SNEAK PREVIEW!

Chili Pepper
Lemon Curry

Cashmere Rose
Purple Wine
Carafe
Stargazer
Green Moss

These are some of my BRAND NEW items that will be offered for sale this weekend in New York during the PDX Etsy trunk show, Brooklyn Indie Market, and Etsy Labs Halloween Party.

My idea was to offer a matching set. I think it makes for a really cute display and also adds value to the product. So now when you purchase one of my painted Roman Record Cuffs, you will also have the option to get a matching mirrored jewerly tray made from an upcycled 45 rpm record! I sculpted the edges of some of the records to make lovely little flower-like forms, and left some of them flat as well.

I hope to make some more and get them listed in my shop soon. In the meantime, I would love to hear your feedback on this idea! The cuffs are regularly $24 and my Feng Shui Mirrors (usually designed to hang on the wall) go for $18. I am offering the matching set for $40. Let me know what you think! Would you buy the whole set, or just the cuff, or just the mirror?

I would also like to thank analiese for sharing the Pantone Fall Color Chart in the Etsy forums. I totally used it to mix up these colors and I am quite happy with how they turned out. The captions I used above are actually the names of these "hot" fall Pantone colors.

Last night's Vinyl Killers show

Here's me and Chuck standing in front of the mandalas I contributed to the Vinyl Killers International Show of Painted Records last night. It was held at the Goodfoot which is a cool bar in SE Portland. It was so amazing to see the walls totally covered with more than 200 painted records from all over the world. Unfortunately it was really dark in there so it was hard to get any good pictures with my camera.
A couple of other local artists who participated were Chris Haberman and Beth Myrick. Check them out, they do very cool work.

No sleep till Brooklyn!

In honor of my friends and PDX Etsy teammates Kristin, Ryan, Leah, Lea, Mary, Becky, Adrienne, and Danielle traveling to New York this week for the big trunk show, I am posting the last of my Brooklyn photos from May of this year. Enjoy!

"Take a picture of the water towers, they won't be here for long." That's what Joan said about these Brooklyn landmarks.







"In a brilliant brownstone..."


Random black light art...

You may be right, I may be crazy, but I DID "walk through Bedford-Stuy alone..." (if only the short distance from the subway stop to Joan's apartment). Apparently it's not as scary anymore as it was in Billy Joel's day. Chuck played that song (on vinyl) over and over during the days leading up to my departure.

Hey! It's the Etsy building!

This is Mary, a real sweetie pie from the Etsy Labs. (I blogged about this visit in an earlier post.)

Just a little kitty on the streets of Brooklyn...


Coney Island!

This guy caught a flounder.

You just don't see buildings like that on the beach in Oregon.

Good luck to all of you and especially thanks to Kristin from Urbana for selling my work at the big events in New York this weekend! Kristin is such a great potter, you should see some of her unique and beautiful bowls and dishes. She mixes all her own colors and does an amazing job. And she's also a fabulous belly dancer!

PDX 2 NYC - a teamwide sale online!

If you are in the New York area, you can shop for my cuffs, coloring books, and more at the Etsy Labs during the PDX Etsy team's trunk show, Friday, October 26, 6-8 pm, 325 Gold Street, Brooklyn NY. My work will also be for sale Oct. 27 at the Brooklyn Indie Market and at the Labs during their big Halloween party.

To celebrate, I am offering 10% off all items in my shop all week from October 22 - 27. Just type "PDX 2 NYC" in the Message to Seller at checkout and wait for a revised invoice before making payment. (Discount does not apply to shipping.)

Other PDX 2 NYC sale participants can be found at www.pdxetsy.com.

Many thanks to curlygirlglass for putting together the above treasury full of lovely handmade items from my team members in Portland, Oregon! Please be sure to visit their shops if you can't make it to the trunk show.

Some of my favorite design books

This post is for the Etsy Bloggers blog carnival - the theme has to do with books that inspire you in your craft.

I don't really have any favorite "how-to" books, but there are a few design books that I really love. When I am in between novels or can't seem to find anything to read, I love to just look at the illustrations in these books.

My friend Julie gave me a copy of "Decorative Design" by Fritzi Brod. It's a fun book full of neat examples of motifs, patterns, borders, stylized flowers, and folk art designs.

The illustration on the cover is also one of the pages in the book:


The birdie that I circled was used as a guide for this painting I did on a secondhand hope chest: (Don't worry, I circled it in Photoshop, not in the actual book!)


Another book that fascinates me is "Celtic Art: the Methods of Construction" by George Bain.

In high school, I had a little bit of fame for my "worm lettering." I used to write everyone's names in my own weird made-up style of knotwork, and each letter had a funny worm head on one end and a worm tail on the other. I had never heard of Celtic knotwork until I was an adult.

There are pages and pages of mind-blowing hand-drawn illustrations in this book. I have not yet taken the time to sit down and try to practice any of the techniques - I just like to look at the pictures. My copy of this book actually used to belong to Molly Cooley, one of the founding ladies of the excellent nonprofit program Trillium Artisans, as did this one:


I once did a whole series of my Feng Shui Mirrors inspired by the designs found in
"Designs from Pre-Columbian Mexico" by Jorge Enciso.

