Elemenohpee

Letters catch my eye wherever they pop up - eye charts, license plates, telephone poles, signage, and most especially abc charts, blocks, and books.  You would think that once you'd seen one alphabet book you'd seen them all - but no, seen one, NEED MORE.  And I really wonder if it's something about the inherent graphic nature of our latin based alphabet because I've looked at some Hindi alphabet primers and even though they are beautifully illustrated they don't hold the same appeal.  Or maybe that's my bias to my native language? Or perhaps that magical pull letters and books seem to have is more about the charm of childhood memories than design?  I would be curious to know if alphabet books are regarded fondly worldwide irregardless of language family (Geek fact: As of 2007 there were 6,912 living languages cataloged).  All I know is I could buy every abc grammar book out there and still have my eyes on the next one about to be published...

So, a good place to start with this subject would be with this reprint of one of the oldest known alphabet cards, from 1782. My understanding is that these were originally published in newspapers to help boys read.  Girls were not supposed to read newspapers, or learn to read, for that matter.  But I bet some did.


I personally don’t find this type appealing, but it brings back very fond memories of this book:

My youngest son was obsessed with this book when he was little and was constantly twisting his body into abc shapes.This type of alphabet primer is very appealing to those who learn kinesthetically.










And while this vintage book qualifies as kinesthetic, it’s here just because it cracks me up. I’m sure my kids would have a lot of fun mocking it now. Mimes + xenophobia = comedy central at our house.

But, I digress, back to alphabet primers for tiny ones… I think there’s a pattern to how children note these wall cards. I believe that first they see the bold simple graphics, then, as they grow older they start to realise the correlation between the letter and the picture, and then, if there are subtleties to the design, they pick up on those and feel proud of themselves for “decoding” the card. So my favourite cards have all three of these elements, but at the very least they must have strong, charming design, Such as these Hardware Alphabet cards by eeBoo. These cards actually started the whole idea for this post in the first place. Luv their retro design and clean lines! About a year ago Pip and I stood in WindUpHere staring at these for a long, long time trying to decide if they were too boyish for her nursery, but now it's a year later, she's had her second boy (yay!) so we’re saving up our change! *ching, ching*

The following are more examples of cards I think would be engaging for young children: (BTW, these are products I enjoy artistically.  Speaking about them here in no way means I endorse their pricing.  I'm not saying they're unreasonably priced, I'm just saying we all need to live within our means.  When we can afford these sorts of items, I fullheartedly believe in supporting artists, and local artists even better.  But you can be an artist, too.  Nuff said.)

These cards, from Bob's Your Uncle, are a
perfect example of bold design - and they
encourage curiousity by showing just part
of the animal, - the entire animal is shown
on the back with some info.

This one makes me think of M for Amazing.
Go see the rest, the T is for Town one is my fave.

Though not my favourite, I think kids would find
it enticing to read this alphabet poster in order.

For these wall cards John Carrera has gone
thru old dictionaries and pulled out their
illustrations - loved those as a kid, love
them even more now.

The art in Strawberryluna's Etsy shop is so
cute, but I could never afford the whole alphabet! ($16 a card)

I really like this little hen, but I can't
remember where I found her!

Another example of vivid art with loads of child appeal.

Found on the third page of CastleintheAir's catalogue.
  These work for young children, and then
someday they'll find they can read the
cursive and be quite pleased with themselves.

Charley Harper.  What's not to love? All his art is wonderful.

JHill Design's cards remind me of illuminations.
Great art to expose your child to!

I thought these gorgeous cards were vintage, but it turns out
they're Martha Stewart! The zebra stripes just kill me.  Her site
no longer sells them, so if you find some somewhere, let me know!

I absolutely adore, adore these!  I just don't know
if children would be immediately drawn t
o them.  I think I might be forcing their design
asthetic but...what's the matter with that?

If you're going to get them hooked
on good art, you may as well get them addicted
to typography while you're at it! 
Alphabeasties will do both.

(Once you've introduced them to that world
you can spend a tidy sum (ie, small fortune)
and wallpaper their room
with this Fawn and Forest Wallpaper.)

These are such wonderful eye candy! I can just hear your child
spinning new synapses. Each letter is very creative,
there will be lots to discuss as you turn these pages.

