Almost time for the November Newsletter!

I suppose as with most of you, the month of November has whizzed by...and Thanksgiving is next week and Christmas will follow all too quickly! I'm one of those people who has always finished my Christmas shopping BY Thanksgiving, BUT not this year! I have NEVER done this before and am about to panic! I think I finally have most of my list figured out...except for my son who is moving into a new house and needs EVERYTHING!! So, obviously, we are going to have to pare that list down a bit! LOL

I had a bit of a back problem recently, so have tried to limit my time on the computer somewhat - which is a very hard thing to do, especially when you have a business online!!!

Now that I've given you all my "whine" for the day, I will say that I'm going to Dawn's on Saturday and we are going to actually do the NOVEMBER newsletter! I did the sample several weeks ago and actually wrote a lot of what goes into the newsletter, but between my aches and pains and Dawn's busy life, we are just now getting together for the 1st time in several weeks!

Here's a sneak preview of our technique sample and you get to guess what we are showing you to do!




On Saturday we are also going to An Affair of the Heart in Tulsa! One of our customers will be selling Divas D'Este designed t-shirts there! She sold out of the Halloween ones that Dawn designed twice in October and now has 3 new Christmas designs PLUS two other original designs by the very talented Diva Dawn! We know that she will sell out and have to order more!

Dawn and I wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Some of our NEWEST Collage Sheets!

If you click in the center you will get a magnifying lens so you can see them in close up view!

Halloween! My favorite Holiday!

Hello all! Dawn here ~ I haven't posted in soooo long I thought I'd drop you all a quick note! Things have been so crazy in my life with my new job as a Title Attorney (almost 5 months now) and my father (who has dementia/alzheimers) that I hardly have a chance to breathe much less do art! I am sooooo frustrated and truly want to be able to get back into the creative process! Hopefully, mom and I will have time to play over the Thanksgiving holiday! Yippee! We're going to make jewelry and quilties and purses and new collage sheets (oh my!) I can't wait!

But, since I haven't gotten to express myself artistically, for Halloween this year, my friends and I decided to express ourselves using a slightly different form of artistic expression! He He! (In case you don't know... I'm the Pirate on the right! Aargh!) :) We had such fun!

Well, hate to do this but, have to get back to work! I have a Title Opinion deadline tomorrow morning and I'm missing a couple of people!! I'll check back again soon! Take care and have an artful Sunday!

NEW Collage Sheets

I've been making new collage sheets ALL day! Our monthly newsletter will be out in a couple of weeks and so I wanted to make sure that we had new collages sheets and new ephemera for everyone! It kind of reminds me of when I go to the video store - we're such movie nuts that I'm always looking for the new releases! Everyone who goes shopping always seems to go to the new stuff first! Our webmistress, Pat, is creating a NEW page this month so that everything that is new for the month will be on that page (these items will also be in their regular place as well). Okay, enough about all of this!

Tomorrow is An Affair of the Heart in OKC! It is the biggest arts and crafts show imaginable - like 7 buildings crammed with STUFF! After having gone for years and years (and watched it grow to gargantuum proportions!), I realize that there are lots and lots of the same thing! So, the time it takes to get through all of the booths is pared down considerably by simply passing by the things I have no interest in, or the things I've seen so many times that I'm just sick of seeing them! I think we have a theme going on in this post!! Everyone wants to see NEW stuff!

What I look for now is just something unusual or different...a little booth with a twist on an old idea, some little found object or piece of fabric, a sweatshirt with something fun on it! Who knows what I will find - if anything - but it is going to be a gorgeous day and it will be fun just to go!

On Saturday, I'm going with a friend to a town about an hour away to attend a bead group get together. The woman whose place we are going to has a bead store in her house and once a month she has a "bead day" where everyone sits around and beads on a project they are working on, then we will all eat our brown bag lunch, and bead some more. She has really nice beads for sale too!

Since I need to go put something together to bead on, I'm going to make this short and sweet! So, have fun taking a sneak peek at some of the NEW collage sheets til they come out in a week or so...ONE of them will be the November Special (free collage sheet for subscribers to our newsletter)!!

