Spring Bada-Bing Loot!

Sunday's Spring Bada-Bing at the REST table was a success. I had the pleasure to hang out with:

Psychic Power Projects Karen Maiko and Jkadesigns

Although I didn't sell much of anything, I bought a few lovely things (I'm not including one which is a secret gift):


End of the World Switchplate by Wonder Wares

Anatomical Mouth Switchplate by Penguin Love, who also made some really snazzy little notebooks which were in the swag bags.

Moss Pin by Arthur Hash.

I also bought some I ♥ Alpaca stickers from Made By Tess at her adorable and colorful display.

So, of course I scrambled like crazy to get a lot of stuff done for the event, and I think I knew I was going overboard... I made 250 mini promo envelopes for the swag bags, though I didn't get them all in on time.


They included a tiny Catalog of Goods, a sticker, a coupon and either a 100 Random Square Inch Drawing magnet, or a teeny flip cat shrinky dink "bead".





I used my absolutely last sheet of Frosted Ruff & Ready Shrinky Dinks, Colorforms ©1975. I'm wondering if I can find this old style Shrinky Dinks anymore. The other sheets I had were modern and not at all Frosted Ruff & Ready. Check out the cool packaging:




So... next up is Bizarre Market this Saturday!

Get Ready for Upcoming Fun

This Sunday April 20th is Spring Bada-Bing, put on by the Richmond Craft Mafia. I won't be an official vendor with my own table, but I will be there as part of REST (Richmond Etsy Street Team).



Then.... on Saturday, April 26th from Noon through 4, Chop Suey Books will host the annual Spring Bizarre Market.



Richmond's most eclectic arts & crafts & oddities sale.
The Bizarre Market fills up Randolph Street with an
average of 25-40 vendors who sell everything from
paintings, knit clothing, retro clothing, prints, jewelry,
photographs, haircuts, new shoes, bottles of water,
and household goods. This particular market will focus
on all of these items, but we are encouraging all Spring
Cleaners to bring out yard sale and household products.

It is always free for vendors to set up, and we welcome
anyone with legal items to sell. We do ask that each vendor
donates 10% of the day's sales to our selected non-profit,
Books On Wheels. In return, BOW will be present with
the bus, fixing bikes and giving away books.

I'm not 100% sure that I'll be doing Bizarre Market, (because I still might go out of town). But I probably will do it.

Right now I am working on many little odds and ends, including Lookability goody bags for the Spring Bada-Bing.

I got a great envelope template maker from digging around on the internet. Luckily I learned how to "score" to get the folds to work.

I'm making some new flip cat goods...


Mini Pouches


More cats

Also, I was lucky to be featured in today's Etsy Finds - Print Plush email. There are many cool etsy mailing lists to subscribe to.

I'm kind of embarrassed IF my dolls are too inexpensive (now that I see the other Print Plushies), but these are similar to the ones that didn't sell in person for $8 the one time I tried. Pricing is so tricky! I need a pricing support group. Or I guess I need to do some "market research" and see how cat dolls are faring in the economy.

Oh, I almost forgot, I got a really great cat-related thing at the thrift store (yeah, breaking my shopping rules). I'll put that up next time.

Alchemy Success Part 2: Jackalope Taxidermy

Yesterday I reported on alchemy success from the consumer's perspective. It was about my new favorite raccoon shirt.

Today's episode deals with alchemy success from the maker's perspective. And that maker is me.


I couldn't resist bidding on the challenge to make a mounted jackalope "taxidermy" made of non-animal materials. I won the bid but didn't really have a plan other than ideas floating in my head.

Lucky for me the ideas in my head floated out pretty much exactly how I hoped they would. That's always nice. (Because believe me, most of the time it doesn't work out that way).





