Merry Craftmas Everyone!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas filled with friends, family, fun, and perhaps a little bit of creative play time! Sending much love for the holiday...

Michelle
xoxo

The Accidental Jeweler...

What happens when you make a plan in November of 2012 to be the Jewelry Artist of the Month at a local library in December of 2013? Well, if you're like me... you totally forget... then you get a phone call 10 days before the month starts, and you scramble like mad to make some jewelry!

So I broke out my stash and pulled pieces that spoke to me. My process is usually... go through silver junk and take out what calls to me... go through gold stuff and take out what appeals to me... go through beads that match... and chains that coordinate. Begin!

I got to pair new goodies with old goodies, which is always fun. I had this two-tone metal bracelet with floral accents for ages... and just recently found this cute little garden party hat to complete this piece!

I was channeling my love of everything Irish when I created this 'Oh, Blarney' charm necklace! I just love using tons and tons of monochromatic and metallic matching mementos. Lucky me!

This was my absolute favorite creation this time around. But it didn't even make it to the show, as it was snatched up after I posted it on Facebook! I do love that it's going to a good home.

I made jewelry every day — and even into the night — for almost two weeks. And even though my little helper is as cute as a button... she didn't get as much done overnight as I had hoped she would. Oh, well.

It was great to take a break from all the painting I did this summer. I got a quick and unexpected reminder as to why I collect these shiny baubles like a magpie... and how I love turning memories of the past into wearable mementos.

My work will be available all month long at the Oceanic Library in Rumson, NJ. And 20% of all my jewelry sales go directly to the library! So if you're local... go check out my vintage upcycled creations this December!

Oceanic Free Library
109 Avenue of the Two Rivers
Rumson, NJ 0776
732-842-2692

Cyber Monday Sale!

After an incredible discount-focused weekend at those big box stores, I have to ask myself, "How can a small art business compete with such low prices on mass-produced goods?" This is how — I don't. I have to look at it like this... they can't compete with me! I'm unique, friendly, real, approachable, honest, flexible... and everything in my shop was made by me... with Love!

So I invite you to shop this Cyber Monday, but also to shop hand made. Shop my shop. Hey, I'm not afraid of shameless self promotion! And, just because I like you... I'm offering 25% everything in my Yesterday's Trash Etsy Shop — Monday, December 2nd for an entire 24 hours until midnight EST. Just enter the code CYBERMONDAY when you check out. You'll find lots of unique items made from vintage, found and everyday items including...

Rag Dolls! Like these fun and whimsical cupcakes!

Upcycled Jewelry! Made from vintage items, interesting finds, and antique pieces and parts... like this metal purse necklace using an upcycled coin purse, vintage brass and enamel baubles and filled with the most gorgeous faceted red crystal beads!

Tons of Carnival & Circus Fun stuff! Including arcade-inspired Knock-Down Dolls, Shadowboxes, Side Show Banners and more!

Mixed Media Art! Including shadowbox-framed collages and some really weird and interesting stuff too! And Prints! The newest addition to my shop... prints of my original art. Lots of fun and whimsical pieces to choose from. 

So skip the malls, don't fuss over parking, avoid the crowds... and be a Cyber Shopper. Shop loud. Shop proud. Shop in your underwear if you like, because I can't see you! And... Thanks!

Visit my Etsy Shop!

~Michelle
    xoxo

Gallery Show Opening, Saturday, November 2nd!

I'm so excited! The date has been set, and I'll be gathering up my art for Saturday's Opening Reception. Stop by and see my latest works of art... whimsically playful paintings, drenched in bold, fun colors, with layers and layers of paper, paint, pastel, vintage ephemera and modern day embellishments. It's a mashup of visual texture and playful characters... with a few surprises thrown in! If you're around, come on down and enjoy Asbury's First Night gallery crawl festivities, and stop by to see what I've been up to!

The Art of Whimsicality

featuring mixed media creations by me!

at The Paint Place

605 Cookman Avenue

Asbury Park, NJ

November 1 - December 31

Opening Night Reception

First Saturday, November 2nd

6:00pm - 9:00pm

Light refreshments

Art To Die For...

This past weekend was the Zombie Walk in Asbury Park... which inspired me to break out of my cute girl mold and paint something creepy and gorey. Yay! I mean.... Grrrrrrrrr.

Asbury's annual event brings thousands of walking dead to the city by the sea, and this year there were more than ever! In fact, they won back their Guinness Book of World Records title with 9,592 walking dead!

There was no lack of inspiration for my own zombie girl. Yikes! These dead are pretty scary!