FALL has Arrived!

My favorite time of the year has FINALLY arrived in Okieland! We actually had a cold front come in the other night and I pulled out some flannel pjs and it was wonderful! I always look forward to the brisk Fall days and chilly nights - great weather to watch a good movie, create art, read a good book...just about anything!

As I told you the last time I wrote, I got a new digital camera for my b'day...and I've been trying it out...some of the pics are good, some not so good. BTW, how do I get rid of the flash glare on glass? Does anyone know about this?? I have a Sony digital camera - more specifics if you need them. Below are some of the pics I've been taking...some of my latest art projects, but mainly Ephemera that won't fit in my scanner (I've got to start somewhere, now don't I?). Hopefully, I will get better at this SOON!

This first picture is of a Vintage Crazy Quilt purse that I just finished! It has lots of handwork on it, including embroidery, beading, yo-yos made from old flour sacks, hand-dyed lace, antique lace, and lots and lots of time! These purses are always labors of love...and this one is no exception. The colors in this purse are not my usual palette of choice, but for some reason I was really drawn to do something with these colors and I really enjoyed changing from my normal Tuscany/Renaissance color palette. What do you think?

This is the back of the purse!

This is an artpiece on 8x10 canvas that I recently did using layering techniques. It has art tissue paper, cheesecloth, molding paste (using stencils), lots of layers of paint (Golden), vintage music, beads on wax linen thread, hand-dyed ribbon, a brass finding, and a photo image from Divas D'Este.

Now, I'll show you some of the new Ephemera that I've found on my excursions into dusty garages, estate sales, flea markets, etc. For me, the most fun part is the HUNT! I absolutely love to forage through old boxes, suitcases, cobweb covered hiddieholds...just about anyplace that my hide a TREASURE!!

Are you old enough to remember the old metal ice cream spoons? They are made out of aluminum I think. But these are so neat because they are already "aged" (sort of rusty and patina-ed). These will be up on the website by the 1st of November! Wouldn't they be fun to use on an assemblage or to punch a whole in the top of the handle to dangle from somthing?

Simply described, a player piano is a self-playing piano. A piano roll is a roll of paper with perforations (holes) punched in it. The position and length of the perforation determines the note played on the piano.

Beginning around 1900 and continuing for the next three decades, for the first time in history, music could be heard on demand. The player piano was like a jukebox; its "discs" were the paper piano rolls. The unique player, however, did not use speakers or electricity; it actually played itself using air pressure-- hammers struck the strings, strings vibrated and wood resonated.

The music recorded on the player piano roll reflected the changing social fabric of the day--the end of Victorian convention and the beginning of the uninhibited modern thinking and free-spending practices of the twentieth century.

You can use them as they are in scroll (rolled up) form to embellish and then unwind, tear/cut them into pieces of ephemera for just about any of your art projects, use as pages in your altered books, utilize the performations as peek-a-boo slits, AND THEN use the box as an assemblage! What terrific fun these little pieces of Victorian memorabilia are!!

That's all for today! My Bunko group meets tonight (loads of giggles and lots of girl fun), so I have to go make a dish to take. I'm making a Mexican Cornbread that's scrumptious! I usually do desserts, but it's cool tonight so thought the cornbread sounded warm and fallish! It has cream cheese, corn meal mix, chopped green chiles, grated cheese...yummy...if you want the recipe, just let me know!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me!!! giggle

It's been quite a busy few days since I last posted - I just don't know where the days go! But, one of those days was spent celebrating my big BAD b'day! You know the one where you are DEFINITELY a Senior Citizen!! About the only thing I can think of that is positive about this b'day is that I am now eligible for cheaper airline tickets! Can you tell I am not doing this aging thing well???? But, as my kids tell me - it's not your age, it's your ATTITUDE, mom! And, at least most of the time, I don't feel my age! Enough of this dreary chatter...on to more fun stuff!

