Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Meet a Fellow Etsian: Dirty Sanchez


I'm not going to tell you all about Dirty Sanchez because, let's face it, her product descriptions do all the work for me.

I love handmade soap. I used to think it was a frivolous luxury (like expensive scented candles that you just burned down to a wick) until I tried a bar and now I'm a handmade soap addict. It's not a hard thing to get hold of where I live nor on Etsy where there are probably hundreds of sellers creating all sorts of wonderful soaps for every taste and budget.

Dirty Sanchez, however, clinched the deal just with her writing. I look forward to receiving my first bars and I'll let you know how well I like them, but I can't imagine being anything other than ecstatic so I'll be a repeat purchaser. This time I ordered "breakfast club" and "pollinator", both scents that Dirty Sanchez swears to abhor due to the fact that they are floral.

Dipping My Toe in the Water


Ok, this whole blogging thing has been a mystery to me right from the start. I have tried to do some personal blogs before and ... oops failure. For a person that likes to talk about themselves I sure don't like to write about myself!

That's not a bad thing, but I'm going to stretch my wings here a little and hopefully give you a taste of my creative side, my magpie side (to share things I like with you), and my gustatory side. Yes, there will be some food art with my art here.

So herein you will find art, arts & crafts, food arts, food issues, and the odd observation about life, love, and the universe (but nothing icky gooey cheesy).

First and foremost I have taken up jewelry design, beaded jewelry work, and am creeping into the more esoteric realms of technique. My primary interest when I do art is color and texture, so technique is not important to me until I need it. Fortunately I have a wonderful mentor/tutor and can work with my hands so whenever I need to learn something new it will magically appear.

The fun for me, so far, in jewelry construction and design is combining my deep magpie longings with the urge to create, and the result is shape, color, and texture that can be worn. What could be more satisfying?

I used to satisfy this urge with knitting, a foray into weaving, but the fiber arts ultimately lost me due to a series of frustrations (I don't need fifty zillion sweaters, the acting of knitting is too repetitive for my tastes, and it costs a fortune to knit even one sweater!).

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Introducing Longfellow

Artist and activist, writer and dreamer.

I have a Masters in Fine Art, have taught art at college level, and recently began to make handcrafted jewelry because my partner is also a jeweler and it spread to me like an infection! I love working with all the different possibilities of beads and metal elements to concoct something unique, one of a kind, my primary interests are color and texture when I work. I am also learning more about metalwork and already some of my findings are handmade, handforged. I also like to shop so I seek out cool items on Etsy, antique stores, gem shows, and more for my work. I need people to buy my jewelry to feed my new obsession! Jewelry is definitely even more expensive than oil painting!

My etsy store is http://www.longfellow.etsy.com