d.Sharp Journal

Favorite

Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas with family and loved ones.  For the holidays I am taking a bit of a break and will be back in 08. I look forward to sharing more with you in the New Year.  Merry Christmas! Best, Denise

A few more of my favorite ornaments.

When something is a few notches past scary my friend Sarah calls it Clown Scary. I like that a lot of antique ornaments aren't all sugar plum fairies or  saccharine sweet. Even some Santas can look a bit stern, like maybe he hasn't decided which column your name will end up on. We have a motley assortment of  vintage clowns for our tree. We didn't pull out all the stops this year with decorating, just the main tree and not all of the ornaments. So some of them are still packed up. The clown head was the first joker, got him at an estate sale. He is quite old, per a Christmas ornament book I have. Also love the clip on guy, he is vintage too. He is in a new clip, as I found him all stumpy.

The trio are of the dozen or so clown ornaments of this same style that we liberated from my husband's family - they decorated his family Christmas tree and probably one of his parent's childhood Christmas trees as well. The other two found at different estate sales - both unfortunately are missing their original tops, I should remember to keep my eye out for vintage caps, either that or break a few vintage ornaments.

Behold - Not to be my child's Last Supper.

Spend any length of time around my family and chances are you will be told the story of how I , being the delicate and charming two year old that I was, shoved a piece of pea gravel way into the nether regions of my nose. Or how my brother had me eat some foul poison with him, necessitating a trip to the ER for the two of us. As to avoid such drama for my offspring, I am going to put these small religious figures up out of reach of our littlest one, lest we have to explain at the emergency room why our child swallowed some of the apostles.

These little figures are beyond ticky tacky. I bought them a number of years ago and feel compelled to bring them out at Christmas. They were made in Hong Kong, probably as vintage as I am. {that statement is depressing} The box says they are hand-painted. The box itself has seen better days, but it really is the reason I felt I had to plop down the $1.49 at the thrift store. I love the gothic arcade diecut into the box and the column details printed on the face. Each figurine has their special spot with their name, all Hollywood Squares style. Also helpful in case one goes missing.

Christmas tradition

One Christmas tradition that G. and I started as parents was to buy a special ornament each year for each boy, allowing them to pick it out once they are able to. That way, when we kick them out they are living on their own and have gotten over the embarrassment of their parents having a sweet little collection of Christmas ornaments for them, they have decorations for their own trees.  This is the first ornament that we got for M. - a sock monkey.

Says he will buy his son Barbie game instead.

Father in Canada spends weeks finding coveted Guitar Hero II for his 15 year old son for Christmas, comes home to find son smoking pot with his two friends. So for punishment he lists the game {$90 US} on Ebay and ends up getting....wait for it......$9,100 US.
I didn't realize that when they say that every cloud has a silver lining, they mean every cloud.
{source}

Visitor From Outer Space

Even as an antique dealer I kind of hated going to those huge antique shows. Aisle after aisle, at a certain point my eyes just glaze over and I am semi-comatose just wanting to 'finish' out of stubbornness. One year I just stumbled into a friend's booth in a daze. I must have looked like I had combat crawled all the way there, for he took pity on me. Knowing how nuts I am about Christmas ornaments, he simply gave me this amazing Space Man ornament. He is one of my very favorite ornaments.

It is an annealed glass ornament from the early 1950's. Most of this type were from Italy at that time. He is about 6 inches long, kind of an iridescent white. Don't worry, he comes in peace - even if he looks kind of threatening with that raygun and buckteeth.

file under typophile

Stumbled across this video, opening credits for the Typophile Filmfest. To put it delicately, life - from sperm and egg to dirt nap and the afterlife.

Reunited, and it feels so good.

Santa needs to bring something special for this girl, for she has been especially nice. This past autumn, Carnegie Melon student Jennifer Gooch started OneColdHand - 'a site for the collection and hopeful reunion of Pittsburgh's dropped gloves'. She posts photos and information of lost gloves on the site, hoping their owners will claim them. Jennifer provides OneColdHand stickers, so that when you find a glove you can leave a sticker in its place and direct the owner of the lost glove to the web site. In addition, she has organized glove drop boxes sponsored by local businesses and has worked with two other women to have a OneColdHand start up in New York City. So far in Pittsburgh, three pairs of hands are happier.

To some it may not seem that important of a mission, to collect the lost gloves and mittens of a city's sidewalks, these 'sad lumps', and attempt to reunite them with their owners. But goodwill can be contagious and OneColdHand is warming hearts as well as hands.

Drop Chandelier

Stuart Haygarth has a way with flotsam.

Over 1800 water bottles confiscated at the the Stansted Airport, London were used to create this chandelier, Drop, that was displayed at Design Miami last week. The artist transformed the bottles, giving them the appearance of frosted glass, by cutting off the bases and turning them in a cement mixer with sand and water. {source}

He is best known for his Tide Chandelier - a small edition of chandeliers constructed out of objects that washed up on a specific stretch of the Kent shore. {source}

The Millennium Chandelier is a small edition of chandeliers - each constructed out of 1,000 exploded party poppers collected on January 1st, 2000 in the streets of London following the millennium New Year's celebration. { source }

Love demonstrated.

Some people may think that you fall in love and the rest takes care of it itself. But love is work - enjoyable, worthy, roll-your-sleeves-up work. And if this isn't love,  I don't know what is.

Over a half century ago in China, a 20 year old Liu Guojiang fell in love with an older, widowed mother Xu Chaoqing. At the time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman, most especially one with children, so they ran off to elope and live in a cave in the Jiangjin County in the southern ChongQing area.

Though living peacefully together, at first they had nothing -  no electricity or even food. They ate grass and roots they found and Liu made kerosene lamps for light.

Starting their second year of living in the mountain, Liu began, and continued for over 50 years, to hand carve steps so that his wife could get down the mountain more easily.

In 2001, a group of adventures were exploring the forest and found the elderly couple and the over 6,000 stairs of the hand carved ladder.

“My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for over 50 years and never been apart a single day.” Liu MingSheng, one of their seven children said, “He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother’s convenience, although she doesn’t go down the mountain that much."

Sadly, their time together ended last Wednesday. Liu, 72 years-old, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed, passing away in his wife's arms.

Their story has so touched the people of China that the local government has decided to preserve the steps and the place they lived as a museum. {source}

Makes me ask myself  - have I carved that step today? Have I put in the work?