Lucy's Vet Visit and Some New Collages and Movie Watching

You can read about Lucy's vet visit here. Real exciting that was.

New collage in the shop.

Nesting.


Baby Birds in the Nest.


We did some movie watching this weekend. Cheap movies from the Red Box, and I'm so glad our first choice was cheap because it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen and I couldn't even finish watching it, I just got way too annoyed.

What was the annoying movie? Due Date. STOOPID! And BORING! And a total waste of a dollar.

But last nights movies were way better. Keith missed most of the first movie because he fell asleep at 7pm, fully clothed and with his work boots on, all stretched out across the bed. It was The Kids are All Right and I really enjoyed it. I like both Annette Bening and Julianne Moore anyway, and this movie was very entertaining and well acted. Keith woke up in time for the next movie, The Town with Ben Affleck, and I really liked that movie too. Those were well worth $1.00 each.

Let's Talk About the Weather

I'm really enjoying spring this year. After a wetter than usual winter, spring has come in a little more colorful and a little breezier. I'm really liking having the windows open and the breezes blowing through the house. The cats like it too, they will sit at the back door or in the window for hours, must be lots of enticing smells on the breeze. Spring is about the only time of the year that I actually almost like living in Bakersfield. Winters are cold and dry, summers are hot and dry, but this spring is just beautiful. The temps have been in the 70's and the evenings are balmy. The smog hasn't settled in yet and there hasn't been that stink of manure or onions in the air lately. Seriously, sometimes this town smells distinctly of poo. Or onions.

The fresh breezes have NOT inspired me to spring clean though. That's just crazy talk to do something like that.

But, we saw a story on the news about the wildflowers in Kern County and if you go on their website you can print out a wildflower tour map, so this weekend we may just go for a wildflower drive. Wouldn't that be wild?

I've been working on some collages lately, kind of springy collages actually, with birds and flowers and such. I got some really cool vintage books from ebay and have been cutting them up for pendants and collage.

I did a couple of art cards, those are always fun to make because of the smallness:


These are bigger, the seahorse and iris just seemed to go together to me:

And what could say spring more than Americans in Paris?

I Finally

Got me some inspiration. Bet you thought I was going to say cleaned the house or something, didn't you?

The past few weeks I've been feeling kind of discouraged and down and not very into making things. I had done some collages for the ceramic tile coasters out of sheet music from a 1930's school book and some pictures from a black and white 1940's Mother Goose book and a lot of them got ruined by the resin even though I put 4 layers of sealant over the paper. The resin will seep under the edges and stain the paper and the whole thing is ruined, or you'll miss some bubbles in the finish or a stray cat hair and again, the whole thing is done for. Then I kind of have to hide the trash because Keith gets all weird when I throw stuff away saying that there's nothing wrong with it and nobody will notice a bubble or a cat hair. Well, I notice it A LOT and I don't want someone to buy something that's messed up, so in the trash it goes and stay out of my trash anyway!

Like this one here, looks okay at first, and I just loved the way the collage came out, but along the top is where the resin seeped and there is a huge bubble right in the middle. You can't see it in the picture, but it's there and it's huge!


So, not wanting to ruin more of the sheet music or cute pictures from the mother goose book I thought maybe I should use the more fragile papers for regular collage, but what exactly did I want to do with it?

I cut some paper for the backs of the collages but didn't like the size of them or the flimsiness, didn't have any poster board or thicker paper, didn't want to have to go buy poster board or thicker paper, and then thought about all the book covers that get tossed after I've cut up the insides of the books and went hmm...

So, I cut some book covers up into the same size squares that I use on the ceramic tiles, made a collage on one which came out nice, but it was just not finished enough looking, so inspiration hit and why not make a dimensional collage with another bigger piece of bookboard behind the collage with coordinating papers on it?

And voila! I put some ribbon hangers on the back by gluing the ribbon down and then gluing paper over the entire back to cover up the ribbon and the book cover.



I made quite a few today, they are all drying here:


I was trying to decide if I should open up a second shop on etsy again for all the stuff that isn't jewelry but second shops are kind of a pain if someone wants to combine purchases and it's getting so hard to be seen with a new shop so I'll probably just stick with the one for now. I don't like to have too much in the shop, though, I know when I'm looking at a shop I get kind of bored after about 10 pages, so who knows what I'll do right now. I'll take some pictures of these tomorrow and then decide I guess.

What to Blog About Today?

I have nothing interesting to blog about today, not that I blog about anything that interesting to begin with, so today I think I'll share some of my etsy favorites with you.
I don't do a lot of shopping on etsy mainly because I'm trying not to spend money on non-necessities, but I see a lot of etsy sellers with some really nice things, so I 'heart' them and save them in my favorites so I can go back and look at their shops later. It's kind of like browsing through the Speigel catalog-do they still print that?-looking but never actually buying.
So, here are a few of my favorites:
This collage is made on an old flash card and is from http://lanisvintage.etsy.com. I don't know how to make those clickable thingies where you just click on the words and it links you so for now I'm just going to put the whole shop address in. I'm too lazy to figure out how to do much on this blog. Bear with me.
These are vintage bird pencil sharpeners from http://shop66.etsy.com. I love anything retroey fifties and sixties and also little bird things, so I may have to get one of these.
And this funny bunny necklace is from http://polkadotthunder.etsy.com. Plastic! My favorite material!