The process:
First I went to the hardware store and experienced the usual awkward situation of looking for unknown materials and not wanting to explain what I'm looking for... since I'm rarely quite sure. I bought chicken wire and screening. That was the base for the jackalope embryo:


This was built up with wire and screen and then covered with this foam carpet padding stuff. Then I made brown corduroy antlers. A lot of the sewing of padding and "skin/fur" was done using a curved needle. Actually, without the curved needle, it might have been impossible to get the "pelt" on the innards.


I like the profile.

The eyes were made using these glass globules I had for a long time. I had no idea what I was ever going to use these for, but now I know I can use them for jackalope eyes.



* * * *

Meanwhile, in unrelated news I must report, Patches is bemused by a camel cricket.

Alchemy Success part 1: Raccoon Shirt Transformed by Fisheye

Etsy recently reintroduced the Alchemy feature which is used for requesting custom items or bidding to be the person to make the custom items.

I decided to partake so I put out a call to have a shirt altered to fit. As many shirts as I have, I always wanted this shirt to fit, because the fabric is so awesome:



Yes, it is vintage fabric with raccoons. I imagine they are washing apples or some other treasure they scavenged from somewhere. Of course these raccoons remind me of Patches. I have had this shirt since 2002 when I attended the Art-o-Mat 5th Anniversary Swap Meet in Winston-Salem. I grabbed this shirt out of a giant clothing swap mountain at Mary's of Course! Cafe. Finally, some random thing I pick up and hold on to for half a decade has actually become usable.

And all thanks to Fisheye Accessories. fisheye is an etsy seller who makes one-of-a-kind accessories, primarily from recycled or repurposed materials.


One of my favorites is her Apple Tree Cross Stitch clutch, made out of an upcycled kitchen towel.

She did a great job on altering the shirt, which started out way too loose and slouchy on me.

Before:


and

After:


Next Episode: Alchemy Success Part 2: Wherein chicken wire is utilized.

Caterpillar & Warrior Bear - plus continued adventures and misadventures in print

Recently, I think by using Shop Local on Etsy, I discovered juliabhebner.etsy.com. She has really beautiful and unique prints, among other things. We did a sort of bartering arrangement and I got this print I had been eyeing:

Swallowtail Butterfly Caterpillar

And also this:

Warrior Bear Magnet

I love these! And I know I'll see at least one of those caterpillars show up again this year when the fennel gets going. I doubt I'll see a warrior bear in person, but you never know.

For local people, go check out Julia's work, currently at the Visual Arts Studio and upcoming on May 17th at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden's art & craft show

* * *

So, this weekend I dropped in on a print making open house at Visual Arts Center (not to be confused with Visual Arts Studio), which I still very much want to call the Hand Work Shop

To make a long story short, once again I have concluded that print making (in most forms) takes a lot of prep and is messy and time consuming (none of which I'm saying is a negative thing). It's just difficult to get into if you're not prepared.

I thought I finally learned the difference between monotype and monoprint, although here it is explained in a way that makes me think I'm still not quite certain. I'm constantly getting hung up on terminology, I think because I like getting hung up on terminology. I love finding out what all the materials and implements and machinery parts are called. Anyway, I made a very simple monotype. One was the result of drawing with a stick on top of the paper on top of the plate, the other (the one with the red background) went through the press.

Comparing the outcome to last week's project, I think I prefer drypoint, though that is even more press-reliant. I also found out some things about the wood block class they have, and that's really the class I'd want to take the most, although I fear my carving strengths would not be adequate.

So, for now it's just screenprinting for me. The most recent episode involved my attempt to use the leftover photo emulsion which had been in refrigerator since last time I used it. It looked usable as I was pouring it onto the screen. But it smelled gross, and I'm thinking I should have thrown it out. Too late though. The next day, after I left it to burn the image all night, the screen's surface was all globby and uneven. Then when I tried to wash it out at first nothing was happening and then the edges of the images started to crumble off. Lesson (learned?) once again: stop taking short cuts and stop trying to use materials that are past their prime. Oh yeah, but I filled in the chunked off parts with screen filler and I'm going to try and see if I can still get some prints from it.