My kids (totally grown, but always kids to me!), my hubby, and Dawn's hubby all took me to dinner (Mexican food, my fav!) and gave me cards that made me cry (sentimental/happy tears) and a FANTASTIC DIGITAL CAMERA!!! (To those of you who gently suggested that this would be a 'good thing' for me to have, you will be pleased to learn this!!!). It is loaded with lots of extra stuff, but definitely easy enough for me to operate (I think)! My son was explaining it to me, but finally just said, "Mom, put it on auto pilot and take the picture!" So, I'm going to give it a whirl tomorrow! I have a couple of my purses ready to take pictures of as well as a new piece of ephemera to go up on the website (but it definitely won't fit in my scanner!). THANK YOU TO EACH OF YOU FOR A GREAT B'DAY!

I found this great group of very old piano rolls last weekend, which would be great to alter!! I'll put the pics up as soon as I get the pics taken and uploaded!

Dawn and I actually got together for a while a couple of days ago and between the two of us finished and mailed out our Divas D'Este October Newsletter! Now, you all know how I did the sample I put up a while back!! The BIG SECRET is out, eh what? But, I hope that all of our newsletter subscribers try it out and have a wonderful time creating FANTASTIC art with these techniques!

I also thought it would by fun to add a picture now and then of some of our customer's art! Trixie Both sent us a really cute piece that she did recently using one of the images from our Itsy Bitsy Fairy Children - such a great Holiday piece! And, here it is! THANK YOU, Trixie!!! Great job!

Dawn and I also worked on some new images for t-shirts and/or cards, which we will be adding to our line of goodies in the near future. Until then, check our t-shirts, sweatshirts, cards, hats, etc., etc. out on Cafe Press http://www.cafepress.com/divasdeste.

Here are a couple of our new Christmas Holiday designs - aren't they just the cutest ever!?

Guess that's all for tonight! More soon....thanks for stopping by!

De

Weekend ART

HAPPY MONDAY to you all!

I think that time has sped up in my world since I retired! I absolutely don't know where the days go! The weekend absolutely FLEW by! Sweet hubby and I went to our twice monthly discussion group with a long time group of friends (we watch a video on anything from science to psychology to mythology to who knows what else and then discuss it - or NOT)! We just enjoy getting together, sharing a meal, and talking about the state of LIFE in our whacko world with great friends! On Sunday, hubby and I attended our next door neighbor's 80th birthday! I only hope that I'm as active and happy as he is at 80! It was wonderful to see soooo many people gathered to help him celebrate this milestone! We also watched a great deal of Ken Burns new film series called "The War"! I could spend an entire Blog talking about this phenomenal film effort. It should be REQUIRED watching for every school child for his/her history class!! If you get a chance, I highly recommend that you watch as much of it as you can - you too will learn so much about this time in history from just about every perspective.

Now, back to ART!! Just about the rest of my time was spent working on the sample for our techniques section of the Divas D'Este October Newsletter - so at least I was doing some ART! This month I promised Dawn that I would do the technique section of the newsletter - she's done ALL the others! So, since I have so much fun doing layering techniques for backgrounds, I decided that I would use that as my contribution...oh my goodness! It is not that easy to do these samples - no wonder it takes her so long!!!! After EACH and EVERY step, you have to make sure your paint, glue, medium, etc. is dry enough to put on the scanner, wait for the scanner to do its thing, then adjust, crop, save, etc. the image, then go do the next step, stop, dry, scan, and begin again!! AND, oh my gosh if you should make a mistake - 'cause then you would have to start all over again (at least on a piece like I chose where each layer builds on the previous one). The next time I volunteer to do this, it is going to be something EASIER!! BUT, here's the final project...NOW you just have to wait for the newsletter to find out how I did it!!! giggle OH, I almost forgot - now I need to write up what I did on each of the steps!! Maybe tomorrow!

Our grand and glorious Mistress of the Web, Pat, uploaded all our new stuff to the Divas D'Este website this weekend!!! THANK YOU, PAT!! It looks fabulous! She also added the first of what I'm sure will end up being a long list of Blogs to our Links page. If any of you have a Blog and want to be listed, PLEASE send us a note.

