I know I know

I usually blerg more often. I've been totally without motivation or raison d'etre or joie de vivre or je ne sais quoi for a while. I've been without a croissant or a s'il vous plait. I've been without my latrine. And now I just want a milk au chocolat for some reason. But this is the first time I've been without voulez vous coucher avec moi in the five years or so I've been doing this so yeah, I'm not sacre bleu-ing myself over it or any kind of comment sa va.
What was the question?

I made some simple little guys though. 

In this piece and the following, you'll see a bumpy connector that manages to be rusty crusty and iridescent at the same motherslappin' time! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHGHGHG! This is our greatest achievement as a species I think.

There she is! Hello my baby.

 Should I even bother listing anything? Sales are ... man. I think everyone is suffering financially.

See that? I didn't look for a reason for crap sales over on my side of things. Because everyone's sales are shit and everyone's broke and its FINE. I mean, other than if you're starving and can't pay your heating bill during this POLAR VORTEX.               

Dun-dun- duuuuunnn!    

Whoever came up with that term deserves a Nobel prize in branding. Which is totes a thing. Did I mention that we are under like 6 feet of snow here in the Chi? The Chi not to be confused with the Shire. No that you could, what with the polar bears. 

Anypoopers. I have another destash lot for the dark gothsters out there. Click for bigs.
[ALREADY PUCHASED THANK YOU! I should only sell destash lots, man.]

 Instead of describing what you can clearly see in these pix I'm going to not. (I've never had so much italics in one post!)

Apropos of nothing, I was reading some crap about how to shut up your inner critic the other day and wanted to put in my $0.02.

I embrace my inner critic, it's what makes me better, what keeps me away from average. It gives me the impetus to rework and edit pieces, gives me all kinds of ideas for changes. When I stop and truly look critically at something, that can make all the difference. It also lets me know something extremely important, which is when to abandon a project and not waste time on it.

(The red thing is iron-on monograms.)

Often if there's a project I can't get excited about or I can't seem to get myself to work on, it's another aspect of the critic telling me to give it up.

(A roll of tigertail beading cord whatever its called)

But see, I make it work. It's not just "this sucks," I make it tell me what sucks about it, what could make it better, creative and productive stuff. Make your critic sweat for you. Just saying something sucks is stupid, so your critic is being stupid, so be the critic of your inner critic, demand more of it. Yeah!

Another productive step is to ask for honest feedback from artists you admire. I've had people send me pix of something they're working on for this purpose and I tell them- this bit isn't adding anything, I'd switch those beads for something more eye-catching, if there were different ones on either side it would be less repetitive, etc. (Now, this is of course work you're asking for and it's best if you can reciprocate in some way.)

(Who doesn't want a chandelier crystal with a grungy bat on the back? That's just classy.)

I find it helps to take a picture of a project; this allows me to see it anew and much more objectively. It's not hard to decide whether we like the work of others and why, and it's possible to adopt this same perspective with our own.

So yeah. That's what I have to say about that. Your 2 centavos to go in the comments s' il vous plait.

(Some pages from this cool-ass Mexican comic book for your art journal/collage/wrapping. Guilder's in Antique Gold but it's in a little shoe polish can instead of the original huge-ass pot.)

A vintage lighter, a glass hoop, a bunch of hairpipe beads, a ammonite fossil that looks like someone crumbled fibers all over it.

A piece of antique leather glove for your thin soft leather needs. Bit of dyed crochet.

This is actually a bracelet sorta. 

A little scrap of sewy thing.

Hollow heart pendant, little metal beads.

Some decent bits. I'mna say $45. So $50 w/ship. And any extra space always gets more goodies. Convo me if you want. Whatever. 

And remember if I don't blerg for a while it's just me being rudder-less, huddled at the computer giggling at stupid lolcats, sucking on a granola bar, not a sudden brain hemorrhage you need to worry about or nothing.