Original Image: Orion Nebula – new image from Hubble & Spitzer

I’ve been lusting after vintage suitcases again. About two years ago I picked up an especially sexy oversized doctors bag in vegetarian leather. While it was lovely to look at, it’s one flaw was a complete lack of wheels. I’ve since then bought a luggage trolley, which does the trick for short distances. But nothing beats a suitcase with a pair of wheels attached. But all those wheeled suitcases are ugly! Or so I thought….

Here are four lovely vintage inspired suitcases and the imaginary women who use them;

Jewelna Rose

Large Romantic Basket Trolley

Kara is travelling to Japan for the first time. She wants to eat lots of sushi & buy all the Kawaii trinkets she can get her hands on. During the flight over she gives herself a manicure with delicious pink nail polish & listens to Blondie on her ipod. She’ll make little videos of her travels in Japan & put them up on youtube for her family & friends. Kara packed her lime green Doc Martens, copies of Fruits magazine, a rhinestone tiara & bottles of her favourite bubble bath.

-

Steamline

Steamline Diplomat Series Suitcase

On her way to Vienna to see her grandmother, Olivia daydreams about taking possible shopping trips to London & Paris afterwards. While in Vienna Olivia & her Oma will shop for sweet pastries, go to the Volkstheater Wein, gossip about relatives & catch the tram just about everywhere. She will return home with her suitcase full of German magazines, old photos & a pair of Louboutin’s she managed to pick up from Paris, of course.

-

Globetrotter

Globetrotter Mastermind Suitcase

Morgan is traveling from New York to Edinburgh for a business trip. She’ll stop by Holyrood while there just to see what all the fuss is about. She carefully packed all the business documents in her suitcase, alongside her tailored suits & black patent pumps. Underneath everything she hid a leather riding crop & her teddy bear Mustafa. During the stopover in LAX she taps away nervously on her Vaio & updates her facebook status compulsively. “STILL waiting at the airport”

-

Seward

Seward Collegiate Wheeled Trunk

Isabella decided to take the train to Krakow because she thought it would be more romantic. She’s travelling there to begin studying at art school & hopes that the two years of Polish language classes will have been useful. On the weekends she’ll sketch pictures of the Jewish Quarter in charcoals & sell them to tourists. Besides all the vintage hats & gloves in her suitcase, she has packed her folio, conte crayons, a broken medium format camera & peppermint sticks. Unfortunately, Isabella forgot to pack anything warm to wear.

-

Extra Credit

Loomis Luggage looks very promising!

Scour Etsy for the real deal – sans wheels of course.

Add the wheels yourself!

Untitled

-

There is a Beautiful Creature

Living in a hole you have dug.

-

So at night

I set fruit and grains

And little pots of wine and milk

Beside your soft earthen mounds,

-

And I often sing.

-

But still, my dear,

You do not come out.

-

I have fallen in love with Someone

Who hides inside you.

-

We should talk about this problem -

-

Otherwise,

I will never leave you alone.

- – -

“We Should Talk About This Problem” by Hafiz.

Quoted from I Heard God Laughing translated by Daniel Ladinsky.

1. Build a blanket fort.
2. Share a bottle of something delicious.
3. Play cards.
4. Invent exciting new cocktails.
5. Learn a new language.
6. Cook your own giant pizza to share.
7. Listen to Stephen Fry read Harry Potter.
8. Plant a tree.
9. Get dressed up.
10. Sing your favourite songs.
11. Visit the farmer’s market and buy exciting and as yet unheard of vegetables.
12. Make origami.
13. Catch a bus to somewhere new.
14. Read your favourite stories to each other out loud.
15. Climb a tree.
16. and build a tree house!
17. Make a kite.
18. Go cloudwatching.
19. Jump on the bed.
20. Visit a playground & use the swings.
21. Take photos.
22. Stretch out in the sun.
23. Have afternoon tea. In your underwear!
24. Go for a swim.
25. Eat dessert first.
26. Draw chalk arrows on the footpath for strangers to follow.
27. Make mix tapes.
28. Take turns giving each other a massage.
29. Play tag.
30. Try a strange recipe.
31. Share a bath.
32. Go geocaching.
33. Rent your favourite horror films.
34. Pack a picnic.
35. Bake bread.
36. Visit the planetarium for some  stargazing.
37. Go on a scavenger hunt.
38. Sit and watch the world go by.
39. Dance!
40. Dress each other for an afternoon.
41. Draw on each other.
42. Spend a whole day communicating without words.
43. Write silly poems.
44. Swap stories from your childhood.
45. Have a wine tasting. With blindfolds.
46. Play a few rounds of strip poker.
47. Take silly photobooth pictures.
48. Jump in puddles.
49. Eat with your hands.
50. Master the art of being together.

Have fun!

Image by Aristocrats-hat

It is no small pity, and should cause us no little shame, that, through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are. Would it not be a sign of great ignorance, my daughters, if a person were asked who he was, and could not say, and had no idea who his father or mother was, or from what country he came? Though that is a great stupidity, our own is incomparably greater if we make no attempt to discover what we are, and only know that we are living in these bodies and have a vague idea, because we have heard it, and because our faith tells us so, that we possess souls. As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or who dwells within them, or how precious they are — those are things which seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul’s beauty. All our interest is centred in the rough setting of the diamond and in the outer wall of the castle – that is to say in these bodies of ours.

-Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, El Castillo Interior, 1577

My sister, Emma, painted this and gave it to me on my fourteenth or fifteenth birthday. To this day, it remains one of the most beautiful things another human being has given me.

Extract from “All The Hemispheres” by Hafiz.

Quoted from The Subject Tonight is Love translated by David Ladinsky.

Ink on watercolours.

Something to think about when you go to work tomorrow. If you’re interested, this poster is for sale at Help Ink. Proceeds help children in third world countries who have a cleft lip or palate.

More after the jump –>

Read the rest of this entry »

~16/30 Gratitude~ Ice Crystal Rainbow

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

-Rumi

From The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

[ Bella Blithely powered by Wordpress | Skinned Bare by Matthew Trevino. ]