Recently in Etsy Category
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Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
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Happy Santa Lucia Day! 10% all day in both stores with the coupon code: STLUCIA10.
In addition, buy two or more prints from Irving Place Photography and get the shipping free!
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Use coupon code FBTW10 for 10% off any order at Irving Place Photography or The Floating Market, now through Monday!
Additionally, if you buy two or more prints from Irving Place Photography, shipping will be free, now through Christmas. (Etsy will still charge the shipping, but I will refund the charge.)
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Starting on Friday, buy any two prints and get the shipping for free!
More Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales from the Female Photographers of Etsy can be found here.
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Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
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Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
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Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
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Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Cheers!
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Today seemed like a good day to make some Etsy Treasuries:
Trick or Treat!, featuring members of the fPOE Team.
Boo!, featuring members of the Wisconsin Street Team.
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As blogged by T.
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My Canton cufflinks are included in this nifty Father's Day treasury:
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My first treasury in Etsy's new Treasury East beta. It features buttony selections from the Etsy Recyclers Guild, the Etsy Trashion Team, and the Etsy Wisconsin Street Team.
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I'm quoted in Etsy's Storque blog.
Also, more Film Fest write-ups coming soon, but in the meantime, I'm off to Chicago for Lifeline Theater's Floating Market benefit.
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Etsy, The Floating Market, Wisconsin Film Festival, elseweb, event, reviews, site news, wonderful oddness
My MTA cufflinks are included in a cool Earth Day treasury (expires Saturday, just before midnight).
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Etsy, Irving Place, The Floating Market, art, site news, treasury, wonderful oddness
"Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned."
--"Charlie on the MTA," Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes
Lovely, old-school Boston subway tokens adorn these funky cufflinks. MTA, not MBTA, which puts these tokens at pre-1964. (The more recently discontinued MBTA tokens feature the large "T" on one side. Of course, it's all Charlie Cards now.)
I must admit, the Boston subway holds a special place in my heart, and I think these tokens are might snazzy. Don't you?
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The Floating market garners a nice mention in this article on the Etsy Recyclers Guild Team (see page 4 for a photo and page 5 for the mention)
What a nice way to start the week!
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Etsy, The Floating Market, art, elseweb, reviews, wonderful oddness
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A pair of my cufflinks is featured in this cool p-poc treasury: http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=122237 Check it and click! (expires Wednesday morning)
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1. I am bound and determined to sell these hair sticks today. They are on sale right now for $5 off the regular price, and they are totally charming.
2. Starting today and for the next seven days, I have a tile ad up on Craft Cult. I'm hoping it does some good.
3. I have a wonderfully creepy treasury, "The Unsettling Toy Box" on Etsy at the moment.
4. This weekend, I expect to finish an art project I have been working on since December. I'll post pictures as soon as I do.
Happy Friday! What are you up to?
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Etsy, Irving Place, The Floating Market, art, sale, wonderful oddness
Apparently, at approximately 5:00am EST, Thursday December 31 2009, a treasury list that I made was featured on the Etsy front page. (It was about 5 hours later that one of my own items made the front page for the first time.) Check it out!
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All hair sticks $5 off at the Floating Market, limited time only.
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In Etsy's Treasury West, until early Sunday morning.
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I've been a busy, busy bee with 6 new listings and 2 renewals. (This was after finishing painting a mural at a friend's house--more on that later.)
New:
Guitar, Fine Art Photograph, 8x10 Glossy Print, unframed
At the Terrace, Fine Art Photograph, 8x10 Glossy Print, unframed
Vine-wrapped Window, Fine Art Photograph, 6.5x4.5 Glossy Print, unframed
Malus, Fine Art Photograph, 6.5x4.5 Glossy Print, unframed
Cloudy Day at the Midway, Fine Art Photograph, 6.5x4.5 Glossy Print, unframed
They say the owl was a bakers daughter... Fine Art Photograph, 4.5x6.5 Matte Print, unframed
Renewed:
Night Nude, Fine Art Photograph, 7.5x5 Glossy Print, unframed
Queen of Pentacles, Fine Art Photograph, 5x7 Glossy Print, unframed
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FREE shipping on any order $10 or more for the 100th person to make The Floating Market an Etsy favorite!
