Things that make me sad for mankind....

I feel I am a fairly optimistic person. I try to always see the good side of people and situations. But every so often you see or hear something that causes your faith in people to die a little bit. Here are somethings I've seen and experienced that make me sad for mankind....

BridalPlasty Reality TV


I mean come on people!! Brides to be compete to win free plastic surgery for their wedding!! So wrong on so many levels! Who comes up with this crap!? Who actually sat in a room and said..."Wedding shows are huge, but lets have them compete for something other than the wedding of their dreams....let's change how they look permanently!"  Ugh. I mean I'm all for makeovers and believe that on your wedding day you should feel like the most beautiful woman in the room. But to get plastic surgery....I mean that's a way too extreme makeover. Aren't you altering what your partner fell in love with in the first place?! Not only should the people who came up with this concept be tarred and feathered, but the willing participants of such a show deserve a good mocking from the likes of Conan or Chelsea Handler. I hope this show doesn't see the light of day!

Jersey Shore

Ok, I must admit I've seen the show....not some of my proudest moments. It has it's entertaining moments. What makes me sad is the pop cultural phenomenon it's become. I am sad that the cast members get paid $30,000 an episode to act like fools. I dislike the fact that they are considered...."celebrities." The whole 'I'm rich and famous, but I don't really do anything' trend....is wearing thin on my patience. It's almost encouraging the younger generation that if you act like a fool or a slut, you too could be rich and famous.

Parents who don't say...

I've seen these parents with their kids, coddling them. Letting them get away with things for fear of saying 'No.' God forbid your children have boundaries. They are afraid to say the word 'No' because it supposedly affects their self esteem or something...ok great job parental units, you will have very confident sociopaths. They let their kids run a muck in public, without so much as a single effort to gain control over them. Oh, you've seen them....in restaurants....they're the kids that are allowed to freely run around a busy restaurant like it's a playground. Heavy trays, hot plates, sharp corners, slick floors...sure it's totally ok for your kids to run, skip and jump around. Oh and please let them spill their entire meal all over the floor, it's ok, because you don't have to clean it up! I think that if a child isn't able to behave for a public meal then maybe McD's is as fine of dining as you get until they can....they have a play area.


These are a few things that make me sad for mankind.....what about you?

Bad Face Day

Everyone is familiar with those crazy bad hair days. The days where you just wake up to a nest of hot mess. You shower, wash and condition your hair. You dry and try to style it, but nothing. Nothing you do to it seems to make it look any better. Well, I'd take a bad hair day over a bad face day any day of the week, thank you very much!

Bad face day? What's that you ask....well it's simply those days that you wake up and look in the mirror and startle yourself, then groan.Yesterday, I had a bad face day.

I'm pretty confident in my make up skills, I enjoy having fun with make up, using pretty eyeshadows and glosses. But no amount of make up could do anything for my face that day. I had two little, lovely visitors on my nose and dark circles under my eyes. I put on my make up for the day and found that my face still didn't look right :(. So I wiped it off and started again....and again, and again...oh ya, and again. It took a great deal of self control to not throw my foundation across the room.  Oh and did I mention I used three different kinds of make up...ya, three. Nothing I did seemed to make my face look any better. I felt like I was going crazy....and maybe I was. The only reason I stopped was that it was going to make me late for work. Then you leave the house, self conscious about your face for the rest of the day...convinced that everyone is noticing each, obvious to you, blemish. You're sure they are all commenting about how much make up you've caked on to hide everything....you're sure they care. Then you realize how self indulgent and vaguely narcissistic it is of you to think that anyone cares a smidgen about your face, so now you're bummed that you were so self involved....and the sky starts falling all around you and the beginning of the end spirals all around you!!!! Dum dum dummmm! 

That's the curse of the bad face day.

Headbands and haircombs!

I'm just a little in love with my new headbands! I make them with vintage fabric and vintage jewelry pieces. I find creating a unique piece so satisfying! After I've finished one, I look at it and am like "you are one of a kind." (We can discuss the healthiness of talking to inanimate objects at another time...)
The pieces I've posted onto my Facebook page have gotten a really positive response! Now, they just need to SELL.....

These are just a few that I have photos of currently. I have many more made and more on the way!!!

I've also started my bridal line....I haven't gotten as much done as I would have liked, but I'm working on it! I'm currently working on a couple of wedding pieces for this month, and here are some photos of what I've already done!

This is a photo of the bridesmaid combs and earrings I did for my friend Sadeeka's wedding 6/26/10.

These are some bridesmaid earrings in purple, for sale now on my Etsy page!

I wish I had more hands and more time to make everything I want to make!