In other news, my upcoming "reveal" (if this was a reality show) involves the following sneak peek:

bird skull, bug skin, potatoes with long eyes, milking a Bosnian cow and tarlatan

Reports from the backyard:


I'm not sure what the moral of the story is, but I found these two things outside today. And somehow they seemed to go together.



Seed potatoes. I know potatoes grow underground but I didn't realize "seed potatoes" existed and could be purchased by the pound out of wooden barrels. But now I got some and they are hopefully doing their thing out in the dirt. I did use legit yukon gold seed potatoes and also some red potatoes from the grocery store that grew eyes. We'll see if this potato experiment results in any clear conclusions on potato culture.

I got two old tires from my dad, to use as a potato-planting area. Thanks to T.K. and folks at the Y.L. for giving me the idea. I also used some plastic garden edging to create another area, because once I cut the potatoes I had too many to fit in the tire space. I'm trying really hard not to crowd plants, because I'm still having trouble coming to terms with the idea of thinning plants. I guess that's really the way you grow healthy plants, but I don't actually know how to do it. And it seems like a waste. But I'm just being sentimental, I guess.



On the topic of printing (with a hodgepodge of links)

In other news, this weekend I attended a dry point workshop at Gallery 5 put on by a local org called Art on Wheels. It was fun and the people were very nice. And I probably asked too many questions, but that seems to be my way.

I brought this photo as a reference from which to make the image.

This is one of my favorite photos from Bosnia. This lady was a neighbor of the people I was staying with and she was very excited to show me her milking station (located in a sort of stone room under a barn) and also a horse and a manure field. She was extremely enthusiastic.

So, what did I learn about dry point? Well, like all other printmaking techniques I've attempted so far, this one is also relatively complicated, messy and time consuming.

First we scratch our image (which will print in reverse) on a plate. Traditionally it would be metal, but we used plastic, which enabled tracing from a photo.


Then there's this whole long step where you apply and then rub off ink. You rub it off with a stiff cheesecloth called a tarlatan. I like that word. On a side note, I just read that tutus used to be made out of tarlatan until that was replaced with tulle.

Anyway, then place the rubbed off ink plate on the press, over which you place a dampened sheet of the paper, and then you run it through. Turning the press wheel took a lot more physical gusto than I was prepared for. At any rate, if you don't totally screw it up, your print will be ready on the other end of the press.


(paper isn't really that color, my camera is just pretending it is).

So, how do I feel about drypoint vs. screenprinting? Well, for one the way we did this there wasn't any talk of using more than black ink, and my great downfall in screen printing is failure to follow rules and register inks properly. So in that way, drypoint was less taxing on my brain. But then again, screen printing can be done without owning a press and overall it is less tiring as far as arms and wrists and hands go. (And that's always one of my issues).

So, I was just reading that drypoint is part of the intaglio family. I'm not quite sure I can remember the differences in each type of printing. But here's some discussion that explains the "dry" in drypoint referring to no acid being involved. In addition, I don't know how to get myself to pronounce things like intaglio (pronounced in-TAL-yo, IPA: [ɪn'tælɪəʊ] correctly. Lastly, does the twisted etching tool Whistler's Needle refer to James McNeill Whistler, son of Whistler's Mother? Apparently so.

So, I'm going to think this over and return to explore printing techniques at a later date.

Strawberry Kids

Quite a while ago, I posted a photo of Strawberry Boy under the title Naked Strawberry, because he had no clothes.

Now he has clothes, and his friend Strawberry Girl is out and about as well. Maybe there will be more Strawberry Kids, but only time will tell. These two are now residing in the Toys and Doodads section of my shop.

I attempted to make a stop motion with these two, and I think it would have been pretty cute, but unfortunately it came out all pixelated and funky. The weird thing is - one single frame was clear, and I have no idea why. Nevertheless, I put in on YouTube. I think I'm just going to have to do the digital movie thing as a trial and error work in progress. Once I figure out what I'm doing maybe I'll do remakes or an epic or something.