Self-Taught Artists Treasury Team Feature

Hey everyone, I hope you've been enjoying those fried green tomatoes!  This is just a drive-by to let you know that I'm featured on the STATTEAM blog this week!  Head on over to check out the interview and see some pictures from my Etsy shop, as well as to get a few more hints about my fall collection, which I promise to get posted in the very near future!  Talk to you soon!

Blue Eyed Blessings and Hopping Blogs

So, it looks like I've been chosen to co-host a blog hop tomorrow with Julia and Cori over at Blue Eyed Blessings! This is very cool... I've been linking my shop and my blog over there every Wednesday pretty much since I started selling on Etsy. It's great exposure, so please consider linking up using the linky tool below. The linkies will "open" at 12:01am PST on Wednesday morning and close Sunday at 11:59pm.

Add your blog here:



Add your shop here:

The First Picture of You

Today, or rather, yesterday (it's around 12:30 here and I've had an extremely busy day), I was featured on an amazing Italian blog called "The First Picture of You," by medusa1307.  Medusa's interviews are unique in that she asks the artist to tell their story visually, through pictures and photographs, as well as through words.  It was a challenge to choose the handful of images that would depict me, my background, my inspiration, and my work, but I think that I succeeded.  Medusa did an absolutely amazing job of putting everything together, and you can read the interview here:

http://medusa1307.blogspot.com/2011/08/first-picture-of-you-3.html

I hope that you find it entertaining!  I definitely had fun doing it.  You can check out Medusa's own work at www.medusa1307.etsy.com.

Like An Artist

There are so many things about which I want to post right now!  It seems that I rather quickly got over my blogging hangup, doesn't it?  I'm finding that this is a great way to share and work through my thoughts on life, art, and crafts, not to mention ghost koi and pop culture!  I still owe you guys some background on myself, a full explanation of my obsession with Santana Lopez, and that discussion of Pretty Little Liars that I promised in my very first post.  Not to mention that I'll be showing off my Bollywood yarn soon, as well as some Halloween and Christmas items from my shop, and that I want to talk about some of the fabulous teams I've joined on Etsy and the awesome people that I've met there!  I've also hit upon an entirely new art form that I've totally embraced, as both a creator and a collector.  Two new art forms, actually...

But alas, all that must wait, for I must to bed.  My sleep specialist says that I need to stop blogging late at night and go to bed by at least 2am.  So for now, I will leave you with some eye candy.  A few days ago (or maybe more), I uploaded an amazing metal collage piece called "Darkness at the Garden Gate."  I'd worked on it for quite awhile, and there are only two in the world... the one in my shop, and the one I kept for myself (hehe.)  The supplies likely won't be available again, so I consider this a one of a kind piece.  Anyway, a few minutes (!!!) after I posted it, it was featured in this stunning treasury by soycomfort..  She even named the treasury after my necklace!  I can't stop looking at it - sometimes I could swear that the treasuries on Etsy are the real art form, and that the rest of us are simply providing the raw materials.  When I get a feature like this, it actually does make me feel like an artist, if only by proximity to other ones.  I hope you enjoy this is as I drift off into dreamland... till next time...

Blogging... it's sort of freaking me out.

As you could probably tell from my first post, I'm still not really comfortable with the idea of blogging.  In fact, I still haven't really publicized this at all.  (I think I have three followers now, so I promise you all... I will publicize this shortly and continue to blog so that your follow will not have been in vain.)  I've been thinking quite bit about what I want this blog to be "about."  The only thing I know is that I do NOT want this to be a promotional blog, dedicated solely to promoting my shop.  My life (and yours) is oh so much bigger than that.

I want this blog to be about what drives me, whether it's in art, crafts, work, or life in general.  For that reason, I feel I owe you a "real" introduction - who I am and how I got to where I am now.

