bella

The flea market was great again this weekend and I’ll give the full and official report on it later but for now here is the first thing made from new aquisitions, the daily bird bella.

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She’s made from a spectacularly unflattering (love the print though) vintage dress. She is one of a small edition and will be in the shop at 1PM EST.

And work in progress in the strange golden light that I get in the early morning here.

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flea market report

The Park Slope flea market was especially good this past sunny weekend. I got these three fantastic little metal men for future dioramas and terrariums

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and a bunch of amazing vintage pillow cases. I’ve got some ships in progress that I’ll show you next week and these will make great sails. Part of me wants to save them for the country home I will ultimately have but they’re just irresistible sail fabric so I’m cutting them up.

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the daily bird nellie valentine.

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and sammy buttons

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He’s made from a vintage housecoat and he was going to be the daily bird today but I’ve decided to keep him.

taking pictures

It did get a bit brighter yesterday for picture taking but I still needed a little artificial enhancement so I invested a total of about 15 minutes and 8 bucks in putting together a sort of simple light box I found at Make. I used drafting velum instead of interfacing and I had one florescent bulb and one incandescent ( wish I had two florescent) which were clipped on either side. I would have shown you the clip lights ( which I already had) but that would have meant taking a wider shot and revealing some embarrassing disarray here in birdville.

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Here are a couple bird portraits taken in the box:

This is the daily bird abra

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and nan. She’ll be in the shop at one.
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Pretty simple and it made the difference in being able to take at least acceptable pictures on a lousy day in a place where I’m already kind of light challenged particularly in the afternoon.

april showers

It’s pouring in Brooklyn
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and dark. I hope it brightens up at least a little because I need to take photos for tomorrow’s little shop update. It doesn’t look promising though and I might try making one of these.

Here is Batina, today’s daily bird looking very confident on a much nicer day in Prospect Park.
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and here she is in her official shop portrait looking far less sure of herself and a little suspicious of the entire affair.

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spider attack

A little band of marauding spiders. These guys will be on their way to Nest in San Francisco.
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And the daily bird marybeth.
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She’ll be in the shop in about 15 minutes.

the daily bird

Beginning today and for an indefinite period I’m going to post one little bird for sale everyday in my shop Monday through Friday. At least for now they will each be one of a kind made from some tiny pieces of my favorite vintage fabric I’ve been saving. Sometimes the bird will be fancy and sometimes simple. The time of the post will vary but I’ll put a notice in the shop of the time the day before. The first daily bird is jane and she’ll be in the shop at 1PM. ( I would have given you more notice but wordpress was being all squirrely and weird this morning)

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Elegant Bride

I got pretty overwhelmed and accidentally didn’t post a single thing last week so this week I’m going to make up for it with a post every day. I’m still trying to get through a daunting backlog of work and email but there is a tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. A long overdue shop update will happen Friday the 13th at 1 PM EST also I’m going to start ” a bird a day” tomorrow. I’ll post one new bird for sale everyday Monday through Friday.

I finished a cake topper over the weekend. This one is spoken for but I’ve got several in progress that will be in the shop within a couple weeks.

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Some little birds had their magazine debut in the spring issue of Elegant Bride. The Designer is Matthew Robbins of Artfool.

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