Free Shipping in My Etsy Store Through Cyber Monday!!

OK, this is totally lame.  Apparently, I'm out of storage space on this blog and have to pay to put any more pictures up, so I don't have a picture to go with this really cool bit of info I have for you.

However, you can go to my Etsy store: www.bellyartsmama.etsy.com and see all of the pictures of my listings there.  There are a few costuming items, a few very gift-able items and more listings coming soon- hopefully tonight!!

Through Cyber Monday, I'm offering free US shipping (shipping in the US)!!  Offer ends Nov. 27th and all orders placed Nov. 21st - Nov. 26th will be shipped Nov. 27th-28th.

Buy handmade for the holidays!!  Please share this to help spread the word!

Enjoy your Thanksgiving, friends!

With the picture situation and all, I may be moving this blog soon.  Will let you know!

Belly Dance Art, Jewelry and Costumes

My Etsy shop now has these items and more.  Many more pictures to take a look at over there too. 

Please take a look over at www.bellyartsmama.etsy.com 

and share with friends.  Even if you can't buy, please go ahead and favorite items you like. After a whole lot of mish mash, I think sticking to belly dance art and costumes in my Etsy store makes the most sense.  

Enjoy!! Please let me know what you think! :)

Art for Sale, Art for Play, and Art that Moves

There's a new album on my Facebook profile.  Some of the items I have for sale are posted and I will list them on Etsy for you if you would like to buy.  All items will go into a listing made specifically for you and your actual shipping cost (vs. an estimate) will also be listed.  Enjoy! :)

This is but one of the Artist Trading Cards I've enjoyed making as of late.  Such a nice, no pressure way to enjoy playing with my supplies.  More to be posted soon.  

Monday's Open House at the Cultural Trust was a great success!  Lots of people and a great response for my class... it's very very exciting!  

You (and your friends who are interested) can register here for the weekly class starting tomorrow at 7:00pm: http://trustarts.culturaldistrict.org/event/3287/belly-dance-class 

The Yule Goat and an Honorable Mention

Did you know that the Yule Goat preceded Santa Claus in the lore of yesteryear? Apparently, he used to go around demanding gifts.  Maybe someone thought that wasn't very nice and then the story changed to the Goat giving out gifts for Yule.  Then, the Goat morphed into Santa Claus.  Above, you can see Father Christmas riding the Yule Goat. Hmm... interesting.  A way to transition the old with the new or is it like Durga riding the Tiger?  If you would like to read more about the Yule Goat, go to Wikipedia's link here.

As of late, it has come to my attention that while the mass consumption which supports large corporations is a sad mess, the idea of a magical guy who brings joy to children is something that appeals to me. Angelo knows that Santa is a "game of make believe that grown ups like to play too", but still gets excited seeing images of Santa Claus.  He knows Mommy and Daddy bring him presents, so it isn't the gifts that make Mr. Claus magical to him. It warms the cockles of my heart. :)

If you are into Santa Claus and other vintage Christmas imagery, you can check out my ornaments section in my Etsy shop. Or, if you're in the area Dec. 11th, you can come to the Local Artiste Market at Sterling Yoga.  I'll have magnets, journals, cards, jewelry, etc. 

A new camera is mine! So, I won't say there will never be another iPhoto pic here, there will be lots more photos in a better-than-they-were way. :)  Plenty of sewing projects on the docket ('tis one of the sewing seasons), so hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures of those to share with you soon.  

Oh, the Honorable Mention?  My Alice Girly over at the Altered Alice! :D

Shop Handmade on my Etsy shop!

There are some Black Friday/Cyber Monday price reductions in my Etsy shop!!  Journals, original collage art and more.  There's a swap/sell gathering I'm going to tomorrow and I'm vending at the Sterling Yoga Artiste Market Dec. 8th 2pm-8pm.  Send me good selling vibes! :) (thanks in advance).

Oh, and there's the Decorative Papers workshop at Sterling Yoga December 2nd! Super fun!! Join us!

Beautiful Antique Ladies Digital Collage Sheet

This one is newly listed in the Etsy shop.  I've had the collage sheet made for a long time, but had some editing to do so I could list it.  Finally, that's done!  Some beautiful antique images of elegant ladies for your mixed media/altered art: Click Here

I also re-listed the babies and Mother/Child collage sheets.

