You know the kind of feeling where your running shoes are staring up at you, two gaping black holes where your feet SHOULD be.
In case you ever need that extra shove out the door I introduce to you the latest line in running shoes. Other quotes include:
* Love me.
* Erase me.
* I see you.
* That pint will taste better earned.
* You can’t see any writing on a winner’s shoes.
Whatever your shoes are saying to you, don’t let them mock you. Shut them up. Put your feet in them and get running. 
——-
MOTIVATION posts.
——-
1) What should be another quote/quip to add to our line or running shoes with sass?
2) What’s something you tell yourself if you’re lacking in the motivation department?
Remind myself that my own running guilt is NOT worth putting up with if I weenie out.
3) If we were to offer a line of spikes with writing on the soles, what should they read?
I think if we were to let people sharpie in some PR goals…just be ready to scratch out and re-sharpie. 
When minimalist running turned from a concept into some kind of near-cult ideology, I’ll admit to shaking my head. More correctly I was soured that with the launch of the Vibrams and ‘Born to Run’ book release the masses became obsessed with immediately running barefoot. Everyone wanted to jump headlong into this running trend with no other reason than they thought it was the cool thing to do. I mean “Waaaaaaz up” was the coolest thing to do for a time too, no?
Misinformed runners were getting hurt, and THAT was really what I was stuck on or against. Well, and in all honesty I think the Vibram toe-thing is silly. I’m not anti-minimalist, in fact I began implementing Nike Free running in 2004 in order to increase foot strength and mobility. The key word there is IMPLEMENTING.
Scott Douglas, multi-running book author and editor for Runner’s World, just released “The Runner’s World Complete Guide to Minimalism and Barefoot Running” for which I was given a copy to read and review. I was nervous at first only because of that buzz word minimalism but I also have read enough from Douglas to have faith that rather than just glorify barefoot running the book would be true to name and act as a manual. There IS sound reasoning and logic behind minimalist running, it then becomes a matter of ensuring enough runners learn and understand just HOW to go about running in ‘less’ without just getting themselves hurt.
I was relieved because right off the bat because Douglas tackles the logistics and starts not at the aspect most minimalists and runners begin, the foot, but instead explains that the running body is a package. A runner’s body is an interconnected machine, you can’t take a single injury or problem at face value, but rather trace it back to the underlying cause of it. A problem with your foot can be stemming from your hips, you have to fix the underlying cause before the foot gets any better.
Source: Roadale, Inc.
starts by taking running and your BODY as a whole, explaining the interconnectedness of it all and then delves into minimalist theory. I believe with most things it’s a matter of understanding the
‘whys’ before you can get to the ‘hows’. It’s also refreshing that, while the author states from the beginning he’s always loved running in less shoe, he shares both sides of the story, and in quite an engaging tone.
The book’s informative, but it’s not a text-book read.
Some of the actual running shoe stats and numbers may not have been absorbed as fully by me as others, as I’m not a total running shoe ‘addict/geek’, but I still got the gist. What I was more interested in was that the book tackles more than shoes and feet: the importance of running form, the importance of GRADUALLY transitioning and that injuries aren’t caused or cured merely by a shoe-swap and there is still the need for strengthening and mobility work (the book includes exercises). These are all, in fact, fundamentals of running people should read outside of shoes and minimalism.
The book was written with the input and thoughts from an array of different running coaches, shoe experts, and exercise physiologists. Among them, and someone I’ve often sought keen insights from for my own articles, was Steve Magness. I appreciated his parts not just because of the knowledge and science there, but explaining why elite distance runners aren’t all striving to run barefoot all the time, but that they still get minimalist style miles in the form of racing flats and spikes. Finally, the drills are things all runners should do and the suggestions for cooling-down or doing striders barefoot get back to that gradual implementation.
Bottom line, both from the book and in line with my own reasoning: Shoes and whatever people end up running in shouldn’t be dictated by a running trend or fad, but rather what keeps them running healthfully and ideally as fast as possible. Everyone wants to be faster, right?
———
Scott Douglas’
“The Runner’s World Complete Guide to Minimalism and Barefoot Running” can be purchased in stores or
online.
———
1) What are your thoughts on minimalism and/or barefoot running? What kind of shoes do you prefer to run in?
2) Have you wound up with an injury tied to making the jump to minimalism too quickly? If so, have you learned and then gone forward with a way to include minimalist style running without an injury?
3) Douglas also asks a very poignant questions in his book along the lines of: If you are a minimalist, where does your journey to ‘less shoes’ end? It doesn’t necessarily become when you’re running barefoot all the time.
