Excuse Me While I Indulge

In gratuitous cuteness.
Ignore the flies and check out the magic at 0:44:

Make sure to have the volume on for the nail clacks:

Here's me tush.

I love me a sloth.

Somewhere in Belgium, this happens.  Not so much cute as surreal.

And then I ate a peanut.

Thank you CuteOverload.com, for the free happiness injections. Or as I like to call them, Cute Overlords.

Putting the "Oooo" in "New" since 1834

Took some pix. Is it as lame as I think it is to spell it 'pix'?  I always want to spell it w/an 'f', as in fotos, since I realized they write it like that in Spanish.
The fiber and tiny nailheads are from Sparrow. The silver bits and chess piece from Uruguay, the feathers from Opulent Oddities' gift box. I think some of the crochet I used for backing I dyed myself, but it sure looks just like Sparrow bits.
(Shouldn't I have something deeper to say about it?  I used a great Rilke poem in the description...))

So it's only right, since my girl's contributed, to show some of their awesome pieces. This one is from Op Odd, of course. Her stuff makes me think she's just rolling around in PILES of antique bits. It screams abundance.

Lately, Sparrow's gotten into some crazy color. Technicolor rainbows fused with grungy darkness? Somehow, she makes it work. Check it.

Anywhozits, I also listed these little shabby-chiquers.
I used a great poem sent to me in a poetry mountain.  The red made me think of drops of blood in snow, which made me think of the poem.

Tintype on the Pond, 1925

Believe it or not,
the old woman said,
and I tried to picture it:
a girl,
the polished white ribs of a roast
tied to her boots with twine,
the twine coated with candle wax
so she could glide
uninterrupted
across the ice—
my mother,
skating on bones.

- J. LORRAINE BROWN

So I named them Skating on Bones.  Thanks Denise!

 

      Here's today's creation. Looks much more dominantly black in reality. We'll see when I take pictures tomorrow since there's NO WORK! Yahoooooo!

      Another Sunday come and gone and this is what I have to show for it. I mean that in a good way. Man, before I was medicated, time would trickle by so agonizingly slowly. My childhood is like a never-ending trap I was caught in that I simply couldn't see my way out of.  An imprisonment of sorts, always having to do what others told me to. Now that I've joined the rest of humanity, I finally see what people meant when they'd comment on how fast the years fly by.  People, adults, would always be making a comment about how they still felt like a youngster trapped in an adult's body or some such. And I'd always think- 'that alone shows you're an old fogie! Have you ever heard a kid say they felt like a kid in a kid's body? No. They say they feel like adults that no one takes seriously b/c they're trapped in a child's body." Duh! 

       I could always feel how impossibly distant these people were from childhood, forgetting the desperation children have to grow, blind to their own very adult seriousness- all routine, never jumping on a swing or playing in the street. I'd wonder why, when friends came over, the adults wouldn't join the kids playing in the yard. I remember wondering about this on a red tricycle in our tiny backyard in Uruguay. I imagined my parents and their friends stopping their endless chatter for once to climb our tire swing or get on my tricycle. I realized then that talking had to be playing for them, or they wouldn't do it all the time. I was quite content with my realization.

      I was 3 or 4 when that happened, though no one believes me b/c they say I couldn't possibly remember that much. In fact, I even remember getting my diapers changed, if only the one time. One of the tortures of my mind pre-medication was its instant access to every single event it had ever lived through. Hard to get up and fix yourself a sandwich when you are constantly seeing several movies of everything that's ever happened to you and that you've ever thought or heard about.  

      School teachers always had one or two stories they told at the beginning of the year then forgot the telling and told again in the second semester. I'd look around at the faces taking in the story as if for the first time and feel evermore isolated in my giant mind. The time since medication has been such a blur.  My husband will tell me about things we did together and I'll listen happily, as if to a stranger's anecdote. 

      People always say they wish they had better memory. The fools! You might wish you remembered where you left the keys or what you were supposed to get at the store, but you don't want to remember humiliating episodes from adolescence or how scared you were the 1st time your parents got mad at you. And remember it in such detail that you turn red, you find yourself covering your ears and yelling LALALALA in hopes of blocking it out. 

