Winter not only restricts fashion, to wearing thick sweaters for months on end, it also inspires it! Like Canada, fashion in Helsinki, Finland is full of boots, coats, and warm hats! I found this crazy website HEL LOOKS, which features tons of photographs of street fashion in Helsinki. It was started as a hobby project, but progressed, and now they have been taking pictures in clubs and on the streets of Helsinki for the past two years. Here is a sample of some of the great wears on HEL LOOKS...



They also feature a little blurb about each person they photograph, usually telling what inspires them in their fashion, so this is a great site for any fashion-enthusiast.

Also visit Jacqui Oakley's website. I absolutely love her illustrations! Her portraits are amazing, and I also love her one illustration of bugs. Her work is so grainy, and colourful, and nice!

Now you can buy art not only because you love it, but for a good cause as well. At pretty:darn:swell, they have a gallery full of artists' prints for sale. When viewing each artwork, you can see which selected charity the proceeds will be going to from that sale. Their mission is to raise money for charitable organizations and to promote emerging artists. Sounds good to me! Here is one print from their gallery. It is laura e. horning's 'the blackbird's migration'.

In Canadian Art magazine (winter 2006) there is an article on Evan Lee and his scanner pictures. He sets up still-lifes and uses his scanner as a means to photograph his still-lifes. The effects are somewhat reminiscent of 17th Century Dutch still-life paintings, with beautiful shadows. He uses dollar store trickets, like tacky silk flowers and plastic bugs. And since I happen to have a scanner, tacky dollar store flowers and bugs, I decided to give this technique a whirl and this is the picture I ended up with.