moselle: chapter the second

The rain came down in big gloppy drops and she saw no end in site.

The cab driver was middle eastern and smelled of curry and bitter tobacco. They didn't speak. She watched the drops slide down the window leaving snail trails. Her feet hurt more today than usual. The bills felt moist in her hands. She looked down at them and wondered how many miles they had traveled before landing in her possession.

Such an extravagance. A cab ride.

She paused before fitting the key into the lock. She put her ear to the door. She listened, but heard nothing.

Alas, her little finches were fast asleep, cuddled up on the far side of the perch leaving the apartment silent and uninviting. She opened the sealed note she had found slipped under her door and read it while she kicked off her shoes.

Miss Moselle,


Please note that all tenants are now required to personally transport their own trash to West side of the building. Fritz will no longer be making rounds to gather trash, he will, however, continue to collect glass milk and soda bottles.


As a courtesy to Mrs. Havenbell on the second floor, please do not ring the bell for entry past the hour of nine p.m.


Thank you,


Management

She sat on the chaise next to the window with her legs curled up underneath her.  The room was fairly stark. Decorating on a beginners salary would take time. The damask wall paper would have to wait.  But she had her birds and her chaise. And now she had a warm bowl of macaroni and cheese which was a guilty pleasure from her childhood.  

And it made her miss her mother. Her mother who painted every wall in their family home gold and adorned them with blue and white Delft plates.  Oh how she had hated her mother's style growing up. But now, well now she would give anything to spend a day in her mother's warm kitchen, watching her  prepare a banketstaaf, sipping peppermint tea.

And she realized something there in her empty apartment, on her chaise next to the window with the rain drops softly pattering.

Her mother's style is true. Never changing. Steady and welcoming. It radiated directly from the heart of a gentle woman with love to give.  

The empty bowl and spoon sat on the chaise. The finches were waking, stretching their wings. 

The Delft tea cups her mother had given her were located and given a new home on the mantle. 

And she felt a little closer to home, a little more comfortable in her own skin.

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Need help creating a blog that has your true authentic style? We can help. 

Please visit Moselle Design Studios.

ruby bloom, pleased to meet you

Meet Ruby Bloom Samson. Ruby lives in brownstone in New York. She attends St. Mary's school for girls where she is learning Latin and pre-algebra. On Wednesdays, her mother takes her to ice skating lessons. After the lesson, she and her mother like to stop at their favorite Pizza place for a slice of pepperoni. They eat their pizza in Central Park and watch the swallows peck at the crumbs on the ground.


For her eighth birthday, Ruby's Uncle Walter bought her a dove. Ruby named her Sunday.  Sunday likes to chirp and chatter, especially when Ruby comes home from school.  Ruby's father likes to say that Sunday got her name because she talks all week long and twice as much on Sundays.

Please feel free to download Ruby and Sunday. They can be printed out any size you desire. After you have printed them on cardstock and colored them, you can laminate the entire sheet and then cut out each piece. You can cut off the tabs and use sticky strips.  You can also leave them unlaminated and use adhesive putty.

If you want your dolls to stand up, cut a square block around Ruby's feet. Cut two slits along the bottom of the block and slide in two little strips of paper.

I love to get photos of my dolls in use! Please send them!

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To download Ruby, simply click on the graphic. That will take you to Flickr. In the top left corner you will see a button that says "All Sizes". Click that and choose the size you want to download.


All paper dolls on Suaviloquy are free for download, however, if you use them for commercial purposes you will need to credit the source. That's little ol' me in case you were wondering.

scattered

I love this vase I recently bought from one of my all time favorite stores, Paper Source.  When I die, I would like my ashes scattered there. Sugar Daddy will have to do it on the sly. Maybe down his pant leg or something.

Oh don't be grossed out. That's what vacumns are for.

blue

Sugar Daddy has been gone and I find that I am becoming quite blue. The house is full of little bodies but it's oh so empty.  I have things to do every second of the day and yet I am bored. 

The hour I set aside to work in the studio while the babies slept was entirely unproductive.  Instead of working on a large order I have due next week, I spun slowing in my chair with my camera to my eye.  I focused here and there. I zoomed in on Finnigan's nose.

I thought about my husband, hard at work in some court room in the big bad city of Los Angeles.  I tried to picture what tie he might be wearing and I thought about how his hair brushes the tops of his ears. Salt and pepper sexy.

I listened to a little Johnny Cash. I pinched the fat on my stomache and assesed how long it will take me to run it off.  I picked some red paint off my desk. And then the Little Mister started grunting, and like clock work the Bird called out to me and that was it. My time was over.

I'm feeling blue because life is a lot of hard work these days.

