New Artists for Polarity Locket Series

This week I am so fortunate to add five more amazingly talented artists to my Polarity locket artist series!


TinyArtByJMullin - Jennifer is a high school art and art history teacher by day and collage and watercolor artist by night. Creating art keeps her sane and happy and she is thrilled to be able to share her passion on Etsy! We are so lucky to have her beautiful I Will Be Blue and Floral Improv. No. 8 artwork for your locket!

f2images - Emi and Mark started f2images as a way to share their photography with others. Their ambition is to capture and present images in a unique and engaging way. Although they enjoy fine art photography, the technical aspect of image capture is equally important to them. We are so lucky to have their beautiful Lazy Summer and Mare photographs for your locket!

blackoutwell - When she was young Amy wanted to be a mad scientist but quickly decided that her path in life would be accompanied by a notebook and pen, a yellow flask of semi sweet tea, a small orange fox, a slightly bent but empty birdcage and a rusty red lantern she found in the street. Unfortunately she has only 2 hands so she carries the leftover items in her backpack, alternating from time to time and picking up treasures and inspiration along the way! We are so lucky to have her beautiful Stripey Fox and Suspicious Cat artwork for your locket!

somethingwhimsical - Vinnie is an amazing artist who wanted to have some fun and walk on the wild side of things for awhile, well, on the whimsical side at least. His little alien lifeforms known as BOBs (bunch of bolts) have recently been leaving some marks and symbols that we will leave it up to you mad scientists out there to decipher. You can check out Vinnie's other, slightly more serious side at http://www.corona-evans.com We are so lucky to have his little BOBs language for your locket! He also happens to be my amazingly talented brother....

Deadpan Alley - Liese loves to work with all types of media. Paint, ink, copper, beads, fabric, you name it. She shows work in a traditional art gallery but when she gets pen in hand nothing traditional seems to come out. Etsy is her outlet for the illustrations that like a hysterical giggle, she can't seem to suppress! We are so lucky to have her beautiful X-Ray, Devourer of Nations and The Innovator artwork for your locket!

Purchase any of these amazing lockets and you will receive a FREE set of additional lids.

I will also be doing a giveaway with each locket from now until the end of June- the first giveaway is on Andrea's awesome Anything Indie blog for the Jessica Doyle Locket shown here!

What's a 'Green' Sweater Girl To Do?

When my mother was young and Lana Turner was the famous sweater girl, my mother owned twenty seven sweaters. She told me this number more than once. Twenty seven. Even with today's walk in closets and over extended credit cards this is alot of sweaters.

I own maybe 5 or 6 sweaters that I wear regularly and this time of year as I am getting ready to put those sweaters away (or at least thinking about it, it has still been pretty cold here!) I am thinking about a trip to the dry cleaners.

Dry cleaning is not always necessary; clothing makers often place the “dry clean only” label on tags because they can list no more than one cleaning method and can be held liable if an item is damaged when the owner follows the listed procedure, so I handwash my sweaters all winter, but feel like they need that little dry cleaning magic before storage.

Now dry cleaning is not a green girl's friend. Most commercial dry cleaners (there is nothing dry about it by the way) still use a chemical called perchloroethylene, commonly known as perc. Exposure to perc depresses the central nervous system and can have long term effects on the liver and kidneys; perc can cause cancer. If not properly disposed of, perc contaminates groundwater. Many dry cleaners call themselves 'organic' but use of the word is unregulated and technically perc, being a carbon-based compound IS organic. Another dry cleaning method called green earth dry cleaning is a process billed as nontoxic but studies have shown that D-5, the silicone-based solvent used in the process causes cancer in rats.

The EPA has an eco-friendly cleaner guide and you can look for a cleaner that uses professional wet cleaning which is a water-based, nontoxic, energy-efficient technology that uses computer-controlled washers and dryers and specially formulated biodegradable detergents. There is also a handy little site called nodryclean that lets you easily search by zip code. I found one near me (well, near enough for my infrequent trips) and hopefully you can, too.

