In the spirit of Earth Day!

Like our ancestors, humans are still recycling, upcycling or repurposing to get the most out of the resources available to us.  It is economical and realistic, beyond being idealistic.  I currently participate in two online trading sites, swaptree and paperbackswap, where users recycle media by trading with other members of this online community.  Not are we only reusing media that would otherwise sit on a shelf, but most of the members re-use packaging. Fantastic!

In the spirit of Earth Day I wanted to highlight a few of the items on Etsy that are created with the idea of recycling, upcycling or repurposing in mind.
Alyssa Jackson's upcycled jewelry is a hit in our hometown of Oneonta, NY.  She's been collecting game pieces to make pendants, rings, necklaces and earrings for over a year.  Her jewelry has a hip, romantic flair.

In the same spirit comes Diana Cozzens' creations.  Also romantic, yet more in the vein of 80's punk, a lot the jewelry Diana has created for the shop thus far is from discarded leather scraps originally meant for furniture.

A couple of weeks ago, I added some new blank cards on Etsy by Joseph Von Stengel to highlight Earth Day.  His 8-Bit Creations and Culture Catalogue Silhouettes images grace 100% recycled note cards, the brown ones are also 20% post-consumer and the white 100% post-consumer recycled.  Rad!

Happy Earth Day!

40th Anniversary of Earth Day coming soon!

Spring has sprung and Earth Day is nearly upon us.  I was cruising the internet earlier today and discovered that Earth Hour 2010 (basically, on March 27th the world takes an hour to turn off their lights and promote saving energy) has come and gone.  If I watched television, perhaps I would have known...
This year I'm able to participate by starting my very own garden.  Extremely excited.  My husband is talking about composting.
Since Earth Day started 40 years ago, it has gained considerable momentum, considering the ecological concerns everyone is faced with today.  Earth Day comes to us with a dual-purpose- to celebrate the Earth and the bounty it provides, while becoming more aware of what we can do to help preserve her for future generations.
The last couple of days I've been scouring the internet on everything Earth Day- especially in connection with the arts.  I found this pretty hip looking gallery in Chicago and thought it a worthy mention.  http://earthday.net/artsfortheearth/jordan.html  Check it out!

Tara Hu's Calligraphy

Bigbadartcollective is welcoming a new addition to our group, calligrapher Tara Hu.  I met Tara at one of her calligraphy classes in Oneonta, NY and absolutely loved her class!  She is a very kind & talented artist. Her calligraphy is graceful and elegant, but not overly stylish.  There is a wisdom and steadiness present in her strokes.  We are looking forward to unveiling her work on Etsy this week.

This March 27th Tara will be teaching a one day calligraphy workshop from 1:00 - 4:00 in Oneonta. Tara also teaches Chinese, calligraphy and Chinese bookbinding classes in NY & CT.  You can follow her on Twitter.

Very cool Space Invaders' site

Really enjoying this website I found today.
http://www.djgallagher.com/games/classics/spaceinvaders/
You can play space invaders, pick up tips, and get a short history lesson.  Highly recommended for those looking to burn a few minutes.  

Hand-stamped!

Finally getting an image up of the shirt I hand-stamped.  I practiced mostly on clothing that had rips, stains, etc. using VersaCraft fabric ink stamp pads.  I was hoping to stamp over some of the stains and mask them with an image and was not successful.  After I heat-set the inked fabric, the stains (mostly olive oil from cooking) seemed to pop right out.
Another lesson- stamping on dark clothing is not recommended because it overwhelms the stamped image's color.  Yellow doesn't show up well on most colors, but works well on white.  Next time I'll try heat-setting on both sides of the image.

All-in-all I was pretty excited by the results.  The next day after removing the first batch from the dryer, I started on another.  Still stamping on postcards.  Going to list some artist trading cards that are original hand-stamped works by Joseph Von Stengel this week- just took some pics yesterday.  Keeping busy!