Saturday, January 31, 2009

Art On Tap: Andy Warhol

My little Ode to Andy: Marilyn Through Beer Goggles

Last night I got to go to the Art on tap event for the Andy Warhol: 15 Weeks of Fame exhibit at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. All because the Bohemian loves he's wife so very very much as to set up a wonderfully fantastic early birthday gift extraordinaire! It was so much fun! Not only did I get to see Warhol but there was an international beer tasting before the gallery opened where we got to act like the snooty artsy people we used to be and we didn't have anyone else with us, no kids, nothin', just a good old fashioned date! It was all around fantastic! Fantastic art with my favorite person in the world.

Friday, January 30, 2009

A New Purpose

Tonight I received a lovely convo from fat face creations letting me know my Please Read Responsibly bookmark is in a treasury of hers called A New Purpose full of fantastic upcycled etsy finds. I'm honored, thanks! Be sure to check out the treasury (you can click the image to get there) and be sure to stop by fat face creations to check out all the wonderful items in her shop made from her original photography.

NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.

Baby Prince Scrapbook


NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.I

have decided to stick to my New Year's shop resolutions and am starting with curing my crafting ADD. For now I am going to trim down my focus to scrapbooks and memory catchers only. That is a huge enough category that I should still be able to feel creative but also be creating a more cohesive shopping experience that will hopefully result in better sales. This is also all in line with my new mellowed out philosophy, "This isn't a business yet, just a way for me to test the waters and learn the ropes. No pressure" So I'm testing those waters and getting revved up to stock my etsy shop with scrapbooks and think about delving into the realm of premade layouts. All this said, here's the newest arrival to my shop, a 12 x 12 Baby Prince Album! Another goal to add to the business list: professional photographer!



















Monday, January 26, 2009

In The Pink!

In the Pink! a few of katzetsy's favorites. Valentine's day is fast approaching and here is a gorgeous all pink treasury to celebrate the season of love. It just so happens my Little Princess album is part of it! Thanks katzetsy!

NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Old School Scrapping: How Not To Scrapbook

After getting my gorgeous craft organizers for Christmas I decided it was time to clean out my craft room and get really organized. In the process I ran across a lot of fun stuff I had completely forgotten about, one of which was my very first scrapbook. I didn't know I was scrapping at the time, not really. I had never heard of scrapbooking before, and certainly hadn't experience the crazed, mega addictive, craft-art-movement-obsession that I know it to be now!

I remember discovering this little gem at a junk store and being a little disappointed it wasn't still filled with old photos. I soon filled it with my own junk. Thankfully I have perfected my technique a bit more, both aesthetically and structurally. I used the worst of all glues on this bad boy, rubber cement! There is no good use for rubber cement, other than maybe asphyxiation. It's messy, it stinks, it yellows while you watch it, it super holds when you don't want it to while other things peel apart at a glance. I can't believe my art profs would advocate its use! Anywho, some of the innards:

The left side of this spread features a lovely picture of me and my bestest friend Billie in our crazy hats playing mini-golf the summer after graduating high school, a picture of me in the lower right sporting my beloved purple hair, some bingo chips and what I believe is a note where I've written "I love so and so" repeatedly as a way to practice my handwriting (one of my favorite past times!). On the right are all things freshman move-in day. A pic of my college dorm, name tag and of course a Razorback or two.



Good stuff! I had many a lovely, and not so lovely, reminder of my days of yore while digging through all my memorabilia! I found some other good stuff that would make my aforementioned friend fall out of her seat with laughter, that might have to make an appearance at a later date. Until next time you can remember these wise words from the margarita swilling crooner Jimmy Buffet, "If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Love Is In The Air

NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.



Last night I took a peak at my hearts and discovered I have 200!

Then this morning I had a convo from The Silver Dog telling me my Puppy Love paper bag album was in her Valentine's Day and Puppy Love treasury! I'm feeling the love! Be sure to check out The Silver Dog for gorgeous vintage style jewelry.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Pinks And Chocolates

a few of Oakleaf Hollow's favorites!

I'm in a fantastic treasury! Thanks to Oakleaf Hollow who curated this beauty full of some of her favorite pink and chocolate etsy delights. My City Dweller Memory Catcher is among them (bottom left). Be sure to visit the treasury and Oakleaf Hollow on etsy where she sells her adorable country style hand painted items.

NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Favorite Things: My Beloved Coffee Mug

This coffee cup is one of my most favorite possessions, drinking out of it makes me just a smidge happier than when I drink from any other. I like it so much because it encompasses several things that I really love all in one mundane, functional, common item: coffee, art, signatures, the color black, and Chicago.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Bag Lady

NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.

Paper bag albums have arrived at the beehive! I'm so excited! Last year for my first swap gift ever I made my first paper bag album ever and I had so much fun I decided to make them for my shop. That was many months ago and I'm finally getting around to it. Here are my first two, Here Kitty Kitty and Puppy Love.