Two new pages for my forthcoming
Memoirs.
Paper53 on iPad. Click to enlarge.
Two more pages from my forthcoming
Memoirs.
Paper53 on iPad. Click to enlarge.
The Korean Cinderella
A lush Korean version of the story of Cinderella....
To honor her birth, a pear tree is planted and the newborn baby is named Pear. She is beautiful and loved by her elderly mother and father. When Pear's mother dies, her father remarries a woman with a daughter the same age as Pear. Beautiful Pear's stepmother is jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty and requires her to perform many impossible chores, while her own daughter, Peony watches.
With the help of magical creatures (frog, sparrow, and black oxen) Pear successfully completes each chore and is able to attend the festival. On the way to the festival she loses her shoe. The magistrate sees the beautiful Pear and calls out to her. Believing he is yelling at her, she runs away without her shoe. At the festival the magistrate looks for the girl without the shoe...
If you liked this, try:
The Irish Cinderlad
The Rough Faced Girl
Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
Lon Po Po
The Golden Sandal
here is the finished illustration/painting for a summer issue of stories for children magazine www.storiesforchildrenmagazine.com (not sure which one yet).
it is about a little boy and his grandmom who is babysitting him for a day. not just any day...but his birthday. and he is just so set out to believe that his 5th birthday will be "the most boring birthday in the universe";) so....
grandmom takes him on an "adventure" to the mall on this rainy day,where they ride the escalator and go into the "super duper shoe" shop to buy little noah his much coveted pair of green gecko galoshes:)
i got this done 9 days before the deadline. not too bad if i do say so myself...
A sexy woman in the cafe inspired me to whip out the sepia.
Watercolour 19cm x 14cm. Click to enlarge.
Don’t you love it when you are so inspired to do something that you have to do it RIGHT NOW?
Several weeks ago I saw these 1930s floral-pattern and metallic shoes on Pinterest (from the Thought Patterns blog):
Beautiful! I immediately bookmarked this image, on Pinterest, and in my mind. I knew there was a way to make/refashion similar shoes. I had a starting base:
Very old, maybe 1920s or ’30s Mary Janes. You can see me wearing them here. I had been thinking about getting them professionally repainted/dyed a darker color for fall but had been putting it off for no particular reason. (OMG, I just realized, looking at this photo, the perforations form a heart in the center!)
So I’ve been trying to figure out how I was going to get the roses on here. Paint them? (HA!) Waterslide decals? (Probably not suited to leather.) Decoupage with Victorian clip art? (Might be messy.) I have a whole bunch of Victorian stickers on my stationery drawer that I haven’t used. While decorating a package today (for a certain little fairy friend), I realized that the stickers were printed on thin, clear plastic. Eep! Just the ticket.
I went to work straight away. No, I don’t know how durable this is and what will happen when I actually wear them out and about. But I didn’t care, I was having too much fun.
And they are not perfect, there is a wrinkle here and there but I think they look pretty good. I’m going to wait a while to see if the stickers start to peel off; if so, I might put on a coat of satin clear acrylic paint over them.
To finish these off I painted the trim a pretty, faded gold (“Champagne Gold” metallic acrylic paint from DecorArt). These are now the prettiest shoes I own! OK, so where to wear them?
If you’re a shoe person, you know just how exciting it can be to find the perfect pair.
One that looks good.
One that feels good.
One that makes your feet smile.
Debut picture book author Sue Fliess knows this feeling well. And, she’s captured it perfectly in Shoes for Me! (Marshall Cavendish Children, 2011).
The book tells the story of a rhino who outgrows her shoes and goes shopping for the perfect replacement pair. But there are so many options! Her quest for perfection is told in an easy-to-read rhyme and illustrated with understated charm by Mike Laughead.
Today’s guest reviewer, Sienna, is only 4 years old, but she already knows a thing or two about shoes.
She’s wearing her favorite sparkly pink pair in the photo to the right, along with pajama bottoms featuring flip-flops. She also has a pair of pink cowgirl boots she’s partial to.
So here she is to tell us what she thought of the book. Take it away, Sienna!
Our reviewer: Sienna.
Age: 4.
I like to: Play baby, play chase and do karate.
This book was about: Finding shoes.
The best part was when: I got some shoes. (Editor’s note: Shoes for the reader are not included in the price of this book!)
I smiled when: She got her shoes.
I was worried when: The shoes were all piled up.
I was surprised when: She couldn’t find shoes she liked.
This book taught me: Don’t look for shoes all day and night.
Three words that describe this book: “Shoes.” “Shoes.” “Shoes.”
My favorite line or phrase in this book: “I’m no duck!”
