****Swap update: So the Vintage Vacation Swap sign ups are closed and I will give you all your partners very soon...I originally thought I'd have you guys all matched up by early this week but since I extended sign ups til midnight on Tuesday, this set things back a bit...so give me a couple days to get it all together. I believe by Monday & Tuesday you will all be matched up. And also...if you signed up and didn't yet get a reply email from me, don't worry, I probably just could not answer at that moment, but I've saved all of your emails to a file and will make sure to go through carefully .
So Memorial Day Weekend is here and in my neighborhood it's impossible to miss the signs. Right about now, the population of our little town probably quadruples. These big beautiful white houses, dark & dormant all winter long, suddenly fill with life. Flower boxes...empty vessels yesterday...now spilling forth with extravagant color and fragrance. Once empty porches, now crowded with white washed wicker. Flags are flying, cars line the streets and driveways, and all this week...especially today, with last minute urgency...power tools and landscaping implements are roaring away at their final tasks.
I really do love this time of year. I'm a fan of things beginning, whereas Labor Day weekend is the complete opposite...the end, the last hurrah...when you'll feel either sadness or relief that it's all over. But right now the air is charged with possibility and the heat has yet to slay us in relentless weeklong waves. Beginnings, new starts, first steps, are the world to me...
For the working artist times like these call for creative measures. You have to capture that electricity that's in the air and put it to good use. Paint the canvas, glue the paper, sew the fabric, mold the clay, click open the shutter, gild the lily...
We have these two new paintings...our "Gorgeous Gals", that are just so exciting for us. We have a history of painting Gals just like this that stretches back to maybe 1998. We used old cupboard doors as canvases and in fluid hand painted black line we'd do these Gals right over the old peely paint. We could not hold onto those for very long and eventually the demand outgrew our supply of old peely paint cupboard doors!
Well, here are our 2010 Gorgeous Gals...the cupboard doors gave way to paper collage, which references another memory from about a dozen years ago. Our good friend had a little antique booth in a tiny back room of a larger shop and she plastered one whole wall with the most gorgeous scraps of vintage wallpaper you ever did see. She did estate sales and house clean-outs and she left nothing behind...she'd peel down that 100 year old wallpaper!! Ever since then, whenever we do paper collage, we have one image burned into our memories...that tiny back room plastered floor to ceiling with a treasury of time worn florals, stripes, damasks, and dots . We wish the photos did these Gals justice but really, you have to hold the print in your hands to see the texture and age of the background collage.
Gorgeous Gals have always been an integral part of our home decor...every room must have a face, a muse. In our minds, we are decorating FOR that gal. The room is hers and we populate it with the furnishings and accoutrement of her liking.
So, this weekend means new art for us and it means a big sale for everyone else! First off, in our Artfire.com studio we are having a Holiday Weekend Sale...20% off everything in the shop...I went ahead and activated the sale on Artfire...which is another great feature of theirs...and the prices now shown in our shop reflect the 20% off Weekend Sale.
AND...and this is a big AND...Anyone who shops the sale this weekend will have their name put in a hat and we will pick one lucky shopper's name out...and that person gets to pick: THE 5 x 7 READY TO FRAME, MATTED PRINT OF THEIR CHOICE! It's a giveaway for anyone who makes a purchase this weekend! So you get 20% off anything you buy, plus you've got a great chance of winning a Free Print!! I don't know about you...but holy cow! If I wasn't me...I'd be shopping at Everyday is a Holiday this weekend! ;)
I mentioned in a previous post that over the winter I found a much needed refuge in the act of Art Journaling. As a working artist, your creativity is your livelihood...you rely on it...you need it to survive...and you are constantly showing your creations to the world...because, well...you need to.
But Art Journaling was this whole new thing...because it's all done within the privacy of those pages. And it offers more than a sketchbook does...you take it a bit more seriously. You have this idea that your pages should look like something...they should feel like finished products...But, you also feel like it's all yours...no one ever has to see. So with that in mind, but usually on a subconscious level, I'd try things I hadn't done before...use techniques and mediums that were outside my comfort zone...and that I really didn't even have a name for. I'd finish a couple pages and I didn't even know how to refer to it...like, well it's not a drawing really...and it's not really a painting...and it's not exactly a collage. I really loved the idea of it and plan to keep one going for as long as I need to.
Well, I bring this up again because I've got some more new pieces that I finally got to list in our shop. These too are over on Artfire. I drew inspiration directly from the pages of my Art Journal. The cake and cupcake circle plaques are a really fun new look yet side by side with our other pieces they fit right in...and because they feature prints of cake & cupcake paintings they kind of bridge the gap between the two styles.
And I really am excited about the "When I Grow Up..." pieces. They are almost an exact replica of a page from my Journal...and it was one of those things that I saw completely finished in mind the second I laid down the first basecoat of paint. They're collages, paintings & drawings all in one and they come on 8 x 10 wooden plaques. They really are so sweet...but the inspired message of that little girl inside of us might be a little too hard to live up to!!
Alright...before I go, I must return to the inspiration that I opened this post with. The impending summer...the days have gotten so long already! My neighborhood is quieted down now. All the last minute workers have called it a day and it feels like the calm before the storm...but that's not exactly a good cliche to use right there because a storm usually cramps your style. I hope this weekend brings no storms (figuratively and LITERALLY!...rain rain stay away...come back some other day!)
But the dawn of summer is here...the Vintage Vacation Swap is right on time...and so I'll leave you with some of my favorite inspiration images from summers gone by.
Thanks so much again for reading...and don't forget the SALE...20% off and a giveaway!!
xoxo, Jenny
