Unique LA Spring Show

Hello everybody,

just a quick reminder while a gather my stuff to set up my booth at Unique LA.

Head over to the Los Angeles Market Center this Saturday and Sunday (both days from 11am to 6pm) to score some truly "unique" (hehe) creations from local independent artists!

What you can expect: graphic tees, swimwear, jewelry, soap, paper goods, fashion, music (the famous recordstore: Amoeba!!!), gourmet food, free (yes, free!) drinks, amazing views over downtown LA, awesome people watching, etc.

Make sure to head over to my booth, #127 to check out my latest creations at low prices: everything will be under $35!

Don't miss out on this great opportunity to enjoy the growing local community.

Tickets are $10. Kids under 12 are free and if you say you come to see NIMO. you might get one of my ten free tickets, xx

Happy weekend everybody!!!

My Week In Pics

I haven't stopped this week. Most of you already know, but next weekend, April 24 & 25 is the next Unique LA show. An amazing design and gift show with 300 local vendors - and I'm one of them! Next week is my (very late and very needed) spring break, so I've been trying to shove everything on my "to do for unique" list into this week! And I almost succeeded!

I've been screen printing, drawing, sawing, hammering, tarnishing, bending, beading, sewing and cutting all week long! Wow. Now I'm exhausted!

Luckily enough I managed to squeeze in some fun:

A get-together with my girls - this time a laid back afternoon at home featuring cake! Yum.

A concert at the Troubadour: the australian band Karnivool - on the top of playlist these days! Right after "Diamond Eyes" the new Deftones single)

A forced time out in the sun (I locked myself out again)

New shoes!!! Yes. Converse. Again. Of course.

So, without further ado, the pictures!

New shoes and Karnivool live at the Troubadour

As American as it gets: shopping cart with cup holder and pancakes on sunday morning

My forced break in the sun. (I left my keys at home and had to wait for Mikki to return home)

Work: My retro tumbler (the cut out pieces are polished in soapy water and shot [nails and other metals]) and some silver rainclouds

More cut out pieces and my work bench

Signs for Unique LA: hand painted on mini canvases and hand screen printed on paper

Left: screen for my NIMO. banner. Right: printed muslin just cut our with my pinking shears

Detail of my banner (it features a giant copper Phoenix bird) and my sewing machine

TA-DAN: my pride and glory. The finished product hanging in the doorway.

The NIMO. Banner. You should come see it in person at Unique LA :)

Food is Good

Fresh produce from the Hollywood Farmers Market

Has it happened to you, that when you start getting information about something it suddenly seems to be everywhere? It has happened to me many times. The latest thing which appears to be following me everywhere I look is food. Not just any food, but good food. Healthy food, ecological food. Clean food.

It all started when Mikki and I watched two documentaries, the scary (in a "oh-my-god-you-can't-eat-anything-anymore" kind of way) Food Inc. and a very fascinating documentary Water, The Great Mystery, which focuses on how this vital fluid is actually affected by anything and everything that surrounds it. Trust me, after watching this docu, you'll be extra kind to your water!

Then I came across this link to Jamie Oliver's TED talk, and who hasn't been hearing about his Food Revolution!?

To top it all off I read something about buying fresh food from local farmers in a blog post. The idea is that you sign up on the CSA website, and for $20 a week you get a basket of fresh produce (fruit, veggies and herbs - eggs and meat can be ordered additionally). Basically it's a group of local farmers that contribute their products to these baskets. The contents varies every week. So once a week (saturday morning in our case) you head to a location (usually a parking lot), where you pick up your extremely fresh, organic food from your local farmers - all in one box - no extra packaging. You don't get to choose what you get, which forces you, in a very positive way, to eat a wide variety of food that is currently in season.

Needless to say, Mikki and I signed up for it the other day and we'll be picking up our first basket this saturday!

My Week In Pics

Where did the time go? It's been a week already and I'm one day late with my post!

Last week had three highlights. In chronological order they were

1. A meeting for all the Unique LA vendors at the Grammy Museum in downtown LA. Where Sonja, the organizer gave a fun presentation and lots of posters and postcards to spread the word about the Spring Show, April 24 &25 (I'll be sharing booth #127 with Miss Scuba)

2. Saturday was my weekly meeting with the girls (do you do something like that? If not, I definitely recommend it). We headed over to Melrose for some windowshopping, peoplewatching and an awesome lunch at the Blu Jam Café. I sipped my Chai Latte extra carefully because I was enjoying the milk-foam-art so much :). Oh, and the sandwich was the Chicken Curry on Ciabatta bread - yum!

3. To finish off the week I had a table at the Pasadena Art and Design Market in oldtown. It's a biannual market where students from the famous Art Center and the local College (that's my category) can sell their art. It was a cold and gray day, but people still came out and shopped quite a bit! Thank you Pasadenians, for supporting your local students :)

I ended up so exhausted that I went to bed really early, and forgot all about blogging, sorry.

The rest of the week was filled with food, jewelry making, lots of coffee from my new french press, and wearing my bangles after a long winter break!

Hope you had a great week, too

xx Naomi

SS Fashion Wishlist ;)

Brace yourselves, here comes the girl-post! It's all about fashion :)

The thing is that I feel bad for not posting anything this week, but I'm not really feeling creative.