Other kids reading this book should watch for: The fuzzy duck shoes.
You should read this book because: It’s so hilarious.
If you’d like to learn more about Sue Fliess and future books she has coming out, visit her website.
If you’d like to learn more about Mike Laughead and his previous work, you can visit his website.
And, just to prove that shopping for cool shoes is not limited to the younger set, here are the shoes I recently purchased that make my feet smile.
But unlike the main character in Fliess’ picture book, it did not take me very long to find them. I saw them on the John Fluevog website and instantly fell in love. (Sorry for the shameless product promotion. Fluevog is not giving me any sort of a reimbursement for mentioning their extremely pumped-up kicks. Although if they wanted to, they certainly could contact me through this blog.)
And, unlike the rhino in this book, my mother did not tell me the shoes I lik
Shoe-La-La. Karen Beaumont. Illustrated by LeUyen Pham. 2011. Scholastic. 40 pages.
Party dresses, party hair...Need new party shoes to wear.Emily, Ashley, Kaitlyn, Claire!Let's go find the perfect pair!Shoe-la-la!They're everywhere.Rows and rows!These or those?Up, up on our tippy toes.Can't wait to choose new shoes.Here goes!Could I really be liking a book with SO MUCH glitter on the cover? I'm not a glitter-loving girl after all. But. I was pleasantly surprised by Karen Beaumont's Shoe-la-la! I found this book about four friends to be so much fun! The rhythm-and-rhyme of it worked for me. (I can be a bit picky, I know!) And the illustrations by LeUyen Pham, well, they were fantastic!!! I just love, love, love her work so very much!!! I don't know that I've ever read a book she's illustrated (or written) that I didn't end up loving!
© 2011 Becky Laney of
Young Readers
Both my girls could crawl by the time they were 4 and a half months and walk by the time they were 9 months. Baby Co is 6 months old and a bit behind. He doesn't crawl so much as scoot. He does a sort of push up, sticks his bum high in the air, and pushes backwards on his tippy toes. As hard as he tries he just can't seem to go forward. It's super cute, but his legs and feet are always getting stuck under couches and doors.
Because of this what Co wears (or doesn't wear) on his feet is very important. With bare feet he gets scratched up. Socks are slippery. And most shoes fall off his sausage feet easily - which means he either has bare feet or slippery socks all of the time. One of my very favorite brands of shoes for transitioning babies are Pedipeds.
Co has the Original Adrian Chocolate Brown Shoes and I absolutely love them.
Pediped Originals have skid-resistant leather soles perfect for young kids like Co that are learning to walk or crawl. The shoes are flexible and don't get in the way when Co pushes off his tippy toes.
But my very favorite thing about the shoes is that they stay on his feet! I don't know if it's the shape of the shoe or the velcro, but they've never fallen off.
All of the Pediped Originals line of shoes feature
- All Natural Leather Sole
- New Diamond Patterned Tread
- 2 Layers of Leather plus soft foam insert for protection
To Buy - The Originals Adrian - Chocolate Brown shoes retail for $33.00, and are a great buy! For more information and special deals check out
Pediped on Facebook and
Twitter!
I received a product to review from the above company or their PR Agency. Opinions expressed in this post are strictly my own - I was not influenced in any way. I received no monetary compensation for this post.
By:
Ellis Nadler,
on 7/9/2012
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I was shocked to find these shoes copulating at the back of my wardrobe.
Marker pen with digital colour. Click to enlarge.
My daughter has been walking around the house with a video camera the last couple days, recording everything. Because I want to support her creativity, she is going to introduce us to today's Back 2 School Must Have - Pediped Shoes.
When we received the Flex Bailey shoes in the mail, Kik was so excited. Until she found out they were Bid's size.
Luckily Bid loves them too.
They are a classic, black, mary-jane style, and great for school or even church. The shoes are made from leather and have a flexible sole. My only complaint is the first time she wore them, she didn't put socks on. And they turned her toes black. She thought it was awesome.
To Buy - Besides the Bailey shoes, Pediped just debuted its Fall/Winter 2012 Collection. It features an innovative line of athletic shoes featuring Ultra Light Technology™, a collection of waterproof cold weather boots and more than 80 new design offerings. You can buy these and more on
Pediped.com.For more info, you can sign up to become a Pediped insider, or follow them on
facebook and
twitter.
I received a product to review from the above company or their PR Agency. Opinions expressed in this post are strictly my own - I was not influenced in any way. I received no monetary compensation for this post.
The school year always brings an end to the hot dry season in Utah. Temperatures cool off, and we finally get some rain. And if there's rain we must play in it.
