“Happen’s Toy Lab is a unique outreach of Happen, Inc. that allows children (ages 6 and up) to create their own toys from our massive selection of “recycled” toy parts. Choose any seven pieces, then fit and attach the parts with the help of our specially-trained assemblers. In less than an hour you will have invented your very own, one-of-a-kind-in-the-whole-wide-world toy!”

Even broken toys deserve to be happy! A company with an allaround great message, encouraging kids to be creative & recycle. This new toy called the ‘Weirdosaur’, was invented by Mason, 6 years old, who reports “He can grow trees and crush rocks.”

It almost feels wrong putting up this post, as my first preference to recycling children’s books is to give them away (to family, goodwill, or freecycle). BUT, that being said, sometimes kids books don’t last the distance to being acceptable as second hand, and the inside pages can be ripped & crayoned upon to the point that you wouldn’t want to give them away…but they could make wonderful birdhouses as you can see from Danny Seo’s simple green living blog!

“I headed to my local craft store and picked up some unfinished bird houses for about $4 each. Then I headed to my local Goodwill store, where I first dropped off some donations and then I headed inside to the book section to pick up vintage books. I’m amazed at how many old and wonderful things can be found at Goodwill; I found vintage Danny & The Dinosaur books along with many others for very little money. Anyway, this project couldn’t be any simpler: just decoupage pages all over the birdhouse (I chose a high gloss finish glue) and glue the book’s jacket onto the roof. Voila! Storybook birdhouse.”

We spent the Australia Day long weekend camping at our favourite spot along the Murray River here in SA…Kataparoka’s Booky Cliff. I thought it would be fun to paint the yellow & red cliffs across from our campsite in 3 parts. I don’t necessarily plan to hang them together on the wall, maybe two of them together and the third somewhere else in our place…but it’s kind of fun painting a long landscape broken up. I spent about 3 hours painting on red primed canvas…had to stop as it was so windy I was contending with gum leaves & sand sticking to the wet oils. As it is, all the painted areas have a fine layer of sand over it! (Read on …)

I just completed another commission for a Shell Mosaic (You can see my previous mosaic here.) These are a lot of fun to do, as beachcombing is as much fun as putting together the final artwork. (Read on …)

This poster is officially on my wish-list of Star Wars gear!

“It’s comforting to know, that no matter what you do in life it will never be as awesome as this picture.”

(found here)

Kublai Khan Mongolian Barbeque is just up the street from me, I already wanted to go there for dinner but this illustration on their website sealed the deal for me, it’s just awesome! Enjoy your BBQ!

LuLu.com provides print-on-demand facilities…much the same as Greeting Card Universe, or CafePress, you have complete control over your “shop” and have no up front fees, but you only make royalties off what you sell…so it’s great if you’re wanting to print a low run of calendars or children’s books. Check out my (relatively) new 2007 Season’s Calendar available at LuLu.com.

2007 Calendar

“Statistically, it is extremely unlikely that you are the best at anything, or even in the top ten per cent. Success, like bad breath, is something other people have.”

– Dr. Neil Manson, Little Book of Crap No.2

I found these images by Chris Jordan haunting…

“This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone….Statistics tend to feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with [them]….”

Cans Seurat, 2007 | Digital C print, 6×7 feet
“Depicting 106,000 aluminum cans, equal to the number of cans consumed in the US every thirty seconds.”

Partial zoom:

At full size:

Four new card designs added to my print-on-demand card shop at GreetingCardUniverse.com/HeatherCastles

(Note : All card designs at my GCU shop are available for licensing / sale, they are not restricted to GCU use)