It's not like I didn't have enough things to work on, creating more of my customer's favorites for the upcoming shows (The Pasadena Art and Design Market this sunday and Unique LA on April 24 & 24), working on the signage for those events (I have an awesome idea, if I dare say so myself), designing online ads to promote my little etsy store (I'm sorry I have been ignoring you for far to long!) and redesigning the shopnimo twitter home page (now that I'm tweeting more!)...

But instead of doing any of the above, I keep thinking about spring and summer and how desperately I'm in need of new clothes! I keep thinking about tomorrow: I'm headed to Melrose with friends, which is always very inspiring, even if you don't buy anything. Truth is, that I've become more and more picky with clothes, a fact that I blame on taking fashion classes. Now every single tee is lifted and studied, judged upon: could I do this myself, is it worth the price, was it sewn sloppily, etc...

Anyways, I've been wasting time, err... browsing the web, looking for spring summer outfits that more or less fit my style (some more than others).

I am a very "black on black" person in general, which is obviously most noted when you open my closet. To me anything (from bras to shoes, over bags, coats, and tees) just looks so much better in black! The only thing I adore is colorful socks and undies :) Anyways, what I'm trying to get to is that I'm trying to insert more color in my outfits, not too much, but a hint here and there. Let's see how that goes :)

I hope I didn't bore you out of your mind by now. I hope you enjoy the pics.

What's on your SpringSummer Wishlist?

My summer outfits always include a version of the plastic flip flop.

New on my list: grey havaianas

Oh and what would my outfits be without a pair of these all stars?

Luckily I live in a climate where I can wear them year-round (with varying sock-thickness) unless it's pouring.

I'm still not a huge fan of the TOMSshoe design, but they are growing on me and I fell in love with the idea behind it. (Buy a pair and TOMS sends another pair to a poor kid)

I saw these two beauties at american apparel. Visualize them with boyfriend jeans, messy hair and in case of the top one, with a tiny bolero jacket.

I really want a boyfriend jean. I especially like these not too cropped ones from jcrew.

Hmmm... I'm not so sure about this one from urban outfitters. Maybe I could make it my own, with plenty of accessories, the pink all stars and messy hair?

I'm frequenting the same craft shows as Salt Swimwear. All their pieces are made in downtown LA and named after girls.

I love the Naomi Top with the Helena Bottom (My full name is Naomi Elena Plange - how fun is that!?!)

These have been on my wishlist for way to long. I love the baggy pant look. I already ordered some black (obviously!) thai fisherman pants. Let's see what they're like when they get here!

I spotted these two dresses over at anthropologie. I'm not so sure about the pattern panel in the first one, but I loved the second one. Too bad that they're so expensive. I guess I'll try them on anyways to see if they look that nice in person :)

My Week In Pics

Spring sunshine through the moonroof of our car

Flower Power!

This was a week of many firsts. And as today is easter sunday and we had a brunch over at our place, a lot of my firsts were food and brunch related ;)

Easter Brunch Food!

Easter eggs: dyed with beets and black tea!

One funky looking egg!

One first was guacamole! I love guacamole, but had never attempted to make one myself. Oh man, if I had only known how easy and delicious it is - I would've done it much sooner! Talking about easy and fun: this was our first time having friends over for brunch (and we have been living in this house for 2 and half years!) It only took a bit of rearranging our miniature living room and some easy snacks and fingerfood- and we had so much fun! When I went grocery shopping, I bought my first flowers (yes, I had never bought flowers for myself before) I went for something cheap, colorful and that I knew was gonna last :) Oh, and I dyed my easter eggs in the liquid from canned beets - hoping for the purply color. Well, my eggs looked kinda grayish, but after making them shiny with a bit of olive oil they looked pretty cute!

Finally another more meaningful and still fun first is this new necklace I designed and made during the week. I like how I was inspired by japanese prints and the finished necklace looks very african or tribal.

The rest of the week was the usual: a great lunch with my girls at a local mall, time in the garage working on jewelry, finally finishing my 10 color heat transfer screen print (the finished product will be on black mens tees and tote bags for the ladies), delish food and a pretty high dose of yoga. Oh and my mom sent me this cute easter bunny that now guards our key-tree!

I hope you had a great week and got some rest if this was your spring break,

xx Naomi

Inspiring Individuals: Amy Purdy

Images 1 & 2 by Amber B

Left image by Nikki Sixx

Right Image from an article in Womens Health Magazine

both via amypurdy

Let me introduce you to the amazing Amy Purdy.

She is a multi talented, gorgeous Nevada native. Snowboarder, skateboarder, model, actress, make-up artist, motivational speaker - you name it. This is probably already much more than many of us can say of themselves, but Amy is all the above (and she excels at what she does - she has medals to prove it!) and she is a double leg amputee.

She lost both legs, and almost her life to Bacterial Meningitis. But instead of stopping her from doing anything, one could almost say it has pushed her to doing even more. Only four months after getting her first prosthetic legs she was already standing on a snowboard!

But Amy didn't stop short at achieving great things for herself - she is the co-founder of ASA ( Adaptive Action Sports) an organization to support action sport (think X Games!) athletes with disabilities.

I guess you can tell by now how blown away I am by this girl! I just had to share her story with you guys, hoping to make you check out her projects and just to share some inspiration.

Have a wonderful weekend,

xx Naomi