So for my creepy creation, I started with some coffee stained kraft paper as my base and loved the splotchy-ness of it so much, that I decided to keep that as the background. For the day of the event, Asbury Park becomes Zombie Park and so I had to incorporate that into my piece. And an underlay of some Frankenstein green was the perfect beginning.

Working from dark to light, I wanted to really make the girl and the words pop off the drab background. I think she's actually starting to glow!

One of my favorite parts of this piece is the legs in chains as the A in PARK. I'd love to say that I am just that creative and this was totally planned, but it was a happy accident. As I was placing my original sketches over the words, I realized that the girl's legs fell right where the A was. So I added the chains to complete the hint of the letter A. Love it when that happens!

I have to admit that adding the blood was super fun! I watered down the ugliest, darkest red paint I had, blobbed it on the canvas, and then tilted it slightly to make all the wonderful drips!

Channeling the perfect zombie patina was a challenge that I really enjoyed. A deep dark mossy green, lots of blues and teals, a little pistachio and a touch of gray. And the illusion was complete!

Thanks to "Zombie Park" I have a brand new piece of art... which will actually be for sale in a gallery in Asbury this month. But now that I'm finished I feel a little hungry. Hmmmm.... what do I want to eat? Oh, I know... More brains!

Taking Time to Play...

If we think about the last time we actually played with paint and pencils and crayons and stamps — with no expectations and no judgements about our work — it was probably like... when we were 7 or so? I know for myself... I can't even remember what it was like to not make an icky face at my first attempt at anything!

Which is why I felt it was so absolutely necessary to take Mindy Lacefield's Play Journal workshop at the Art & Soul Retreat recently. She teaches... nay... preaches... living from your authentic childlike self and her fun and whimsical attitude is contagious!

Her work is so playful and visually stimulating in a witty, lighthearted way... that I just needed to be a part of that type of creation face-to-face...

That's why even though I've taken her classes online for almost a year now, I still felt compelled to learn with her in-person in a 2-day workshop. And I am so very happy that I did!

We started off with some warm-up exercises... drawing on deli paper with our non-dominant hand (we'd use that later in our journals). Once we crafted our journals (it was easy peasy!), we jumped right in to putting paint on paper, which is still always exciting and scary for me each time I do it!

Painting. Stamping. Mark-making. Drawing. Gluing. Lettering. These are things that just bring pure joy when there is no end result in mind. And it was fun! I gave myself permission to let go.

And it was so cool to watch my pages as they progressed. I ended up disassembling my journal because I wanted to add elements to multiple pages and my 7 year old self couldn't wait for them to dry (who am I kidding, that's the impatient me today!). I was so overcome with excitement and the desire to add more and more (and more!) that I found myself shoving lunch into my mouth faster than I could chew it... just so I could get back to the classroom more quickly. Come on! Hurry up! So you can have more fun!!

We had a fabulous group dynamic in our class and we all fed off of each other's energy. We journaled and shared stories, got a little teary-eyed, laughed a lot, shared some more, got ideas from each other and evolved as a group. At the end of day two we had a little show-and-tell. Everyone did such a great job and each person's creations were uniquely their own. It was a blast!

And after I returned home, the party didn't stop! I was obsessed with mark-making and doodling and painting and finding just the right piece of epemera to complete an empty space. I was kind of cracking myself up over cracking up. Is my therapist on call, I wondered?

But I finally came down a bit, off of the major adrenaline high I was on, and just enjoyed the whole process. I found that after Mindy's workshop, I was more free to make marks, really letting go of the fact that they might get covered up. I had more confidence that I could make those marks again if need be, or take the technique and use it as a new tool in another way on another page. And yes, I will be making like a gazillion more of these journals!

In fact, this mermaid is the result of what I created over that background above. I covered up a lot of marks and painting and drawing and little bits of ephemera. But I love this page oh so much. And I made sure to document it before I covered it. So anything I had, I'll know exactly how to re-create it again for another page.

To be honest,  I wasn't sure how much I'd learn from an in-person class from a teacher I had studied with online. But to my surprise, the person that signed up for that workshop and the person who came home from it ... well, they're two different people. And it's hard to find words that express what a wonderous time I had, and how much my art has changed as a result of it. I am over-the-moon excited every day knowing that all I had to do to move forward, was move backwards... and revisit my childhood self.

I'm so happy I remembered how to play. Makes life (and art) a lot more fun. Wheeeeeee!

Studying With The "Masters"

I'm so excited to share that I'm going to Art & Soul Retreat in Virginia Beach this weekend to paint and play with my own personal, modern-day Master... Mindy Murphy Lacefield! Yippee! I'll be taking her Play Journal workshop where she'll coax students to let out their inner child and play and get lost in the process of painting, writing, and journaling.