Monday, January 5, 2009

A Day With A Budding Artist

We've been trying hard lately to make sure we spend some one-on-one time with the boys. They just do so much better when they aren't together all the time and it gives us a chance to appreciate their individuality. It also gives them the much needed chance for some undivided attention. Last week the Bohemian and Mr. Golden Curls drove to Little Rock to spend his gift card on me, get a purple milkshake at The Purple Cow etc etc. and Lil' Spitfire and I stayed home. This was not at all ok with Spitfire until I leaned over and whispered in his ear "We can get out the new paints you got for Christmas." Suddenly going with Pappa was not at all important and they couldn't leave fast enough for his liking, he was ready to paint. Now that's my boy!

I had so much fun with my little man!

I'm amazed at his concentration and the fact that he does more than just play in the mess of it as though he's playing in a sand box. He actually tries different things to see what happens and made the discovery of mixing paint to make new colors. He absolutely loves the huge set of glitter Cars paints he got for Christmas. Well, technically that was probably brother's gift, but what belongs to one belongs to both! He was also very excited to painting on canvas.

When he switched to the water color paint palette I looked over at him cleaning his brush in this jar and had some kind of bizarre clash of worlds-nostalgia-flashback thing happen. This silly jar is one of the things I used all the time when I painted my gigantic, moody, abstract, mixed media pieces in college. It still has my paint ringed around the inside and sludging up the bottom and now here it was on the kitchen table with my child's sweet tiny little hand in it painting on a coloring page.

While he got into flinging paint I decided to test out our new portable DVD player. So I could go ahead and completely brain wash him into being an artist, I went ahead and played my new Living Art Museum Tour DVD. My parents got it for me so I couldn't complain again that they'd never taken me to an art museum. I don't know, seems a shoddy replacement and I'm still waiting for them to send me to the MOMA to make up for all my pain and suffering as a child! Actually Spitfire really liked the DVD and every time the painting changed would look up and ask "what's that one?"

He painted and painted for about an hour and a half before it was lunch time. I had to bribe it all away from him to avoid a fit pitchin', I don't know how long he'd paint if left to his own devices. After lunch we did some serious building with his new bristle blocks and then it was off to naptime when I actually got several hours of 100% peace because his brother wasn't home to roll around yacking and "napping" on the couch.

Best day ever!

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Resolute

Yep, it sure is a new year! I see everyone making their resolutions, they sound so fantastic and I don't want to be left out of formulating dreams and goals for the coming year so, yes, I am going to jump on the resolutions bandwagon! Here are a few things I'd like to accomplish in '09:
  • Get craft room sorted and organized. (ooh, I've done this one already! I'm on top of things!)
  • Make craft room an inspiring place to be, redecorate
  • Reassess and raise shipping costs to actually cover my costs to ship and shipping materials
  • Reassess my scrapbook prices and raise them to a fair price so as to stop ripping myself off
  • Create regularly
  • List regularly
  • start adhering to my personal and business schedules, life is always better when I do
  • Pick a few lines of product and then create only those, no more crafting ADD! At least not in my shop
  • on a non-crafting note I'd like to drop this 20lbs of "baby" weight, it turns 3 next week!
Well, that's a pretty good list for starters I think. I have no majorly ambitious goals for number of sales etc. For the moment I just want to get into the swing of things now that we're settled in our new house and try to get regular sales, no matter the number. My new attitude about my shop in the new year is have fun! My new attitude tells me "Never fear! You haven't actually started a business yet just started practicing having a business." Yes it is kind of a business but I'm going to try and be less tough on myself and realize I won't be able to really hit the business end hard until the boys are in school and I have some more time on my hands. And starting this year, that's going to be ok with me! Right now is just for getting my feet wet and learning the ropes for the future when it may be time to dive in full force.

Happy New Year!

Resolute In 2010

Well, it seems to be that time of year again. Time to make a change for a better new year, or at least plans for such. First, lets have a little look back in time and see how I did on being resolute in 2009...

Not so bad! Turns out many of the items on last years list will have to be yearly to-dos rather than resolutions. I am really proud of discovering more of a balance in my life. I took leaps and bounds in improving my perfectionist ways and, though it will be a constant battle, managed to find a pretty good balance most of the time. The house isn't perfection, we eat a lot of sandwiches and I don't get to blog or tweet as much as I'd like but I'm learning to be ok with that...it will be an ongoing process.

So, my resolutions for this new year? The first on the list is a doozy and I'm incredibly excited about it! Now that my business has formed a fairly solid identity and isn't just Random Crafts-R-Us I'm ready for a change of name and graphic identity that fits a little better. I've already started separating business from personal by getting a new personal blog. Now I want to start doing regular giveaways, tutorials and really work on making the focus of this blog all about paper crafts...after I get my new crafty business blog started that is. Get ready to say good bye to The Beehive and hello to...well, you'll just have to wait for that!

Wishing you many wonderful memories in the New Year!

NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

AREtsy Team Seein' Red in '09

A big thank you to Katzetsy for including my Rockabilly glass chip magnets (top row right) in her all red ARETsy team treasury titled AREtsy Team Seein' Red in '09!

NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.