being a sworn fan of bags and shoes (aren't we all?) I've got this perfect collection of links to cross body bags I'm definitely going to own one day. They're perfect for the autumn and all year round too :-)

Here are some great ones from Etsy.com, a site I love for my ability to meet many small designers and buy directly from them. I have my own shop there too which you're more than welcome to visit ;-)

So here's my top 10 cross body bags list:

               A combination of red and black & white stripes looks great with just              

                                             about anything.

                                 For all of you who likes a little bit goth:  

Lady's, do you smell it? haaa... I love vintage...

How can we do without geometric??

And pink?

That last one is so unique

O.K, more than 10, I know...I just couldn't help my self...

All my LoVe

Hila.

My Animated Life :-)

Anime, I love it. If I could animate life it would be great, just make everything possible. I still like the physical world, I like feeling the materials and creating things in 3D in a 3D life. And thinking of it, how could I be a jewelry maker in the 2D world, should I make a jewelry app to make people happy

I found this great zebra dress for 500yen in a recycle shop in Japan (recycle shop sounds so much nicer than a second hand shop, doesn't it ;-) 500yen is about 5$, I got the lace skirt at Zara for about 25$ and then the boots from Ebay for 38$ postage included!
the necklace is my own work: 

I had my good friend Eliya Tsuchida To animate this photo for me as I just love animal prints, he and his wife are amazing artists. You can see their work here.

I think I'm going to my studio now; I need to feel my materials after this post!

All my LoVe

Hila.

The Sushi Spin Off

Those who know me know there are some things I am really passionate about, among them you will find Sushi and recycling.

Obviously Sushi can't be recycled, and the temptation to it fresh is leads to eating it. Though I can't eat raw fish, even after years in Japan, and even though the raw food movement is growing steadily… just can’t do it.

It's quite a challenge to find vegetarian Sushi in Japan, especially when you're new at it, as most menus show you only the popular fish variety. It's only when you get to know it that they stop staring at your curly hair (if that what you have, and I do) and let you in on the secrets of inari, tamago yaki, kampyo, kappa maki and the like.

The easiest way to get the sushi you want (while in Japan and searching for vegetarian sushi) was to make it myself. I would not recommend tasting my first attempts, but friends taught me, I practiced and got quite good. These days it's easier, and I even have a friend who teaches sushi in Israel (if you're here, I do recommend her sushi workshops ). Most of the time I just take advantage of any offer to go eat sushi… oiishi desu ne!

Back to the recycling issue, as I guess you'd like to know, I started collecting the Hashi -  the Japanese chopsticks, actually I have a great collection of both hashi and ware-bashi  which are the disposable type. As I prefer to recycle, not dispose of things I thought of something cool to do with them and this is the result:

If you liked this, I invite you to have fun and share with us. Go to my Facebook page and share 

photos of recycled projects you've done with Sushi or Chopsticks. The most popular ones will win a special offer discount for my Etsy Shop! :-) 

All my LoVe,

Hila.

My Geek Jewelry Collection - Tech - Lace

I'd like to introduce Tech-lace, my new and unique Geek Jewelry collection, art jewelry made of something all around us, Though we see through it many times – Hi Tech and computers.

We seem to be getting used to the fact that technology is advancing into every aspect of our life. Making it easier for sure, better or worse is not for me to say.  I love all things, and like to find beauty in what surrounds us, sometimes hidden beauty, as I found while peeking into the insides of my computer one day after it declared its final retirement and demanded an upgrade. This is what I saw inside (I admit, I usually don’t peek inside unless I really need to, and even then I'm no technician, I'm an artist…)

So here I am thinking… Oh Sh#@ I need a new computer, but also found myself thinking – Hey, this is cool, colorful, metallic, perfect to create with. And I started at it, first – imagining shapes, drawing sketches, and the cutting  the motherboard.

Now, Jewelry is not only about cutting, it's also the fun of combining materials, and of working with the metals I so love. I chose to use brass plates, and play with the combinations of shape and contrast between the brass and technology. 

Finally, I connected the two, added silver hinges, silver chains, and even rubber parts I found in a pluming shop…   

The result of that early retirement of my computer is now the Geek Jewelry collection before your eyes, a wonderful game of geometric shapes, colors and materials which come together in true creations of eco-geek wearable art.  You're sure to attract attention with these art geek jewelry pieces of tech art, with both art lovers admiring the bold design, and geeks trying to figure out which parts your jewelry used to be.

This Tech-lace collection, brings the motherboard and computer into the spotlight. Isn't this just the best present for all those art loving techie women out there and a must have if you want to attract a nice computer loving man, he's sure to notice you with this one ;-) 

All my LoVe,

Hila.