Once they’ve mastered the abc basics, you can introduce a little more sophistication into their lives… Like The Hidden Alphabet by Laura Seeger. Your child begins with a picture, then flips the page to reveal a letter.  Besides the fun of anticipation, your child may find that this helps them remember their letters more easily, due to the picture being an integral part of the letter's shape.

Every blog about alphabet cards has this poster in it, but how can I resist? The subtlety of asking the child “Where is m?” is just delightful. Someday they will realise that there was a design reason to make the poster this way, and that will be a fun “aha” moment for them, too.  And if that's not enough reason to like it, this is designed by a married couple in their home. 

When they are older they will love the nonsense of these alphabet personalities…

The authour of this book calls it The Rogue Alphabet, an Alphabet of Difficult Words.  Unfortunately, it hasn't been published yet!  A shame, because boys would love it.

I wish they would reprint this vintage book. It makes me laugh every time I read “M is for a dead, dead moon.” Oh! I thought it was only mostly dead…

Not really on topic but I stumbled upon these Ray Bradbury covers and was tempted beyond my ability to resist…

Julie Morstad’s flash cards aren’t quite as straightforward as some of the others. Whereas “U is for Umbrella” is the type of thinking children are used to, “H is for Hiding” will make them have to stretch their wee minds a bit. It’s good for them.

And Ida Pearle takes it even further. Your child will have to scrutinize these picture and discover for themselves the alphabet correlation. They’ll have a delightful sense of accomplishment when they figure it out! 

Now we move into what I call the Do It Yourself Catgegory. Although these books/cards exist, once you introduce them to your child, you two can go on an odessey to create you own.

Top four from Alphabet City by Stephen T Johnson

Check out Debra Fraiser's A Fabulous Fair website -
it's filled with ideas and games to go
with her book, including a printout pages to take to the fair.

Walking to Jericho's hand-coloured Poloroid art
just makes me giggle a little.  Doesn't it fill you with the desire
to go make something?  I get all giddy inside when I imagine
little kids labelling and photographing their toys.

This one from warpeDesign is particularly good for incorporating more senses into the learning process. Your child can make their own version of this, or you can cut letters out of sandpaper or various other textures, or move dried beans, rice, or macaroni into abc shapes – or fingerpaint them with yogurt! Feel, smell, touch, taste - powerful memory makers. If you figure out a way to let your child hear letter shapes, let me know!

     

    

I found this on SchoolofTots.com - a site that's
apparently no longer working - but I love how
they often incorporated the actual letters
into the pictures, and of course the bible theme
is an extra nice touch.

These three are from DP Sullivan's Flikr page.  Handmade.
So whimsical!  You can actually find a lot of Alphabet
work on Flikr - go exploring!

Violet Lemay's My Foodie ABC: A Little Gourmet's Guide

The following are for parents who play Mozart to their unborn child, buy black and white mobiles, baby einstein videos, and enroll their child in an ivy league preschool the day after they conceive…

I love this Etsy shop's motto:  "Geek up the nursery!"

Everyone mentions this one, but what can I say?  When it's good it's good.

Jason Dent's The ABC's of Branding. See how much
we've been subliminally influenced.

And let’s face it, the rest of these aren’t really for the kids. Totally for the young at heart and awesome.

Indie Rock Alphabet. Indoctrinate your child now.

The Onomatopoeia Alphabet. (own-a-mawta-pea-a)
Onomatopoeia, Onomatopoeia,Onomatopiea.
Isn't it totally appropriate that this word
just begs to be said out loud?  Your twelve year
old son and hubby will love it. They will
drive you crazy adding their own sounds.

Neil Cameron's A-Z of Awesomeness.
This one is absolutely dedicated to my boys. :)

Done.
I told you it would be long.
And I haven't even shown you the number cards....

Coming Soon!

My next post will be on alphabet cards, which I love.  But not writing the post about them - that will be long. But it's for Pip, who has been requesting it for a month.  Pip whose water broke this morning.  Pip who is outside putting in a garden while pretending nothing is happening.  Pip who is going to have the baby in the backseat of their car in a traffic jam on the way to Seattle :)

Keemosabee will get to practice his boy scout skills.  Oh, wait, that's right he didn't do scouts, he played on the basketball team instead.  So he will dribble the baby.  Babies like dribbling.

I'm a Wreck

Once again I couldn't sleep, but rather than while away the time Etsy-ing, I thought I'd work toward my goal of having more current family photos in our home, so towards that end I went to daughter N's blog and began scrolling thru all her posts starting from the very first.

