Yellow Brown Necklace With Large Crocheted Rings (detail) by StudioKarma.
I am always amazed by the beauty of felt or crocheted jewelry. There are a few extraordinary shops @ Etsy - you regularly find their items on the front page - and StudioKarma is one of those. Her necklaces are simply gorgeous.
They are OOAK, but you can ask for custom items anyway. I found this one below in the sold section, and it is one of my favorites :
Quilts Secret Friend n° 3 by Cocoon Designs.
Cocoon Designs makes amazing creatures out of old recycled pieces of sweaters. They are hand patched and OOAK. Some are even made to custom like these mushrooms or those ones.
I really like them ! Here’s another “pointy ears creature” :
Cocoon Designs on Flickr.
my point ears by The Maple Ridge.
This is an original watercolor and pencil drawing. Just love the description :
is this a Halloween costume or just his favorite pair of pajamas? either way i think he looks great in them. pointy ear-sleeves and stripy arms and legs. is he yelling “trick-or-treat” to his neighborhood cat-lady that lives across the street or whining because he doesn’t want to go to bed without having a cookie as wide as his arms are spread? whatever the case may be i bet i know what you’re thinking. you’re thinking how much you want to squeeze him ’til he poops.
I also love this one a lot :
love me (detail).
JORUN by Petra Börner for Ikea.
I was browsing through Ikea tonight and noticed this rug in the new products.
I love the curvy shape of that ring. (Actually it is a set of two silver rings which you can wear together or separately).
Groc is a jewelry line made by Jimena Bolaños and Jordi Costa who live in Costa Rica and the collection is very beautiful and full of interesting or funny items. Besides Etsy you can see a gallery on their Flickr.
Tree Rings, silk-lined clutch bag by Red Ruby Rose.
Rowena Dugdale @ Red Ruby Rose makes the most wonderful and gorgeous clutches. Her choice of fabrics is very sophisticated and the one above “tree Rings” is one of my favorites - it is lined in deep red silk - but I also love this silk starburst luxury clutch bag a lot. All of Red Ruby Rose’s creations are Limited Editions, but she loves custom orders, so if you are interested, just browse through the sold section of her shop to see if there is any fabric you like, providing it is still available she will make it for you…
This is probably one the most extraordinary things I have seen these last months and I keep coming back to it fascinated by its strange beauty. I also love the description given by Frost Indri (which I don’t think I had read before) :
This sponge is Proud of its long thin legs, and has no doubt in (what passes for) it’s mind that it is >sexy< !
Now about the fantastic texture, she goes on explaining how it is obtained :
By sitting there and poking at the clay with a variety of poking tools. Each and every single hole. Alas, there is no real way to do this any faster. Not with the same results anyhow.
Be sure to check on her deviantART for she has a lot more great sculptural works there for you to enjoy. Besides other evolving sponges - with great funny titles - I love this Vampire Cloak.
Frost Indri is also a member of the Etsy Mud Team.
Third Skin paper by Eloise Ghioni.
I had been thinking about it for some time, I bought the domain name only recently and put the site online these last few days, but I have just posted my first article so I can officially declare “the white files” open.
I may love color a lot, the truth is I have also always loved white like crazy. Whenever I have to buy an object, if it exists in white chances are I will end up choosing that. And most of all I have come to realize while writing for “a thing of beauty…” that every time I came across beautiful white stuff, there was always always that little breathtaking moment…
So this will be some sort of experiment, a journey into white, and I do hope to live up to the project.
Maiya 2 by doubleparlour.
I had included them in my review of 100 great artists @ Etsy and their art (see for instance their “creatures of habit”) still emerges from that selection as among the most powerful. I had not been in their shop for quite some time, but I discovered today that they also made small polymer clay sculptures and truly amazing ones.
The one above is named “Maiya 2″ for there was a first Maiya - very similar but with a different mood - which sold recently.
I also love this Toshiro immensely :
He’s described as :
A boy who dreams of flying kites and running away from home.
Doubleparlour, born in 2007, is a creative collaboration between Ernesto and Cassandra Velasco. You can find them on myspace.
Japanese Snow Earrings by Giovanna Torrico Bijou.
Just featured on the front page of Etsy, those earrings have an extraordinary architectural quality. You should really check the original photo to fully appreciate their dynamic for the square format I adopted here does not do Giovanna Torrico’s creation fully justice. They are in fact quite long.
Giovanna Torrico works mostly with sequins, she writes :
Vintage sequins have been my signature material since 2000 – suspended on steel wire they provide continous movement while revealing their sculptural and aerial quality. I enjoyed giving form to this year’s geometrical twist made possible by the discovery of a forgotten vintage sequin box in San Francisco. These sequins are a precious and disappearing resource, they were last cut in the 1940’s.
I particularly love the color of these ones :
And it is quite remarkable that while using vintage material, Giovanna Torrico’s jewelry collection be so totally modern.
Mocca Classic Summer Halter Dress for Blythe by pollenlike @ Etsy.
I just love the fabric of this dress and even though we - at last - seem to be having some choice around there beyond the “Yet Another Empire Dress” for our dolls, I don’t think we see enough halter dresses. This one is very classy.
