Shark Attack Mug from fredflare.com, Click to view more details
I see myself kindly offering a cup of coffee to a guest, and them being horrified at finding a Jaws lurking in the depths of their cup! $16 isn’t much to part with when it’s for such a good cause: laughing at friends.
Digital Photography School’s “How to Get Your Camera Back When You Lose It”
If you’re walking around with a 10MP DSLR, I do hope you’ll be careful not to absent-mindedly leave it on a side table somewhere and then completely forget about it until five hours later, adrenalin pumping and panic setting in you realize you may have just lost $2,000 worth of asset-building equipment. Still! We see here an example of why digital cameras (I’ll reluctantly admit) might be a little better than film ones.
What am I saying, that’s sacrilege. But this article is handy, sweet, and a little bit funny. Click on the picture or this link to enjoy!
my pretties
…Anna and I went thrifting during the lunch break today. This will soon be a bevvy of soy wax-filled luminaries. The three shot glasses will make a perfect set of 3 tea lights, that see-through mod coffee cup in the back will look very streamlined, we found a rustic white fiestaware cup and saucer, and those super trippy retro blue spoon design cups. A decent haul, and a good way to get the creative gears turning again.
So what if you have to go back to the studio and eat snack crackers and water for lunch ’cause you already used the whole break? The thrill of the hunt is always calling…
A cat-lover’s diary from 1988. Totally messed up. You will laugh (and maybe cry) forever.
One of my favorite places to wander around aimlessly is the Pride’s Corner Flea Market. JR goes and looks at the records and I move through the aisles like a hawk, with all my senses looking for ‘just that thing’ that I want to take home with me.
On our most recent visit, it was some guitar picks cut from gift cards, but the vendor wasn’t there, even when I circled around twice. I remembered when I had gotten there I spied an old, beat-up, albeit broken (but still totally awesome) Hell’s Angel belt buckle at my favorite table (when you go there, it’s the one at your back if you’re buying something from the snack bar).
The guy was out, but when he came back I asked him how much it was. He said “Oh, well — it’s broken, so Happy Birthday!”
Unexpected gifts from people with excellent taste when it’s not even your birthday. Yesss.
Here’s my new pressy:
Wheels turning as to what I could do with it… big necklace medallion comes to mind, but it would require a little metal work. It might also be really nice in our herb garden when it gets growing. Sewn in to a shoulder bag? Any other ideas?
Click to View Listing from Hand Me Down Designs, $35
You know that really awesome piece of clothing that you can’t live without but then you start… expanding… then it’s a little too small. Then it gets a stain. Now there’s a hole in the zipper. Oh, darn it – now your favorite skirt is a weird, swiss-cheese sausage casing that you try to wriggle in to once a week with no luck.
I finally parted with my favorite red corduroy skirt, and I’m glad I did. I donated it to Malaika of Hand Me Down Designs and she made a fantastic Fall bag out of it (see picture above). The skirt was cut on the bias and I love that that shows in the body of the skirt, with the contrast of having it run vertically up the strap. Great browns were added – it’s so cool to see my favorite skirt renewed and possibly someone new’s favorite bag!
Great job, Malaika – keep up the good work!
If you’re interested in donating your weird, swiss-cheese sausage casing clothes (or just ones you’re tired of) to Malaika to give them a new life shoot me a note and I will get you her contact information, or you can convo her on Etsy. Making old in to new is a sense of satisfaction only topped by the fact she gives you a coupon for a $5 credit to her shop when you donate a bag of clothes!
Roosters, actually. Thousands of euthanized, uneaten roosters from Colorado. Photo copyright Audrey Hotchkiss of Little Eye.
I’ve had something stuck in my craw for a few months now, and perusing Etsy’s tips from the Merchandising Desk (September edition) I decided it was finally time to resolve some unanswered questions and feelings I have about feather extensions.
About halfway down the page in the “Trending Topics” category they state: “Feather earrings: still going strong.”
Yes…so it seems. Ok, crazy Audrey, why is that a problem?
