Graveyard Dirt

Comme des Garcons 2 is a play of light and shadows, inspired by the Japanese art of calligraphy. The light side of the fragrance create new aldehydes, orange, mandarin and magnolia. The black side is ink. This unusual alliance is followed by the sharp oriental composition of patchouli, labdanum, amber, vetiver, Chinese cedar and juniper. Just like the first fragrance, Comme des Garcons 2 is a fragrance for a personality regardless its sex. It was created in 1999. Notes: Aldehydes, Angelica, Tea, Mandarin Orange, Mate / Ink, Magnolia, Nutmeg, West Indian Bay, Coriander, Caraway, Cinnamon / Incense, Patchouli, Vetiver, Cedar, Amber, Labdanum

Despite having no prior experience of Comme des Garçons 2, I had an inexplicable feeling that I wasn't going to have much to say about it.

And I don't know, a two-sentence review doesn't really satisfy me. I don't feel I've adequately considered the scent; I've just confirmed that, hey, yo!, it's a perfume. So I've been indecisively circling this sample for a few weeks, occasionally singling it out, but never following through with testing it.

After the success of Black (quick update: husband sniffed, husband tested, husband smelled amazing, husband declared the perfume bottle-worthy), I thought I might have been a little uncharitable to Comme des Garçons 2 and finally gave the sample a place in the queue.

Apple peel and freshly laundered linens.

That's it. That's the review. I've got nothing else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean, I can go into detail about the apple peel and linens: definitely the skin of an apple, not the flesh (a big-ass by-product pile of an apple pie), and ironed linens still warm to the touch (a very authentic, clean-laundry smell, no bottle of lung-clogging fabric softener in sight).

Comme des Garçons 2 is pretty inoffensive, but at the same time it's just sort of…there.

🔥 RAFFLE 🔥 Win this altar piece for only $5! A Datura stramonium flower rises up from the tip of this triangular shelf to greet a Hexafoil surrounded by droplets of blood. Two serpents slither up the sides, symbolizing the rise of wisdom, energy, and protection, the very characteristics this shelf brings to any room. An eight-pointed gold star is painted on the top of the shelf along with two more blood droplets. To top it off, a luxurious green tassel hangs from the tip of the shelf, giving it more dimension and mirroring the Datura bloom. Good Luck!

Read more and enter the raffle here!

The first of the four designs from my 2022 Pride Line: Sacred Sappho, divine ancestor of women who love women.

Sappho, on the off chance that you don't know her, was a poet from the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, who lived and wrote in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. Her work was taught as a pinnacle of poetic skill for centuries, well into the Roman Empire, until - through a combination of censorship, neglect, and luck - it was lost to the ages. No contemporary biography survives, and we are left with mere scraps of her estimated 10,000 lines of poetry, but her work has been associated with sexual love between women since the Hellenistic period. Now, she and the island from which she came are virtually synonymous with queer women and their experiences.

The image is based on one of the few surviving images of Sappho, a black figure vase painting from the late 6th century BCE.

* Made of solid .925 sterling silver or shibuichi (an art metal alloy made of 3:1 copper:silver), yellow brass, or red bronze.

* Available as a coin, with an upeye for use as a pendant, or with three jump rings for use in a rosary-style necklace.

Each piece is hand-made to order in my home studio, with unique variations and defects as a result of the fabrication and casting process.

ca. 1860-70s, [hand tinted ambrotype  portrait of a women with her nine-string bango]

May I Give This Ukrainian Bread to All People in This Big Wide World, 1982, Maria Prymachenko

The Angelic Salutation

Wallpaper (circa 1939) by Gilbert Sackerman (American, active circa 1935).

Watercolour, graphite, and gouache on paperboard.