Re opening my Etsy Shop!

Shop is back up and running!  I am adding new pieces evey week and have pieces for everyone's budget.  Bookmarks, collage, collagraph, assemblage, small works...also maybe some vintage pieces from my shop.  So here are a few example of what is available.

Bookmark made from matt board samples, always a favorite!

An altered photo I took of a mourning dove with other wooden bird photos, and paper collage.

And some owls, I am way into owls and making all sorts of owl collages.  This one, however is SOLD!   But I have, some similar ones...

So stop by www.etsy.com/shop/blage and poke around.  Give me some feed back or favorite an item. I will send you a coupon code as reward!  Etsy Shop Blage

Gift tags from old Christmas Cards

One of my favorite things to do after the holiday season is to take the cards and left over gift paper and make gift tags for next year.  I love curling up on the coach in front of the fire and cutting and pasting and stamping away.  When I was a child, I remember my grandmother saving wrapping paper and bows from presents at Christmas to use for the next year.  That generation was ever mindful of not wasting, for sure.   A friend of mine told me that every year her grandmother and brother would wrap each other's presents in the paper used on the gift from the previous year.  The presents would get smaller and smaller and the paper more and more worn.  

These will be available at Book, Paper, Scissors at the Free Library of Philadelphia, Saturday November 22 10:00-4:00pm.  Also available will be my book marks as well as other up cycled paper products.  Other vendors will have handmade paper, origami, hand pulled prints, and handmade books as well.

Also available are my bookmarks from matt board samples, that are always a big hit.  I am even giving away a book when you buy one, pretty good deal.

Life with coffee spoon

The inspiration for this came from an old copy of Hints from Heloise. She writes about all the letters she has received from who women not using their really good dishes, linens, etc for the family and only saving them for guests, "who is more important and loved than your family."

From there I started pulling together various items that merge when two people unite. Some that are precious, others that represent dreams, like the car trip to Switzerland, a piece of the good sterling, and the music to a special song. Also included is a sumi ink painting of poppies I did as a study for another painting. Many of these pieces, incomplete, broken, ripped or tattered, but come together to reveal two lives intertwined.

My cousin has a great deal of china and crystal stem wear inherited from various relatives or bought for a song at an estate sale. She uses it every day, drinks diet coke out of very elegant wine goblets, in a very non-pretentious way. It is one of the many things I find endearing about her, why not use it for yourself and your family for heavens sake. She also recently obtained a goat named Sally for the farm.

So further down are a few shots of "Life with Coffee Spoon" actually hanging up over the mantle in a home. Have also done a few of these as commissions for couples about to get married and a few on anniversaries. Enjoyable, I mostly like to hear their stories....