My favorite place to get children's rain products is Kidorable.com.
They have a fun selection of umbrellas, raincoats,
and even backpacks.
Rain gear can be uncomfortable. Because Kidorable products are so whimsical and fun not only will my girls wear their gear, but they ask too.
Since we'll be walking Kik to the bus stop this year, I thought that Bid needed her very own pair of rain boots. And since every walk we ever take turns into a bug hunt, I thought the
Ladybug Boots would be perfect for her.
When we got them in the mail, she insisted on putting them on and modeling them right away.
She loves them!
They are always quite an attention grabber. Someone almost always stops me to ask where we got the girls such cute rain stuff.
To Buy - Not only are Kidorable Boots adorable, but they are durable as well. Kik has had the same pair of boots for more than a year and they are still in great condition. The boots retail for $29.99, but are on sale right now until Aug. 31st for
20% off. Just enter code
SCHOOL888 at checkout on
Kidorable.com!
I received a product to review from the above company or their PR Agency. Opinions expressed in this post are strictly my own - I was not influenced in any way. I received no monetary compensation for this post.
By:
Ellis Nadler,
on 9/10/2012
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A test page from my graphic novel.
Gouache. A3 size. Click to enlarge.
The Red Shoes
Karen longs for a pair of red shoes she spies in town, and hoards her pennies. Soon, her simple pleasures are forgotten, consumed by her fantasies about the fabulous shoes. Finally, she wears them to a great ball and learns that the shoes have truly come to control her as they had controlled her thoughts. Will the spell be broken? A classic Andersen fairy tale.
If you liked this, try:
Twelve Dancing Princesses
Thumbelina
The Emperor's New Clothes
Sleeping Beauty
East of the Sun and West of the Moon
By:
Ellis Nadler,
on 9/7/2010
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Another page for the Brooklyn Art Library project. A failed clown trapped for eternity in a hellish bird suit.
Casein paint 21cm x 13cm. Click to enlarge.
I'll do a Halloween workshop painting these soon at the
Colour Makes People Happy shop.
This is the result of my first trial - I'm still figuring out the instructions.
To the left a black smudge I made on Simon's lovely clean wooden table in the process, and made much worse smudging it about. Arh.
By: Kirsty,
on 10/20/2010
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By Ulinka Rublack
I will never forget the day when a friend’s husband returned home to Paris from one of his business trips. She and I were having coffee in the huge sun-light living-room overlooking the Seine. We heard his key turn the big iron door. Next a pair of beautiful, shiny black shoes flew through the long corridor with its beautiful parquet floor. Finally the man himself appeared. “My feet are killing me!”, he exclaimed with a veritable sense of pain. The shoes were by Gucci.
We might think that these are the modern follies of fashion, which only now beset men as much as women. My friend too valued herself partly in terms of the wardrobe she had assembled and her accessories of bags, sunglasses, stilettos and shoes. She had modest breast implants and a slim, sportive body. They were moving to Dubai. In odd hours when she was not looking after children, going shopping, walking the dog, or jogging, she would write poems and cry.
Yet, surprisingly, neither my friend nor her husband would seem very much out of place at around 1450. Men wore long pointed Gothic shoes then, which hardly look comfortable and made walking down stairs a special skill. In a German village, a wandering preacher once got men to cut off their shoulder-long hair and slashed the tips of the pointed shoes. Men and women aspired to an elongated, delicate and slim silhouette. Very small people seemed deformed and were given the role of grotesque fools. Italians already wrote medical books on cosmetic surgery.
We therefore need to unlock an important historical problem: How and why have looks become more deeply embedded in how people feel about themselves or others? I see the Renaissance as a turning point. Tailoring was transformed by new materials, cutting, and sewing techniques. Clever merchants created wide markets for such new materials, innovations, and chic accessories, such as hats, bags, gloves, or hairpieces, ranging from beards to long braids. At the same time, Renaissance art depicted humans on an unprecedented scale. This means that many more people were involved in the very act of self-imaging. New media – medals, portraits, woodcuts, genre scenes – as well as the diffusion of mirrors enticed more people into trying to imagine what they looked like to others. New consumer and visual worlds conditioned new emotional cultures. A young accountant of a big business firm, called Matthäus Schwarz, for instance, could commission an image of himself as fashionably slim and precisely note his waist measures. Schwarz worried about gaining weight, which to him would be a sign of ageing and diminished attractiveness. While he was engaged in courtship, he wore heart-shaped leather bags as accessory. They were green, the colour of hope. Hence the meaning of dress could already become intensely emotionalized. The material expression of such new emotional worlds – heart-shaped bags for men, artificial braids for women, or red silk stockings for young boys – may strike us as odd. Yet their messages are all familiar still, to do with self-esteem, erotic appeal, or social advancement, as are their effects, which ranged from delight in wonderful crafting to worries that you had not achieved a look, or that someone just deceived you with their look. In these parts of our lives the Renaissance becomes a mirror which leads us back in time to disturb the notion that the world we live in was made in a modern age.
