Here's a little mid-week distraction from the grind: optical illusions by artist Akiyoshi Kitaoka. Stare at each one -- you'll swear they are moving!

Yarn Hair Extensions

Over the past several months I've been noticing how fiber embellishments are being incorporated into festival-inspired hair styles such as dreadlocks, messy buns, and intricate braids. Like jewelry for your hair, elements of yarn, wool, ribbon, flowers, beads, charms, and dyes are combined with your natural hair or as add-on extensions. Really youthful, really pretty, really trendy. Would you wear this look?

Flower Maiden wool dreads

Love this look!

Custom Mermaid Wool Dreads 

 Etsy Hair Wrap Braid Accessories 

 A Beautiful Mess

Festive Summer Plates

Bright Shapes Melamine Plates / West Elm

I am really digging these festive spring/summer plates from some of my favorite stores. I'm especially drawn to the Ikat pattern on several of them. I also like that they can be mixed and matched. Paper plates are great for an outdoor barbecue, but it's so much prettier to present your feast on a beautiful plate. Some of these are melamine, not glass, so you don't have to worry about breakage.  

Ikat Salad Plates / Pottery Barn

Hacienda Melamine Plates / Anthropologie

Ikat Appetizer Plates / Target

Spring Floral Plates / World Market

Inspirational T-Shirt Transformations

Make a corset...

One of my favorite websites for curated content is BuzzFeed. There's definitely some crazy content on there, with lists such as 15 Thoughts You Should Keep To Yourself and 21 Splashy Ways To Enter A Pool. Do we really need to know this stuff??? But it's fun, too, and sometimes inspirational. If you have a collection of t-shirts that you can't seem to part with you can remake them into something new, according to this BuzzFeed article, 39 Ways To Reuse, Restyle, and Rewear Your Old T-Shirts. Here are just a few of the definitely cool ideas for a t-shirt transformation.

Make a draping vest...

 Make a flower dress...

Paint spatter it to look like ombre...

Make a bangle or two...

Make a quilt... 

Cut it up or paint it to look like a rib cage...

Celebs Wear Tie-Dye

Trend sighting: Celebrities wearing tie-dye

Elle Fanning wearing Rodarte to the Punk Chaos To Couture red carpet gala at the Met, 2013 

Katy Perry, 2013

 LeAnn Rimes at LAX, 2013

DIY with these tie-dye products!

Visiting the Kliss Glass Studio

Happy Friday! Last night my husband and sons went with a whole group to see Iron Man 3. This left me with a free evening to savor. My girlfriend and her husband called and invited me to go to Art Hop, specifically the Kliszewski Glass studio. I've known Bob and Laurie 'Kliss' for several years through their work and I visit their studio at least twice per year when they open it up for special art shows, but I'd never visited it during an Art Hop. While Bob is the glass designer, his wife Laurie and her friend, Laurie Montgomery, make jewelry [Two Laurie Designs]. Laurie Montgomery also paints and sculpts (you can see her whimsical clay creatures, ceramic rattles and acrylic paintings below). There are several more artists to see, and if you've never been to a glass studio I would highly recommend it. Now is the perfect time, too. The Kliss studio is having an open house this weekend and next weekend, so you don't have to wait for the next Art Hop. Not only do you get to see all the beautiful artwork, you also can take a seat and watch Bob and his team of glass artists make the pieces.

 [Laurie Kliss of 2 Lauries, below. Bob is to the left.]