What an emotional roller coaster!! Two years worth of remembrances, goals, photographs, passions, distractions, struggles, parties, births, accomplishments, -- all those valleys and peaks....   I began getting way too emotional so I thought, Ok, I'll take a break and go see what nienie's new movie is all about....... thinking it was going to be something light and frothy and fun.....  I had no idea.  It's an amazing spiritual powerhouse. So beautiful.  So reaffirming. I could have turned off all the electricity in the world and still would've been able to read by the light in the room, it was just Spirit Full.

All my words are just too clunky for the feelings of the night. My cup brimmeth over. I watched the sunrise, all quiet around me, thinking very deep thoughts, feeling grateful for my family and life, the gospel and meaningfullness.

The installation pictured above was one of my favorites, though an image does it no justice. Thousands of nylon threads hung from the ceiling, shimmering and drifting on the slightest breeze, like spiderwebs. Nearby, a plague displayed this scripture: 

"And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind, and earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire, a still small voice." 

~from N's blog archives, 5/5/2009

You Didn't See This

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Leftover business from my spy days; move along, move along. (Technorati  Claim Code)

Sleepless in Seattle

via

I cannot seem to fall asleep at night anymore. A day after being awake 36+ hours I can spontaneously and randomly plunge into a complete exhausted stupor at utterly convenient times... such as while driving; hosting a party; or in deep soul-baring conversation with a loved one... but once that sun sets - wiiiiiiiiide awake.

I could use that extra time to deep clean my house; discover my lost ancestors; edit decades worth of family films; write the Great American Novel; learn to speak Chinese; work my way thru all of MIT's open sourceware; but do I do that?  No, no,no, that would be far too sensible. No, instead I Etsy. I aimlessly click thru all the little shops on etsy.com simply to see where it takes me.  Like when my dad would take us on road trip excursions following back roads and logging trails until we'd be perched on the edge of a mountain looking at the prospect of backing up for three miles. Except the Etsy road never narrows or ends.  When I type "Vintage Toys" into the search bar and receive 978 pages of hits, do I decide that would be far too many to look at?  Oh no, I click away until carpel tunnel and restlessness starts to set in, and then I do something really clever - I begin clicking from the end forward, because we all know that clicking backwards thru the pages somehow doesn't count, just like calories eaten while the fridge door is open don't. So, alternating from front-of-the-line to back -of-the-line to front-of-the-line like that I zip thru those 900 some pages so quickly I don't even notice that half my life has gone by.

Of the many draw backs to this obsessiveness one is that there are very few uses for the information garnered from my persistence. I did learn that basically all the things I think are cool and would luv to own have very narrow market appeal, whereas glass bead trinkets and homemade soaps are some of the all time best sellers. Can you believe that?  It's true; I checked  the list.  I don't think I have much of a future as an Etsy Seller, which probably won't stop me from trying, though, because  I'm brilliant like that. 

While I sleep-walk thru the rest of my day ( I did find an off-Etsy  product that would come in really handy right now) here's my Etsy Show and Tell from last night/this morning:

Put some sprigs of lilac 
in this sweet vintage beaker
and it becomes a charming vase.

And these  would have a
tulip in each one - 
What a set!

You could store a year's worth
of family photos in each cannister
and then display the reels
in this open 1950's film case.

This vintage letter holder
would look really good 
with some family photos in it

If I were a finalist on 
Project Runway all my models
would walk Bryant Park
looking soft and sweet 
and wearing spikey eye patches!

How fun for the kidlets!  
Twoallbeefpatties
specialsaucelettuce
cheesepicklesonions
onasesameseedbun!

I have been looking all over
for a good M to display-
this one's perfect!  Luv the
character from the reflector holes.

This astronaut puzzle's 
70s' graphic is just too cool.

This seller cracks me up - she's 
selling mismatched puzzle
pieces and calling it 
Vintage Assemblage. Silly me,
  I've been calling it my junk drawer. 
Well, m'am, I'll see your
game pieces and raise you 
a Monopoly top hat and
a Clue candlestick!

More astronaut deliciousness!
It's the faces that make them
extra special. 

The Number 7 and the Letter Q!

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."  

