Vintage Victory!

The vintage hat I coveted most at auction is mine, all mine! and what a beauty it is. I can see Audrey Hepburn wearing this one in the Ascot Race scene of 'My Fair Lady'. Ah, victory is sweet! I cannot wait to see see, feel and try on this hat for it is truly a fabulous creation.

As you can tell, I love vintage. The reason being it is art, plain and simple. The lines of a 20's dress, the shape and angle of a 40's hat speak of a time when clothing and the accompanying accessories were created as an art form. Unlike the cookie-cutter culture we have today where everything is the same and nothing is made for visual delight. Give me the artful fashions of the by-gone days where milliners and clothiers treated their work as high art.

Productive Bed Rest

I've been on bed rest for the past couple of days, which we all know can be pretty boring. However, over the years I've managed to make bed rest productive. Countless times I've taken a pile of supplies to sort through or a box of art supplies and my bed tray into my room and created art, while still following doctor's orders. This time is no different.

I've been spending my time sorting through art supplies, doing the BIG PURGE once again. It was only a few months ago that I went through everything in my studio and amassed a pile of books, supplies, ephemera, etc that I felt I no longer needed. This time I was still able to come up with a few boxes of stuff I want to pass along. This constant purging leads to a much neater studio and also helps me to let go of that pack rat mentality that most artists have. For whatever reason, we amass stuff that we think we will later use in our art. And, yes, sometimes we do use these "must save" items, but I suspect that the majority of the time the things never get used. Perhaps it is because artists tend to be cyclic. What we love one day we may not the next. Therefore, what we once had to save for future use becomes less appealing to us over time. Our art evolves and grows so the items we hold on to loose their meaning.

I've also managed to paint two pairs of leather shoes while resting in bed. Both were purchased at the thrift store, cost me less than $3 a pair and are now far cooler and more unique when I brought them into the house a few weeks ago. One pair, a short styled paddock boot, I'm keeping. The other, a boxy looking heeled shoe, is off to Unique Boutik, a local consignment shop that deals in vintage and unusual items. Just last week this same store took my painted leather purse and a whole bunch of vintage hats, jewelry and clothing for their store. The prospect of making a few extra dollars on my vintage items is great, but even more thrilling was the fact that the owner wanted my painted purse and asked me to bring in more items like it! Proof that my new endeavor of painting or altering items for sale has potential. Also, proof that I need create a stockpile of such items, all unique and one of a kind of course, and get my Etsy shop set up.

And now I am off to bed where I'll create something new, while watching endless episodes of the West Wing on DVD and have a very snuggly kitty for company. Productive bed rest at it's finest....

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Delightful Denim

There is something so comforting about denim. Especially old, well worn denim jeans and jackets. Who doesn't have a favorite pair of jeans that are a bit worn out at the knees or the backside? Yet we can't seem to part with these items. They are comfortable, comforting, and timeless.

Ages ago my mother gave me an old denim jacket that she'd painted a horse on the back of. Although I loved it I felt it needed something more. An updating and reinventing if you will. So I cut, sewed, dyed, bleached and enhanced it to create something new and totally different all the while retaining the work she had done on it. The result is an oh-so comfortable, vibrant piece of wearable art, or altered couture if you prefer. It's still denim and has that comforting feel to it, but it's a very different denim. Richer somehow and with a softer feel to it than it had before.

Alterations

I've been having a blast altering some of the items I bought at the thrift store. I've 3 projects in the works, a pair of jeans being turned into a skirt, a pair of shoes I'm painting & a top and skirt I'm combining into a dress. I've also finished a few projects. I painted a small leather purse, finished altering a jacket & have finally photographed the skull jeans I created.

I'm really digging all this altering. My head is chock full of ideas and I cannot wait to see them all come to fruition.

Thrift Store Treasures

The past few days I've been having a blast prowling through the thrift stores looking for items to alter. I hit pay dirt at three different stores and now have a stockpile of jeans, skirts, shoes and purses to get creative with. I also unearthed some fabulous vintage items. A mouton lamb coat from the 50's, a little black dress from the 60's and a full-length wool coat from the late 50's or early 60's. At one store I managed to pick up 9 pairs of jeans, 11 skirts, 3 pairs of leather shoes and 2 leather purses for the bargain price of $40! The items I bought are all in great shape, are major brand names (not that I give a hoot about brand names, but some do...) and are perfect for digging in and altering in any way I see fit. I may never shop retail again.

Altered Couture

I need to go scrounge around the thrift stores. I'm in altered couture mode. I feel the need to take discarded clothing, slash, dye, sew, paint, stamp and manipulate in any whatever way that strikes my fancy in order to create items that are fun, funky, full of personality and expression of my self. Having finished the jeans and jacket I was working on I've been riffling thorugh my closet looking for more articles to alter. nothing in there strikes my fancy, thus the need for a good bout of Thrift Store shopping! In the meantime, I'll imagine all the ways I can transform something old into something new and see what kind of inspiration I get.

And while I do that imagining, I'll take a few moments with my handy, dandy camera to get photos of those altered jeans and the jacket to post here!

Postcard Mania

I've been busy this week making postcards. A few of them have gone out via Post-Crossing, a few others are for mail-art swaps. and the rest are for use in the near future, for when the urge to send mail-art strikes. I love making postcards and then sending them off into the world. I like to imagine that each person who encounters them along their way, from the mail man who picks them up to the people who handle and sort them in the various postal warehouses they pass through, might stop a moment to view them, perhaps ponder them or smile at them before sending them on their merry way. It probably isn't true, but it's a nice little fantasy I have.

Post-Crossing has been exceptionally fun for a lover of postcards. Not only do I get to send out as many as I wish, but each one is assigned a unique id alpha-numeric code so that the receiver can log it in once it arrives. Once logged I get to find out when they arrived, how long it took and read the comments made by the receiver. For each one I send out that gets logged back in I receive one in return. Fun for me no matter how you look at it!

I've also been busy altering some clothing. A denim jacket that once belonged to my mother has undergone a complete transformation. It's been dyed, bleached, stamped, cut, sewn and painted. The result is a stunning, funky jacket that I can't wait to show off. I also painted a pair of jeans with skulls, done free-hand with paint pens. These too are fun and funky. So much so that I just may submit them to Altered Couture just to see if they get picked for publication.

I love altering clothes. It's something I have always done. Long before it became the popular thing to do. Ages before books & magazines geared toward altering clothing, creating wearable art or any of the other catch phrases now in use, were even thought of. Am I ahead of my time when it comes to these things? I don't think so. For what bored teenage girl hasn't taken out a pen or marker and doodled all over her jeans or created a jeans purse? I know all the girls I hung out with did it. Granted, it was usually me who instigated the happenings, but that's just because I was more fearless than they were and was always the one to say, "Hey, let's do such and such!" before anyone else would think to say it. Or maybe I am ahead of my time. I'll go with that because it makes me sound so revolutionary....