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As of this afternoon, I have a new scanner. I am very, very excited by this, as it means I can finally start scanning some of the many, many prints I have available. It also means I can restart my stalled project with the family photo albums. The old scanner just couldn't handle it any more.
To celebrate, I now have a new print up at Irving Place Photography: Red Gym.
I also have a treasury for the next few days: Forward!, a tribute to spring, Daylight Savings Time, and Wisconsin.
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I posted three new items to the Floating Market late last night. Two individual buttons and one 4-button set:
Spikes, 1 inch Wooden Button with burnt-in design, OOAK
Clock, 1 inch Wooden Button with burnt-in design, OOAK
Hourglass, 3/4 inch Wooden Buttons with burnt-in design, set of 4
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Blackbird Marmalade Creations is the work of C. Jane Washington, a Madison artist who makes the most wonderfully creepy art dolls.
I first came across her work at last spring's Odyssey Con art show, and my first thought was, "I know these creatures!" They were very much like the little beings, good and bad, that scampered around my imagination as a child. (See also.)
I picked up one of her cards for future reference, at which point it did that thing that business cards like to do to me: it went into hiding for a while. I rediscovered it last night, and was reminded to check the website, and hence, this blog entry.
Coincidentally, she is also on the WisCon 34 Art Show committee. (Or perhaps she *is* the art show committee, as these things sometimes go.)
Anyway, her work is delightfully creepy, scarily cute, and terrifyingly toothy. Go check it out.
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Etsy, art, for sale elsewhere, local business, wonderful oddness
For starters, there is this excellent retro sash belt. Then, there are five new bags constructed from scraps: a cellphone holder/coin purse made from the end of a necktie and my Four Seasons bag collection, constructed from discarded decorator fabric samples.
I'm happy with the pieces, though I think I may redo most of the photos when I get a chance. Let me know what you think!
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I was digging through a box of fabric and lo and behold, I found where I'd put those bags I'd been working on. It turns out that I had attached the handles, and just hadn't realized it. I also think that they actually don't need a button or a snap at the top. So they really are finished!
I need to get some photos taken this weekend and the pricing figured out, but look for them soon!
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A treasury from Wisconsin Etsians, till Wednesday, at 8:15 PM CST.
Take a look while it is still around!
I was at the Dig and Saves today and brought home a bunch of new things. However, as new things come in to my life, I need to make room. I have a collection of wonderful vintage gloves, which I cannot resist buying when I find them...only none of them has a mate. Some of these made great costume pieces for a LARP, but while I would love to find a project in which to put them to use, I have not yet. So, I offer them up to the world. Someone else might have an idea for them.
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I'm a little tempted to put the "This Item Made the Front Page of Etsy" icon on this one, except it wasn't exactly this item that made the front page but one very, very similar to it. Might be close enough, but there is still some difference.
I have a special fondness for this pair, since the original set was my first ever Etsy frontpage.
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This was another shot from the Verona Hometown USA carnival, same day as the "Flight" photo. The name of this particular ride is the Zipper, and I have ridden it once. By myself. And that was quite enough. (That ride was next to the music tent, which gave me insight in to the length of the ride: the band was doing the last chorus or so of one song when the ride started. Then they played "I Want You to Want Me" by Cheap Trick, and I sang along at the top of my lungs. Then they started up a 3rd song before the ride ended. It was a long, long ride.)
Both the ride and this photo make me think of the Tower card in a tarot deck, hence the name.
Someday, I'd love to have enough appropriate photos to build an entire tarot deck, though so far, I've only got two of the Major Arcana.
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I can! I haz!
Both The Floating Market and Irving Place Photography have fan pages. Of course, right now they only have two fans, and one of them is me! Go on and keep us from getting lonely by ourselves.
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I'm pretty happy to see it, though of course I find myself wondering if I should have worded some things differently. But I'm always going to nitpick my own words.
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This wood-burned button pair is ever so simple. And sometimes, simple is all you need.