When I first began this blog I wanted the name "justlooking" - with O's like a normal word, not zeroes.  But justlooking.blogspot.com was taken by Dan, so I couldn't have it.  Dan who last posted in 2003.  All one of his posts.  First and last on the same day. Good ole' Dan who will own the name forever. *sigh*  So I went with the zeroes.  

But now I find that there's an unsavory justl00king out there wandering the internet and I really don't want the association.  Soooo... head's up, in a week I'm changing my name and blog address to "merelylooking" - which is available and unsullied, as far as I can tell.  However, if you have clever name suggestions feel free to decloak and suggest!  All seven of you. (Counting my loyal spammer.)

image via

That Chair Will Kill You Someday

Business Week has a very interesting article about the health benefits of standing as opposed to sitting.  It turns out each position has a dramatically different effect on our bodies.  Who knew? Well, apparently King Arthur. It was fabled that he had a chair at the round-table called Siege Perilous (Dangerous Chair)  which only the Pure of Heart could sit at or else it would be Instant Death {dadum}.  I'm assuming Merlin must've read Business Week's piece and quickly hopped back in time in his Bermuda shorts to warn King Arthur of the perils of sitting....

Nerd Love

I adore today's One Sentence Story #3624

House of Cards

I've been thinking about cardstacking off and on all day today courtesy of last night's Survivor challenge.  I remembered seeing a picture of Bryan Berg's World Record House of Cards, which is really a misnomer because it's a city of cards, and decided I should share it with you all so you too can gasp and ooh and ahh... No captions, they speak for themselves.

Anthropomorphism

After finally coming back mentally from our lovely break, I came here to post, saw Truman moving out of the corner of my eye and had a huge flash of panic thinking, Omigosh, when's the last time I fed him?!!  Lol!  Well, it's to be expected - I can't throw away my shredded ballet flats because I might hurt their feelings and I used to apologise to the furniture when I bumped into them.

I like to prepare for every eventuality. I have plasters and safety pins stashed in my bag. I get the train before the one I need. I have assembled a small army of toys on whose loyalty I feel I can depend if inanimate objects come alive overnight and the war between organics and inerts begins in earnest. You never know. ~ Margaret Robertson on Offworld: One More Go

Honeymooning

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M for Amazing and I are taking a little two day getaway.  See you Wednesday!

Living Large

Have any of you been following Apartment Therapy's Small Cool 2010 contest?  It's a treasure trove of inspiration.  Readers (and they have many) are sending in pics of their small decor; all entries are divided into five categories ranging from teeny-tiny (400 sq feet and under) to small (1,000 sq feet and under).  I would have been getting heart palpatations over this four years ago (not that I'm not now) - I remember devouring everything I could get my hands on about small space living; this would have kept me fed for a month! So often books on "small" space living include 2,000 and 3,000 sq ft houses (!!?), so I really appreciate the focus on truly small living. I haven't had a chance to really delve, yet, but here's some of what I noticed with one glance. Go check it out  - and don't forget to vote!

Love the books spilling over everywhere! I can live without furniture as long as I have books, photos, and art.  I'm so sad our library system has started charging overdue fees - I've had to ban myself from checking out books because I am notoriously slow about returning them.  I've joked that if anyone ever wants to track me down they just have to check every city library's Most Wanted list.

I am totally going to steal that sign for our bedroom.  There's not enough positive verbage in the world.

This is called Pong's Restraint and that's what I appreciate about it - love that simple note of the clouds high in the corner.

Bright Ideas

I've been searching antique stores for chandelier crystals to donate to TheSpanishLady's projects - but it turns out that was just a waste of time - I should've been roaming the candy aisles at Safeway instead! Look at these amazing gummi bear chandeliers!

It turns out there's no end to humble objects that can be turned into something beautiful - lost treasures, found objects, plastic cups, bic pens, clothespins, wire, drink carriers, paper clips, - it makes me itch to go out and make something wonderful.

























































































































































*Warning for the Fish Phobic: Fish Ahead*
(not a a fish head; fish ahead)

Even though what I really love about  Dominic Bromley's famous Shoal Chandelier is the white on white textures and shadows, I'd still like to try to make a small version with Swedish Fish.  Of course, I'd have to not munch....


Lustre via
Round Gummi via
Chandelier Gummi via
Winnie Lui 1 via
Plastic Cup via
Bic Pen via
Clothespin via
Wire via
Drink Carrier via
Winnie Lui 2 via
Paper Clip via
Shoal via