New and Improved

My new website vanessaboer.com is up and running! Hooray!!

NYCares painting party!

I recently volunteered as a mural artist for NYCares and designed a couple of murals for a local school that needed a pick-me-up. Some fantastic friends, a load of volunteers and I painted two murals in an Eastern Brooklyn middle school. It's pretty amazing what people can do with bad brushes and donated paint in a multitude of institutional colors like 'Safety Purple'. It was such a great experience and I can't wait to do it again soon.

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The hallway at Eastern New York Middle School of Excellence (!)

The school 'zoo', currently inhabited by one Bearded Dragon Lizard.

DIY fun

DIY paper clock {click on image to enlarge}

I just started a monthly DIY column on the supercute blog OMFG. Check it out!

exciting times

I am in the midst of working on illustrating my first book!! Actually, I will be illustrating an entire series of books on children's social and psychological issues, the first of which is on sleeping problems, nightmares, etc. It has been a really fun project thus far and I am so excited to see the first book once it's printed this fall! I can't show any of the images I'm working on until it's published but here is a sketch I won't be using.

{click on the image to enlarge}

birds of a feather

Last week I made this 3' x 3' surface for a Plum Workshop photoshoot. I wanted to make it entirely of feathers but had some ethical issues with using real feathers. I decided to make them out of paper. 200+ hand cut feathers later, here's what I ended up with.

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I'm pretty happy with the results! Now I can't wait to experiment more with watercoloring the paper beforehand, using different weights and textures, etc. Nerd alert!

I already have one commission to make a wall piece like this one. I love it when an experiment ends better than you had expected!

fantastic!

Things are on the up and up! Wes Anderson's first animation film 'Fantastic Mr Fox', based on Roald Dahl's book, is coming out soon!

Sooo exciting! Some fun people involved: Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Meryl Streep, Owen Wilson, and a lot more of the Anderson gang.

Of Muppets and Men

This is just something you should watch.

I had forgotten about it for awhile but now that I am counting the weeks until 'Where the Wild Things Are' comes out, and seeing as the Jim Henson Creature Shop made all the monsters, I am back on a Muppet kick.














and why not watch this one again? so excited.

THINGS I LIKE: Hedgehog in the Fog

I never get tired of the incredibly sweet and beautiful "Hedgehog in the Fog". It was made in Moscow in 1975 and it's considered one of the best animated films of all time. I think it's pretty clear why.

Enjoy!

long lost twins

I always knew Gigi had great fashion sense, it's just a given. But now even Adrien Brody is catching on to her trend-setting styles. I picked up her sassy bandana (in both blue and red) in a vintage shop in Amsterdam this May but I'm guessing he just got his from some overpriced shop in LA. Either way, they look great together.

look what I found!

Though I may get a dirty look, I am absolutely one of those people that will pick something up off the sidewalk or in the dirt. Not just anything, but something that has a little spark I can't ignore. And sometimes, not all the time, it really pays off.

I have found some real treasure over the years including bird's nests, old letters, patinated keys, photographs, etc. Amongst many other collections, I have been picking up single playing cards off the street and eventually hope to have the whole deck. You wouldn't believe how often there are playing cards lying on the ground. But I only pick up one at a time and just have to hope it's one I need. But that's not the point.

The other day, after a long rain here in Brooklyn, I came upon this innocent little card in a puddle. I loved the simplicity of the lonesome number on that (once) cream card.




Little did I know what was waiting for me on the other side!

The Men About Town! Bob Prince on Vibes! 10 to 2! and for only $1.50, these guys really knew how to throw a party in 1953! I tried to do some research on these Men About Town and all I came up with was a New York Times article from 1911 on the modest beginnings of this Friars Club.

Thanks, Street!

exactly.

“A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. Another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of the cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept her diary locked by a clasp, a notebook written in a code of her own invention. In a toy safe opened by six secret numbers she stored letters and postcards. An old tin petty cash box was hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed. In the box were treasures that dated back four years, to her ninth birthday when she began collecting: a mutant double acorn, fool’s gold, a rainmaking spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel’s skull as light as a leaf.”
- from Atonement by Ian McEwan

a fun surprise

My little fox has really been getting around. Here is he is on a Dutch bank card! Fun! I guess he is rather appropriate considering the economic climate.

I'm officially obsessed.

My friend Kristine and I have been making some custom props for our little side business Plum Workshop and they are turning out so cute! But man oh man, once I started sewing one little mushroom, I couldn't stop!



Here is a little taste of the sort of fun things we have been making:


to see more of our custom props you can visit us at Plum Workshop