Brown bear bowl : Grumpy Bear by MaidOfClay @ Etsy.
Felicia Nilson had sent me a very nice message through the contact page just after my post 100 great artists @ etsy you might want to visit…. She wanted to bring to my attention as she wrote it three other artists I might enjoy. And although two of these artists were quite interesting, I was actually much more attracted by Felicia’s “MaidOfClay” creatures and even fell deeply for a couple of them !
At the time, the Grumpy Bear above had not yet been sold and it was the first item I really noticed in her shop. I just love this bear ! It reminds me of that rabbit with an “attitude” I have written about here and there I realize I might particularly be fond of creatures with an “attitude” even though there’s also this extremely cute bear that only sold recently that I have been watching regularly ever so often ! Here it is :
How cute is that ? Can you resist that face ? And notice the “little white toenails” ? Aren’t they just great ?
Now here’s what Felicia writes about these hand sculpted ceramic bears :
The thing I love most about the bear bowls (…)
is the little white toenails - don’t ask me why :-)
Well, those bears with their little white toenails are terrific all right but I think some of MaidOfClay’s other sculptures are quite amazing too like this Goth Kitty Girl :
Goth Kitty Girl - Miniature hand sculpted porcelain bust.
Felicia Nilson deals with many different styles and some are not exactly to my taste but you should know that she has a lot of “cat related” stuff and - once again - I like the sculptures best. She is a member of the Etsy Mud Team.
intuiciones by vickygonart @ Etsy.
I discovered Vicky Gonart’s shop last week, and I totally fell in love with some of her paintings. This one above is an original acrilyc on canvas measuring 100×100 cm (or 39×39 inches) and is my favorite so far, but there is also this absolutely gorgeous pink one called colours 2 which is simply stunning !
You can see more of her art on her Flickr and she also has a blog.
She lives in Valencia, Spain.
Porcelain Teabowl by Fred Parker Pottery @ Etsy.
There is always a great sensuality in a perfect bowl. It has to do with the roundness no doubt. This here is a perfect bowl to me.
In his Shop Announcement, Fred Parker professes his love for detail :
Detail is important to me. Because of this you will generally see equal attention given all parts of an item — bottoms should be as exciting and interesting as the rest of a pot.
And they definitely are !
This is no doubt a shop to follow, for there are already some very interesting objects like those black stoneware teabowls (here and here for instance) even though they are not exactly my thing. And you can see a lot more on Fred Parker’s website Baitpond Pottery.
oh daisy - Turquoise wool bonnet with daisy button by loou @ Etsy.
So I am up for another round of funny hats for Blythe which I plan to release in the following days, but in the meantime let’s just enjoy this blue turquoise bonnet by loou. She also has an amazing pointy orange one called “orangelove” at the moment !
Ceramic pendant by Birdseye Clay Studio @ Etsy.
Birdseye Clay Studio is a fairly new shop @ Etsy and I have just stumbled upon this rectangular porcelain pendant with “lunar texture” which she writes is one of her favorites. I must say it is definitely a favorite of mine too. I just love the texture ! Plus it is really so not expensive - it’s not the first time I’ve noticed new shops have this tendency to price their items on the low side…
“in this place” by Heather Smith Jones @ Etsy.
I love this piece by Heather Smith Jones and since I was going to post it before I took my “little break”, here it is !
It is an original watercolor painting with pinholes on paper. Heather Smith Jones uses this “pinhole technique” a lot - you can see some here @ Etsy or on her Flickr in this album - but I really love it the most when she combines techniques.
She has an amazing sense of color which is not only obvious in her watercolors - she grinds and prepares them herself which tells me she has a sensual relationship with pigments and colors - but also in her acrylic, tempera and oil paintings. I absolutely love this one called “a cottonwood seed”.
And did I say that she only sells originals in her Etsy shop ?
She also has a blog.
I can’t believe it’s been so long since my last post, but I have been very busy elsewhere and the truth is I kind of needed a break from this blog for a little while. I just thought it would be shorter… So I really want to apologize to all the people who wrote to me through the contact page (I got your messages in my email) and be sure that I will write back to everyone.
But back to “things of beauty” !
anne
This is a limited edition print of an “original gouache painting of multi-colored dots, which was embroidered with teal thread” by Shannon Rankin.
There is also a Seaside 1 (with pink threads) as well as a Seaside 3 (with green ones) and you can see a picture of the 3 side by side here @ her Flickr.
She also sells original embroidered paintings. I like this one very much (it has now been sold) :
Camera Camera Case - Degicame No.12 by hiné @ Etsy.
Like most really great craft objects it seems so obvious that once you see it you wonder how it could even be otherwise. It is both amazingly simple and perfect. Meet the “Camera Camera Case” by Hine [hee-neh] Mizushima a Japanese illustrator/puppet stop-motion video artist/crafter living in Vancouver, Canada.
She has 4 different designs (all originals) but my favorite one is this 3D one. Her choice of color is fantastic and each Camera Case is handmade, unique and OOAK. Just love this one in this color though !
You can see more of Hine Mizushima’s work on her Flickr.
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