Finding beauty

This choker by Junque Revival has got some serious style and drama. I like that she uses found objects in her pieces.

The past is not dead. It's not even past.

It always brightens my day when I discover a wonderful little shop like One Punk Posy. I love the dreamy, layered look of this shadowbox, especially the darling illustration.

Fix it even if you didn't break it

The do-gooder and hopefully someday soon to be homeowner in me loves this sweet poster from Blue Barnhouse.

The less appropriate me love this cheeky card:

Put on your dancing shoes.

I'd be dancing all over the city if I owned these amazing Chie Mihara leather heels, handmade in Spain. Wouldn't these be perfect for a St. Patrick's Day party? Available at Twig.

I found Twig via a post on decor8 (I loved the leaf print bag) but then discovered these shoes in the shop and had to share.

Mr. Postman

All I get in the mail is bills and Arby's coupons, but wouldn't it be grand to get a note on this fantastic telegram-inspired stationery? Pretty much everything at 16 Sparrows is equally covet-able.

Few as clever as coyote

I don't know what it is with me and all these subtle colors lately. Maybe I need to ease back a bit from my usual draw to vibrant colors. This Coyote necklace from Daa glass' Nellie collection has handmade glass charms dangling off of it. It's quite lovely and perfect-looking.

Subtle spring leaf

I need one of these pretty ivory hairpins from Sprout Studio. I recently saw a picture of a woman with her hair pinned up with 5 different pretty bobby pins. Such a pretty idea! Considering my hair has grown out to resemble a cheesy seventies boy singer lately, I need all the pins I can get to make it look presentable once more.

Star quilts and strays

I could be haunted by the paintings of Jeanie Tomanek.




I'm fascinated by the spareness of those pale figures.

Foxy

You have to love the cleverness of this fox scarf from GreenerGrassDesign.

Piping

I lurve me some piping. The red piping at the collar and waist of this Eliza Gran dress really puts it over the top for me. Adorable!

Texturific.

Pottery from Alyssa Ettinger, featuring the delicious texture of knitware. Available through her website, and also through the excellent Brooklyn shop Cog & Pearl.

Math + Rabbits

Aside from their great silhouettes, these rabbits have a cool theory behind them. To fully appreciate it, you'll have to read it from the source but I'll give you a hint: the pattern on the rabbit's brooch is based on the Fibonaci number sequence. Das Kaninchen is full of similar brainy, beautiful objects that not only do I wish to own, but that I also wish I had thought of myself.

Shino Arihara

I'm obsessed lately with de-posterizing my apartment, and filling the walls with more original artworks and prints that are not to be found in any box stores. The work of Shino Arihara would fit the bill quite nicely.

I must have a thing for mermaids lately. This pair looks so badass.

I very much like the random fish that appear in some of the paintings.

This one completely puts me in mind of Tom Waits. And who doesn't need a bit more Tom Waitsness in their life?

You can purchase prints of Shino's work over at Thumbtack Press.

Flora & Fauna

This gorgeous one-of-a-kind cuff from Poison Apple would be just perfect for spring. I love these colors together, and also the way the vintage gold charms and chains spill casually off the side.

Hoops

I simply adore asymmetrical necklaces. This pretty thing from MyMy would be such a nice addition to my jewelry collection.

Amy Sol

The wood grains and soothing colors of Amy Sol's work is captivating. I wnat to live in a world where whales float dreamily along with hot air balloons and sea ponies say hello.

Brandi Milne

Brandi Milne's work is the perfect combination of gorgeous dreamyness and dark ominousness.

These works are simply amazing.

Mmmmm plastic

This dress made by Liana Kabel is absolute candy for the eyes. Its made out of tupperware lids! She does lots of amazing things with plastic - including lots of jewelry pieces you can purchase from her shop.

Mermaid queen

An admittance of selfishness - had this not already been sold, I would be hesitant to post it. Cause it really should be mine, all mine! This mermaid queen neclace by heyjupiter21 is utterly perfect and dreamy. She posts all her pretty work on flickr and some of it is up for grabs on ebay. Alas, its prettyness is in someone else's hands. I hope they love it as much as I would have.

She had to wear cardboard in her shoes...

Mary Emma Hawthorne has a whole slew of pretty bird paintings and collages.