Today, after completing a long list of errands, I started on another collage sheet - this one I called Hootchy Kootchy Girls, and for those of you who have never heard this term, I thought I would tell you who these infamous ladies were!

The Streets of Cairo, or the Poor Little Country Maid was a well-known melody in years past. In the United States, the song was best known as The Hootchy Kootchy Dance (today the phrase "hootchy-kootchy" generally means an erotic suggestive dance). Originally, the song was purported to have been written by Sol Bloom, a showman (and later, a U.S. Congressman) who was the entertainment director of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. It included an attraction called "A Street in Cairo" which featured snake charmers, camel rides and a scandalous dancer known as Little Egypt. Little Egypt is the one I remember as being the most famous Hootchy Kootchy dancer!

Since I have made a complete and total disaster of my art room, I'm going to try to attempt to make a path through the assortment of paint, glue, fabric, and STUFF so that I can start on something else!!

Hope you're enjoying the musings of the Divas D'Este! Come back any ole' time, ya'll!!

Dawn and De

Synchronicity! (Meaningful Chance)

Have you ever had one of those days when you felt like there was true meaning in a chance meeting with someone? Or, you just felt like...I was "supposed" to meet this person? Well, that happened to me today...

I had gone to the printers to get some of our new collage sheets printed, and this lovely older lady standing at the counter beside me was having some very old pictures reproduced as part of a family album. I was, of course, immediately drawn to the very old images and the character in the face of the primary subject - the woman's grandfather (born in the 1800s). We began to chat as she allowed me to look through these wonderful old pictures.... She told me that her grandfather had fought in the Battle of San Jacinto in early Texas. One of the pictures even showed him with his sword and gun - reminded me of pictures of the men from the Alamo. Another picture was of a group of men and women (her grandfather included) - she pointed out that one of the men was William Jennings Bryant and another was the son of Sam Houston! I was hooked, fascinated, and enthralled!!

As we continued to talk, I mentioned that the photos could be enhanced to take away some of their grainy look (she was working from a copy of the original, but still...). She said that it would be too expensive to fix with as many photos as she had, although she would love to! So, I suggested that she might get in touch with the local University graphics dept. and see if there might be a student who would be interested in taking this project on - for a lesser cost. Then, as the conversation continued and she found out more about me and what I did, she suggested that perhaps we could trade something I wanted for something she wanted; e.g., she wanted the photos enhanced and I wanted to scan some of her fabulous photos! So, we struck a barter trade right there in the print shop!! She also told me she had some great 1920's magazines with women's fashions and one on bridal fashions, and some other things she had collected over the years that I might be interested in as well...talk about synchronicity (meaningful chance)that we should both be there at the same time and had a "connection" right away. She was such a lovely lady - and a quilter too!

Later she told me that she had been having a very bad day and I had helped make it a good day for her! Now, that's a SPECIAL thing, don't you think??? When I have finished working on some of her photos, I'll post them for you to see. Hopefully, I can make them look a little better for her.

Besides working on filling orders this week, I've been making MORE collage sheets! Sometimes I just get on a roll with ideas and make a whole bunch at one time. But, I've got to get busy on the sample for the October Newsletter, so I'll probably slow down on collage sheets for a few days....BUT here are a few of the soon to be uploaded on the website NEW COLLAGE SHEETS!

Dawn has had soooo many comments on her Fish Lady from our September Newsletter, that we decided to give you a Fish Collage sheet so you can play too!

PLEASE let us know if there is a theme you would like to see in collage sheets and we will do our best to accommodate you! One customer has requested Fairytales, so they will be coming soon!

I feel that the following quote is applicable to the experiences of this day for me...and perhaps to your's as well.

"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

Have a great day!

Our Art on ZNE!

Hello All!

Dawn here!

I don't have a lot to add for the day but was playing around with some HTML code and thought I'd see if I could get it to show up as a post!

You see, mom & I belong to this really great group of artistic women at www.zneart.com ... you should really check it out!

Fabulous women~Fabulous art! And, everyone who belongs gets to post their art for all to see! So, being the wonderful ladies that they are, they have given us the ability to share, with you, all the art we have posted on the ZNE website!