If you follow my blog, I'm sure you've seen a lot of the paintings I did from her Paint Your Story online workshop...

And then mixed media pieces inspired by her True Free Spirit class online...

And maybe a few from the mini Frolic class she offered virtually! But there's not too much better than studying with someone you admire — in-person — for two days straight! I've met Mindy Lacefield and her spirit is just as colorful, whimsical and tenderly sentimental as the work she does. She is such a loving, approachable person and everyone I know who's life she's touched is more playful today... in part because of her.

Now that's what I call a Master!

On Safari... A Ticket To Adventure...

You know, sometimes my life isn't about making art... it's about making graphic art! Yes, my actual background is in Graphic Design and although I don't talk about it much... it definitely has had a tremendous impact on my art.

Recently, I designed this logo for Art & Soul Mixed Media Art Retreats, showcasing their 2013 theme of "On Safari". The challenge arose when I was asked to create tickets for each class that will take place at the retreat. I wanted to utilize the animals and other elements from the original logo... but how? Well, in this digital age it takes only seconds to Google the words "jungle + safari" and get fodder for all kinds of ideas! Gone are the days of scouring hoarded copies of Print and Design magazines for just the right "look". Ahhhh, technology.

So I took my ideas and created a look-book on Pinterest and then tried a few for myself. The silhouettes of the animals had the best effect and a sunset-style graduated background color topped it off quite nicely. I love using elements as text and so I borrowed the Acadia Tree to use as the "I" in SAFARI. I created 4 different tickets with each of the animals I used in the original logo to create diversity and collectibility.

I just love a good theme and I'm very happy with the way these tickets turned out. Playing around with graphics is always an adventure for me. What can I say... sometimes work is fun!

Holiday Distress, Cupcakes & Knock Downs!

Boy, oh, boy... were your holidays distressing? Because mine sure were. In a good way of course! It was so nice to take some time off just to play and make things (including messes!). I spent a lot of my time working on a few rag dolls. Distressing. Stuffing. Sewing. And it was all very, very relaxing and fun. A winning combination that got me through the holiday season.

The cupcake trio turned out to be some of my favorites. Each with a different color scheme... and personality! I had to experiment a bit with the cherries on top and making them look, well... cherry-ish. I tried putting a small styrofoam ball into the doll as a rotund support system, but many of them turned out looking like baseball caps up close anyway. Tee-hee! Who ever heard of a baseball cap-wearing cupcake?

Sometimes the dolls evolve as I go along and this little red firecracker was no exception. When I first chose her monochromatic color palette and put her together, I loved the idea of her... but I wasn't in love just yet. I thought maybe after I distressed her... but no. Maybe after I stuffed  her? Well, that did bring about some changes, because I ended up turning her into a knock down doll (like my Tillies), but, still... there was something missing. So I took some extra striped fabric, ripped her some new arms and a bow for her hair, and.... voilà! She won my heart!

After all that clowning around, I feel refreshed, rejuvenated, and ready to play lots more! I realized that I got so busy last year, I hadn't given myself enough time for fun. So for 2013, there's going to be a lot more playing going on around here. Because, well... I deserve it.

Happy New Year everybody... and Happy Making!

xoxo

Let's Go On Safari...

I'm so excited to introduce a logo I designed for Art & Soul Mixed-Media Retreats and their 2013 On Safari theme! When Glenny Moir asked me to create the logo for next year's theme... I was ecstatic. That little hamster wheel in my brain started going a mile a minute. What should I do? Maybe a Survivor themed logo... Outwit, Outcraft, Outlast? Maybe an animal print logo... like a zebra or a cheetah? But when it came down to the actual design, I ended up just gathering as many jungle and safari images that struck my fancy until the ultimate idea came to fruition.

Playing around with the mixed-media theme, I thought it would be fun to silhouette a bunch of animals that you'd see on a safari... using the many types of papers, fabrics and ephemera I love to use in my own collage work! So I searched through my own papers, books and even random pieces of fabric to find just the right look for each animal. After creating a pleasing composition for the animals it was time to design the logo for the theme.

I knew I wanted to use the Acadia Tree and once I had that in place, everything else just seemed to fall together. Even when I'm doing graphic design, my process seems to be very organic. I get inspired by the serendipity of the moment... and I just go with it. For example, using the tree as the '1' in 2013 just kind of popped into my brain... just like having the giraffe eating the '&' just kind of happened. So I ended up with the perfect combination of clever and whimsy, and I must say...

I'm wild about it!