However, given that the very idea of blogging about myself still totally freaks me out, I've decided to start in safer territory... I want to explain my shop and blog name, because the inspiration for them is a little bit obscure, and I get asked about my shop name (The House of Decadent Delusion) quite a bit. Since the inspiration for this blog comes from the same source, I'll just get this out of the way now.  :)

Here is the explanation that I have posted on my Etsy shop page and profile:

Sometimes people ask about the name of my shop. It's derived from the decadent movement in art and literature, and in particular from the book "Against the Grain," by Joris-Karl Huysman, which has greatly influenced the way I think about art, aesthetics, and life. Here is some information from the excellent Wikipedia article on this book:

"'À rebours' (translated into English as 'Against the Grain' or 'Against Nature') (1884) is a novel by the French novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans. Its narrative concentrates almost entirely on its principal character, and is mostly a catalogue of the tastes and inner life of Jean Des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive aesthete and antihero, who loathes 19th century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation. 'À rebours' contains many themes which became associated with the Symbolist aesthetic. In doing so, it broke from naturalism and became the ultimate example of 'decadent' literature.

Jean Des Esseintes is the last member of a powerful and once proud noble family. He has lived an extremely decadent life in Paris which has left him disgusted with human society. Without telling anyone, he absconds to a house in the countryside.

He fills the house with his eclectic art collection (which notably consists of reprints of paintings of Gustave Moreau). Drawing from the theme of Gustave Flaubert's 'Bouvard and Pecuchet,' Des Esseintes decides to spend the rest of his life in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation. Throughout his intellectual experiments, he recalls various debauched events and love affairs of his past in Paris. He studies Moreau's paintings, he tries his hand at inventing perfumes, he creates a garden of poisonous flowers. In one of the book's most surrealistic episodes, he has gemstones set in the shell of a tortoise. The extra weight on the creature's back causes its death. In one of the book's more comic episodes, he spontaneously decides to visit London. When he reaches the train station, he overhears some English visitors, whom he finds disgusting. Feeling that he now knows what London would be like, he immediately returns home. Eventually, his late nights and idiosyncratic diet take their toll on his health, requiring him to return to Paris or to forfeit his life."

I don't hate people or society like Des Esseintes, but this shop is my "house in the countryside," where I can feel free to retreat into an ideal artistic world of my own creation.

I like to think that this explanation is self-explanatory, but perhaps not.  I recently explained the name to a group of Etsy friends, and one of them commented, "Your art is very important to you."  Yes and no - I've never thought of myself as an artist, but living an artistic life is important to me.  I want to be immersed in art and story and culture and yes, perhaps delusion, all of the time.

Life is but a decadent delusion, people - live it as if the art of it were the reality.

Introduction...?

Well, here I am... blogging.  As far as I know, I have no followers... hence the title of this post.  I have to be honest, I've never really like the idea of blogging.  It's time consuming, I have nothing to say, blah blah blah.

Recently, however, I've come to realize that I may have more to say than I thought I did.  See, I recently opened an Etsy shop.  I'm not going to pretend that I'm some "great artist" - I just do what I enjoy.  I have been making jewelry, knitting, and spinning yarn for years now, and my space finally got so overwhelmed with finished projects and stashed supplies that I had to start selling it off.

When you start up an Etsy shop, you get inundated with newsletters full of marketing tips.  Most of them are filled with gorgeous photos and featured artists and pretty much just make you feel inadequate.  However, one of the many tips that they offer over and over (along with great pictures, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account) is to start a blog and talk about your shop.

Again I say, "blah blah blah."  Still I resisted.  The whole idea seemed self-indulgent, and frankly, I wasn't convinced that my shop would last for more than a couple of weeks.  I did, however, set up a Facebook page for my shop, and finally got with the program and learned how to Tweet.

And that's when I noticed something surprising... after awhile, my Facebook posts started getting longer.  I wanted to share everyday stuff with my shop followers in the same way that I do with my friends.  What song am I listening to today?  What fabulous new Chanel nail polish has caught my eye?  What does everyone think of that new translation of Anna Karenina? Who else watches Pretty Little Liars, and are you as obsessed with Aria's wardrobe as I am?

So this is the result.  Me, sitting here in bed with my laptop in the middle of the night... blogging to myself.  I suppose I'll have to publicize my blog at some point... blah blah blah.  In the meantime, if there's anyone out there... enjoy.