Variazione is Italian for "Variation" and they have taken the "ZNE" from this cool Italian word! Anyway... check out the site & our cool new video feed and have a wonderful night!

Where's FALL?

Ok, I'm already feeling guilty already about this blogging thing! I think you're supposed to post a lot...and here it is days and days later and I'm just trying to do this again! As I said, I'll get the hang of this pretty soon (I hope)!!


I put my FALL wreath on the door of our house today, but it seemed really strange because it is still very much Summer in Okieland!! It's 90 degrees and extremely sunny and HOT - just not conducive to feeling very Autumn like! My birthday is coming up very soon (a much dreaded one I might add), and I always wish for a lovely "blue norther" (Okie speak for a big cold front that drops temps about 20 degrees in 30 minutes!) to blow in for my b'day!!! Can you guess that I'm a Winter person - hate the Summer heat! Dawn, on the other hand LOVES the sun and Summer. At least one of us is happy for about half of the year!!


Just in case anybody's curious as to what we look like - well, here we are - The Divas D'Este!! Everyone says we look a LOT alike!! Oh, BTW, Dawn's the one on the left (the beautiful one)!!!

Now here's my excuse for the delay in blogging. It goes something like this....I started off pretty good (one blog attempt), but then I got really distracted with the ton of orders generated by our September Divas D'Este Newsletter!! WOW! Since I'm the head Diva in charge of processing and mailing all of our orders (Dawn's the head Diva in charge of the newsletter), I got a little overwhelmed (couldn't be my age, now could it???!!). Anyway, with all the orders last week, I was lucky to get to bed before midnight for several nights - which is waaaaaaaaay past my bedtime! HOWEVER, I really love doing the processing and mailing, cause it gives me an excuse to chat with a lot of our customers online...it's so neat to get to know the lovely ladies who visit our website. We often end up just chatting about our lives and art...not just about when their order was mailed!! Many have even said that it feels like we have "known" each other for a long time. Isn't that just the coolest (do people still use that word - coolest) thing??

This week we've been working on even MORE stuff to have our lovely and talented webmistress (Pat) upload! She said she will get all the new stuff up sometime this week, but thought I would give you Bloggers a SNEAK PREVIEW of a few things we've been playing with!
With the holidays approaching, Dawn decided to create a beautiful Jingle Girl Christmas Card/Holiday Party Invitation (whatever you want them to be, I guess) using one of her original art pieces.

The Jingle Girl cards are printed on photo quality paper and measure 8.25x5.45 (after folding). They are blank inside. These cards are absolutely gorgeous!! They would make great Christmas cards, invitations to a Special Holiday Party, or thank you cards for those special Christmas gifts - anything holidayish you can think of!!

We've also gotten in two NEW color palettes of Hand-dyed Rayon Ribbon for embellishing your fabric and paper ARTwork! Ribbon #1 is a deeply rich color palette of varigated purples, teals, and rusty reds. Ribbon #2 is a softer color palette including varigated shades (from light to darker shades) of mossy greens, shrimp, teals, and touches of coffee with cream. The hand on the ribbon is soft and flowy making for beautiful embellishments for one-of-a-kind artwork pieces! We're going to be selling these gorgeous ribbons by the yard.

And, last, but certainly not least, are a couple of NEW collage sheets. The Kalaidoscope Flowers are pics that my brother (retired Prof of Horticulture/Floriculture) took and turned into Kalaidoscope images (he's a super great photographer!). I just think they are fantastic images to use as backgrounds, embellishments, focal points, etc. I would really like do something on fabric with them! The Lovely Ladies of the Folies Bergere are sooooo bright and blingy - I know they will fly off our shelves! We also have some new Bird Trading Cards that I will make a collage sheet out of later this week.

Well, I think I've about blogged my way to the end of this little chat with you. Hope all of you have a very CREATIVE week.

If anybody has ideas/suggestions for things they would like to see, PLEASE let us know - we're always looking for new ideas!

Dawn and De

De's FIRST Attempt at Blogging!!!

