Friday, April 09, 2010

Fabulous Friday Finds for April 9

Welcome to this week's edition of my Fabulous Friday Finds! I have another varied batch of finds for you, so I hope you'll enjoy them. :-)

Fabulous Friday Find #1 is some of the most amazing art I've seen, by an artist named Charles Clary. He takes paper cutting to a whole new level with his Percusive Art.

His recent blog posts have been showcasing pieces for his solo show, Double Diddle Escapades.

Be sure to check out his older blog posts to see more of his work. This Terr-a-Diddle Formation is incredible!

Just imagine the hours of planning, cutting, and assembling that goes into each of these pieces. Many layers, perfectly planned, letting you peek down through to the bottom.

Wow.



Fabulous Friday Find #2 is a contest. A beading contest, to be exact, and it's all about color.

The contest details are on Zoya Gutina's website, My Lovely Beads. You have from now until June 15 to enter, so there's still plenty of time for you to create a piece for the Fashion Colorworks 2010 Beading Contest.



What can you win? There are prizes from Artbeads.com, Softflex Company, and Beads Direct UK


What are you waiting for?! Get out those beads and get to work!

It should be no surprise that some of my Fabulous Friday Finds come from Etsy. I spend a lot of time on there, both tending to my shops (time2cre8, where I have all my beadwoven creations; and time2split, where I have art supplies, vintage items, and assorted other goodies) and looking at all the wonderful things my fellow Etsians create.

This week I added a few new favorites to my extensive list.

Fabulous Friday Find #3 is this piece by an artist whose work I've admired for awhile, Liz Hall. Liz' Etsy shop is called LizardsJewelry. I'm almost envious that she can take her name and turn it into her shop name. :-)

Liz uses precious metals, polymer clay, stones, plastics, glass, and (according to her) whatever else catches her eye to create her pieces.

This piece, called See How My Garden Grows, is probably my favorite. I love those little squiggles of black and white, the detail of the teeth along the edge, and best of all those three little circles at the bottom. Or is it the top? This piece can be worn as a necklace or as a pin, so you can choose which way is up.

Dr. Seuss would love this, I think.




I'm not sure if Dr. Seuss would like this next Fabulous Friday Find, but I think he might. I know I do.

Check out this cool Robotic Teapot by Richard Symons.

Who even knew robots drank tea? You'd think it would short out their circuits or something.

:-)





Fabulous Friday Find #5 is a blog of faces. Well, faces and other stuff. Cool stuff. Weird stuff. Fun stuff. The blog is called Hidden Missives, and it's filled with faces that are the creation of Jay King.

I first happened across his work on his flickr page. I'm fascinated by what he does with all these faces (made from polymer clay). And fascinated by the little snippets of stories he includes with them.

I'm not sure if this is my favorite of his faces, but I had to choose Edgar Poe to show here because he's one of my favorite authors.

According to his flickr profile, Jay does these faces for fun. His "real" job is making and repairing stained glass windows. I saw some pictures of those too. They're amazing.

Poor Edgar, though. He looks a little... er... squished.








The last Fabulous Friday Find I have for this week is for my beady friends. Specifically my beady friends who like teeny tiny beads.

You think 15s are small? How about 16s? 18s? Smaller?

How about 22s?

Now that's tiny! And Empyrean Beads has them.

Lots and lots of teeny tiny beads. I'm intrigued by the size 22 beads. I have no idea what I'd do with them, but can you imagine working with something that small???

There's lots of other cool beady stuff, too: Czech glass buttons, vintage beads, silk thread, needles (my favorite, John James).







And now I think it's time for me to do some beading myself. Happy Friday!

5 comments:

Marcie Abney Carroll said...

Haha! I love the fish hair lady, that's awesome! Thanks for the link to Empyrian beads, please tell me that you're gonna whip something up with some 22's!

AWJ said...

Another great Friday Finds. My favorite is LizardsJewelry, but I've actually seen Charles Clary's work in person many times-- I think he's still showing here at one of the galleries. His artwork makes me think of the inside of bones, and arteries! (am I weird?)

Miss Val's Creations said...

Fantastic finds. I'm really intrigued by the robotic teapot!

:-) MaryLou said...

I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to attempt something with 22s... I use 15s every so often, though, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad. :-)

Athena - I'd love to see Charles Clary's work in person! Although they'd probably have to have it roped off because I just want to touch some of those pieces. And I think you're absolutely right that they look like a microscopic view of bone marrow or the insides of blood vessels! I guess we're both weird. :-)

BeadsForever said...

I loved all your picks, especially the paper art. I have some tiny size 22 old Czech beads, but I haven't decided on how to use them yet. They really are tiny!