Idea floods and inspiration

I live in Portland, Oregon. And as you may already know....it rains here. So far, we are having an uncommon amount of rain. Usually by June, we have pretty great weather. Well, this year not so much. Today, June 10, was surprisingly rainy. It just started pouring and pouring. It only lasted a good hour or two, but the damage was done. My basement flooded.

Why am I talking about the weather?! The weather today is like my inspiration.

Last night, I couldn't sleep....I had so many ideas. I thought about felt and different things I could make with it like necklaces and earrings. I thought about wire and new ways of wrapping and using different colors. I thought of advertising, new ways to advertise. It was like a torrential rain of ideas, so forceful I couldn't sleep. I had to write it down, I had to try it and as a result I went to bed at 4am. Have you ever felt just so flooded by inspiration and full to the brim of ideas, that you are literally itching to get some sort of materials in your hand and just get it all out!? That you almost tremble because you can't get the ideas out fast enough. I imagine that's what crack does to you.

Craft is my crack.

Lately, I've been finding inspiration and forming ideas from a variety of different places. Sometimes I'll see a color combination on a mannequin in a clothing store and I will remember those colors and proceed to buy beads, felt, ribbon and fabric in those colors. I also get inspired by books. Living in Portland, a great resource that I enjoy using is the Powell's Bookstore on 10th and Burnside downtown. I believe it's the largest bookstore in the country or on the west coast...something like that....anywho, it is a place to sell your books and buy new and used books. You can find me in the Blue Room which features a lot of fiction novels which can often influence my fabric choices by inspiring me to pick romantic looking patterns...I tend to find a lot of romantic fiction in this room, the  Purple Room with the historical books which just speaks to my passion for vintage pieces and incorporating those components  into my contemporary accessories makes me feel as though a piece of history is always with me, or the Orange Room with the craft books where you can learn new techniques. I have recently purchased 2 books there. The first book is a great guide to starting your handmade craft business, I really wish I would have seen it a year ago. It's called Handmade Marketplace: How to Sell your Crafts Locally, Globally and Online By Kari Chapin.

This book is great because it includes a lot of first hand experience from successful artists selling their craft. It touches on every aspect of business and promotion. The other book I found is called Make Your Own Costume Jewelry by Jutta Lammer. It was published in 1964. The book features diagrams and pictures with instructions for beaded necklaces. Most of the necklaces are woven and multi-stranded. I like it because it's a small book only 57 pages and it's straight to the point. Most of the pics are black and white. I'm excited to try one of their techniques.

I have also been inspired by fellow artists that I've met doing craft shows (get to know your neighbors these are great networking opportunities). Recently at the Alberta Art Hop, I met a fellow designer Haidee of Artsy Fartsy Mind (her blog is www.artsyfartsymind.blogspot.com). She too works with wire, and she inspired me to take more risks with my wire work. I tend to stick to what I know works, but after talking to her for awhile and checking out her pieces I wanted to run home and start messing around with some wire! We met for coffee the other day and just tossed ideas back and forth. It's nice talking to someone who does what you do and understands because they are trying to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish. We came up with some great ideas! I see jewelry parties and craft swaps in our future!!

Basically, you never know when inspiration will find you and sometimes it is almost overwhelming when it floods your head just like my flooded basement. It's easy to get swept away, to want to do everything right then and there. When this happens to me, I make sure to write my ideas down (I always have an idea book in my purse and beside my bed so when it hits I'm ready) and then I take a step back, prioritize what I'm currently working on and finish that before I start something else. Sometimes I get around to those ideas, and sometimes I don't. But having them written down for, well I would say rainy day...but for the purpose of this blog let's say an inspiration drought, gets the storm going because one idea dropping is usually the first of many.

These are just some things that inspire me....what inspires you?

The Beginning of Lovely Pretty Things

Hello!!!!!! My name is Cat Prospero and I have an accessory line called Kendi. I create fashionable jewelry and accessories. You can purchase Kendi items at http://www.kendibycatprospero.etsy.com . Etsy allows you to pay securely and with confidence via Paypal. New things are posted all the time, so check back often!

You can also check out my info web page with a product gallery and event calendar at http://www.kendistyle.webs.com.

Kendi Jewelry and Accessories can also be found on Facebook.

Phew, now all that plugging is done! Let me tell you about what the purpose of this blog is...I want this blog to serve not only as a promotional tool for my accessory line, I would like it to be a forum for craft in general. I will talk about local craft show experiences, new resources and tools I discover, new artists that I enjoy, and new techniques I'm learning. 

We can never have too many Lovely, Pretty, Things in our lives.