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