Enjoy! :)

Baby in a Book

This little cutie is from my collection of antique/vintage photos.  The book is one I started for my Altered Book Workshop in Charleston.  The card with the baby and quote I started at the first Mixed Media Collage workshop- a phone book page, pigment ink, stenciled background.  

You can find the antique/vintage image on my Babies Collage Sheet in my Etsy Store, along with 7 other darlings! :)

Have a great weekend! :)

We Are Fish in a Sea of Spirit

Hoping you find these images inspiring!  I know I'm not the only one who loves Mermaids and Fairies, so I hope you enjoy these! :)

 Image copyright 2011 Narah Kimberly A. Minardi. All Rights Reserved

Listed here in my Etsy store.

Copyright 2011 Narah Kimberly A. Minardi. All Rights Reserved.

Listed here in my Etsy store.


You can *heart* my store and favorite your favorites on Etsy.  So, if you like them, please do! :)

Once I find the right picture CD, I have some catch up posts to do.  Used my Cannon film camera for a while since my digital camera card was broken.  

Hope you had a Happy Independence Day!

Zombie Shrine

My camera really didn't want to take pictures of this art I created this morning.  Perhaps it was scared. ;)
So, I took some video on my phone.  This way you get to see some of the angles that would be hard to get with a still picture too.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.  Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but I had fun!! :)

The ATC shrine is from Retro Cafe.  Oh, the number of alterables on my wish list from there!
The mini zombies are from Tiny Things Are Cute.  So much fun stuff in miniature! Who knew?! :)

This was just for fun, though the zombie sisters are on my altered Halloween collage sheet.  :)

Do you love Halloween as much as I do?  Do you have any projects in mind for the impending Hallow-day? :)

More items Up in the Etsy Store!

Not even a year ago I got to 9 listings in my shop and stopped because so much was going on.  Now, I have twice as many, and even though that's not a lot compared to most Etsy shops, I'm definitely doing the happy dance. :)  Here are all my current listings if you'd like to take a look, and I hope you do! :D

More Fairy Children and Inspirational quotes:
(all images copyright 2011 Narah Kimberly Minardi. All rights reserved.)

And Green Tara journals to inspire you.  It was wonderful spending some time with this wonderful Goddess. :)

With luck, I'll get some hand collaged cards listed. :)

Antique Fairy Toddler Journal 1

Whee!!! I'm so excited!! Officially, my first piece of original art (except for my altered digital images) is listed on Etsy!!

copyright 2011 Narah Kimberly A. Minardi All rights reserved.

It was so good for me to focus on making a volume of work with a deadline.  Not only does working with my hands keep me sane, now I have a respectable amount of items to put in my long neglected Etsy shop.

This little one is just so adorable, I had to save the image for just the right time.  Another exciting thing about making these journals (more to come), is that I got to use my new Eco friendly paint.  Having a little guy around means that I eliminated a lot of paint because it did not specifically say "non-toxic".  These Eco-green acrylic paints have to be shaken well and are a little less viscose than I expected, but are so nice to work with.  The colors are a bit different than expected, but with the whole differences in computer screens and there only being a "drawing" of the paint pictured, that's ok with me.  And just because they are different than expected doesn't mean I didn't really love working with them.  This persimmon and copper combo was just wonderful to experience.  The fairy wings are made with a computer print out from a digitally altered scanned piece of wax paper I sprayed with ink.

Anyway, thanks for looking!  I'll be back soon.  That first listing took a long time, but hopefully the rest will go more quickly. :)

Art Selling Experience

Not a suburb picture, but I wanted to share my table with you from the Spirit Fair at Sterling Yoga.  Lots of thinking and planning went into this little table.  A couple of Angels even came by the night before and helped me finish up the trimming, tagging, sleeving and set up run-through.  Really, if my new friends (I'll explain in a minute) Michael and *Michaela had not come to my rescue, I would have been selling my art for the first time on only a few hours of sleep... and me on a few hours of sleep can mean seriously bad things.