And if I have to be in the trenches, then I want Sugar Daddy with me.

He's got my back.

The studio through my lens today:

late, but oh so magnificent

I'm a paper person. Seriously. There's a name for my condition. It's papyrophilia. Just one of my many neuroses.

I revel in beautiful handmade linen papers and Japanese oragami paper. I'll buy a book even if I don't want to read it if it has beautiful end papers.

It's really quite out of control. But what is there to do? I'm too tired these days for any self introspection anyway.

So needless to say, I take announcements and invitations very seriously.

It took forever to finally get Henry's birth announcement finished, but here it is.

I think they turned out magnificent.

Photographer Siobhan Ridgway

Taken using a Mamiya Twin Lens on black and white.

Letterpress onto 220 lb. 100% cotton paper by Page Stationary

And now, a word about the photographer.

And when I say photographer, I mean it in the truest sense.

Bear with me here. I'm going to express an opinion. Scary, I know. What comments will I get? The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the population at large.

Having said that, I want to say this: Let's call a spade a spade shall we? I mean, it seems that there are a kabillion people running around these days calling themselves "photographers". To that I say, ummmmm. Sorry but no.

I get compliments on the photos I post here on my blog and to my Flickr page. And when I get those compliments, I feel inclined to tell whomever is the complimentor, that I am not a gifted photographer, just a girl who has a good eye for composition and knows how to use Photoshop and I think this is true of most people taking photos today.

Digital cameras have become so incredibly good, they are almost fail safe. And what the camera dosen't take care of, Photoshop can.

And then there are little gems like Siobhan Ridgway.  Siobhan took the photo of Henry with an old camera she most likely bought on ebay or found at an estate sale. She came to my house and found a room with the kind of lighting she wanted and she took a few shots. Not five hundred. Remember, this is old school. She used specialized square format film that she loaded one exposure at a time.

Siobhan shooting Henry (These photos are totally Photoshopped)

She did not use Photoshop or even crop. What you see is all her.

Think about it. When was the last time you saw a photo that was totally untouched?

When I meet Siobhan I was a little intimidated. First of all, she's beautiful. A natural kind of beauty. She used to live in New York and shoot for fashion magazines. She showed me her portfolio which included some tintypes she had shot last Summer.

That night I dreamt about them. No joke.

They take my breath away.

A computer screen doesn't do these justice. It doesn't allow for the shiny nature of the tin or the weight of each photo when you hold it in your hand.

Siobhan lives in Southern California. You can see her tintypes in person at the Del Mar Fair or by appointment. You can see more of her work on her website, Siobhan Photography.

go towards the light mr. chirpy

 

Meet Mr. Chirpy by Secondsister

Mr. Chirpy flew in from who knows where two weeks ago.

If pressed to speculate, I would say he is probably from one of the Bible Belt states like Alabama or Mississippi where people really like to talk. Also, I have detected a slight twang to his vernacular.

Mr. Chirpy is single and unsatisfied. It's hard to form relationships when you travel as much as he does. And then there's the extra ten pounds he's been carrying, no doubt from eating on the road all the time. And also there is his awkward bumbling nature to take into account.

My best guess is that Mr. Chirpy heard about the large population of immigrants here in Southern California. No need to go all the way to Asia to find a mate. There are plenty of lookers migrating up and down the West Coast. Surely he could find a partner here. A little Latina maybe?

He could teach her American culture. She could teach him Spanish.

As my luck would have it, Mr. Chirpy took leave of his normal life to take up residence in my ornamental plumb tree. It has been very unpleasant for me to say the least.

Freed from his regular responsibilities, Mr. Chirpy has thrown himself full force into the night life of San Diego County. He's become a real night owl, a full fledged party animal, that one.

He gets things going around ten and he doesn't drag his pudgy little body back to the nest until the sun crests the horizon.

All through the midnight hours he serenades. He cat calls. He uses his entire repertoire to lure his little senorita.

I've come to hate Mr. Chirpy with all my being.

And although I have always been repulsed by the very idea of owning a gun, I'm a little tempted.

I think a b.b. gun would be just the thing. A few shots in the air, maybe one in his general direction, should be enough to scare this chatty squatter off my land.

But the problem is, not being a gun person myself, the problem is that I'm not a good shot.

And something might happen. Yes, I think something might accidentally happen.

So I want you all to know, dear readers, if something were to happen, if a bullet were to find its way to Mr. Chirpy's vocal cords, I would dash out of the house straight away (right after I found some plastic gloves of course), and hold Mr. Chirpy in my hands as he gasps his last breath.