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This is another shot from the Troll series. It reminded me of a woodblock print. There was actually a specific image that I remember from years ago, but I haven't been able to find it, even after much searching. I wonder if it may have been an ad? It was a standard-looking samurai/kabuki actor portrait, only the figure in the portrait was looking angrily (and possibly cross-eyed) at a fly. I don't think I'm imagining it, but it may well have been a modern parody.
I love the intensity of the stare.
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Tragic Ladies: Unlucky in Love, a new treasury on Esty. Expires Tuesday, February 9 at 6:46 PM CST, so look while you can.
"That's what she said."
But seriously, who *doesn't* want to be good all over Wilkinsburg?
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I am really drawn to cheesy local festivals and carnival rides.The slightly bored carnies, the clusters of giggling teens, the wafting smell of cotton candy and funnel cakes, and the sound of the Cheap Trick cover band in the beer tent...
Besides the thrill of the ride itself, there is something about the thought "gee, I hope they put it together right" while flying through the air at great speed that gets the heart pumping. This photo captures that for me.
(Shot at Verona Hometown U.S.A. Fest, 1999.)
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These earring are actually not something that I made. They are, however, old enough to be considered vintage by Etsy, so... That was a little weird for me. I bought these when I was in 7th grade, probably from Claire's Boutique or some other such mall store. I was into dressing crazy-funky, and I loved how outrageously large the hoops were. Of course, they were so big that I hardly ever wore them. I had to be careful to keep my head level, because they would touch my shoulders.
Part of me is sorry to let these go, but all things considered, I am happy to release them out into the world. Someone is going to be thrilled to have these crazy things.
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Most of my buttons are done as singles, but these pinwheels demanded to be made ina sete of four. Perhaps this was to echo those four segments (which should not be confused with the fallout trefoil, though it did remind me of that).
Spin, little pinwheels, spin!
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"Ophelia, you're breaking my heart!"
This is one of my favorite photos, and also from one of my favorite photo shoots. Did I mention how grateful I am that I have such obliging friends as fabulous models? This was my first "put the model in the water" shoot. Happily, we had a warm September day for the work, and the water was not at all uncomfortable.
Earlier in the day, we had wandered around in a graveyard, doing a mad scene. The photos turned out all right, but none were exactly what I was looking to achieve. We then trekked over to Lake Wingra Park, where an obliging willow tree and the warm, shallow water provided the perfect backdrop.
I always find this photo to be beautiful and haunting...and just slightly creepy.
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Check out the Etsy Recyclers Guild Team Blog. It features lots of artists and artisans who make things with recycled and "upcycled" materials, including yours truly!
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Winter, winter, winter. I have to say, I'm not digging it right now. If I weren't sick, and could take advantage of the ice skating this week, it might be different. Instead, I am craving flowers something fierce.
Well, Lynda Naranjo's photography feels like a bit of summer. At least a pleasant memory of warmer seasons. Hollyhocks and days on the lake.
Sometimes I get a little silly when naming things, but when I looked at what I had made, the alternating discs and seed beads really made me think of plate spinning. The cheery yellow base and the pyrographic design also lend to the circus feel. I think these are fun and decorative, without being over the top.
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I am really not a "car person". I'm not someone who can tell you year, make, and model at a glance. (Well, except for the models with really distinctive body types, and even then I'm not going to be able to tell you a year.) Still, I do appreciate the lines of a well-designed automobile. There was something about this car that caught my eye.
This is also an early image for me, circa summer of 1998. It may have been within a roll or two of "Derelict". If you look closely, you can see a wee, unintentional self-portrait in the chrome.
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These earrings are a wee bit less "found object" than my usual. The keys are found, the birds came from the same fabric store going out of business sale that netted me all my plain wooden buttons. But I just sort of love the idea of these hummingbirds bearing keys. Very much like something that might happen in a fairytale.
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If I recall correctly, this was taken on Thanksgiving of 1998 or 1999. I was using a Cmeha Smena 8m, a Soviet Russian camera that I picked up for super cheap. (I think this was before the "Lomography" craze had hit big...I hadn't heard of it, at least. I picked up a Holga at the same time.) It is considered a "toy" camera, and it is pretty limited in what it an do, but the lens produces some very cool effects. Frankly, I wish that processing and printing from film hadn't become so much more difficult, because this kind of thing makes me want to shoot a few more rolls and hit the darkroom.
