frozen charlottes, victorian dolls, textile bundles and digital collage sheets…

…and really a lot more than that!

i’ve been a busy bee, re-stocking the altered bits shop with heaps of new goodies, including but not limited to frozen charlottes, little victorian dolls, other vintage and antique dolls and doll parts, a whole new page of digital collage sheets (these were up weeks ago — i’m just slow to share), new embellishments and found objects, vintage photo bundles, textile bundles and vintage crocheted lace… all kinds of little pretties.  if i add five things per day to my shop over the next seven months, i should be caught up.  😉

a few new items were added to my etsy junk shop too… cleaning out the house in a new year is a great thing!!

i literally have hundreds more dolls so if you’re looking for some, let me know.  i’m not going to be able to add them all for awhile (takes a LOT of time to photograph, resize/enhance, write code/add to site, create buttons, etc.).

on a totally random note, wanna swap? i’m looking for a cute little boy cdv, cabinet card or tintype and will swap you for other photos (i mostly have adults), dolls of whatever sort, vintage lace, or whatever you may want from my shop(s) of relatively equal value.  i’ll even throw in some digital collage sheets for fun.  🙂  i’m really quite picky about this photo… typically i don’t use children in my art, unless they are fetuses.  in fact, this will be my first child.  but in the spirit of accuracy, i need a little boy (around age 10 in the first decade of the 1900s, named sam) for the historically accurate ghost book i’m working on.

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taking a wee break

i’m going to be taking off for a few days.  i know i often say “things have been crazy around here” but they really have been and i need a wee break before i implode.  tuesday was my wedding anniversary and my mum always takes our son for for a couple/few days the weekend after our anniversary so what a perfect time to escape and play!

husby and i are going to the beach.  the last time i went to the beach i set out to find a zillion cool things for myself which was pretty much a flop in the “great found object” departments.  the time before i set out to find a few things for friends and woots!  they hit the jackpot!  so this time i’m going on a beachy scavenger hunt.  i’m going to say “okay, this next fabulous thing i find is going to be for kerin”… “and the next thing is for seth”… “and the next thing is for one of the debis/debbies”… “and laura”… “and tracey”… “and you get the picture”.  it will make it more fun.  and hopefully worthwhile.  better pack a little notepad so i can keep it all straight and omg, almost forgot my camera.  we have to wake up at FIVE in the morning.  no bueno.

have a wonderful rest of the week and tremendous weekend.  i leave you with a beach photo i took last year… or the year before?  sometime when the wind was blowing sand in our eyes and it was way too cold to be on the oregon coast.  😉

and one of the poems our sweet friend kevin read us at our wedding:

dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots
and wind is wind)

trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)

honour the past
but welcome the future
(and dance your death
away at this wedding)

never mind a world
with its villains or heroes
(for god likes girls
and tomorrow and the earth)

 --e.e.cummings

i owe some of you phone calls and emails and i’m so very sorry not to get back to you before escaping. promise i’ll be better upon my return!

excavating art bits

okay, today is so way better than yesterday with regard to found objects. after weeding in the gardens for a few hours i came in to work on some ATCs i’m doing for two swaps with debrina and deryn. my little guy ran in to tell me that i was not allowed either a) in our back yard or b) in the basement because they were “excavating a present” for me. after about 20 minutes i got bored waiting for paint to dry so went back out to weed in the front, and oh my gosh! my husband “interrupted” my efforts and… yeah… i have the best, most amazing husband in the world, let me just tell you. look what he found for me buried in the back yard!!!:

he painstakingly dug up each and every one of these bones, cleaned the soil and some fur off, bleached them and re-rinsed them before setting them in the sun to dry. look at all of these! vertebrae, skull bits, portions of jaw, teeth and fangs, ribs, leg bones, a shoulder, and all kinds of bits. i’m going to have soooooooo much fun with these beauties!

our orange cat even found interest in them:

i’m super excited today. 🙂

found (and forgotten) objects are fun

oh wowz. the husby and i were busy doing some much needed clearing out of crap today as we still have boxes upon boxes of way too much stuff in our cluttered basement. i mean heck, i only moved in here… hmmm… about two years ago. you’d think that’d be ample time to get organized but apparently we’re slackers (i get too busy arting, he gets too busy making music and building electronic coolnesses and poof, there are still boxes everywhere). but enough prattle. i was excited to find many forgotten items:

necklaces, pendents, a lace thing, a rusty bell, some weird doll thing that needs to be altered or tossed, neat wing things with crystals hanging from them, cemetery photos, a dragon with a crystal (not really my “thing” but he looks cool enough), etc.

i also happened upon about a half billion wooden boxes and ceramic pots/raku pottery pieces. what can i do with all of them? in one of them was a little leather pouch my pops had made me years ago and inside was the best of all…

can you guess the best? the bear claw is pretty dang cool but i’m really diggin’ the teeth! i have no idea where they came from but my assumption is that the cute little pristine one was mine, the cavity filling one was my younger half-sister’s and the big ol’ gnarly one was my fathers. see them closer:

i can think of way too many things at once that i could do with those teeth. hey, i have a “thing” for anatomical stuff. i’m sure that’s overly obvious to everyone by now, but here is a sneak peek at something i’m working on today to further prove my point:

back to the found objects…. some things were not quite as exciting. like a box of letters from an old boyfriend (recycling material!) and some other things i’m going to try to find homes for before giving to goodwill as a last resort like beads that aren’t my style, charms and angle cards. i’ll post photos soon but i promise it’s nothing too exciting. i did find some quote cards from a lady did i site for once named mary anne radmacher who did a lot of inspirational pieces with her quotes as the central focus. i’ve used and shared several over the years so will definitely need to find a new home for what i have left of those.

happy day!

—-

holy cow. right after i posted this i hit the mother load of forgotten stuff. mmmm…. i have so many plans for these rusty little pretties! i only “misplaced” them about 3 months ago but am so glad to have re-found them. i thought someone tossed them and was a tad bit on the pissy side.

phew!