Retail Therapy Retro Shop updated!!

My husband and I have listed some lovely new items in our vintage shop! I actually wish I could keep all of them! Though, I must admit, the longer I look at it, the more the adorable wooden chicken bowl becomes my favorite! (I also love the distressed wooden candle holder, and the bluebird dish, and...well, all of it!)

We spent a couple of lovely days poking around in the deepest, darkest corners of the antique shops and thrift stores to come up with these treasures, and time like that is never time wasted, in my ever-humble opinion! Enjoy!

(Clicky on the pics to go to the Etsy listings!)

Golden Hours

One of the benefits of having an Etsy vintage shop is that it gives me an excuse to style lots of wonderful still-life product shots. One of my favorite things to do right now is to arrange a piece of jewelry on a vintage book. Case in point:

"You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by." --J M Barrie

Oh, and, that watch is for sale here, if you like it!

Big Shop Update

I've been lazy the past few months...taking photos, editing them, sure...but not adding them into the Etsy shop! Well, I've remedied that! I uploaded a bunch of new photo prints to my shop, including the image above, and some recent Polaroids that I've been particularly proud of! Enjoy!

Retail Therapy Retro Shop!

Well, it's official! My husband and I got off our lazy behinds and got our Etsy vintage shop going! I'm very happy to announce the opening of Retail Therapy Retro! Currently, we have 16 items posted, and we'll keep posting more as we find them and get things together. I think we have some really nice stuff to start with, though! The four items above are a sneak peek. Click the image to visit our shop!

Tee Shirt Love

Seems to be a little trend in the blogging world to have themed days of the week. I've seen Wordless Wednesday, Friday Flowers, and several others. So just call this Tee Shirt Thursday, I guess! Really, this is all just a big build-up to show you all a fabulous tee-shirt I just saw...

Bloody Hell We're Buggered Now T-Shirt by ScreamPrinting

I think this is one of my favorite takes on the now-iconic "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters ever!

Gift Guide

I was browsing the Gift Guides on Etsy earlier, and noticed something interesting...one of my print sets, Dusk Among the Grasses, has been chosen for inclusion in the Steampunk and Noir Gift Guide! How fun!

Go figure!

I guess it pays to keep your Etsy shop updated; I made two sales today! Neither of them were my new items, but still! I have to think there's a correlation between a major update yesterday and sales today, ha ha!

New Shop Items

Okay, I finally got off my behind and uploaded some new images to my Etsy shop. Most of them are newer images, but I did throw in a couple of older shots that had somehow never made it into the shop before. Hope you enjoy!

In a Treasury!

Just a quick update to say that the above photo of my vintage Duaflex camera from my Etsy shop has been chosen for a very nice treasury! It's all photographs, and they're all lovely! Please, go check it out! The shots chosen all look wonderful together! I appreciate a well-constructed treasury, even when I'm not in it...but it's the cherry on top when I am, ha!

Slowly editing...

Well, I've slowly been editing my way through photos from my trip. Somehow, despite being in one of the most lovely landscapes around, the Blue Ridge Mountains, I ended up taking many more photos of the small details...the flowers!...than the large ones...the mountains! As usual, the bright colors and little surprises hidden in the blossoms captivated me. I'll probably be adding at least one or two of my trip photos to my Etsy shop, of course.

Just a taste...

Bee Happy


Pink Dogwood

Regarding the dogwood photo...a funny conversation took place about that tree, which was in bloom across the street from my grandmother's house.

My Cousin: "What kind of tree is that?"
Me: "A dogwood."
My Cousin: "Uh, why's it pink, then?"
Me: "'Cause it's a pink dogwood."
My Cousin: *pause* *blink* "Oh, why didn't I think of that?" *blinkblink*

New Etsy Shop Items!

Oh, spring has sprung at last, and I'm going just as snap-happy as I knew I would! I've been filling up my memory cards with flowers and blue sky and green buds and even a few birds, and I've decided it's time to rejuvenate my Etsy shop, too! I haven't added too many items there lately because I hadn't been shooting much, but with the world coming back to life, I should have plenty of new material to work with.

