New Christmas decoration - Skully Tree

Christmas is getting ever closer, and over the past few weeks I've been listing a few festive goodies. The latest to arrive in my Etsy shop is a piece called Skully Tree:



If you're a Gothic type, you might want a darker look to your home at Christmas, or if you like rich colours and quirky details, this piece would also fit in well. It's made of steel wire, red glass beads and plastic skull beads, and it has a hanging loop of red ribbon. It could be hung by a window to catch the sunlight, on a wall or perhaps on a door, or of course on your Christmas tree.

Take a look at my Etsy shop for more Christmas goodies:



And, if you live in the UK, you can also buy my Christmas goodies at Folksy:



Plus, take a look at all three of my shops for unique handmade Christmas gifts:

http://sneddonia.etsy.com
http://sneddoniart.etsy.com
http://www.folksy.com/shops/Sneddonia

Recycled Packaging

As I have mentioned here in a previous post, reclaimed materials are an important part of what I do. I not only reuse old jewellery in my work, but I also try to use old packaging wherever possible. So I keep all the bubble wrap, boxes, jiffy bags, tissue paper and other packaging that I receive through the post, and reuse it when I mail out my work.

I store the tissue paper in this little table:



My work gets wrapped up in reused paper and packaging to be posted:





I have recently been advised to start using gift boxes to give my jewellery a more professional edge and, while this is of course a good idea, I was unsure about it because that would involve buying new boxes rather than reusing old ones. The solution came when I was watching Dragons' Den one evening and saw the Tiny Box Company's pitch. I'd heard of them before, and, while watching the pitch, admired their commitment to using purely recycled materials in the manufacture of their boxes. I placed an order with them, and received some lovely purple boxes that I was very happy with. A couple of days ago I put my Black Fuzzy Bat in the post in one of them:



Now that little bat is all wrapped up and off to America!

Size Does Matter - ACEOs vs huge paintings

Excuse the slightly clichéd title, but this post is about size, in part at least :) Lately, it has occurred to me that I'm painting smaller and smaller paintings now. What's made me think about it is the fact that some of my ACEOs have migrated from my DaWanda shop to my Etsy shop (as will the entire contents of my DaWanda shop over time).



Looking at them has inspired me to create more of these miniature works of art. There seems to be something very appealing about making something so small.



The fact that they're cute is I suppose the simple, rather girlie, answer to what I find appealing about them. Another reason is that it's a challenge to paint something so small, and therefore detailed. Don't get me wrong - I love large works of art too, but not all art has to be huge.

It's occurred to me lately that, while I now paint tiny things, my art teacher actually spent a lot of time trying to make me paint larger, which is funny in a way. At school I was told to paint on larger paper, for what reason I don't remember. She need not have spent so long trying to make me paint larger anyway - with all the life-drawing classes, Visual Studies and other art classes I went on to do at college, working on larger paper was a natural progression. She also said I should work more in 3D, and she was actually right there. Back in school it was all about trying to work to a brief set by an exam paper, which was what made me afraid to experiment (with sculpture) back then. Leaving school and coming to a rather different environment like college triggered more experimentation in my work, not least because there was so much more to try there. I specialised in three-dimensional pieces towards the end of college, working in ceramics and then metalwork, finally going on to uni to study Crafts. Again I specialised in metalwork there, also dabbling in ceramics and other media.



The main theme running through my work there was organic shapes, including metal sculpture such as copper trees. After uni I continued with these, finding my way back to painting via the trees.



Now it was on my terms - I didn't have to paint some incredibly detailed thing to try and pass an exam. It was liberating really. And now, I can paint tiny little things if I want. Now that I've come back to painting, outside of an educational context, I have developed my own style, which is a lot simpler than anything I ever painted at school. In the past few years, through both education and experimentation, I've developed my own style in all of my work. I don't doubt that my work will change in as yet unforeseen ways in the next few years too.

Front Page Glory!

Brierley Sunset made it to Etsy's front page! Sneddoniart's first FP, awww :)

Many thanks to PennyDog, Hippy and PaisleyChainsaw for letting me know. And thanks of course to TickledPinkKnits for creating this Treasury list!

The great $7 sale

There's a sale in my shop! Check it out here.

Most of the items would make great Christmas decorations, so you could stock up for Christmas. Or you could maybe brighten up your house with the suncatchers, bringing a little summer sun indoors.



Or add a little humour to your outfit with my Spidey pendant.



7 is a lucky number, so why not get lucky at my $7 sale!

Toadstool Footstool and Fuzzy Bats

A couple of weeks ago I got this gorgeous item from the lovely Esme of PaisleyChainsaw, EsmeArt and StyleMissile:



It's a Toadstool Footstool, made for the UK Etsy Challenge, and Esme kindly gave it to me for FREE! Yays :)

I have bought many things from her supplies store:





and recently I was her 100th customer there, so I got fabulous freebies:



Bless her, it's a wonder she makes any money giving away all this free stuff :D

I also wish to pimp a couple of other UK Etsians I've bought things from lately. First up is geegaw.etsy.com, from whom I bought these gorgeous jewel-coloured glass beads:



Also check out her other shop, gugaw.etsy.com from which I bought one of my favourite pairs of earrings:



I love silver, and I love roses, so these are perfect :)

I've been wanting to use felt beads in my work for a while, and finally took the plunge with a 25 bead taster pack from BigFish.etsy.com:



I also got free beads and buttons, yay! BigFish is the colourful, ethical supplies shop of the lovely Kirsty Fish (probably not her real name), and she also runs PaperFish (more colourful goodness) and SnowFish (Christmas goodness).

The new material deserved a new design, and I've created something a little more minimal than my usual work. Here's what I've made with the felt beads so far:





These little winged furballs are called Fuzzy Bats, and are for sale here.

Thanks for reading, and happy shopping!

Looking forward to autumn

Rather than wanting the funny weather we've been having lately to go back to proper summer, I seem to be in the odd position of wanting it to get colder. At the moment, in the house at least, I'm trying to keep warm, which puts me in mind of cosy yet stylish clothes. I want it to be autumn so that I can wear my little tartan skirt with opaque tights and a big chunky cardi, or snuggle up in similarly lovely warm clothes, such as the two H&M cord jackets I now own (one's a rich purple, the other's a mossy green, in case you wondered). This is partly the fault of fashion magazines such as Elle. I'm reading all about a/w fashions, my favourite being Goth of course, and wanting to wear them all.

I love this photoshoot from Elle:



I love tartan, and the way they've styled it there is great. Dark, playful and glamorous all at the same time.

I read a lot of fashion mags and sometimes the fashion does not inspire me. I'm not really a dedicated follower of fashion, so the fact that summer's all-in-ones and nauticals didn't interest me was not really a problem. But when what I see in those glossy pages strikes a chord, I'm all over it. I'm loving this new Dark Romance trend. That kind of feminine-with-a-hard-edge look that says Goth to me is one of the strongest themes that runs through my work, so the fact that this look is in fashion is a bit of a bonus.

I've dedicated a large chunk of my moodboard to this new, darker mood in fashion:





Inspired by this, I have created this Gothic Rose charm necklace:



I love the combination of black and red, as it always looks striking. Plastic stars and skulls add a bit of fun to the piece, while a vintage Lucite rose adds a little old-fashioned romance. Find it for sale here.

For more Gothic pieces, search Goth in my shop. Also, for more work from my fellow Dark Side members and myself, search etsydarkteam on Etsy.

Thank you for reading.