The shadows are from my sister and I, as we were out in a local nature preserve walking the dog. The title comes from a line in L. M. Montgomery's Emily Climbs.
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Today was a wonderfully full day. I took a set of product photos for the fabulous Anandi, then started getting them web-ready (color correction, cropping, sizing...) We would have done more, but my camera battery started running low.
In exchange, she is going to make me a nightgown. I have been looking in vain for something sexy/cute, yet warm (it is, after all, Wisconsin in winter). So I bought a few yards of some soft green jersey cloth, and she is going to custom-make something for me. I'm very excited by this. I'll totally post some pictures of it when it is ready.
I'm also looking forward to seeing her shop up and running live. (She has a few pieces in it now, but she has quite a few more lovely things to list.)
Nice. I've got 6 new photos up:
Enjoys!
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"We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero."
Seriously, if you are a Browncoat, these cufflinks will get the "Hero of Canton" song running through your head.
One of the things I really like about this pair is that it is pretty much the same token (unlike my mixed sets) but the colors are not identical. We have one silver-tone token and one that looks like it may have been coated in a darker layer (copper?) that has started wearing off. It would be too easy if they looked exactly alike. The difference makes it interesting to me.
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This was totally a lucky shot from my very first roll of film in an SLR. Sweet timing, that's what I say to that.
I'm particularly fond of his shadow.
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In a way, it was a LARP that set a good bit of this in motion. Not everything, but it certainly played a part. There was a period of almost 3 years during which I was taking part in a Live Action Roleplaying game based on Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I was, in fact, playing a version of Ingress (Ress), the youngest daughter of the the House of Arch, who only appears in the book very briefly and is still missing (and perhaps dead) at the end of it.
She was an Opener, and had a tendency to collect lost keys. I didn't even have to try very hard, as over the course of the game other players would seek me out and hand me bunches of old keys. Sometimes they would want the prop back at the end of the game. Usually they didn't. Then the key acquisition started to bleed out into the real world, and old keys continued to find their way into my possession. I amassed quite a horde of random keys and a desire to find things to do with them.
This key actually did come to me during the course of some Floating Market session or another. So it seems appropriate that when it does eventually leave me, it will also be by way of The Floating Market.
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This shot is the result of a happy accident plus some digital manipulation. I'd tried to get a good shot of a group of people staring down at the camera in an ominous way. The actual result, when I made the print, was pretty lackluster. Only, there was one tiny bit of a face in the corner which really drew my attention. I loved the way the light and shadows played together for in a highly creepy way.
I made that bit of the image the basis for a really cool pen and ink drawing (which I should find and scan one of these days). Once I actually had a scanner of my own, I made a very high resolution scan of that part of the picture, than started working with it in Photoshop to sharpen the contrasts a bit more and build on the scary anonymity of it. I must say, I'm really proud of how it turned out.
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A few years ago, I started a project of buying old leather coats from the Dig and Save and revamping them in an odd, urban fantasy way...the aesthetic that soon took over a lot of what I was doing. (I don't have any of the coats ready for sale just yet, but you an glimpse a bit of one here.) Part of the revamp was to replace the plastic buttons with more interesting things. Around the same time, a local fabric store was going out of business, and I ended up with a whole mess of plain wooden buttons that were crying out for some pyrography. Of course, I liked it so much that I ended up with way more buttons than I would probably use.
This particular button plays with surfaces and textures. The design is owes more to pressure than to burning—quick, heavy presses with the tool. When I finished, I realized that it reminded me of the old Aztec and Mayan calendars. (Hence the name.)
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Have I mentioned how much I love my obliging friends? This is the result of a collaboration with the fabulous Anandi. I gave her a Project Runway style challenge, with a Floating Market twist. Assemble a costume for a Bridge Troll using only items that could be found in the trash of the Dig and Save bins. The modern samurai feel came in as a why to indicate troll as honorable warrior, rather than scary monster. (And we tried to do the whole thing in a respectful, rather than icky, way.)