I added five, count them FIVE, new prints to my shop yesterday. They are all flowers, and they are all vibrant and rich and sun-drenched and would look wonderful in a white mat and hung on a wall (hint hint!). I posted a few of the images in my blog a couple of posts back, so I won't repost those pictures here, but they are Saffron, Mum's the Word, and Primary for those who are interested!

In addition, here are the other two prints, previously unposted here!

Opiate

Tulipomania

They're all listed as 8x10 prints, but, as always, if anyone wants a different size, I can accommodate requests, as well! You have but to ask.

Kitty!

Okay, my last post was kind of long and heavy. So here's a shot of my beautiful cat to lighten things up around here. He's a real heartbreaker!

In fact, he's such a handsome boy that I've decided to list some of my favorite shots of him in my Etsy shop. (I don't think he'd mind; he's got quite an ego as it is!) The shot above is the first one I've uploaded to my shop...click the picture to go straight to the listing. :-) I'm going to go through some of my others and add one or two more over the next day or so.

Enjoy!

Magpie Minis arrive!!

I'm very excited! The ACEO-sized mat boards I ordered arrived a few days ago, and I've finally had time to sit down and print out and mat up some of my images for my new Magpie Mini series in my Etsy shop! I'm listing them as either singles, your choice of image from the index photograph, or as sets of three, again your choice.

I made the choice to print my images out as 2x3, in order to leave a small black border around the image when it was matted on the 2.5 x 3.5 mat board. I just think it looks better that way!

Please, go check them out! I think they're wonderful. I love small format art!!




I also listed a new set of 4x6 prints that I'm calling Palms of Paradise. I don't think that the leaves are actually palms, though...but it's as good a name as any for a pair of shots of broad green tropical leaves, I thought!

A Moo Point

How exciting! I received my new Moo cards in the mail! (Well, actually, I got them on Friday, but I spaced on blogging about it until now, ha!) I made them for my still-new Etsy photo shop, and I'm pretty excited. They look great, as Moo cards always do! I've never made them from Etsy images before, only Flickr, and was pretty happy to see that I can actually tell Moo and Etsy to chat with each other and get Moo to grab the images for the cards right out of my shop, no extra uploading necessary. So convenient! I decided not to make cards of ALL the photos in my shop; that would just be overkill! So I picked my favs and put my shop information and a pithy little slogan on the backs. (In case you can't read it in the pic above, the slogan on the back reads: "Bright, shiny, colorful things from my nest to yours!") Tres cute!



For those who might not be familiar with Moo...though I doubt many of you fall into this category, ha...it's a wonderful printing company that creates really high-quality products with your uploaded images! They started by creating a new kind of business card...they call 'em MiniCards, and that's what I made. As you can see in the pics, the MiniCards are about half the size of a regular business card, making them more whimsical and fun, while still looking totally slick and put-together. As the company got more popular, they expanded out into other products. They now create regular sized business cards, greeting cards, postcards, and even books of stickers! And if you don't have images of your own to upload, they also have a shop full of ready-made packs of their products, with some great designs on 'em.

In my experiences handing out Moo MiniCards with my images on them at galleries and the like, they're really popular! People love to sort through them like a bag of treats and pick out their favorite designs. When's the last time you saw people get that excited about a boring ol' business card, eh? I'm going to keep some of my new cards with me all the time to hand out to people, but I also plan to pop one in every time someone orders a print from me from Etsy, in hopes that they'll pass it along and keep my name and images circulating.

New print sets in my shop!

I was going through some older shots recently and discovered several that I thought would work well as sets, either matted and framed together, or hung separately in a group. So, I decided that they should be posted to my Etsy shop! Right now I only have two print sets posted, both as sets of two 4x6 shots. My Tropical Desire set, seen above, dates back to my husband and my honeymoon to Hawaii. Vibrant and lush!

Meanwhile, the Dusk Among the Grasses set (below) is pretty much the exact opposite, ha. Rather than lush petals and bright sunlight, we have the softer, dusty blues and purples of twilight drenching nodding seed heads. Lovely!