Well — if you run a search for “feather earrings” on Etsy you get over 30,000 results.
When you run a search for “feather earrings humane“ you get exactly 72.
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Whoa!! I was expecting there to be a discrepancy but that is just f-ing ridiculous. The real kicker is that now, about a century and some thirty years after feather fever swept America in hat-form, no one actually seems to be aware that millions (yep. millions.) of birds are being plucked/bludgeoned/slaughtered in the way of that“Ooh, that would look so pretty attached to my scalp!” mentality. The Audubon Society took great pains at the end of the 19th century to inspire legislation against the hunting and killing of birds like great blue heron and egrets that were otherwise destined to rest, sometimes in full-on taxidermied form, on the macabre coiffures of the gentle lady-folk.
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Let’s back up a little, here. I am not, by any means, discounting that there are people out there who are responsibly collecting and crafting feathers in to earrings, or whatever. I’m not saying that those 30,000 feather earrings are created by monsters. I eat meat. Sometimes I even eat meat from 7-11. I wear leather. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and my cats are scurrying around my feet I kick them (nicely…?) out of the way in my sleepy stupor. So I’m not riding around on this high horse saying it should stop – I’m just saying we all need a little awareness that feathers have always and will always come from being attached to the skin of a bird. What you want to do with that information is up to you.
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If you just gotta jump on this trend, though, I suggest perusing the selections (and doing your reading) from the ‘humane’ search and see what you can find. Here are some lovely ones from LoveLifeWear:
No bird died in the making of these earrings... but strangely, 3 people did. Freak feather-wrapping accident! Joke. Click to View Listing from LoveLifeWear.
And, for a little extra reading on the topic I’ve found these informative articles about feather fever:
-Stylist Kristin Jackson explains why she’ll never offer feather hair extensions in her salon
-Ke$ha and Steven Tyler are totally stealing food out of the mouths of fishermen. Way to go, crappy ‘musicians’!
Chicken Barrette, $6 from littleeyedesigns on Etsy
‘Ello! If you haven’t peeked in to my Etsy shop lately (click there), you’ll be blown away at all the new items. I’ve been hemming and hawing about new listings and I realized that when you sell tiny, little specialty objects it really is a numbers game: the more I pack in there, the more chance there will be someone who connects with the artwork featured in the bottle cap! Many new listings still to come, but I especially like that chicken barrette.
I’m also offering FREE SHIPPING on any order over $10, all you need to do is enter “ISPENT10” (all caps, no spaces) at checkout and the shipping charge will be removed. That’s neat!
Click Here to Get to Little Eye on Facebook
Ok, ok — so when I originally started my Facebook presence as Little Eye I made it a ‘person’ instead of a ‘page.’ Woops! Now, to encourage you to “like” my page just as much as you like my person I’m offering a 10% off Little Eye at Picnic coupon at my new page’s site. Here is the link that you must click in order to get there. You can also click on that gawdy “Facebook” icon to the right. Or that awesome Little Eye logo above. Then! Print out the ol’ coupon, bring it to me when you’re buying awesome bottle cap stuff, and call it good!
cello bags 4 eva
Don’t worry, the novelty isn’t lost on me. I plan on having bottle cap pin ‘6 packs’ ready to go (and for only $10) by the Christmas season! For now, though, marvel at my ‘PhotoBooth’ technique and my ‘pretend to know how to do graphic design on a shoestring’ technique. 3 packs will debut at Picnic Music + Arts Festival in Lincoln Park, Portland, ME on Saturday, August 27th!
Also, while I was writing this there was a kitchen fire in the apartment building next door to mine, in the apartment that is on the same level as our main floor. I hope it’s not bad and that the little kiddos that usually wave ‘hi!’ to me out the back stairwell while I’m cooking dinner don’t have to stay somewhere else for the night. Just looks like smoke damage at this point, but the neighborhood was just FULL of firetrucks! For any and all really important info, check the national Fire Safety Website. Better to be prepared than caught off guard…
Little Eye Designs 