New Year!

Hello Lovelies~

I hope this Monday finds you all in good spirits and ready to start a brand new year. I am excited about all the things on my horizon this coming year and I hope you are too. I have just discounted the rest of my Venomous Vixens 2012 Calendars to a mere $7 each + S/H. Only a few left, grab them while you can!

Those of you who have been reading my blog awhile know that I'm an avid junker and thrifter. I love finding new treasures and cleaning them up and using or selling them. It's a tradition for my Sweetie and I to go thrifting all New Year's Day and this year was no exception. We went to a ton of places and after climbing around in some dirty basements and dusty barns, we found some great things, including a vintage adult-sized clown costume. That's right. And I already know how I'm going to use it in an upcoming photo shoot. Take a look at what else we found below and here.

Clown costume!

This bull head actually goes on a bottle and you can pour liquor out of the mouth! Amazing.

I love ocean-related stuff and these Disney 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea puzzles were the bees knees.

I'm sure most of you have heard of Stanley Kubrick, he's the director of Clockwork Orange and 2001 a Space Odyssey, oh, and The Shining. But did you know he was also a photographer? Yeah, neither did I. And he was quite good at it. Check out these amazing shots! The rest can be found here.

And speaking of amazing things, in my travels through cyberspace recently, I found Stranger & Stranger, a package design company specializing in alcoholic drinks. As you can see from the examples below (just a few of their designs), their look is distinctive and seamlessly melds vintage fonts with modern class. I would buy these bottles just for the labels, Folks. Not kidding.

And while we're on the topic of vintage-inspired class, let's talk about Bonlook, a site specializing in fashion glasses and sunglasses. Well, I wear glasses myself and I love vintage-looking frames, but the few times I've bought a pair, they've been bent or bowed or scratched to the point where I can't actually wear them. Enter, Bonlook! I have earmarked 3 of their styles already and event that was tough... I love them all. Here are a few examples:

Until next time: Unpleasant dreams...

Heeeeere's the Winner!

Hello Lovelies!

First (because I know you've all been anxiously waiting to hear), the winner of the giveaway is Noella! She will receive the entire Alice in Wonderland print set free. Congratulations Noella and thank you all for entering, your movie and book suggestions will keep me busy through the winter.

More business to discuss then the fun parts. My Seahorse Palace photo made it to the front page this week, which is always a bit gratifying.

And, I have listed three new photos in the shop; Sky Full of Amusement, Onion Rings and Dark Car. These were all taken at the Fryeburg Fair up here in Maine that I mentioned a couple of posts ago. Fun stuff. (And yes, all of those rides were that close together, no Photoshopping there folks... crazy.)

So, I went thrifting today for a new project I'm starting for a gallery show I'm in this December. I've decided to repurpose old frames/plaques into new pieces of artwork. I'm really excited about these pieces and if it comes out half as good as it looks in my mind's eye, I think you'll like it too! Here are the pieces I will be converting to art. Yes, they look rough now, but you just wait...

And I picked up this totally neat old photo in a tin frame while I was out. Sweet isn't it? I swear everyone was stylish in the 40's... Sigh.

This new project I'm doing was partly inspired by one of my favorite artists; Mark Ryden. If you don't know his work, go to his site. Wonderful, whimsical, dark and funny. He gets it. Lovely work. Anyway, he has a new Blood series that's perfect as always (can you tell I'm a big fan?) and it uses old frames and small scale to make a big statement. So, I decided to create a series mixing old and new and small size to create a wall arrangement in the gallery. Here are some of his Blood pieces...

And let's wrap up with a little movie-related bragging on my part. A theater up here in Maine was showing The Shining on the big screen last week and I got to see it with friends. Talk about amazing. I'm not a huge Stanley Kubrick fan in general, and I like Clockwork Orange better, but on the big screen, you really get what he was doing with The Shining. It was amazing. Truly. If you ever have the chance to see it at a theater... go.

Until next time: Unpleasant Dreams...