little cards

i did these for a ten year old called Megan who loves her dog called Odie. They are quite simple, I do a little applique and some beading and then I sew them onto good paper. When I put them in the frames that they had sent they looked really good.
I think I will do some more. Put them in cheap frames from the Local hardware store. the frames I got to fill for these were really nice and only cost ten euro.
I was thinking I could do the craft fair again with smaller stuff like this to sell for maybe 40 euro or 50 euro a pop.
For now I will do some and put them on my etsy site. See what happens!

give-away

Hi….

I have been neglecting the business side of things for the last few months. Right now I am pondering labels and outlets and how to market my bags and purses and the cards I do. I am not very attentive on these things, I tend to get distracted into the more interesting side of actually making a new thing. When it is finished I put it on etsy and then forget about it.

So, as part of a promotion for this blog and my etsy store I am having a giveaway. Please post a comment about some idea of promotion, some ideas about labels, should I use my real name or use a name for the bags only or a critique of my etsy store or blog. Something small. It can help everyone else reading them too. Ideas of how to improve the business side of things.

I haven’t decided yet whether I will pull the name from a hat or choose the most useful comment. But the winner will get one of the three new oil cloth bags I have on my store. Pictures here. Winner chooses which one they want. I figured I would use a good prize to entice some good ideas! Open for the next week so post before Sat 4th of october.

yellow things

I have figured a fun thing to do would be to pick a colour and see what i could find. I decided on yellow for no other reason than it jumped into my head.

I love yellow.. a rich warm sunny yellow. I don´t wear it I paint walls of kitchens and bathrooms with it (and eat it, paul just handed me a yellow M&M) and revel in the warm light it makes in these rooms. I would probably paint my whole house yellow if I could.

Yellow is sun, warmth, light, happiness, simplicity, joy, childish playfulness. At the moment here there are yellow flowers everywhere, shining in the sun and making far away hill look orange. I had an idea to make a coat. A chinese cut, green with yellow flowers all over it. It is forming in my mind as one of those future projects I might just accomplish if I don´t get distracted by more in the moment ideas.

I found this wonderful book on the web. I like her style. Julie Paschkis is her name

And these soaps on etsy.. there are so many yummy soap shops on etsy, I had about thirty tabs open and had to be really strong, favourite a few of them and take just two for this blog.

Skin Journey Shea Butter

Dennis Anderson Lemon lustre shea butter massage bar

These victorian tags are kinda interesting, from Farouche

Yellow citrine, one of my favourite stones…. from Lee Ohio Designs

Quince, known here as Guayabana. It sets into a jelly when mashed up. They use it make a sweet called membrillo here. really good. I also have a recipe for quince cake which I took with me from Ireland to try. I will try it soon I think and let ya`ll know…

a cute baby wearing a yellow hat….

and of course please refer to my yellow umbrella two posts down for extra cheer in an already sunny climate!

x clio

lots of pretty colourful things

I have become the proud owner of a collection of umbrellas! I have had cool umbrellas in the past but only ever one at a time. I had a pink polka dot one for about two weeks before I lost it and for a while I had kids umbrella with a ducks head on the top and two wings out either side. I would walk down the street to a symphony of nudges and cries (in tough inner city dublin) of “would ya look at the state of ‘er”. It made people smile though, made a rainy day a happy escuse to use my bright yellow duck umbrella.

Women use the umbrellas here as Parasols. To stay out of the sun and I have taken up this habit. When you live in the sun you actually spend most of your time staying out of it rather than taking your clothes off and smathering yourself in quick tan lotion and lying very still for hours. I never had the patience for tanning.

Here they are in a row from big to little. The smallest one is a kids one and the blue one was my first and the brown one is a very pretty parasol and the yellow one I just bought in Los Mochis because it was raining.

Paul after I persuaded him to let me take it.

He said I could put this one on my blog if I put another one of him looking tough and being a miner so here is one of him looking tough at his son Arthur and Art very obviously taking him seriously.

I also bought some new oil cloth to make some new purses from. Very excited!

Here is a fish I have done in the last while. It is good to get back to fabrics. I got some cool new fabrics in mochis too.

My butterfly embroidery.

On the way to the mine in the morning the air is filled white big white butterflies. They are beautiful and fragile. I used a fabric that dissolves in water to do the outside lacy effect (i wish I had more of it now) and then the butterflies and background were done on chiffon that I pulled and stretched and embroidered over. I want to explore these fabrics further…

girly things

check these really cute shoes out! I want a pair. I have them in my favourites list and I go and look at them every now and then. It is a site called Fairysteps

She makes them herself. You measure your feet and send her your measurements and she makes them to order. She has certain ones ready to sell. I love the idea of getting shoes made up for me. I want a pair of high leather lace up boots in bright red.

I just showed these to Paul and he hated them! we have very differant tastes in clothes and things. I think they are adorable.

Also for the girly girl working in a mans world I love this site. Oshatoes

Its safety gear and steeltoes shoes but they are for girls! There are pink hard hats and pink safety glasses. So cute. I look around this mine site and I think it would be great to have everybody wear pink hard hats! I shalll take some pictures today of this place for this blog.

What else, oh yes, the puppy turns out to be a girl so she is back being Pala again. Its strange how we treat things differently as to whether they are male or female. I found myself thinking differently about the puppy when I found out she was a girl.

