Kat and Valentine

A Year of Kissing People.

I found this blog... I think it received a write-up in the most recent Frankie magazine, or similar, and I've fallen in love with it. Thiel has a habit of year-long socio-cultural projects (my own awkward terminology for what are delightful and inspired ideas): 2005 was a year of iambic pentameter, 2006 was a year of flowers and poems, in 2007 he spent a 'year with the saints'; considering and reacting to the lives of the saints. In 2008 he followed a different person everyday to see where he was lead. In 2009 he spent each day reacting to, and engaging with lemons; using the fruit in different modes. This year he is kissing poeople. A different peson everyday this year. This is his beautiful blog.
WHY DIDNT I THINK OF THAT?????????
I adore his writing-style; I'm beginning to build an idea of what kind of soul he is by the sweetness of his kissing recollections. He's got me wondering what I could do for a year, starting next year...

Cat Lauigan

I was staring longingly at more of Cedrine Rovini's work, followed some links and found this lovely work by Cat Lauigan.

Wool Beannie Alert: Check Zara kids!

I was the center of the attention at one of the many Zara stores that inhabit my city.
I felt in love with a wool beannie I saw in the shop window. I really had to buy it because when something is on the sideboard, it's sold out in a question of days.

Lucky me, the light brown beannie was in the Kids Zone.
Many people looked at me like if I was crazy, but when I started to use it, everybody asked me where did I bought it. Haven't seen any adult wearing it yet :)
The best thing is what it costs: less than 5€!! C'mon this is a present from heaven!

The key is that the sizes matches for a girl, because the beannie is 54 cm and it's big enough for a girl older than 10 :)
So, the message between lines is:  don't be afraid of trying out different things, different stores, think outside of the box and create your own fashions.

I must confess it was one of the most funny shopping days so far!

And how do I look know? Exactly like this:

Kat and her new passion: beannies

Good shopping days sweethearts!

Cheapest lisptick tip!

Kat von D signature look is red lipstick. But how to get the red that made her lipstick so desired?

This is the result of my fave cheapest mix:

God knows that I'd love to enter to my local Sephora store and try all her make up. When you live in a country without her makeup and you can't afford MAC because you work in a shitty job, there's only one option for you:

Use your imagination

- First, apply  a bit of concealer to make it last longer.
- Then, Sephora Lipstick Maniac 12 Champs Elyses. A creamy reddish chocolate brown.
- Right after, Sephora Lipstiac Maniac Mat 9. A very dark wine red.

The combination of this two lipsticks is an rich dark red Kat von D looking like, I guess.

If you want to make it last even more, apply Sephora nano lip linner right after the concealer and before you apply the lipstick. Depends on what finnish look you like, reddish or darky, apply to the whole mouth: 20 -real red- or 11 - beau bourdeaux -
This will allow you to eat and drink without worrying of your lips :)


I haven't tried Lip Attitude - Glamour by Sephora, but 13 looks so gorgeous!



And how much is it?

9€ each lipstick, lip linner 4€

MAC Cremesheen lisptick "Dare You" + MAC lip linner: freaking much :) around 30€ 

One month to read Tattoo Chronicles

Chapter One Highway to Hell

The autobiography of Kat Von D

I am a canvas of my experiences. My story is etched in lines and shading, and you can read it on my arms, my legs, my shoulders, and my stomach. But like everybody else, I was born naked and screaming, waiting for my life to write itself on my skin.

The first person who ever held me was my grandfather, Carlos Von Drachenberg. He was the doctor who delivered me in March 1982, in Montemorelos, Nuevo León, Mexico. I come from a long line of doctors. When I was born, my grandpa was teaching medicine in Mexico as a missionary for the Seventh Day Adventist Church while my father finished his schooling in the medical field. My family came from Argentina, but until I was four, we lived in Mexico.
I can still remember the dirt roads, the horses and donkeys, the rain that flooded the pool with frogs, and the local market where my sis and I used to run around and play. And many of my tattoos, especially the lettering, are in Spanish, reflecting Latin tradition.