The other dry cleaning nightmare is the billions of hangers (return them to your cleaners), paper sleeves and plastic covers that end up in landfills and will still be in those landfills breaking down when your great-great-great-great-great (etc, etc) grandchildren are buying sweaters. I use a really handy Dry Greening bag that converts from a tote to a garment bag - they are only about $10.00 and I hand it off to my cleaner as a duffle bag, with my name written on it in black magic marker just like summer camp, and she hands it back to me as a garment bag. The key, I think though, is to dry clean as infrequently as you can (I have passed on many purchases to avoid it) and do a little local research before your next trip to the dry cleaner.

The Captain Always Goes Down With Her Ship

Ugh! Another rainy Monday morning and my blog post on social networking sites (the really good ones like Dogster) seems to be awol on my computer AND I am over my head with work AND my taxes are still not done AND little pup Olive is hiding under my chair from the thunderstorm, so let's just surf around and find some fun stuff! Dutch Tulip Fields! Yes, I am serious!
Life Size Dollhouse - Could Be Better Than Our Barn Renovation
Rethinking a Yellow Kitchen - Turquoise?
No One Will Ever Steal Your Lunch Again (of course, anyone who has ever seen my lunch would only steal it to prevent me from eating it- yuck!)
Recycled Wallpaper (the girl in the paper store told me that she had papered the inside of her doorways with scrapbook paper which sounded very interesting)
Now this is Camping! No more leaky tents - wouldn't this be amazing! OK, now back to work with me .....

Artist Collaboration Lockets

I am so excited about my new artist collaboration Polarity locket series. I had made some lockets for Jennifer Mullin with her amazing collages (her locket launches this weekend) at Christmas time and when Kendra Zvonik ordered a locket from me, I could not resist including some locket lids made from her work. Kendra was very excited and gave me the kick in the pants I sometimes need to start something new!

This week the first 8 lockets were listed in my Polarity shop and they are all totally amazing and totally different! I will be talking to one of the artists each week starting next week, so we can all get to know them a little better.

During the month of April any order of one of these lockets will include a FREE set of 3 extra lids- so you will have 6 lockets in 1! Here they are, in no particular order:

The amazing Stephanie Fizer is a curious girl and astonishing illustrator living in lovely but misunderstood West Virginia. We are so lucky to have THREE of her sweet Kokeshis for a locket!

Kirsten Cram is the amazing artist behind the creations of Tollipop. Her drawings are mostly about children who are lost in thought, the kind who daydream and press their noses against the glass. Little spectators with imaginary friends and sometimes the whole world on their minds, but experiencing the magic of childhood nonetheless. We are so lucky to have Kirsten's What Page Are You On and Jumprope Girl for a locket!

K, the amazing artist behind Unconventional Ida has created the gorgeous Ida, her townspeople, enchanted forests and the monsters that inhabit her world. We are so lucky to have her beautiful Katarina and Ellen the Daydreamer artwork for a locket!

Dilka of Dilkabear is an amazing Italian artist whose work is pure gorgeous fantasy! We are so lucky to have her beautiful Amelie in the Magical Forest and Dandelion Girl artwork for a locket!

Christy Zaragoza is the incredible mad scientist behind the creations of Peppermint Daydreams. Growing up, Christy tended to bond more with insects and imaginary creatures than children her own age. Little has changed since then and we are glad because her creations are totally amazing. We are so lucky to have Christy's Zebra Vision and The Low Tide for a locket!

Jessica Doyle is an incredible Canadian artist whose work is whimsically detailed and painstakingly created. She loves mini. Being able to hold something in the palm of her hand is just, well, precious to her! We are so lucky to have her gorgeous Sassy Sea Urchin and pretty fish George artwork for a locket!

Jess Gonacha works in a variety of mediums and her artwork is vibrant and quirky, delightful and full of soulful imaginings! We are so lucky to have her gorgeous Bird Lady and Backyard Swing artwork for your locket!

Kendra Zvonik is an incredibly bold and stunning Florida artist
who has recently created a new series of original works in her affordable abstract art gallery expressly for Etsy. We are so lucky to have three of her gorgeous paintings for a locket!