So, I am having a GREAT time with Shrinky Dinks and have to tell you about it! I have created some awesome jewelry that I will soon share with you all here and put up for sale in my Etsy Shop!
I was randomly looking around on the internet one day and found this article about making your own shrink dinks.
So, I found some #6 plastic container from the salad bar and went home and tried it out with permanent markers. I had a great time tracing farm animals from a children’s book and creating a bracelet out of them:
So, after they were all shrunk I strung them on a bracelet and the bracelet sort of tells a little farm animal story. I loved it!
So, I did a little searching online for shrink art and discovered some serious artists are creating beautiful things with shrinky dinks! I am not a “serious” artist, more of an “outsider artist” but I am having a great time. Instead of finding a bazillion salad bar containers I went to the craft store and purchased shrink plastic.
I have been creating jewelry to put up for sale on my Etsy shop:
This first item is a large pin. I drew one of my favorite birds from this summer’s vacation: a heron. I put an art deco background on it and secured a pin. I love it and may not sell it.
I know my camera sort of sucks. I don’t know how I expect to sell jewelry on Etsy with crappy photos! hahaha…
Then yesterday I created this set of earrings and a matching necklace after my love for Japanese art. I used the Koi fish as a good luck charm. I incorporated some beautiful glass beads I had and Iris showed me how to work with the wire:
Here’s the matching necklace and pendant I made for them:
Anyway… I can’t wait to make some more. I am next going to scan and print photos onto the shrink paper so I can make jewelry, etc for my family for Christmas gifts!
Many years ago I found a beautiful CD in a metaphysical shop. The album was Native American flute music and it truly brought me to a place of peace. The artist, Marina Raye, skillfully played the flute with such tenderness that I was transformed from a state of stress and anxiety to calm and relaxation before the end of the first track.
Click HERE to listen to a track by Marina while you read this article. It should open in a small pop-up window. You know, I’m sorry but it will navigate you away from my article. I just can’t master the “new window thing” yet. Maybe you can try it after reading the article?
I was so touched by the music that I looked up the website on the CD label and sent an email to thank them for the music. The first “fan mail” I may have ever sent. Well, imagine my surprise when Marina Raye herself wrote back to me a beautiful email… not a form letter, an actual conversation with me! I was an instant fan.
Over the years, I have continued to listen to Marina’s music while meditating, while making my art projects, and while cooking and doing chores. At a gallery event I organized, I played Marina Raye’s CD’s and received many compliments on the music.
This is just the thing I recommend for cold northern nights. Today I received her newsletter with the link to listen to her latest. Yes, just the thing I needed! Thank you, Marina Raye!
PS- consider giving a cd by Marina to yourself for the holidays. You WILL thank me!
Well, this is that time of year. The time of year when I normally have a breakdown. I guess I have some sort of issues with the holiday season- issues buried so deep I don’t know about them. (?) Why else would I get crazy every year at this time?
It’s just the adjustment. I wrote all summer dreading the coming of winter. And here I sit already, in six inches of snow with a howling wind and temps in the 20’s. It’s dark at 5pm. The backyard is all packed up and the friendly front porches are empty and desolate. My beautiful tall zebra grass has been chopped down for the year. It’s sleeping. Waiting for spring. Long wait.
My mind is again swimming in art and ideas. I can’t quite grasp what the “real artists” have. I am so turned around by looking at Mixed Media Art. I can do that, I tell myself. That’s beautiful. That is in my mind, why can’t I put it on paper? Why can’t I make it?
I’m really exploring polyshrink right now. Another juxtaposition- trying to use real art and combine it with kitsch to express my sense of humor. It is and isn’t working. The sizing isn’t right- the drawings are a little wierd. And I keep looking at “real art” and having an inferiority complex.
I’m trying to learn Photoshop Elements- which is a cluster fuck and not at all what I was used to with good plain old Adobe Photoshop that used to be on my computer at the NACC. I just want to open a frigging image and change it. I don’t want to hear about selections and layers. Just let me frigging change it and cut and paste parts and draw on it. What the fuck is all that shit?
To top it off, I have too many ideas and before I can get one out- I come up with another. I wonder if there is a syndrome called PMS-PMD-ADD-ADHD because if so, I have it.
Did I mention I don’t feel like cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year? How come we are never invited to anyone’s house?
So, I’ve still been really busy finishing the living room project. Yesterday, Iris and I made another trip to Ikea and picked out some fabulous lamps. Here is one with the painted reclaimed table and my plants.
It’s really pretty and has an adjustable height. We bought a pair- and the dark shades are just what we needed. The basket weave shade gives the room additional texture, (which is was definitely needing!).
We hung the floating wall shelves for our television and now I am carefully editing from my old boxes of stuff which few collectibles I should put back out.
Here are a couple of old Fisher Price toys that I dug out:
That “Change a Tune” piano is so much fun! And the happy Busy Bee just makes me smile. These are from my old collection I made when I lived in Ohio and could find very cheap good old stuff at auctions. That doesn’t seem to happen much here in Western NY. The name of the game is “estate sales” with garage sale caliber stuff and department store prices!
I have been so busy! Iris and I absolutely hated our living room. In the thirteen years we have been together, we have never had *new* living room furniture. We’ve had second hand give-aways, auction furniture, thrift store furniture, hell even the occasional curbside-free-yard-sale-on-trash-night. This time, we would have new furniture.
We found some really pretty brown faux leather couches. No- we purposely sought out the fake leather. It was harder to find, quite honestly. But we have a bazillion pets and it’s been our experience that fake leather is best. (We had a used set from the 70’s once). We can just spray it with cleaner, and wipe it up to remove any pet hair, etc.
We changed the wall color from a very dark indigo blue to the lightest, palest aqua-blue-green-grey you can find before it’s just white. So we are going with the aqua and brown color palette. I do love that. Anyway, soon I will be able to post some really nice photos but until then I’ll show you a few favorite little pieces to show you. When the room is all together, we’ll have a nice slide show!
Iris and I just got done with a renovation in our albatross of an old house so I’ve been away from the computer for a few days. I’ll be back real soon with some photos and an update to my blog.
So, I was on Etsy today, which I am now obsessed with. Nobody is buying my stuff except my daughter and Canadian Creationz, who is such a nice person. ANYWAY… my $18 is just burning a hole in my PayPal so I’ve been looking to spend it.
I found the most awesome Etsy Store, Shrunken Cat Heads. I was intrigued by the artist profile because she sounded like my SISTA so I cyberstalked all her links and looked at her website, (she’s an author too!), and then her blog, and then I found this goddamn HILARIOUS song she recorded, to which I am giving you the video above.
So, if all four of you who read my blog will go to her blog, maybe it will help her out with her probable cazillion readers… in the meantime, I cannot wait to read her book this December because I bet it’s going to be frigging awesome.
PS- Total Embarassment! Cori emailed me and light-heartedly let me know that although she posted this video on her website, she is not the woman in it. Ruh-oh, Poppy has embarassed herself again! LOL
Remember the rabbit I adopted? Well, here she is finally gaining some weight. Her new found health has added some spunk and we are having some behavior issues. She is honking and biting me sometimes. Also, she goes right under my couch and refuses to come out sometimes. I took her outside on a harness to help her expend some of that new found energy:
She got to run and have fun! She did very well on that harness!
She stayed out and played for about an hour. But here’s a picture of Mad Rabbit as she was picked up and taken back into the house for Crimes of Eating Flowers.
Isn’t that the cutest anger? Here is Alice the Rabbit back in her cage. Behind her to the right you’ll see I gave her a consolation prize: a 2006 phone book to shred- which she loves to do.