And I sold two purses from my etsy store! surprised I was, I haven’t sold anything from there for ages. I had kinda left it alone. Cool.

xx clio

other peoples stuff

hi, due to an absence of stuff I have done I have been thinking aboout what it was I wanted to write about and then I remembered etsy and all the cool things I have been finding there. Starting with a new ‘hearts me’ which I checked out and loved her pictures. MizzDraconia has a cool photographic style, I love her images.

also a shop called Stargazer29609 who has the most delicious bead work I have seen for a while, she has this necklace here which I love and there is a bracelet I just saw which went on my favourites list also

and still on the bead trail, check this shop out, she has beaded necklaces but she also uses really yummy stones in her stuff. Forbesfarm

I adore Kathannah’s work, she is very witchypoo, all vague and sensitive and wonderfulness

who else.. for sheer wonderfulness of style, johnwgolden, he has a simplicity I find appealing and his work is so full of character, check this crafty fox out

an to stay on an animal theme, I remember the first time I had ever seen a wild boar, I was so excited. It was in the north of spain. Remember Asterix and Obelix? they were always chasing boars to eat them and the boars would always lead them to roman patrols to shake them off and the romans figured the gauls had trained the boars to find the romans. A shop called the bigheadedrobot.

I love this womans work also, KatherineDunn, this link is to her website, but she has an etsy store also. Its another fox. she draws a lot of animals. Her drawing style is so free. I am inspired to get out my messiest charcoals and oil pastels.

alright, reckon thats a lot to be going on with! cool stuff everywhere to be ferreted out and discovered!! happy happy joy joy……

my new obsession

I have a new obsession.. it makes me go rummaging through my piles of fabric and hold two of them together and think, and then two more, and ponder, and then oooooooo this looks really cute and if I put this on it too! wow.. super cool

The object of my new craze? the wee tiny change purse. I posted a picture in the previous post of one I did and I have been making two a day since for my etsy shop.  Its since I discovered the utter simplicity of zip insertion.. its like discovering the wheel (or sliced bread) all over again. I love when I open them and there is a differant colour inside. Its like chocolate sweets with raspberry filling.. now there is a concept to apply to a purse

I bought linen with sparkly bits in it yesterday (fabric stores are the new second-hand clothes shops…. don’t get sucked in cliodhna! do you really need this fabric?.. answer? yes, yes, whatever, just buy it and worry about it later) and also some shiny blue satin and some red zips and some dark purple zip. There is a place in India I want to go to where they sell silk. A whole gigantic market full of silks and saris.. drool……

My problem is there are too many things I want to do and not enough time in which to do them and being a very typical gemini I get distracted by the latest pretty shiny thing and flit from idea to idea until my head feels like its going to burst and I get a panicky feeling that I will not get any of them done. Deep breath and one thing at a time.. I have to balance fun things like bags and purses and cute illustrations with exploring what I want to paint or pictures I have that I want to do. I had a realisation last night that I actually wasn’t 100% sure who I am exactly.. I am all these things and sometimes I try to be other than who I am  which confuses the matter again.

Its ok to be confused, worried, intense, self absorbed, shy, retiring, reclusive, and also at the same time be outgoing cheerful, happy, flighty, slightly batty. Maybe thats where the conflict comes in, my art has two sides, one more serious when I paint and try to reveal truths and explore meaning and then the other side where its just fun and hey little silver fishes and embroidered hearts look great on red felt..

easter sunday

good sunday everyone,

I wrote to a friend recently saying how great it was that the old symbols survive in spite of everything. Religions come and go but rabbits and the moon and birth and fertility keep getting celebrated. Easter according to one source is the old pagan goddess of fertility ‘Eostre’and easter is always celebrated on the first full moon after the spring equinox. I googled it a few days ago and came across a whole load of christian sites saying “easter is pagan” and admonishing us to quit with the fluffy bunny rabbits and eggs and concentrate on the ‘real’ meaning. As usual they don’t want anyone having fun….

What else.. Ooo.. threadless are having a sale, all their t shirts are 9 and 12 dollars. They are selling out fast and the sale is only till wednesday so get in there and have a look. I have bought about five shirts for various birthdays and a few for me (with an email to my sister telling her to choose one because the last time she ordered some I tried them all on and stole one!)(it was my birthday, she said I could… after I was wearing it and gave her the whole puppy dog treatment, pleeeeeease?) The picture above is called the battle of E5 and I got it for my brother and for Paul. The one below is for me called Victor Terrintop.

I actually sold two things from my etsy store! I was about to give up on it. Thing is I had a brainwave about three weeks ago when I realised from a feng shui perspective that I was sleeping with my feet facing the toilet so I was flushing everything I did down the drain so I moved the bed around (paul thought I was mad but helped me move the bed) and its incredible what moving furniture can do to a room. Our room is twice the size now and I love the new perspective. I makes a new room out of it and I wonder why it didn’t occur to me to do it ages ago. I am now posting things on etsy again. Thing is its an great place but there are something like 3 million people selling on etsy so advertising is necessary. You have to post things frequently so you are near the top of the search pages in there but also I need to start do some advertising myself. Have to think about that now…..

ok, off to find coffee and think, there is no coffee in the house and the cafe doesn’t open till ten. have to wait…

happy easter however you want to celebrate it! but could you imagine easter without the chocolate eggs? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

…and to continue

Remedios Varo

after yesterdays vagueness I figured I had better get some facts together. I found a few great sites with a catalogue of womens artist through the ages. There are a lot of them, it changed when life drawing form male models was introduced and the Academias were established in the eighteenth century but they still found a way around it. Here are two links..

Wikipedia good facts and narrative history and links to the artists by period

Women Artists from medieval times

some of my favourite artists are Remedios Varos, I love the strangeness of her images, Icould spend all day staring at them. Georgia O Keefe, how could anyone not love her flowers and cactii and desertscapes. Aileen Johnston who does the most incredible embroideries. I also love all the strange toys and odd creatures I am finding in etsy, I have posted about some of them here before.

Here is a link just for the girls! 

ok, I am off to paint and break a few rules!