Etsy Awesomeness

I have been meaning for months to post the awesome work of an Etsy artist and her shop, Jhoeymonster which includes a variety of crafts including tiny, perfect cross stitch pieces featuring some 8-bit stars.

I bought a Tiny Boo Cross Stitch from her this past summer and I have it up on my fridge, but I am planning on putting it along with some patches on the perfect geek bag, once I find such a bag.

So cute!

Recently I also bought and received two pieces from Neisse on Etsy. Each is the anime version of an awesome character, in this case Codex from "The Guild" and Leela from "Futurama". It was hard to part with the Leela, but I gave her to one of my friends who loves Futurama (remember the Bender that I helped build, it was with her!).

Codex and Leela are so adorable as anime characters!

I set up Bender to surprise my friend when she came over.

Here's Leela's new home. Look at all the purple. Perfect!

Wedding Dice and Anime Bookmarks!

You may recall I was in a wedding two weekends past. Well, since it had a lovely Fall theme and I am celebrating the season I wanted to share with you some of the amazing favors that were given out!

The bride and groom had custom dice made with a Fall theme:

There were also bookmarks with a comic book/manga theme. I blacked out the details from the bride and groom.

There was also a bottle of Tequila floating around with a glass Tiki god inside of it.... Whew! Fun, piratey times were had. Arrrrr!

Here are the dice in action with a Dragon Chow dice bag!

It's Fishnet Friday!

This is the title that hooked me into reading manga, Nana. I had been watching anime and attending anime club showings for years. When I lived in China I improved my Chinese language skills by watching some of the animes like Conan (here in the US called Case Closed) which had an easy to understand Chinese dub. When it came to reading manga, however, I could never get into a story enough to really want to keep reading.

That all changed when I saw a curious sample magazine at Barnes and Noble called Shojo Beat. It was the free issuse 0 and I loved it enough to subscribe right then.

Nana was serialized in the magazine and then I started buying the graphic novels themselves. It's the story of two young women who share the same name and move to Tokyo on the same day. They meet on the train and then part ways, but collide together again when looking for an apartment to rent. The two become roommates and from there we experience a really amazingly told tale that falls under the realm of "everyday life" comics or "slice of life", but is always captivating to read.

Ok, so what about the fishnets! Nana Osaki is the dark haired one and she lives a very punk-rock life. She's often clad in fishnets like the ones to the right, or ripped up tights. Nana is a singer and part of her reason to move to Tokyo is musical, but the other part, the part hidden from Nana Komatsu (the second Nana), connects the two together.

Nana is also available in the US as an anime and has two live-action movie adaptations. In Japan this series is tremendously popular and has everything from a theme cafe where you can see Nana Osaki's dressing room to video games!

Here's the opening of the anime:

Tokidoki Thor

A good friend picked this delightful Thor t-shirt up for me in a comic shop hours from my home. I don't usually wear t-shirts that aren't black, but I'll be making an exception (or just wearing a black long-sleeve under it, ha!) for this piece of goodness.







Here's a view of the back. Since I love anything that is manga-style and I love American comics this is a fun mash-up of styles.

So, I guess it's T-shirt Tuesday around here! Although, since it's Thor related I debated posting this on a Thursday, since that would be more in keeping with our hero....


Since we are on the subject of Thor and Marvel I want to also mention the excellent one-shot comic about Sif. If you haven't read it yet check it out. The art and storytelling is wonderfully dark. The Sif one-shot is part of Marvel's focus on women in comics in 2010 and I couldn't be happier with what they have done so far this year to spotlight women in comics. As a comic book reader for now over two decades it's exactly the kind of move I think the industry needs.

Check out Sif at http://marvel.com/catalog/?id=14267