More Things I Will Always Be Obsessed With

Beetles.

The little beetle painting hanging up in the apartment, from Etsy seller Christie Chase.

Amazing shed beetle wing necklace, available here. 

Cute little beetle knob in happy colors, available here.

Bottega Veneta clutch with amazing weaved beetle detail, no longer available. 

Yes, really. Maybe it's the Victorian in me. I am not one for sciences like chemistry or physics, but natural history? I'm all about it. This semester I will be working with the Natural History Museum on a grant-writing project and I'm already excited about having the built-in excuse of already being on the property to wander the museum after meetings. While I could love any old dinosaur bones or giant geodes (and I do), I have a soft spot for beetles-the way some have horns and resemble rhinos, the metallic green ones I've randomly found on the sidewalk even though they look far too exotic to be city dwellers, how they can be giant without being disgusting like other bugs once they get so large you see all of their creepy details. Now, all beetles are not created equally; some are indeed just ugly. And larvae? Make me want to scream like a little girl. But the fancy ones, they let me forget all about their less attractive brethren. Those beetles are little self-contained units of everything that's cool about the natural world.


Glitter.

Confetti eggs with tutorial from here.

Cake made with edible glitter, from this adorable Kate Spade commissioned video.

Okay, if I have to explain why glitter is worthy of obsession, we just cannot be friends. Seriously! Glitter is sparkly, it's glamorous, it's fun, and while it's a pain in the arse to clean up, somehow it's worth the trouble. Every single time. It's things like glitter that make me happy to be a girl.


Heath Ceramics.

A couple of years ago while on a trip up to San Francisco I discovered the Heath Ceramics factory over the bridge in Sausalito and took one of their Sunday morning tours. Hands down best thing I did on that trip, and I did lots of fun stuff. I don't want to sound like an over-dramatic hippie and say it was life changing, but...it was sort of life changing. There was this gorgeous tile with a so many shades of red it was like a volcanic eruption captured in ceramic. I decided right then that if I ever had the opportunity, I would have to have some of their tile in my home. That trip involved visits to two places with kilns, so I guess it was a bit of my ceramics love blooming and a bit a growing awareness of interior design (I had just moved out of my dad's before this trip and still in a decorating frenzy), but I still think about that factory with the amount of joy Henry must have felt when he was let loose in Willy Wonka's. It was just an added bonus that a few months after my Heath discovery they opened their Los Angeles outpost. During my first visit to that store Mark found his first apartment, right down the street, so you might say Heath is indelibly marked in my mind. Now that Mark has started seriously talking about getting a house I'm not obsessed with finding the perfect place, something in the Ivanhoe district or any of that-all I want is a cute little place with a shitty fireplace, bathroom, or kitchen for me to have the excuse to replace it with Heath tile! Fingers crossed.


All images of Heath tile from the Heath Ceramics website.
All uncredited images are from Tumblrs without original sources listed.