This book is a treasury of 300 original motifs created by the Aztecs, Toltecs, Totonacs, and others. The designs were found on "malacates," small clay spindle weights or whorls made by the pre-Conquest people of Mexico and discovered in archaeological digs.

I also have a great love of vintage decorating books. My mom had this whole series of books called Woman Alive in the Seventies, and I snagged this one, called "How to Decorate Without Going Broke." I love it!I'm just crazy about some of the cool decorating ideas this book offers. Like this amazing cabinet and mirror frame that are covered with psychedelic contact paper:

This idea for painting a door...

...was the inspiration behind this door that I painted in my house:
Finally, I'd like to share the book that I am reading right now, "Lust for Life" by Irving Stone. It is very inspiring and makes me feel a lot better about being poor and in debt!

In case you are wondering, the book came long before the song by Iggy Pop!

Blog Action Day

This is me and my family this spring at Larch Mountain in Oregon.

We like the woods and the green spaces of the world.

Today is Blog Action Day and this is my post. 15,000 blogs around the world have all united to post about the environment today.

Here's what we do as a family to help the environment:
1. We recycle everything that can be recycled.
2. We subscribe to PGE's renewable power program.
3. We get a lot of our clothing and housewares at thrift stores.
4. We like shopping at SCRAP.
5. We have reusable canvas shopping bags for groceries.

Here's what I do at work to help the environment:

I work for an art and craft-based nonprofit organization with a focus on environmental sustainability. Trillium Artisans supports low to moderate income Portland artisans who use at least 50% recycled and reclaimed materials in their work.

Trillium helps people market and sell their sustainable crafts and build their small businesses, thus helping keep materials out of the landfills, building awareness of and appreciation for "green" crafts, and helping to alleviate poverty along the way. Please click here to visit Trillium's Etsy shop, and if you live in Portland, please come to our Holiday Gift Sale on Saturday, November 10 from 1 - 6 pm.

I also work as an art teacher and I use that opportunity to teach kids about the importance of reducing, reusing, and recycling whenever I can, even if it's as simple as turning a mistake into a happy accident instead of throwing it out and getting a new canvas. I love teaching classes that incorporate reused materials, especially painting mandalas on vinyl records!

Here's what I do as a business to help the environment:

1. Take a look at my shop. Pretty much everything I sell is made from recycled (or "upcycled") vinyl records.
2. I use recycled paper for almost everything I print including my tags, coloring books, brochures, packing slips, etc.
3. I reuse boxes and packaging materials for everything I ship.
4. My studio and office operate on renewable power.
5. I am a member of Trillium Artisans (and yes, I also work there).
6. I am a member of Etsy Trashion and Eco Etsy.
7. I frequently donate art pieces for silent auctions benefiting environmental nonprofits.
8. I participate in art shows that showcase work made from recycled materials, such as the Clark County Recycled Arts Festival and the Tossed and Found Show, and often donate a portion of my sales to environmental causes.

So those are some of the things I do. Leave me a comment and let me know what you do, and don't forget to check out some of the 15,000 other blogs that are posting on this subject today!

Trunk Show in Brooklyn

Originally uploaded by LeahPellegrini

Eye Pop Art products will be at the Etsy Labs' October trunk show! I am working on some very cool new stuff to send along with the delegation from PDX Etsy.

Date: Friday, October 26th
Time: 6-8pm - fashion show is from 8-10pm
Halloween Party is Saturday Night
Location: Etsy Labs, 325 Gold St, 6th Floor
Brooklyn NY
www.pdxetsy.com

More rock and roll

Here's Cootie Platoon playing at Slabtown last night. Great show, great tights. Also a great exhibit of rock photography hanging on the walls - Portland bands in the background include Dead Moon and the Ones (with our old friends Andy and Tim, it was cool to see their faces on the wall).

Treasury time

Two gorgeous treasuries are currently featuring my work - Lollipop Lollipop and Mandalas Kaleidoscopes. Both of these treasuries also include work by Andrew Daniel who is one of my favorite artists on Etsy. Many thanks to makefuncrafts and flandersfield for creating these lovely lists.

Dartgun rocks your world

We played a show Wednesday night at the Tonic Lounge. The girls all had up-do's with big dahlias stuck in the back. Here's Kat doing a little pre-show primping (note her fabulous Record Cuff!)
I have to say, I LOVE playing with the band. It is so much fun, I want to play all the time. Our next gig is scheduled for October 30 (it's a doo-wop hop) at the Ash Street in downtown PDX, with the Hickmans, Cootie Platoon and Hello Cleveland.

Here's the guys during the sound check - unfortunately I don't have any pics of our actual performance but you can check out more band photos on Dartgun's myspace page.

Newly listed - two new Record Bowls

I listed two new Mandala Record Bowls in my shop. Click over and check 'em out!

Electric Green has been sold!

I sold my first Record Bowls on Etsy! This one was bought by Shannon from Greenbelts. Take a look at her cool cuffs made from recycled belts. I am getting a custom one for Chuck, and I can't wait to get it. I also sold this bowl, the Turkish Treat, to a new company in the UK called Citizen Recycle. They got it as a sample and may place a wholesale order - I'm keeping my fingers crossed!