And I would whisper softly in his ear, "Go towards the light Mr. Chirpy. Paradise awaits."

score one for the babies

Yesterday kicked my trash to Idaho and back. By nightfall I was a reeking mess. Score one for the babies.

But let it be put to record that I did my best. I think I read somewhere that the effort is what really matters.

Here's the proof:

This is Birdie's third outfit and second ruined hairstyle of the day.

And this is exactly how she acted all. day. long. That's mischief, my friends, mischief.

Don't judge her because of her bottle habit. She's had a rough few months, you know, losing her baby status with the Little Mister showing up and all. How is she supposed to give up the drink with her brother tipping it back left and right? As her sponsor, I had to support her decision not to go cold turkey at this juncture.

I took more photos of peonies, because I'm simply crazy for them.
And I posted a few more pieces to the Secondsister shop. That means I accomplished something right?

Today I'm taking both babies to get vaccinations. 

And the band played on...

regarding moselle

"Style is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward" -Robert Frost

The man behind the desk asked her a simple question and yet her mind raced and stumbled and she wondered where to begin.

"Yes,and what is your personal sense of style Miss?"

"Well, I...I am, I mean I like, which is to say, I gravitate towards things, or rather, items, that say, well not "say" in a literal way but in a figurative way, that say well...this."

And she laid her well loved album gingerly on the desk and turned it to face the man.

"Miss Moselle?" he asked bewildered by this strange answer to his stock question.

"This is me, well not me, but everything I love. Photos and things I've collected over the years..." Her voice trailed off.

The man looked down at the album and tentatively opened the first page to a new world.

1. Untitled, 2. yellow, 3. if wishes were horses, 4. LULALAND, 5. books, 6. Untitled, 7. Swedish "slagbaenk", 8. WINDMILL, 9. version II, 10. Untitled, 11. 1800s Lettering Sketchbook, image 14, 12. vintagebird02, 13. Yale Joel for LIFE, 14. Untitled, 15. one letter - M, 16. card letter o, 17. Door detail, 18. E, 19. L, 20. L on a door, 21. E & ivy, 22. whidbey., 23. untitled, 24. untitled, 25. tim walker dip, 26. suitcases, 27. flapper - Ziegfeld Girl 4, 28. isabelle, 29. yellow door "Moss Norway", 30. knitted dress, 31. made some boxes, 32. undeniably, she felt cornered., 33. Untitled, 34. photo3, 35. art wall

Moselle Design

spankin new

New month!

New jewelry collection!

New iMac?

I hope so.

Please visit the Secondsister shop. I will be loading new jewelry into the shop over the next week or so. I really want that new Mac. I'm saving up like a little kid who wants a bike. It's old school but it is uber satisfying. Help a sister out and buy some jewelry would ya? 

hello, my name is moselle

There something I haven't told you yet.

It's been a quasi secret for the last few months.

It's nearly killed me to keep my mouth shut. You know how excitable I am over all my creative ventures.

Introducing Moselle.

She's a little website design company that we just launched this past weekend at the Casual Blogger Conference. And speaking of that, if you missed it this year, I'm so very sorry for your loss. Hopefully you will make it next year. My condolences.

What's that you ask? Who's the "we" that did this launching? Lemme tell ya.

We are a pastiche*. We are a group of artists and designers and geeky computer geniuses that came together with a big idea.

We want to beautify the world of web design. We want to put individual personality into web sites and blogs. We want to hear about you and what you are all about. And then we want to create you, in website form.

Oh, and we want really good snacks at our company meetings.

Lately people have been personally contacting me about doing custom illustrations for a web based business or blog. After I get over the shock that someone out there actually wants to do something cool with my doodles, I do the macaraina in my living room which in turn causes the Boy to say, "You're weird Mom."

If you are one of these very kindhearted, if not somewhat crazy, people who want me to illustrate for you, please know that if you hire Moselle to beautify your place on the web you will have me at your beck and call, sketching away. You want a scottie dog- done. A fat lady with a pie- done. A naked mud flap girl? Um, just who do you think I am anyway? I do have standards, contrary to popular belief. For shame.

I created a new flickr group called, of course, "Pastiche". I want it to be a place of reference for inspiration and collaboration. A spring board for ideas. Please click on over and upload photos of your personal style. I personally want to see who you are.

Okay here's the deal. We want to help you, yeah you, reading this. If you dream of a blog or website that represents you and your personality we want to hear from you. Like, we really want to hear from you.


Contact us. You won't be disappointed.

* Pastiche: noun 1. a literary, artistic, or musical composition made up of bits from various sources; potpourri 2. a jumbled mixture; hodgepodge 3. the coolest freakin' word in the English language