Etsy-licious

I also received in the mail the other day a terrific bracelet I ordered through Etsy from a crafter in Spain.

It arrived marvelously packaged... and it's a sunny bright and yellow treat, with some plastic fruit for whimsy.

Made me very very happy.




and it goes so well with these shoes I picked up the other week...

bestest fun ever

After purchasing "Collage Unleashed" recently, and in conjunction with and art journal class I'm working on developing, I've been playing with dying stuff ... paper towels, fabric, dryer sheets, bristol board, lace ... pretty much anything not nailed down :0)

Here's a samples of the paper towel pages I've done so far...

Posh Frocks

Here's some slightly lousy pictures of some little paper dresses I've been working on for a swap...

 

 

 

Taking a Leap

So in honor of Leap Day, I'd like to announce that I'm about to open my very own Etsy shop -- Effie's Little Shop-- I still have some (virtual) boxes to unpack and I'm awaiting the arrival of the cash register (wink)... but I hope to be up and running with a Grand Opening very very soon. Here's a little sneak peek at one of my handmade cards...

A question

I'm tired of winter. When will it be Spring?

Good from Bad...

So I've been thinking about doing this from time to time, but I finally started the list today. I get all kinds of bad spam mail, but they often have great names attached to them. I write stories from time to time and am always looking for names... so here's today's haul:

Rene Haynes (add and e ... get Renee, works for either sex)
Murray Porter (he sounds like an old cranky guy)
Geraldine Puddock (she sounds English)
Andre Edwards (he sounds like a professor, or a musician/ and alternately, make Andre into Andrea and there is the female version of the name)
Lupe Stacy (two first names)
Christopher Wadman (Ok, so Wardman or Waldman are better versions of this...)

just a fun little creative spark this morning...

stretching

So I said a couple posts back that I thought my style had simplified over the past couple of years and I didn't know how I felt about that. So after I looked back, and as I was doing that day's page, I challenged myself to pull more pages out, to try and get more complex and see what happened. This is it... and I love it... it's sort of complex simplicity. I love the tonal quality of it, I love the tryptich-ness. I even love the quote...plus the greys were what the day was all about, grey and rainy. This is one of those rare pages that ended up being more than the sum of its parts. They happen every now and then...



the other recent pages I've done are up on my flickr page:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethelbertina/sets/72157594250888766/

Hiding

Ok, so I admit it, I've been lousy keeping up with this blog this past while. Mostly it's that I have stuff I want to talk about but I haven't had time to scan it into my computer so I have no visual aides to go with my talks, and where's the fun in that? Hopefully I can rectify that in the near future, but till then... here's what I saw last night while sorting my sock drawer:

Looking back...

Was trying to organize some of the stuff on my computer and I came across some scans from 2004 when I had just started to explore visual journaling. I look at them now 3+ years later and I see that I've gotten simpler over time... and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I think these little collages had an energy that maybe I'm lacking these days.







One of the first sites I found on the internet when I started exploring collages/art journaling was this one:
http://www.aisling.net/gallery/journals/journals.htm

I can see the influence ... the abundance that I might have lost. I don't know, but I do know I want to think about it some. Am I taking the easy way out these days? I don't want to tie myself to the past, but I don't want to settle either...

things to ponder on this Friday morning...

The Month So Far

January 8th was a spring like day...

Finally got off my duff and scanned in my visual journal pages this month to date. I haven't managed every day... but I have done what I could do. These are just quick magazine collages sparked by a word, a phrase, a feeling, or a color which arises from the day I'm living.

I've posted the first one here... the others are on my Flickr page
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethelbertina/sets/72157594250888766/

“I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”
Bill Watterson (American Author of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, b.1958)

Not nearly as crabby today as yesterday, but it's cold and snowy out, and I have a headache, and the printer has been acting up... and all in all I would prefer to just go back to bed with my kitty cat and sleep the day away...

blergh

Just can't seem to get moving today. Typed the word "apathy" into this website -- http://www.typogenerator.net/ -- and this is the resultant graphic (after a little tinkering) I like it.

TGIF

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above. --Cyril Connolly

So, it's Friday -- or as the voice(s) in my head would say -- "Free Day." It's payday from the second job which always helps the bank account. There's only a few more hours I have to spend chained to a desk and then I'm off for the weekend, which of course, as a result of that second job is a real misnomer, but still...a chance to get away from the mundane world of work and into my studio to putter around and see what I can produce that's creative as I picnic on the shores of my imagination...