But my strongest memories are set in Colton, a small town in Southern California, where my life revolved around love, art, and music. In our family, love was a given, art was a powerful presence, and music was pretty much a requirement. The five of us-my parents, my older sister, Karoline, and my younger brother, Michael-listened to religious hymns at church, but at home, classical music was everything.

My grandmother, Clara Von Drachenberg, was an inspiration for me when it came to music and art. She classically trained my siblings and me to play the piano. For breakfast we had Chopin, for lunch we had Mozart, and as an after-school snack, Schubert and Liszt. But above all, there was Ludwig van Beethoven.
During our weekly lessons, I would sneak into her library to catch a glimpse of a scrapbook she had put together during her teenage years that was dedicated to her favorite composers, Beethoven being the main one. On my eighteenth birthday, Clara gave me the scrapbook as a gift, and to this very day, that book is probably one of my most prized possessions. And Beethoven still features prominently in my life-I have four tattoos of him, countless paintings, and one of my cats is named Ludwig.


Clara was my mentor in all things music; when it came to art she was more like a role model. I have a still life of an arrangement of roses, dated 1949, that Clara gave to my parents as a wedding gift. It hung above the fireplace in our family room, where I practiced the piano, and I spent my childhood staring at it and imagining her painting it.
I coveted that oil painting. When my parents divorced after twenty-six years of marriage, the painting went with my father, and I begged and begged him for it. My father disagreed, always trying to negotiate his way out of giving it to me. Finally, on my twenty-sixth birthday, as a gift from both Clara and my dad, I was given the painting!


The inspiration to create my art and the encouragement to continue my musical studies paved the way for me to create the life I lead today, and I thank my grandmother for passing these gifts on to me.

Our whole family was musical. Between us, we could play the accordion, trumpet, guitar, piano, clarinet, bass guitar, saxophone, harp, and flute. Unlike most of my childhood friends, who played outside or went to slumber parties, we practiced our weekly lessons two hours a day, whether or not we wanted to. I can remember crying because I didn't want to play-but I still had to practice. It wasn't fun at the time, but it taught me that if you dedicate yourself to something, you'll get there. It is a lesson that still impacts the way I work today.
It was in elementary school that I really discovered my passion for art. I spent a lot of my time drawing pictures of my family, of flowers, of birds; all the things that I saw around me. My father still talks about the way I would crawl under the pews at church, coloring furiously while everybody else listened carefully to the sermons. Every year, I got better at drawing. I was drawing constantly, filling up one pad after another with my sketches and dreams. My mother saved every piece of art I did, whether I liked it or not.


From the very beginning, I gravitated towards realism, working hard to render lifelike portraits of family members, pets, and magazine clippings. I wanted my drawing to look as real as possible and would practice on famous faces like Marilyn Monroe's. When Anna Nicole Smith was cast in the Guess ads in the early 1990s, when I was around ten, it was a turning point for me. At the time, I didn't even know her name, but she was such a classic beauty, like a modern Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield, that I was inspired to sketch her. I must have drawn her face more than twenty times. Each time, I tried to do better, perfecting my lines and shading so that I could noticeably improve the drawings.

When she passed away in 2007, the tabloids were buzzing with gossip and rumors, but there were some people who were genuinely sad about her death. Not long after she died, I received an e-mail from one of her close friends who wanted to get a portrait of Anna tattooed on her thigh.


When Anna's friend showed up at the shop with her personal collection of photographs, I rifled through the stack to find the image that would make the best tattoo. And then it hit me: The blonde in the pictures sipping coffee in the morning wasn't just a pop icon, or the headline of the month, or another playmate. She was a real person who had played a big part in the development of my art. I had learned to draw faces by staring at her face, and now, after her death, I was going to tattoo her portrait on her friend's skin as a loving memorial.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from High Voltage Tattoo by Kat Von D Copyright © 2009 by Kat Von D

Thank You For The World: She's looking at us from her cloud and smiling

Thank You For The World: She's looking at us from her cloud and smiling: "The heart of 15 year old Eve Davenport stopped beating not so long ago. She got a spinal cancer (http://www.ehow.com/about_5109915_spinal-ca..."

Adora Palette review

Loved the lighting of the vid!