A friend of ours came to visit on Saturday- Bill. Bill has many friends and went to see some at an SCA event on Saturday.  Michael and Michaela, who are book binders, joined us back at the house.  Yes, that's right; two people who had never been to our house, one of whom I'd never met, and who know paper and truly understand the artistic process (including selling said art), paid a visit the night I was working every possible minute to get my wares ready for my first art vending experience.  They generously helped me finish so I could go to bed hours earlier than I would have been able to doing it all by myself.  Plus, we got to talk about art!! I have to give a big THANK YOU to the Universe for that!!

BTW, I just love what *Michaela does with her photography- specializing in celebrating and honoring the beauty in all people, regardless of whether they fit the "standard" model of beauty. 

My collage sheets are re-listed in my Etsy shop. Once I get the rest of the cards, journals and jewelry scanned/photoed, they will be up there too. There are some fairies (both elegant and adorable), beautiful mermaids and inspiring Deities just waiting for you.  Only a few of our belly dance instructional DVD's are left, but several of the performance DVD's are still in stock.  Does anyone know if I would be allowed to list those on Etsy since I did all the pre-production work, some of the filming and assisted in editing?  My husband did the rest of the technical work and he's not listed on my store... not sure if I can add him now.  My sister is also featured in two videos and my students in the other.

Also, you may have noticed that the blog has a new name: Vinegar and Glitter!!  I'm super excited about the personalization, and have a new website, which is far from finished, that will help people find me on my major websites.

Happy Monday!

Art Retreat Report

Where do I begin? How about some of the things I made in preparation for the art retreat?

First, I made crayon cupcakes (which I did a whole post on here), which I’ve wanted to do for a couple of years- since I got Collage Unleashed by Traci Bautista. They were easy to make and Angelo helped me by peeling off the wrappers (I had some boxes left over from his birthday party and a few broken ones I’ve collected. Really surprised there weren’t more broken ones) and breaking up some of the crayons. You can give them to your child or use yourself for some interesting coloring fun or use a craft/travel iron (one without holes) to make some really cool backgrounds. For the backgrounds, just melt some crayon cupcake onto the iron and smear around on cardstock or watercolor paper (I like the latter better). You can also melt some regular crayons without the paper onto the iron and do a print or smear around also.

I also tea dyed some silk gauze, cotton cheesecloth and cotton muslin. It helped with some great antiqued collages, including a Halloween one using an image from my collage sheets available on Etsy.

I filled my dye tub with enough water for the fabric to move around in, heated, but did not boil the water, added about 10-11 cheap tea bags, wet, rung and added the fabric and then let everything sit for a couple hours or so. I stirred once or twice, but since I was going for an aged look, was actually looking for a few dark spots.

Then I got to the retreat (I’m skipping over a lot of stuff, like how I was excited to go, but in tears because I’d be away from my babies so long and how I agonized over packing and shipping my supplies. I get separation anxiety with my family and my art supplies.) This is what my room looked like:

I was spoiled all week. I didn’t have to cook or clean, make my own coffee (which was available all day) and someone else (my husband mainly) was providing child and puppy care. And, best of all, I got to spread out my supplies and leave everything and make art as long as I wanted, only being interrupted by food and potty breaks. I didn’t even sleep that much since I was so excited about all the ideas I had. I got to make the shrine for Tara, which I’ve wanted to make for a very very long time. It was labor intensive and sweet and emotionally difficult at the same time. I don’t think I would have been able to do it at home. It took so long to make, I think I would have had to spread it out over months and I might have gotten discouraged. There, I was able to work for hours straight (except for food, potty breaks and getting some experimentation out of my system). Once it was finished, I banged out a bunch of Artist Trading Cards, some small canvases and a cardboard piece. I will post pictures of all that later, but for now, I’ll add some pics of my dyed paper towels (which I hung on the line outside to dry and thought looked like tie dyed cloth diapers). The technique for this is also in Collage Unleashed.

It was a wonderful week. I laughed, I cried and I have been trying to adjust to being back “in the real world”. I also have been refusing to clean up after anyone but myself and occasionally Angelo (and once Dana, but usually I don’t have to do that. She’s such a good girl!) I’ve noticed that after a week of having to do it all [mostly] by himself, my husband is more self motivated in taking care of Angelo and the house. This is excellent, because I definitely plan on running away, um, I mean taking another trip by myself again in the near future.

Hold True to the Dreams of Thy Youth

I added this picture to my Etsy listing for Vintage/Antique boy images. It was something I started in the collage workshop I taught in Charleston and finished later.