{Above:Pothole gardens as seen on Oh Joy!}

I know. Shut up. It's been like two weeks since a Weekly Blogged. I'm sorry. There's been TOO MUCH eye candy between fashion week and my regular reading and the Olympics and just... GUH. So here. Here's what overwhelmed me in the weeks gone by. Maybe next week I can get back to a more regularly scheduled posting schedule. Also, starting Illustration Friday. (JUST. SO. BUSY!)

Floralia and anthropology

It must be Spring, because flowers were all over the blogs this past week. Which is weird considering the week before was the Fall 2010 fashion week.

Cabinets of Curiosity on TeenAngster.

Gene Bauer's Botanical Serigraphs on CRAFT. Absolutely to die for.

DIY Test Tube Vase on Design*Sponge. Totally cute and super easy to do.

We Like It Wild: Daffodil Hill was one of like, five posts on daffodils I saw this week. I think Spring Fever has hit. Also on D*S.

Bright Bazaar teaches you about accessorize with flowers.

Non-floral fun and necessary reading

I didn't actually set out to write a post about all the floral blog happenings; it just happened! BUT! As I said before this is a major catch-all of the last two weeks. Here's some non-floral fun to get you through the weekend, if you're not into that.

IndieFixx is hosting a Logo Design Competition. How fun!

Decor8 gives us a nice round-up of photography product styling tips & tricks.

The Handmade Marketplace book launched, as seen on D*S and the Black Apple official insider blog.

gorgeous papercuts abound on Twig & Thistle. Oh, and you'll like these if you liked that: Paperleaf eyelashes on DesignCrush. WANT.

Fabulous art from Amber Albrecht spotted on Drawn!.

Cassia posted a gorgeous butterfly collection of photos. If you weren't convinced that bloggers are telling us Spring is coming, go here now.

And I have no more time to go through my shared items today. If you'd rather keep up with my readings over there, just add it to your feed reader. Enjoy!

I know it's been quiet on the blogging front this week; I've been head down into a lot of detailed design work at the day job and then — despite that I loathe NBC's Vancouverage — spending a lot of my evening watching the 2010 Olympic Games and trying to catch up on orders, slowly but surely. It's certainly not for a lack of things to post about, the least of which being new lotions in the Etsy shop. But...ah...where does one find time?

The nice thing about my day job right now is that it forces me to do a lot of the work I longed to do at other day jobs but couldn't; either for branding guidelines or general SLA political nonsense. I've never proclaimed to be an artist, by the way; sure, I can kind of draw manga and I can hack together artwork when needed (like the above), but I've always had kind of a chip on my shoulder about what is "art" and what is "design" and that I am squarely, surely, definitively, a designer. I don't know where this mentality came from.

Maybe it came from having so many friends in high school and college who actually paint or make models or did fantastic 3-D animation that put my manga comics to shame; or really, folks who did anything besides zines, book jackets, and publishing layouts (how I began my design days). Wherever it came from, I want it to go away.

For one, I want to get better at doing everything from the ground up; in this digital day and age it's so easy to turn to Illustrator and just hit "Live Trace" and call it our own. I miss the feel of ink on my fingers and the feel of a tangible piece of art I created. Oddly, I went in search of tangibility in perfume. But now I want my art back.

For two, I'm stuck at work most days with a Wacom tablet staring me in the face begging to be abused, and so I doubt I'll get much into the pen & ink art for awhile, but something has to give and I've got to quit being scared of this so-called art. I need to just give into temptation and make something. I will only get better if I begin. I will only get worse if I let go of it all.

I'll be on the hunt for inspiration and definitely looking for suggestions. Because art shouldn't be something that I do just because a client requested it; it should be a part of my daily routine. (Or if not daily, then perhaps every Friday.)

Time to get your masks on! To celebrate Mardi Gras (yeah, I know, I'm a day or two behind this year), here's a small round-up of awesome mask photos and mask-related items for you to feast on. Enjoy.

Above: Bunny Girl on Kingdom of Style.

Tuesday's Girl: Miki on sfgirlbybay.

I've only seen one of these in my life, ever — in a tiny, absolutely to-be-forgotten gas station on I-5 North somewhere between Portland and Tacoma. I had gone down to Portland for an art class with Jill Bliss and to see some cousins one weekend when, upon stumbling home, I came across one of these in the dingiest no-good gas station bathroom ever (and I would know, but that's another story).

This particular quarter-prompted whiffer machine was supposedly dispensing Chanel no. 5 or CK One, depending on your choice of pull-lever. I popped in a quarter and chose CK One. I can't verify the efficacy of the fragrance because frankly, I couldn't smell much other than gas-station-bathroom after leaving. The above image, as seen on aromastiches' blog last week (I have mine translated into English by Google Reader, FYI), is much, much nicer than the I-5 North one.

Seattle isn't exactly known for its street food. At least, not in the way that Portland has embraced its food vending carts that are seriously everywhere downtown and usually delicious, where you can get everything from vegan Thai to greasy Mexican. But I had the fortune of experiencing two Seattle street food institutions this weekend: Taco Truk (though I'm still not sure if it was THE Taco Truk from Eastlake/Stranger fame) and Tandoozy, a tandoori street food vendor at Seattle's Fremont Sunday Fair.

"We wanted to do one thing and do it really well," said Craig, the maker of Tandoozy's outside grills and fine, fine chicken tikka, after explaining that they founded Tandoozy as an experiment and upon request from a friend.