Hi to everyone!! Dawn threw down the challenge to me last night to TRY to do some "blogging," so here I am!! I told her the other day that I was older than she is now the first time I ever used a computer!!! So, I feel like I've really come a very long way (applause, applause)... I've even done a couple of digital art pieces!! Here's one of my very first attempts. This is really a lot of fun - it's just that the learning curve is HUGE for me. Most of you grew up with a computer at home, at school, everywhere! I grew up when we were still fascinated by the test pattern at the end of the day on the TV screen (yes, my young friends, TV did go off the air at night in those days)!!! I'm really telling my age, aren't I????? That's okay...I still feel YOUNG! Big giggle!

My primary love though is fabric art and I love to crazy quilt and embroidery and embellish like crazy, but I don't make quilts!! I make purses, wall art hangings...just about anything I can find to create something "crazy" with fabric! My stash of fabric is taking over my studio!!! aaaaargh!!! But, I also love to play with just about any medium, especially Golden acrylic paints and lots and lots of layering effects. I'll upload my latest one in a couple of days...I still need to add the quote to it.

The most exciting news for us lately was the release of Lane Thaw's new CD called Tokyo Belle with Dawn's art on the front cover, the inside, and back cover! WOW!! It is a unique blend of country swing with a touch of cajun spice. We just love the music! This is Lane's first release with 5 time Grammy Winner, Bruce Swedie. Check out his website at http://www.lanethaw.com/index.html - Dawn even has her own page there!! Here's a pic of the cover.

I think in this FIRST, of hopefully many, blogs, we would like to take this opportunity to say a HUGE THANK YOU from both of us to all our MARVELOUSLY talented and loyal customers at Divas D'Este!! You have all been so supportive and friendly and kind - YOU are, of course, what has made us a successful website and what inspires us to continue to try to create new and fun things for you! We also absolutely love going "treasure hunting" for unique ephemera for each of you!!! It gives us such a great excuse to go shopping!!! Seriously, we truly appreciate each and every one of you...from all over the U.S. to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, the UK, etc., etc. It is always amazing to me how our little company has reached across the world to help fellow artists find just the perfect image or piece of ephemera for their latest piece of art! What a great feeling this gives us! Thanks to EACH of you!

As Bugs Bunny says, "That's All Folks"!! Let me know how I did on this ole' lady's FIRST blog!

Mom De

Greetings!

Greetings to all you Gypsies, Rebels, Artists, Wicked Women & Divas!

We here in Divaville have finally decided to join the 21st Century and start our own blog! There is a definite learning curve associated with this blog thing ...

so please be patient with us while we play at Bloggin'

First a little about us! Divas D'Este is owned by the rockin' rebellious duo of De Crow & Dawn Beckert. (Mom & Daughter to be exact!) We began our artful journies at very young ages with De's Mom, Dawn's Meenaw, as our DIVA-INE Inspiration!

She was the first D'Este woman artist, an absolute gypsy, rebel & diva in her own right!

We can only hope to create our lives in her shadow and do her rebel spirt proud!

We started a little website to pass on the fun & funky things we find to you! You can find us at http://www.divasdeste.com There you'll find collage sheets, image & ephemera CDs, fabulous hand-dyed fibers, exciting ephemera, original mixed media collage art, poetic purses, artful rubber stamps and, we're even available for commissions should you so desire!

In addition to being rebels, De is retired from the FAA and Dawn is a title attorney for an Oil Company. But our souls belong to art & all the wonderful friends we've made along the way! We spend our days traveling the highways and byways of the world and our nights creating! (It's the only thing that keeps us sane!)

In regards to our artful careers... De & Dawn have both been honored with being published in Somerset Studio Magazine. Dawn even got her own little 8 minutes of television fame on HGTV's "That's Clever". We've also designed t-shirts, CD covers, posters, cards, found object jewelry, fabric art, coasters, print ads, purses and so much more!

We hope to add a little bit of our own quirky, funky, cool view on the world to your days (or nights) and we hope to hear from you all! Thanks so much for joining us! We pledge to make this an exciting (or maybe just funny) journey for all of you!