A beautiful blog, for a new year

Hello all,
Happy 2012 to you all!
I want this year to be an especially beautiful one here.
I'd like to start it this way:
My blog has always been given the kindest of praise and many shout-outs from artists and other blog writers alike, and I would love to direct you all to a really wonderful blog Shoe Full Of Snot. This writer is, in my humble opinion, particularly gifted. Her posts are full of life, and most wonderfully, full of the writhing's and churning's of her heart and experience as contemporary woman who thinks about things and then writes with such honesty and clarity about her own struggles. Reading her posts feels wonderful to me...I can't recommend her highly enough.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to express my ongoing commitment to the creative world; the artists, doll-makers, makeup artists, designers, poets, writers, musicians, collectors, travellers, seekers, pray-ers, eccentrics...please contact me with your work. I'm endlessly searching for beauty and experience from other like-minded souls. Email me.
And be happy and well.
xxx

Swans

These were from beloved Bobby, after I spent the night high off my face in the emergency ward. He was the unfortunate fool who stayed on the phone to me throughout the whole process. And then had enough kindness and love left over to send me his beautiful paper swans with messages on each one. Plus a million texts. Plus a hundred phone calls. He's a dear one to me.

Dear, dear, dear.

Emails with Anna

Beloved Anna sent me a long email today, and within it she had placed these little beauties:

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware...

(Henry Miller)

Your task is not to seek for love,

but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself

that you have built against it.

(Rumi)

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,

inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,

rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,

there are whole rivers of light.

The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.

(Kabirdas 1398-1438)

It isn't necessary that you leave home.

Sit at your desk and listen.

Don't even listen, just wait.

Don't wait, be still and alone.

The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked,

it can do no other,

it will writhe before you in ecstasy.

(Franz Kafka)

How wonderful! How wonderful! All things are perfect just as they are.

(Buddha)

Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand- relax.

If you relax, it comes.

If you relax, it is there.

If you relax, you start vibrating with it.

(Osho)

Banish the word 'struggle' from your attitude and your vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

(Hopi elders)

This is lovely!

Dash at French Sampler gave this blog a tremendous shout-out, for which I'm hugely grateful!
Her blog is delicious and I've been following it for ages now - she recently published posts on french pouts and the amazing Natcha Rambova: enough said! Dash is the high-priestess of un-earthing the lives of forgotten artistic and cultural figures. So please go check it out, and here are some beautiful images to speed your journey which I got from Dash's blog. xoxo

Pictures for Mel.

This doll is very grateful for the awesome mates I have to share this thing, 'Life', with.

I met Mel at Suger Coat It when we were 12 years old. Renewing our friendship via the blogging community has been such a sweet surprise for both of us. 

You have been so kind to me, helping me with my blog, being a little 'art director', and being a 'new found' friend - when we were actually always there. It amazes me.

So my dear Mel, these are some pretty pictures gathered for you,  in thanks and friendship.

Love Ri xoxo

To thee I bestow...

Wow... I appear to have been given some awards by my blogging friends. How Lovely!
This award from my friend kellyansapansa, and this from  my beloved friend (and art director of this blog), Mel at sugercoatit
What dear gals they are.
Thankyou ladies,
xoxo

The day that was...

If today was a musical, it would be called the "Rianna Fails Badly" Show. Today was just terrible. People hounding me, technical debacles, confusions, and new found love all mixed up together.

This is the work of one of my friends, Rachel Dent. She is an artist ( in the proper sense of the word ie: she does everything...)

The first six images are her beautiful paintings, the last images are her body-painting work, and the very last two images are the body work she did on me for a shoot we did with our hugely talented photographer  friend, Julie.

Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that my friends are creating. Where there is creation, there is life. And Rach's work cements that for me.