I'm sure I'll add more sets to the shop as I discover them hiding among my photos, ha. Keep checking back for more!!

Sometimes, size DOES matter!

I'm as much of a fan of large, colorful art as anyone else. In fact, we have a very large, very colorful, cartoon-inspired piece front-and-center over our sofa at home! Large artwork can definitely make a statement about your style and interests, and make it loudly, too!

But it's not the be-all and end-all, certainly! In fact, I tend to think that there are certain pieces that just cry out to be displayed in a smaller size. Look at the large impact a small Polaroid picture can have, or the magic of a small TTV shot floating serenely in the white space of a larger mat. (Some of Alicia Bock's beautiful TTV work completely proves my point, here! If you're one of the 3 people in the photo blogging world who've never heard of her, you're missing out!) There is something much more intimate about a smaller format. It makes you get closer to the work, makes you search for the details and appreciate all the little things that give the work its character. While a big piece of art shouts its nature to the world, the smaller piece whispers and makes you work a little bit harder for your reward, and there's something to be said for that.

To that end, I've decided to post some smaller format shots in my Etsy store. Most of my work to this point has been posted as 8x10, though available in smaller sizes if desired. But I have some pieces, like the one above and the one following, that I really think SHOULD be smaller prints, that cry out for the smaller format, the more intimate perusal. Shots like that will be listed as 4x6s. I only have 4 such prints in the shop at this point, but I'll add more as time goes along.

I'm also going to be printing some of my work out in ACEO size (2.5"x3.5"!) and mounting them on black matboard for display. I'm thinking I'll call them my Magpie Minis, ha! Be watching my shop for their appearance as soon as I get my hands on some matboard in the correct sizes!

In the meantime, what do you think about the size issue? DOES size matter? Do you have any artworks of your own that only seem right small, or only seem right large? I'd like to see them, if so!

Sweet! Front Page, baby!

Sweet! I feel like Jonathan Frake's head on that episode of "Futurama!" (If you got that reference and laughed, you and I would probably get along really well.)

The image linked above, "Out of the Light," made it into a treasury on the front page of Etsy! Views on just that image skyrocketed, but front page is great for more than just the one thing that makes it there, of course. All of my prints show increased views, I've already had a couple of questions about some of my other prints, and a bunch more people have "hearted" my shop. Love it! It's the little things in life, really, ha. I mean, I haven't exactly sold a whole bunch of stuff because of this, but I still might, I suppose!

Etsy Treasury!!

How exciting! One of my prints has been chosen for an Etsy treasury! Click the picture above to go visit the treasury. It's all lovely black and whites. Here's hoping it makes the front page! Treasuries can be a wonderful way to get more traffic into one's Etsy shop, and front page treasuries even more so. :-)

First Sale!

Wow, what a fun thing to wake up to! My very first sale in my new Etsy shop! I sold a print of my favorite creepy clown in Polaroid form...you may remember him from this post a few days ago.

This is very fun for me. And I know, it's just one sale, and it doesn't really mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. But I've been feeling somewhat uninspired recently, and have been trying to force myself to make a real effort. I've been seeking out the blogs and Flickr photosteams of people whose work I find inspiring, I've been blogging myself, I've been reading photography books and seeking out essays on art and creativity, I've been playing with older shots and revamping them, trying out new processing techniques, etc etc etc. And somehow, selling even one print sort of helps to justify all these efforts, to inspire me to keep going and keep working!

Coulrophobia

Okay, that Poladroid program I was talking about in my last post is just WAY too fun. I keep going through my old shots and running them through the program, just to see what I get!

And the really fun thing is, I often find myself liking the Poladroid result even better than the original! I've tried it out on some very old (for me) pictures from back when I was first learning my way around my first dSLR, and the results are very, very fun.

I've even uploaded a few of the results of my playing around into my Etsy shop, and will add more later...I don't want to completely flood my shop with all one thing, all at once, of course. So if you're a Polaroid fan like I am, keep checking in for more faux Polaroid fun!