Adventures

This Is Not A Toy

preencess_thisisnotatoy01

Back in February, I went to check out This Is Not A Toy: the latest exhibition at the Design Exchange curated by John Wee Tom, DX Associate Curator Sara Nickleson [and Guest Curator Pharrell Williams] with works from artists such as Junko Mizuno, Takashi Murakami, Huck Gee and KAWS… just to name a few!

I’ve seen blind boxes and vinyl toys around for some years now [who remembers the Kidrobot room at CiRCA?], but I don’t think it really piqued my interest until a vacation to California when we paid multiple visits to shops such as Tokidoki and Kidrobot that I started to become more familiar with vinyl toys as a form of contemporary art. Fast forward four years later, I’ve amassed a little army of Unicornos [I love unicorns!] and random phone plugs, keychain charms and zipper pulls of characters such as Gloomy Bear, Cactus Pups, Jibibuts… even My Little Pony figures. Hah! As for the Dunnys, Munnys, Labbits and Marvel collabos… I just live vicariously through my boyfriend’s blindbox purchases.

This Is Not A Toy: Designer Toys

Although my little collection is currently limited to mini figures and random blind boxes [and a DIY Munny that is still blank since I can’t decide what I want to do with it yet], it was really neat to see some designer toys from a whole bunch of very talented artists. My boyfriend really liked the selection of Huck Gee figures at the exhibit, and I was pleased to see Junko Mizuno’s pieces there as well. Some of the vinyl toys displayed are actually from Pharrell William’s personal collection, two of them being the Daft Punk be@rbricks as shown above. It’s a great exhibit to visit if you want to learn more about the culture behind designer toys and to see a really interesting mix of artwork in a gallery space. The Dunny walls are awesome!

This Is Not A Toy: Figures by Artists

Magic Pony also has a pop-up shop at the main lobby of the Design Exchange. Maybe one day, I’ll get my hands on one of those Junko prints to call my own!

The exhibit runs until May 19th, so if you haven’t gone yet… there’s still time! If you love your designer toys, mini figures, urban vinyls – whatever you wanna call it – this is a fun exhibit worth seeing.

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Design Exchange
234 Bay Street
Toronto ON
(416)363-6121

My IMATS Toronto 2013 Experience

IMATS Toronto!

Makeup mischief, managed!

This past weekend, I was able to attend IMATS Toronto 2013 with two of my girl friends for the first time. I’ve heard about IMATS before mostly via YouTube or beauty blogs and ended up researching earlier on this year about the one taking place in Toronto. Before the show, I read previous experiences from a few bloggers to get an idea of the exhibitors and the discounts as well as how busy it can get. I also tried to make a list of things I wanted to get so that I stay on budget… which I managed to stick to! What a miracle.

From what I’ve read, a few people mentioned to get there early in order to avoid the crowd or a huge lineup. I heard that there was a lineup before the doors opened, but when we got there at around 10:30am, there was no lineup at all to check in and get our wristbands for the day.

MUFE Booth Makeup MagicAlmost done...

Full-body Makeup Work at the Make Up For Ever booth. Amazing!

The booth where I was definitely expecting a lineup was the Make Up For Ever booth and sure enough, there were a bunch of people standing to the side of the booth waiting for their names to be called in order to pay for their purchases. Thankfully, I read about this before going on Saturday and made sure I knew which products I wanted to get so that I wouldn’t have to wait as long or wait around to try the products out. Even still, it was about a 20 minute wait to get your products called out. So if you’re planning to attend in the future, be prepared for this! They had a few promo packages available and I think their IMATS discount was about 30% less compared to Sephora prices. It ended up being cheaper than the VIB 20% discount, so I’m glad I waited to purchase my items from the show. While I was waiting I also saw Maria [well… more like she saw me], which was awesome because we haven’t run into each other for a while. It’s always nice to see friends during events like these!

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What’s SUP? Stand-Up Paddleboarding!

SUP at Sunset

In the beginning of August, I tried out Stand-Up Paddleboarding [or SUP, for short] along with my boyfriend and some of our good friends. Initially, we had scheduled to do this for my birthday back in June, but it rained After a few times trying to decide on a schedule that works best for everyone [planning things gets much harder as time passes *ahem… getting older*; everyone just gets busier and busier!], we finally found a Saturday evening where we could all go and check out paddle boarding for the first time.

To start things off, 3 out of 4 of us don’t even know how to swim properly… [haha!] this automatically means surfing is unfortunately not an option for me. Although it looks fun, I can’t tread water and that wouldn’t be the greatest idea. I just can’t seem to bring myself to go any deeper than tiptoe level! [Anxious much?] I’ll just stick to floating around and swimming from point A to point B in shallow areas Plus, come on… I live in Toronto, not California. Because of this, I thought SUP was a great alternative to try out. I’ve been white water rafting, canoeing and kayaking before so as long as there’s lifejackets involved, it’s safe enough for me!

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