Awesome Book Packaging for Sephora.

Tattoo Chronicles following up for top seller High Voltage Tattoo is soon to be released and Kat von D surprises fans with awesome beauty sets for Sephora.

Instead of a simple box, Kat made a product that looks like a book.
Two different books with make up inside. Is there any better for a beauty lover like this?
By now, only lipstick set is avaliable.

"This is dedicated to those who are self-created, self-reliant, self made, and independent." —Kat Von D

The first beauty book is avaliable now and it's called: Amor Vita.

The book contains six mini Painted Love Lipsticks from nude to dark red:

• Rosary (pale pink)
• Underage Red (pink, brown)
• Cathedral (fatal red)
• Hellbent (velvet red),
• Lolita (light brown)
• Celebutard (mauve pink)

Spend $28 instead of $60!


Second book is called Tattoo Chronicles Palette - Volume 1 ($180 Value- cost $55) Does it mean there is more to come? - I hope so!
Soon is going to be avaliable in stores.

Venusta Impetus in the cover but no colours of Adora collection inside. However Kat included 12 shades, 3 primers (Skin, Stellar, Smoky), 1 pair of false eyelashes and two mini rollons of her last fragances, Saint and Sinner.

If it was avaliable on my country I defenitively would celeb a kind of pre-Christmas with a set like this one.

Shades:

• Tijuana (from Memento mori)
• Taxidermy
• Hollywood
• Peanut (from True Romance - True Love)
• Redemption
• Solitude (from Memento Mori)
• Heartkiller 
• Baudelaire
• Monastary
• Poe Blue
• Nite Owl
• Lemmy

I think others shadows are new or from limited editions..
Best thing of both sets is that they include a giant mirrors!

It seems the book has some pages with Kat's drawings and few texts that make this product a MUST for every fan.

Text in the picture reads:


"This book is dedicated to those who are self- created, self- realised, self -made and independent...
... those who take the artisitc freedom to express themselves though art, music, fashion, make up or whatever creative oultet their heart desires...
.... those who are brave and bold enough to be themselves - even if it means thinking outside the box.

Dedicating this book to you is just a small way of saying "thank you" for inspiring me."

Second page is a poem.






Here you can see more images. Can't wait for reviews of this awesome box!

Try them & feel like Kat von D for one day

If there's a pair of sunglasses every fan of Kat von D worship the most is these black oversized black or grey sunglasses called Jerry by Jimmy Choo.

Check your local store and ask to try them. Feel like Kat von D for one day! They were too big for my face though made my day anyway.

How much? 250€/ $350. You'd better start writting Santa from today :)

Sayaka Maruyama and Wendy Bevan for TEST.

I've posted work by the magician Sayaka Maruyama once before. This is a recent shoot with the performer and artist Wendy Bevan for Test magazine. I can't get enough of Maruyama's aesthetic - I long to live in this world.

Henri Robert

Salome (1909)

Greedy

If there's something that upsets me the most is the people that waits hours in a long queue to be signed for getting money selling autographs online.

New, unreaded and signed are words that work like neon lights: The book you will receive has only been opened at the signing event

Let's pay attention to this one too: "Kat von D 's new book will be released on October 26, 2010.  I will be getting signed copies."

I hope fans recognize sellers like this and boycott them during the Tour.

Interactive Lower Back Tattoos from Kat Von D

Funnyordie.com: Interactive Lower Back Tattoos

As part of our continuing "Artist in Profile" series, we talk to Kat Von D about her newest type of tattoos that are interactive as well as part of the sexual experience.
 
Funny or die  is a place where celebrities, established and up-and-coming comedians and regular users can all put up stuff they think is funny.

I've counted all your scars, I've numbered them as my own.

Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete.     -Sara Zarr

I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.

I don’t ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man’s question. I ask whom did I live for.    -Zadie Smith

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesterdays are burried deep—leave it anyway except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can.        -Beryl Markham

Feelings can be like wild animals—we underrate how fierce they are until we’ve opened their cage.

-Richard Paul Evans

Images via Cocaine Girl and Hello, Bluebird and Sebastian.