Looking for the place to print my business cards

 

When I decided that I need new business cards I went to the Etsy forums and find a thread where people talked about where they order theirs. I followed all links and suggestions, looked through printing sites and couldn't choose   anything by description only. But then I was happy to discover that all of them send free samples of their work!

So now I have a lot of business cards, promotional cards, flyers, stickers and what not to choose from. Still looking through them:) I guess I'll need different kinds of cards for the painted stones and for the jewelry at my shop Artalika.

Chocolate costume

In different countries there are different occasions and holidays when children dress up in costumes. Purim in Israel, Halloween in the US as we all know. Back in Russia we make costumes for the New Year celebration.  Christmas is not a  national holiday, it's strictly religious and happens after the New Year.

So  the New Year  celebration was the most cheerful, most colorful and most joyful time of the year. Every work place organized a party for the children of their employees in special locations like theaters or sports centers. Each one had  a huge beautifully decorated New Year Tree usually placed in the  center of some kind of  a ball room. After watching a performance on  a stage, the children went to the ballroom where they danced and sang around the New Year Tree. There often was a contest with prizes for the best costume .  There was no stores selling costumes,  almost every costume was hand made.

My daughter was five and the season of the New Year parties was approaching. One day she came to me and said that she had the perfect idea for her costume. "I'll be  a chocolate bar,"  she said, "let's make me a costume."

I absolutely adore chocolate so  I  couldn't resist the idea. It turned out that she had already thought through the design of the costume. "You  need to buy chocolate colored silk fabric, something smooth and slippery, then buy  thick batting, put it between two layers of silk and stitch all three layers in squares - it will look exactly like chocolate squares in a bar!"

The idea was absolutely brilliant!

We went to the fabric store and bought everything: chocolate colored smooth lining fabric, batting, brown chiffon,  a bit of silver lame. In a shoe store nearby we found the perfect pair of brown suede shoes.

She helped me with everything. We made a dress with  sheer chiffon sleeves, the bodice was stitched in smaller squares and the full round skirt in large squares and the small piece of silver lame became a little apron representing  silver foil inside the chocolate wrapper. I cut off the buckles   from the shoes and made chiffon roses like those on a chocolate cake, and attach them to the toes. Her father came up with an idea for a crown. I donated  some chocolate wrappers from my collection  for the occasion ( yes, I have kept every wrapper from the chocolate bars I have eaten during the last 25 years.) My daughter and her dad made a crown from cardboard and decorated it with strips of wrappers.

The costume turned out beautiful with all the rich chocolate colors and various textures. She was the Queen of Chocolate. Not only did she wear it for every kids party, it was also her favorite outfit for the whole winter season. She used to come home from kindergarten, immediately change into her silky dress and dance and sing happily till  bed time.
Unfortunately  we don't have any photos where you can see the costume in detail so I drew a picture.

Cyrano on the grass

I took our guinea pig  Cyrano out into the garden so he could run around in the grass. He loves eating fresh grass blades. 

I’m always scared to leave him out there alone, ever since I read a story about a crow that swooped down on a poor guinea pig, plucked it up, but couldn’t carry it and ended up dropping the guinea pig to his death.  So I always cover Cyrano with a spare cage or keep him company outside. 

I thought he would be happy to be in the large open ground and would run around while I was photographing my new jewelry. But he looked around and immediately ran back to me, and propped himself up on my foot and started munching on the grass around it. 

This is him in all his splendor. His hair in the photo was actually just trimmed, it can get twice as long as that in his breed. 

Christmas window decoration

I tried to do something winterlike for my Christmas window. I was looking for small deer figurines at ebay with an idea to paint them white. Then I saw this cute family at Michael's, bought them and decided to keep them colored. Flowers in my white vases were changed to fir-trees branches, and sea-urchin became snowbanks.

Now I need some decorative trees. I imagined them - simple but original cones. Didn't find small enough trees  at the stores. Looked through tons of pinterest pages. Decided to make them myself.

Here they are!

I found  a small ball of perfect yarn - light green with tiny fluffy bits -  for smaller trees.

Two collage trees are cardboard cones covered with pieces from vintage books.

 It was fun to make and I love how they turned out!

Before and after

Before..., a photo by Alika-Rikki on Flickr.

I was making necklaces for my etsy store several days in a row and had totally cluttered table as a result. You know that - something from this box, something from that string - and soon you push things in the morning to free a tiny spot to work on.

Finally you can't do it anymore and need to declutter...

It took me three hour, half an audio book and voila! It's ground zero, I have a table back! And all the tiny pieces went back to their containers.

Love this empty clean look, even if it doesn't stay long like this:)

After!, a photo by Alika-Rikki on Flickr.

Jewelry store in SF Chinatown

I love this jewelry store! Its windows are always full of  large statement necklaces with beads  as big as  eggs and pendants which could serve as pieces of armor. I never saw somebody buying them though.  One day I will go on stakeout there and will wait for the person who will buy one of these!

My beader friend promised me that we will wear that kind of large, bold,  tribal jewelry when we will be ninety years old.

Halloween cats

I painted some sinister smiling black cats for Halloween. Two of them are ceramic ornaments and the third one is a painted rock.

I went to a flea market with my daughter. We are not early risers so by the time we got there many of the sellers were already packing.

We had to run to and fro around the field to see the last booths. My daughter took a fancy to a kitschy and ridiculously expensive radio in the shape of an owl heavily painted in gold. I found some vintage music sheets for future art works and two funny little things at an old Chinese man's table: a teapot with bugs and a fat, bumpy and grumpy toad.

Giveaway

It's a giveaway!
My little painted stone fish magnet will be given to someone who leaves a comment here. I know that there is not a lot of people reading my blog so your chances are really huge:)

I will wait 24 hours and then somebody will be the winner ( or not)
Welcome-welcome:)

It's painted on a beach pebble with acrylic paints and coated with a glossy clear varnish. The back side is left unfinished so you can see color and texture of an original stone. A strong rare earth magnet is glued to the back side. It's ready to adorn any surface that can hold magnets. Will be mailed in a small gift box with a soft insert.
The stone is about 1-3/4" ( 4.5 cm) long.


( you can see my other painted stones? prints and jewelry at my etsy shop - http://www.etsy.com/shop/artalika)

California Quail

I noticed these birds a couple of times in the thick intertwined rose branches above the neighbors' fence but didn't get a chance to look closer. It seemed to me that the birds were sitting there, each holding a small leaf in its beak. What a strange fashion!

But last autumn the neighbors cut all their rose bushes and the fence became empty. Recently I was washing dishes in front of the window facing the side yard when all of a sudden a string of funny fat birds busily marched on the edge of the fence before my eyes. It was my mysterious birds with the leaves in their beaks!

I grabbed my camera and rushed to the backyard. The birds had already done their parade and were now placing themselves on branches of the tall tree nearby. I started moving very slowly, freezing now and then when one of them looked at me suspiciously. Now I was close enough to take pictures and see more details. The funny "leaves" turned out to be little black feathers hanging from their heads. How they didn't become cross-eyed with the constant dangling in front of their faces, I don't know.

One plump fellow:)

They turned their backs to me but kept to be very suspicious. I was moving in small increments when they didn't look and was standing still and shooting when they were looking back.

#3 I think males have bigger and nicer feathers above the beak. The females' feathers look like they have a bad haircut.

Doesn't it look like fish scales?