The Power of a "Favorite"

Recently, I added a couple of new original art pieces to my Etsy store. Almost right away, someone favorited this one. I wish I could tell you how much it meant to me that someone took the time to look at it and liked it enough to hit that little button.

It's Almost Fall and Fall is Sweet

Fall Fairies, an Etsy Treasury

This last August was the longest August in the history of time. For once, I'm actually really looking forward to fall. We've had a few cooler days and a good hard rainstorm, which makes the house feel cozy, and a big mug of sweet milky tea feel like a blessing.

I'm really looking forward to all the autumnal colors, even though they'll mean that winter (and seven straight months of rain) is on the way. Fall is simply magical, and I created this treasury on Etsy to celebrate my anticipation of the changing season.

Art Written in Stone

An Etsy Treasury of Petroglyph-inspired Art

There's some really great rock-art inspired artwork out there. I made a treasury of prehistoric art-inspired goodness over on Etsy. I've also been working out a few ideas of my own.

Felted river stones with petroglyphs

I love making little fiddle-objects (you know, things you fidget with when you're thinking or talking on the phone), so doing some felt versions of painted rock seemed like the natural next step. They're available over in my Etsy shop. Later, I may do some larger versions with more elaborate petroglyph images.

Monday's Inspiration: Etsy Artists

Blushing: a treasury on Etsy

Recently, I've been working on building up my store on Etsy, and spending time promoting other artists' work as well. There's a community aspect to Etsy that is very appealing. I'm finding that building treasuries (curating lists of various items, usually built around a theme) is very inspiring.

There are so many wonderful creative people out there, doing amazing things. When I build a treasury, I deliberately go looking for amazing handmade items. My most recent treasury, Blushing, was built around a soft warm pink like, well, a blush. Note the awesome flamingo from Cart Before the Horse!

I hear my dream kitchen calling...

It's poor etiquette to include one's own items on a treasury, so none of my pieces are pictured here, but I get so much out of seeing what other people are doing and feeling inspired by it. Take the kitchen treasury, for example. I stayed with a soft, near-neutral color palette, one that my friend Alison has really taught me to appreciate. While I don't really do any of the arts involved in making these items, the overall effect of the restrained, serene palette makes me want to put myself on a color diet for about a week - picking a simple palette and then seeing how many things I can do with it.

As a consequence of being a part of the amazing creative community on Etsy, I find myself learning and growing and stretching, and I value those things more than I can say.

Getting Your Hands on Vintage Books in St. Johns

It's true!

One of my favorite tasks as a designer is to work with Néna at St. Johns Booksellers to come up with ideas and window designs to promote her wonderful bookstore and the books she sells. For January, Néna wanted to showcase some of her outstanding vintage books. This is what I came up with:

Decembers's window was a much-welcome explosion of lights, color and glitter for the holidays, so I wanted to do something very clean and simple for January to let the amazing vintage books shine. Hence, the idea of books being pieces of history you can hold in your hands. To carry the idea, I created a number of hand outlines in various fun and vintage-style papers, to place in the books and around the window.

The results were exactly what I wanted! I love the moment when I take a step back, about halfway through the process of setting up the window, and realize that my idea is going to work exactly the way I'd hoped. Especially when times are tight and the design budget is limited.

I've had so many compliments on the poster I created for the window, I decided to offer it for sale in my Etsy store.

Néna has some AMAZING vintage books, including a gorgeously tooled set of Oscar Wildes, and an almost unbelievably cool self-published and AUTOGRAPHED Anais Nin! She also has a Victorian-era Imperial folio on Pompeii which is just incredible. I am rapidly running out of superlatives!

Check out more about St. Johns Booksellers over on Facebook.

Red and Rose Romance Bracelet

Red and Rose Romance Bracelet

This bracelet is one of the prettiest things I have every made. For once, I really let myself go in terms of over-the-top girly charm. When I bought the various elements for it, I looked for the most feminine, sparkly, romantic beads and bits and bobs that I could find.

For this, I wanted to experiment with making my own chain, so I used sterling silver jump rings and decorative silver links. I used silver head pins and ring pins to wirewrap the charms, which include just this huge range of elements: garnets set in silver, Swarovski crystals, pewter lotus and heart charms, faceted rose quartz beads, lampwork glass, freshwater pearls, vintage red glass beads, and a big pink jade flower to be the focal point.