Looking Back and Going Forward

 

[The Thoreau quote says: Nature does not cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate,--not a grain more.]

Rededicating myself to doing a simple daily collage/art journal page in my date book. Loved the ones I've done in the past, and want to continue to do them. They're just simple pages made mostly with bits ripped from magazines or anything else that crosses my desk that day. I can do months worth of pages with just one month's Vogue... a few images that speak to my day, a word or a quote, or a label, and I have a representation of my day.

So until I get a chance to scan in this month, here's a blast from the past... October 2004.

The whole month is at my flicker page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethelbertina/sets/72157594250888766/

Long Winter's Nap

 

"Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snow-hid in Jenooary."

**James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

I feel like I'm under a blanket of snow myself. Snowdrop like, I need a bright and sunny day to give me the strength to poke my head up through the snow...

Welcome home to my new little baby

It's a bouncing baby iPod Nano :0) No pink ones to be had, so I got the blue one, and have named him Robin.

Technology is so amazing to me. Blows my mind that I can watch a TV episode on something not much larger than my debit card!!

Off to spend some time with the new addition and get to know Robin better {grin}. Then there's that episode of Remington Steele I downloaded... full of yummy 8os goodness!!

New York Moments:

In my quest to travel more -- even vicariously -- and because New York is the second state in my year long "get to know the states" project, here is a highly subjective, somewhat random trip around the Empire State...

Watkins Glen http://www.gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/watkins.shtml

I have a vague memory of a family vacation here when I was small. LOTS of steps, but it looks LOVELY! Also famous for the NASCAR speedway there, proving that it takes all kinds of people to make this country :0)

Corning Glass Museum http://www.cmog.org/
maybe it was the same trip, but we also visited this museum when I was small. I remember a small glass turtle that I got as a souvenir that I had for a long time.

Niagara Falls http://www.niagarafallslive.com/Facts_about_Niagara_Falls.htm
(webcam shot: http://www.fallsview.com/Stream/StarDotTechCamStill.shtml)

Fort Ticonderoga http://www.fort-ticonderoga.org/

Here's what wikipedia has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ticonderoga

PSST...an aside:

**the Dixon Ticonderoga is the worlds best pencil :0) http://www.dixonticonderoga.com/ it just makes me happy for some unknown, but no less appreciated reason. How can you not love a product with THIS on their website: "Dixon Ticonderoga is a company that empowers people to take conscious and subliminal thoughts, facts, ideas and dreams, and preserve them using tools that are simply extensions of themselves."

and as for NYC itself:

Top of the Rock http://www.topoftherocknyc.com/splash.aspx

here's where the picture above was taken from. I don't like heights a whole lot, so it was a bit scary, but SUCH panoramas!!

The Met http://www.metmuseum.org/

looks like they currently have a fashion exhibition and a BLOG about it ... I look at these pictures and drool http://blog.metmuseum.org/blogmode/

If you don't want to/can't actually travel on New York City's Subways... check this site out for a vicarious trip. Cully rides the subway and sketches people he sees. He even has a book! http://childofatom.blogspot.com/search/label/sketches

and of course, as a theater nut, I couldn't leave without posting a listing of all the Current Broadway shows http://www.nyctourist.com/bway_currentshows.asp

and to finish our tour up, we stop at the crossroads of the world ... Times Square. Live webcam views here: http://www.earthcam.com/ts/

Head Bangin'

Dealing with the inevitable and very common headache today... so here's a layout I did recently after two days of concerts that also made my head hurt.

Dealing with the pharmaceutically enhanced crowd sucked. This layout I love. Go figure.

 

Happy New Year

So did I mention I went over to the dark side late last year... and started "formally" scrapbooking...???

I've been sticking stuff in books forever and a day, but only recently have I gotten "into" this as a formal art/craft/hobby/whatever you want to call it...

so here's one of my new pages

 

When gazing at my pink christmas tree, the title just came into my head and made me make it...

New to this new world, but a few magazines and a couple books later... I'm still having a great time. I'm blaming an impulse purchase of Ali Edward's new(est)? book "Life Artist" ... I can't ever read it without stopping and jumping up and going into my studio and doing a page.

Just ordered some more pictures online for even more pages...

Have resolved to follow my meanering muse wherever she takes me and enjoy the ride... what better way to start the year?