Shop etsy.com!!!

I Opened Another Etsy Shop

Now I have three. I'm going to take over the world with my etsy shops! I didn't really like the look of having my collage mixed in with my jewelry and have been thinking about opening a dedicated collage shop for a while, and yesterday finally went for it. So now I have geelizziecollage on etsy. Selling, you guessed it-collage! All collage all the time!
Here are a few that I'm listing in the shop.
I'm hoping that my collages will get a little more attention in a shop all to themselves.

I never check to see who has favorited (hearted in etsy speak) my other shops since it's all so old hat now, but I did check to see if anyone had hearted the new shop, and out of 8 hearts, two are from shops that sell banners-the logo things that you can put at the top of your shop page. I was going to get a banner for the new shop but after looking at my home page I decided I like the look of my shop without a banner so I took them out of the other two shops also. What bugs me about the banner shops hearting my shop is that they are only doing it in the hopes that I'll buy a banner from them.
NOT!!!
I wish there was a way I could remove their heart from my shop. Favoriting another shop to promote your own just seems extra extra tacky to me.

Paper Dolls

Do kids still play with paper dolls? Can you even buy them anymore?
One of my favorite childhood memories is of getting a new paper doll to cut out and play with. You could buy them at the drugstore right next to the comic books and coloring books and they were probably about ten cents back in the early sixties. We would keep all the cutout paper dolls and clothes in shoeboxes and I'm sure we left lots of scraps all over the floor. I remember being thrilled with a gift of a Pebbles paper doll at my birthday party when I was 8 or 9. Not like the expensive gifts you have to give kids today at birthday parties. And not like the expensive birthday parties you have to give kids today, either. If you don't have at least a bouncy house at your party you are just not cool. Our parties were a few neighborhood kids, some cake and ice cream, and musical chairs and pin the tail on the donkey.
Anyway, back to the paper dolls. My friend's mom read McCalls magazine and in each issue there was the coveted Betsy McCall paper doll that she would fight over with her sister each month. My mom didn't buy McCalls so I never got the paper dolls unless I could trade something with my friend for them.
When I was around 12, I still played with paper dolls, making my own from Betty and Veronica comic books, cutting out Betty or Veronica and making outfits for them with paper and crayons. I was a little embarrassed at still enjoying this when all my friends were starting to think about boys, makeup, and shaving their legs, but I still remember the fun I had creating outfits for my homemade paper dolls.
Maybe that's why I like to do collage, the cutting and pasting, the colors of the papers and bits and pieces of things remind me of the paper dolls of my childhood.

ACEO's

One of my favorite memories of childhood is of cutting out paper dolls. I liked to play with them, but I think the cutting out was the best part of paper dolls. I remember making my own paper dolls and creating outfits for them to wear with crayons and paper.
No wonder that I like doing collage, you get to cut stuff up and glue it together. I hadn't done any aceo's in quite a while and got inspired to try them again. Aceo stands for art cards editions and originals-there are no rules other that the aceo has to be 2 1/2 x 3 1/2", after that it's whatever strikes your fancy. The aceo came about after artists began trading atc's amongst themselves-Artist Trading Cards, kind of like baseball cards for artwork. ATC's are not meant to be sold, so the aceo was born, because we all like to make a little money on our art if possible. There is nothing glamorous about being a starving artist. I get so tired of reading or hearing about art for art's sake-sure, that's fine, but I'm trying to make a living here.
So, anyway, here are a few of my new aceo's.

I Told You I Was Going to Work on Collages!

And here some are. The first one uses vintage sheet music, the second one is using the vintage dictionary text. I spent quite a few hours putting these together yesterday and getting them ready to solder. I used to make a lot of collages under glass with soldered edges and then kind of got into other things and left them behind for a while. I really like the look and feel of these, they are between two sheets of thicker glass so they have a good weight to them and have fairly heavy chain for the hangers. I used to make these with chains and beads on the bottom, but I think I like a little more simple look now.

Today I worked on soldering these and some of the pendants that I had ready to go. I'm excited about how the new year will treat me on etsy. This time last year my shop was just getting off the ground and January and February seemed to really get the ball rolling. Now that I've made a niche for myself I'm hoping that things will get even bigger and better this year. Last December I hit the 100 items sold mark, and this year I am closing in on 1600 items. The number amazes me until I look at littleputbook's shop and see over 5000 items sold or theblackapple and see over 10000 items sold. That's truly amazing!