It is definitely one of the most complex pieces of jewelry that I have ever composed, and I am so proud of the way it came out!

My Art Jewelry

Moss & Sunglight Bracelet

I've always loved making things. As long as I can remember, if I go too long without getting my hands into some creative work, I start to get kind of cranky about it. And there are so many art forms that make me happy. One of my favorites is art to wear, especially mixed-media jewelry.

I made the bracelet pictured above to remind me of an early morning walk through a Northwest forest. The green aventurine represents the pale green moss hanging from the pines, the citrine drops are the pale sunlight of sunrise creeping through the trees, and the silver is the glint of light on drops of dew.

After a long time of pondering and dithering, I finally decided to start selling my jewelry in my Etsy store. Look for more in the days to come.

Monster Monster Magnets on Etsy

I finally got around to putting up Monster Monsters on Etsy! The small square magnets are sold in sets of four, the large round magnets are sold individually. I know it's way early to think about the holidays, but these would make for great stocking stuffers. And all of my magnets are hand-drawn, hand-colored, and unique.

M is for Mustache

And P is for Picaresque Gent, which I found on Etsy last night. Etsy is so much fun!

I'll never grow a mustache (unless what they say about some Italian women is true) but a few of my gentlemen friends sport lovely mustaches and I'm an aficionado of well-groomed facial hair. Enter good old-fashioned mustache wax.

While it was the t-shirt that caught my eye, Brandon's hand-crafted mustache waxes sound delicious: original, coconut, and sandalwood vanilla, in both "regular" and "stiff". Tins of mustache wax make great little gifts, as well, and the holidays are not far away.

I've never met this particular craftsman, but when I spotted the M is for Mustache t-shirt, it made me want to share. Support a local craftsman.

Etsy Tuesday

I updated my Etsy store today, adding the pastel mushroom people shown here, a couple of new (and yummy) pincushions, and a pretty little owl feltie. The mushrooms are similar to the ones I made for the mushroom swap, only in different colors. I love all three, but I think the opal is my favorite. I'm getting so much mileage out of that shade of wool. These are super fun to make, and it's especially nifty to have a good way to use some of my vintage buttons.

This weekend, I figured out a new way to make bunnies. These are quick and easy to make and they can hang out with the little mice in the bowl at shows. These two are about as long as my thumb. I think I need to go back and add some highlights to the larger one's eyes, so they look cuter and less like they are burrowing.... into your soul!!! Add dramatic music here.

Twice a week isn't going to be enough!

Ever since Sunday, I've been thinking of all kinds of things I want to post here and eagerly waiting for Wednesday so I could update StacySix when I said I would. I'm so excited about sharing this part of my life!

So, my just-for-fun project today was playing with shrinky plastic. When looking around for things to trace, I rediscovered a nifty clip art book, tucked away on a bottom shelf, that I picked up last year at Goodwill: a Dover book "Art Nouveau Designs in Color", c. 1974 (which reaffirms my faith in the goodness of stuff from the 70s).

When making my shrinky pendant/tag, I decided that I liked it better upside-down.

It isn't faded out at the bottom, that's just the light. I can't decide if I like the pen marks or not, but next time I'm going to use wider pens and try a smooth look. The texture is kind of neat.

I also put a couple of new felties in my Etsy store, please take a moment to check them out? Thanks!

Pretty Felt!

Once winter term was finished and my school projects were safely out of the way, I had a burst of creative "ooh, must do hand crafts NOW!" energy. Much of that found its way into felt sculpture. This was one of the results. Its a little Russian doll, made from locally produced and dyed wool, hand-felted using a felting needle.

I learned how to felt about seven years ago from Ayala Talpai's wonderful book, The Felting Needle: From Factory to Fantasy. It's the most soothing of all crafts for me, the occasional stab in the finger notwithstanding, because it's so intuitive. I don't have to count, I don't have to follow a pattern, I can just sit and let the project take shape. Some pieces, like this one, surprise me with how cute they turn out to be. Others, well, they turn out to be learning experiences. Learning is good, right?

Even though I made her in the middle of the biggest snow storm that Portland has seen in decades, I loved the pale blue and purple for this piece instead of warm reds and greens. They just seemed to go with the snow and ice. I should have taken her outside and took a photo in the snow. I should take more pictures in general.