I think she pulled it off quite well, and J., our model was quite game for climbing around and under an assortment of bridges, even wading out in the water a few times. I was extremely happy with how this shoot turned out, and look forward to trying it again sometime.
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Expires Friday, 1/15/01 at 5:45 PM CST
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I wear hair sticks all the time. In fact, a twist held in place with a pair of sticks is kind of my default hairstyle. Of course, this means I own a *lot* of hair sticks. A few years back I ended up with a surplus of these yellow wooden hairsticks. I'd have to break or lose quite a few other before I'd need them.
They sat on a shelf for quite a while. Then I started playing with a wood burning tool I'd also had sitting on a shelf for years. Turns out, they went together quite well. I love the way the spiral turned out, as that had me a little worried. The butterflies are also a fun touch. I'd be tempted to keep these if I didn't already have more hair sticks...than you can shake a stick at.
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This is another very early image for me, which got me into playing with low-light, long exposure shots. I think this was a 30-60 second exposure (guess who failed to write this info down?), and the negative it super-thick. It is also another instance of "gosh, I'm glad I have obliging friends" because not everyone is going to let you wrap them in Christmas lights and hold very stil.
Actually, the "hold very still" thing only sort of applies here: about halfway through the exposure, she turned her head to the side without thinking about it. Talk about a happy accident! I love the way that motion totally obscured the face. I used it again with other models later, but this one gave me the idea.
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Ok, technically, I can't get a Man Cold, but damn if it doesn't feel like that. Took the day off work and moped about the house drinking tea and feeling sorry for myself. However, the day wasn't a total waste, as I got 15 new items listed at The Floating Market. There was a long slog of color correcting and photo resizing involved in that, but I have a pleasant feeling of accomplishment—somewhere underneath all this grossness.
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Time for some late-night pyrography, as I just sold a bunch of buttons. I want to take pictures tomorrow, so tonight is the time to create.
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This was one of my earliest shots, and one of my very favorites. I shot it in the summer of 1998, during my very first college photo class, using an old Nikon I'd borrowed from my dad. The camera was completely manual, with only a 50mm lens and a broken light meter. In a way, it was totally perfect, because it made me have to really think about what I was doing, and the limits of the 50mm made me frame my subjects with care. (I love my digital camera, 28-80 lens, my built-in flash and light meter...but it is easy to just snap snap snap when you don't have those limits in place.)
For this shot, I climbed into the cab of the rusting wreck of a truck that was sitting in a vacant lot near my apartment. I was nervous that I'd end up with tetanus or something, but I got the shot that I wanted. The truck is long gone, and even the lot has been built up, but I'll always remember it.
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This is very neat. I can see the two front page treasuries I was in!
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I was rather pleased with how these turned out, and had to fight the temptation to just keep them for myself, rather than selling them.
The purple beads and the larger silver beads (just below the purple) came from a necklace that a friend made for me about a decade ago. It was a beginner beading project, which I wore until the string gave out. I kept all the pieces, but after years of keeping it in a box, I decided to re-purpose the beads for something new, rather than trying to recreate the old piece.
I love these particular tokens. They are so petite—just the size of dimes—and the cutouts are very neat. I never thought I'd describe something made out of transit tokens as "airy," but I think that word really does apply here.
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I've gotten my Movable Type updated, for the first time in years. Lots and lots of changes since I first installed the old version, so I have a bit of a learning curve. I'm also going to be tweaking the design a bit. The old one was nice, which I why I kept it so long, but it was also getting a bit stale.
This started out as a personal journal blog. Then it became more of a place where I reviewed movies I'd seen, shows I'd attended, restaurants at which I'd eaten. Then it became a photo blog. Now is is moving in a new direction once more, something that will have elements of those, and a bit more.
This time around it is still going to be heavily an art blog. I have two Etsy shops—Irving Place Photography and The Floating Market—which I will be featuring. I'm also going to try to document more of the creative processed behind them. I'm also going to throw in some reports and reviews of interesting goings-on around Madison and on the net, particularly as they relate to creative endeavors.
Hello, 2010, good to meet you.
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They sold pretty fast, but then the sale was canceled since the customer couldn't pay. So they are back and ready to sell!
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