      One thing, though. If anyone ever said, "Where's the _____" my mind would instantly recall the last time I saw or handled whatever it was and I'd know right away, no matter how messy the room, where every single object in it was and precisely how it got there. That trick would come in handy these days with all my supplies .... Though I'd be so overwhelmed by existence I wouldn't be able to make anything so what's the use?

       Sheesh, I wonder where all that came from?

STATEMENT NECKLACE!

So I made this with a bunch of bits from the box I showed y'all in the last post. I'm thinking that if I start w/a length of that thick leather cord I have, it will always end up as a "statement" necklace.

Anywhoo, having a tough time photographing it.

I wanna capture the details and the overall effect.

The details seem too many for an etsy listing, while the overall effect is hard to capture.Oh well. It is what it is.  Which is better in real life b/c I'm not the photographer I wish I was.

I even came up w/a cheesy little story for it for the listing. A medicine man, a defunct mission and a Martin Luther King quote about the arc of the moral universe... It's not supposed to be cheesy of course. It may be inadvertently cheesy.In other news, here's some more broken goodies I got in the mail.I also got a bunch of chunky-chunks for a very low price here. I literally thought the goldstone was going to be heishi-sized! I read the size, but my mind refused to believe it, I guess. So I put a penny there for y'all to boggle at. A couple bead caps and I'm on the way to another STATEMENT necklace.  I think statement means crazybig. What about a tax-statement necklace? Or a necklace statement? How about a declaration necklace?

In other other news, here is my redonkulous husband's new tattoo:It's the Uruguayan shied/coat-of-arms. He asked me what I thought people would think walking behind him in Uruguay and I said, 'I don't know but I'm gonna pretend not to know you.' One glance at that freckled arm and any Uruguayan would know he was looking at a gringo.  Got quite the reaction from my folks and now we've emailed this picture to my family down south. They're gonna think it's a photoshop trick. Oy vey.

Rust run amok

Never had to pickle oxidized metals.  Usually, if a piece keeps darkening, it gets even better. Had an unusual effect on one set of earrings, though. It continued to oxidize even after I took the pictures. And not blacken, but rust.

Before Oxidizing:

After Oxidizing:

After a couple weeks:

I could have tried to clean it up, but I got lazy and just took new pictures. I guess they're too rusty, but I don't hate 'em.

Around the Studio

It's a total mess still, but what the hey. Here's a wall:

I've been putting up some papers from my stash. I'm giving it away, why not keep and enjoy some special bits?

I've also finally cut some drawing out of old folders and attendance notebooks to put up.

I bought these strange button-y things b/c they were so pretty and mysterious- and also underpriced- I couldn't pass them up.

I broke a few trying to hammer or bend the stud, but now I think I'll just cut the metal off and use them as flat cab stones.

Here's a necklace I'm working on. The trim is from some that Opulent Oddities send me.  It was coming apart so I carefully stitched each loop and bead in place.

Here's a pretty box that was next to that. While others might show you their work table, I show you my work floor. I've always worked on the floor. I've always been most comfortable squatting like an Asian people in old photos.

I do have a coffee table.  It's topped w/glass. How nice for hammering and such.

I believe it was Malin who asked to see my stash, but its all boxed up.I do have random boxes everywhereHere's some bits.My 1st 3 attempts at pom-poms.

Some recent mail goodness. I bought this stash of damaged glass beads along w/the odd button-y things above from treasurebooth.

I love broken things! 1- cheap. 2- sense of discovery b/c they come in big packs. 3- they turn on your creative problem-solving since if it's perfect it already tells you what to do w/it.

Here's some fossils I'm gonna solder into connectors. They came w/a amethyst freebie but I'm not loving the shape. 

If any of you want it, email me- marinarios@yahoo.com.

This mysterious box arrived yesterday and I waited til now to open it so I could take pictures as I did.

OK? Am I freaking my shit or what?

Here's a penny for size. All this for $18? MorningDove didn't know what she had and I fear I've taken advantage.

A rather amusing bit- On these redonkulous rubber dolls were fibers strung w/these giant capped resin amber babies. Ou. Em. Gee. I've been wanting and drooling over so much amber. I knew I ordered this  pack but I didn't realize how much goodness it was packed with.

And now, of course, I shall oxidize it all to kingdom come!