If you’re in the Boston area, you probably know about the South End Open Market. While wandering among the many brightly colored stalls this weekend, I came upon a booth sporting handfuls of strikingly beautiful beaded jewelry. Since my jewelry radar is always on, I zeroed in on them. Up close, they were even more remarkable. Made out of rolled up magazine paper, the beads had none of the usual “country kitchen” paper beads usually suggest. The woman behind the table could see the saliva dripping from the corners of my mouth. “They are made by women in Uganda. All the proceeds go to helping the families in the Acholi Quarter,” she told me. These wonderful beads are not just a fashion statement, they are a powerful message of hope for a community that has been displaced by war. Visit www.projecthavehope.org to see more. There are so many ways to help. You can host a bead party with your friends (if you’re local), you can donate money to help send children to school, and soon the online shop will be up and this will be one place you can shop guilt free!

Hi guys. I’m sorry, things have been really busy for me recently. My blogs are going to have to be a lil’ bit short. Check out this awesome handbag tutorial from Kristin La Flamme. This would totally make a bitchin’ present for all your best buds. Well, that’s all I have time for, gotta dash!

Visual art consumers and creators alike will get a kick out of ourstage.com. Our Stage is a forum for indie bands and film makers to take the products of their creative genius directly to the audience. Music videos and movies are posted on Our Stage and its up to the viewing public to judge the top contenders. Then, at the end of the month, fans send text message votes of who are their favorites. Those votes decide who is the top dog. Its a great place to go to see new talent and hear an electic mix of music. And obviously, if you are an artist its a good way to get your stuff seen and heard without going bankrupt. Check out this cartoon below, one of my favorites so far. Greek gods working at a fast food joint. Hilarious.

Hi guys. I’m going to keep this short and sweet today. Check out this selection of Knitting for Pyschos at slightlywarped.com. It is freaking amazing. I especially love the knitted streams of blood. Lots of people make sweaters. I like this creepy and off-beat take on something that’s usually considered innocuous. Check out my faves below.

Take a look at that empty soft drink bottle in your trash? Is it art? Most of us would be inclined to reply “no.” Well mulitply that one bottle by two million. How about now? Seattle artist, Chris Jordan, is taking a look at the numbers in his new series, Running Numbers, An American Self-Portrait. In this series of photographs, Jordan puts our American lifestyle under the microscope. He shows us through a snap shot in time, just how much waste we continuously create. Seen from a far, his pieces look abstract. Take a closer look, and the statistics he’s illustrating are horrifying. See “Plastic Bottles” below to get a feel for it (click on the images to see a larger version) .   This piece depicts two million empty plastic bottles, the number used every five minutes in the United States. Far from desolate and hopeless, though, Jordan’s intention is to present (in his own words) “images representing these quantities” so that they “might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.” This certainly is a call to action on our part. We can all help to change the statistics.