Ever since the Renaissance, we have had to deal with clever marketing as well as the vexing questions of what images want, and what we want from images, as well as whether clothes wear us or we wear them.
Ulinka Rublack is Senior Lecturer in early modern European history at Cambridge University and a Fellow of St John’s College. Her latest
By:
Ellis Nadler,
on 2/3/2011
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I had this idea today for a comic book called The Brain Yard.
Click to enlarge.
By:
Ellis Nadler,
on 2/16/2011
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My friends Mr and Mrs Telly Addict were glued to the gogglebox as usual. I have no idea why I wrote "after Pilkington" on the first page.
Pen and ink. Each page 12cm x 18cm. Click to enlarge.
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Ellis Nadler,
on 3/5/2011
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The Katscratcher Snatcher is page 4 from the Brain Yard: An Adventure Book for Boys.
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Steve Novak,
on 5/12/2011
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I’m a terrible promoter.
I really am.
The problem isn’t that I’m lazy, or that I don’t put forth the effort, or that I’m unwilling to put in the time. It’s none of that stuff.
I’m actually not the least bit lazy, my effort-abilities are second to none and I have nothing but time on my hands.
The actual issue is that my personal persona and my business persona get mixed up a lot. A whole lot, actually.
I say stuff I shouldn’t. I put things out there that I should have locked a safe, wrapped in a chain and tossed into the ocean.
As much as it pains me to admit, I’m an idiot.
The fact that I’m writing these very words at this very moment proves I’m an absolute dolt and that I’ll never learn.
Do the followers on Twitter that are interested in my YA novel or my artwork really need to know that I spent the night bent over the toilet due to a nasty bout of food poisoning? Probably not.
Did I tell them? Yep.
Was it necessary to let them know that because of it I spent the entire next day breaking wind like Chris Brown breaks ladies’ faces? Most definitely not.
Was that Chris Brown joke a massive mistake?
You better believe it.
I’m a goof-ball and I don’t know when to stop.
I spend so much time cracking wise and making you feel uncomfortable with awkward-delicious nuggets about my personal life that I sometimes forget I’m trying to sell you something.
Then the bill collectors come calling. Then my wife shakes her head and I pull out the lining of my pockets and shrug my shoulders. Then she hops on-line and types the words “divorce attorney” into Google.
It’s a vicious cycle.
So how do I plan on solving this little problem of mine?
I have to get serious. I have to get more professional.
I’ll need a briefcase of some sort . Maybe some papers to put in it.
Wait, wait, wait - maybe I don’t need the papers at all. I mean, what are the chances anyone will actually ask to see what’s inside, right?
Combing my hair, putting on a suit and brushing my teeth more than once every other day just isn’t going to cut it anymore. It’s not enough. I have to take things to the next level. I’m going to have to make some drastic lifestyle changes.
I’ll need to straighten that hunch in my back and smear that sloppy-creepy grin off my face.
Maybe I’ll even shave.
I’ll have to mind my P’s and Q’s while making sure my F’s and U’s are never allowed in the same sentence together.
I’ll need to be better than the sum of my parts and better than the sum of the sum of those parts.
I’ll have to blog about books and writing, and the writing process and the process of writing.
Speaking of my blog, I’ll need to maintain it a bit more diligently. I guess I should watch that I don’t accept a friend request from anyone and everyone on Facebook. I should also try and make sure current and prospective clients don’t catch wind of my uncontrollable post-puke wind breaking in one of my many unnecessary status updates.
Breath mints will be important.
New shoes too. New shoes are a given. Shoes are the first thing people look at. I heard that somewhere.
No more gobbling on burgers so stuffed with goop the juices leave stains on my shirts. Nope – gonna have to put the kibosh on that one.
I’ll need some new shirts as well.
Maybe I should change my name? It might be smart to change it to something a little more professional sounding.
Max Hardcopy?
How about, Patrick Gitstuffdun?
No, wait…Stephen Nowack.
No one commands respect like a Nowack.
Or maybe I shouldn’t do any of this nonsense.
Stephen Nowack? Seriously? That’s just silly.
Breath mints? That’s even sil
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Beautifully whipped. Including the empty chair.
Nice!