The first one is my favorite - especially the enigmatic phrase on the front. Makes me want to leave strange snippets of sentences all over town for folks to discover.

Moon boots

The embroidery of Megan Whitmarsh makes me smile. I never knew the joy of moon boot-wearing yetis before today.

Magic trinkets

This necklace by Lush Bella makes me ponder the wonder of finding objects and turning them into precious art. The snail's shell on this necklace is nothing short of magic and genius.

Sweet and subtle

I adore ribbony necklaces - especially this one from Diana Kane with its sweet subtle colors.

Blizzard avoidance

There's a clothing boutique in Columbus' artsy district called Jinny that has some darling dresses. I have't been in person yet (and over a foot of snow on the ground right now says I'm not making it out anytime soon!), but with pretty pieces like these, it's worth swinging by. The first I would love to have for work and the grey dress would be oh-so-pretty with a soft buttery yellow sweater. And both serve to take my mind of the blizzard I'm trying so hard to wish away.

Serious temptation

Because of my addiction to buying used books online for friends and family, I've gone way over my usual shopping limit this week. If I hadn't, I'd be snapping up this cool vintage glove stretcher from HowNowDesign. It would look great hung on a wall with an ecletic collection of art and objects.

Kristen's paint color dilemma

As she mentioned, Kristen is pondering paint colors for her spiffy new place. I saw this room by Beth Haley Design out of Nashville and had to share - especially since it goes so well with our nifty new banner. I love the combination of dark teal and sherberty orange.

Skirts galore

Skirt Spot has such happy-making, interesting skirts. Best of all, they are all made right in California after you place your order. How's that for service? At the moment, I desperately want all of four pictured here, but they have bunches more to choose from.

Queen of small things

When it comes to purses, I'm queen of the miniature. Before two years ago, I didn't even carry a purse - just stashed my wallet in my back pocket and off I went. Then my husband talked me into a cell phone, and my purseless days were over. In protest, I went and found the tinyest purse I could that would fit my wallet and my phone and even my slim lil mp3 player.

But I now aspire to own my own smallish camera that I can take everywhere with me so I will need a slightly larger purse. This purse from Mad Imports will not do, but oh how I covet it with its cool shape and endorphin-boosting colors.

However, I have hope. Kristen is queen of the stylish giganto purse. Between the two of us, I'm sure something suitable can be found.

A new direction...

We've decided to take our little blog off in a slightly new direction! Until now, we've focused on Etsy shopping, and while we'll definitely still be featuring items from Etsy shops (because there's just so much awesome stuff over there, naturlich), we're going to start featuring items, ideas and inspirations from other sources as well. Our goal is to make So Sweet & So Cold into a blog about style & design, a place to visit to see pretty things and get pretty ideas. We'll still be showing you where to buy some of the stuff we post, don't worry.

We've overhauled the Label system over to the right. This will be painless, we promise. Anyway, here's an overview:

- We did away with the pricing labels ($, $$, $$$, $$$$)
- We're keeping the category labels (art, accessories, etc), and all previously labeled posts are still in their same categories
- We added some new labels, which we will start using here on out:

"Shopping List" : this replaces the pricing labels, and indicates that something is available for sale somewhere. If you're in the mood to spend and you only want to see items you can buy, you can just look at all posts with this label and shop your heart out!

"Decorating Ideas" : what's more inspiring than seeing a fab decorating job? This label is for home-dec images and articles. If you're stumped about what color to paint your new apartment (as Kristen is, at this moment) or want to see a truly beautiful kitchen, have a look here for inspiration.

"Crafty Projects" : We know there are tons of great sites out there that post craft projects, but with so many of them, there's no way you can see everything! If we find a project or tutorial that is too good to miss, we'll put it here.

"Blog Crush" : Check here for super awesome blogs we love so much, they warrant a whole post devoted to them.

Lastly, we're going to start featuring some advertising in the column over there to the left. Rates are super affordable (really!) and we can help out with the design of your ad if you don't have one, so hit us up if you're interested! sosweetxsocold AT gmail DOT com

Well, that takes care of everything! We hope you enjoy.

xo,
kristen & claire

Flown

Could these be any cooler? I just adore the colors and especially the funky antennae-like shapes. From Morphologie.