My Venus Ring is a 1000 Markets Staff Pick.

My Venus ring was picked as a staff pick on 1000 markets! They called it stunning. I missed my opportunity to take a screen shot (next time I will think of it sooner).

(via Bliss St on 1000 markets)
Like many woman Venus was divided by her different roles.

There was Venus Genetrix ("Mother Venus"),Venus Felix ("Lucky Venus"), even Venus Kallipygos ("Venus with the pretty bottom"), and the list goes on, an epithet for each the different facets of the goddess

Venus Ercina was the Venus of untamed or wild love in other words, erotic love. Literally it means "queen of the heather" an untamed rose that grew out of the rocks.

This sterling ring unearths an image of powerful beauty, vulnerability, and complexity of female sexuality in the simplest form I could think of. Inspired by Jean Leon Gerome and done in the Art Nouveau style.


The Venus Erycina Erotic Love Ring can be found in my shop on 1000 markets as well as in Bliss St Jewelry.

Books

Found this on Facebook on Charity Maas Sloan's Notes. Every thing written by me is in blue italics. <--- Like this! I of course am all the X's After all it is my list.

If you want to see Charity Mass Sloan's just check it out click on her name.

A room without books is like a body without a soul." --Cicero

Have you read more than 6 of these books?

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?


Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES (Or BLOG) . Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag 20 other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X (I also read Eyre Affair, not by Bronte but fun book)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X (all but the last book)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible X (It was really good, a bit heavy on the sex and violence)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X (First "adult" book I read)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - (out of 42 works I have read 28)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien-X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X (I loved it I also read the other books in "a trilogy in five parts",
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X ( Love Steinbeck)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll- X (Also read Through the Looking Glass)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X ( all of them )
34 Emma-Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (in my to read pile in my living room)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (reading next)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X (read the illustrated version too. It's better)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X The original and some of the others in the series)
53 Cold Comfort Farm
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X (loved this book)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X (Call me Ishmael. He never tells you his real name, just what he wants you to know.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X
76 The Inferno – Dante- X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X ( one of my favorites children's book )
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (nope, first movie freaked me out wouldn't read the book)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

I haven't found this list outside of Facebook, now that I googled it. But BBC did put out a list in 2003 of the top 100 favorite books. The list is quite similar. I only marked books I had read from beginning to end at least once. I didn't mark books that I started but never finished, also watching the movies or listening to audiobooks don't count (sorry)

Coffin Couch Via She’s Batty Design Blog

I discovered this Coffin Couch Via She’s Batty Design Blog . So today there were two great finds. First The coffin couch from VonErickson shop on Etsy The lid closes so it looks like a regular coffin. They will make it in purple, red or black. Personally Red would be my choice. I can’t tell you if it comfortable but it is definitely a statement.VonErickson is in NY. The couch is $3500, shipping depends on your location.

Now the second find. She’s Batty Design Blog. She has products, finds, marketing for artists, and entries about just what is going on with her. It’s a blog worth checking out.

Bamboo a Sustainable, Eco-Friendly Product?

Recycled, up cycled, refurbished, reclaimed, cruelty free, conflict free, organic are all word used in eco- friendly or green products. One word is gets the most question from clients. Sustainable. What is a sustainable product? Bamboo some blurts out to their computer screen and you would be right. Why? Why when we are is bamboo the hottest thing in living green? Furniture to Flooring to towels are currently being made from Bamboo. Bamboo is a Fast Growing Grass

The best definition is “Sustainable products are those products providing environmental, social and economic benefits while protecting public health, welfare, and environment over their full commercial cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to final disposition.”
Tough to find a product that does that in this modern age. Benefit the environment, public health and economy. Some say bamboo is the only true sustainable product. Yet it isn’t. It is renewable, and eco-friendly, but it does not meet all the requirements of a sustainable product.

Bamboo is a hard, durable, renewable resource. Bamboo grows quickly and the use of it helps save trees that take much longer to grow. Most comes from the Pacific Rim, generally in China or Vietnam. Generating economic growth in these counties as the demand becomes greater. Bamboo as a tree substitute does not require use of pesticides and fertilizers used are often organic. So far it sounds eco friendly and it is very.

But why is it not sustainable? Since there are no American growers of wood substitute bamboo all the bamboo used in flooring, furniture and cutting boards are shipped from the Pacific Rim. The energy used for transport if not very eco friendly.

Most bamboo flooring uses an adhesive that contains urea-formaldehyde (UF). Use of UF resins, are harmful to indoor air quality. It must be said that bamboo flooring uses a relatively small amount may other materials such as particle board (hello Ikea). There are sellers that have Formaldehyde free bamboo flooring. You also may consider using salvaged wood.

Importers generally have little information or control over bamboo manufacturers. Manufacturers can use potentially toxic binders, finishes and other chemicals. They can create lots of solid waste, run equipment that may be dangerous, polluting and eroding hillsides. Bamboo can be an aggressive invader because of its quick growth if it is not managed well. It creates monoculture which is has less biodiversity. Biodiversity is good for the environment.

As the demand for bamboo rises so does the economical potential. With that there should be a rise in tracking bamboo. Where did it come from? How environmentally conscience is the company growing it? Producing the products? What was used in the production? Once these questions are asked and America start growing and producing (instead of hydrogenated corn oil please). Many of bamboo’s sustainable issues will disappear.

While Bamboo is not yet sustainable it is extremely promising and is eco-friendlier than many other materials in use and it is beautiful too!