For the Papa

These two guys of mine... well, just look at them.  Melts my heart. :)

Hope you had a great day celebrating the fathers in your life!!

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!

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!

Inspired and Encouraged

My toenails are painted orange to celebrate the Halloween season! I included the picture with Angelo's toes because they're just too adorable not to share. :)

I always love this season- Falloween as the newspaper called it last year. Every year after Pennsic, I get so excited about Halloween preparations. I used to restrain myself and wait to decorate or make things, but the last couple of years I've given in. Why put off Joy? Besides, with all the creative energy I have around this time, I think it's actually bad for my health to resist the urge to make things involving witches and bats.

This has been a life-long love for me. Besides loving to dress up (apparently it was my first game; gee, who'd have thought I'd become a professional belly dancer? ;-), I've always loved things that were kind of creepy. Not necessarily gory or bloody (though I did have a few years of bloody costumes ... ), but dark and mysterious. I like ghost stories and my favorite part of the sunrise Children's museum was the upstairs section with all the antique toys, which would give everyone else the creeps.

For Angelo's first Halloween, I was so excited to have a baby to dress up that he had about 5 costumes. We sought out all the kid friendly Halloween parties we could to take advantage of it. But, I definitely bit off more than I could chew. I was still trying to sew my matching Kanga costume to his Roo costume about 10 minutes before we left for Trick-or-Treat in our friend's neighborhood. So, the next year I started finishing that costume with what I thought was plenty of time. I even vowed to take any and all shortcuts, fighting my nemesis, Perfectionism. Well, I finished mine early and figured that since I now knew what I was doing with this sort of thing, it would be easier if I finished my husband's Tigger costume. Of course, that put me hot gluing stripes right until we frantically left for Trick-or-Treat in the DeHaan's neighborhood. I'm pretty sure I dressed in the car on the way over. So, I promised Angelo and Eric both that I would not do that again. I will start on the Halloween costumes right after Pennsic so we can enjoy and celebrate my favorite day of the year instead of running around like mad people. I have my costume ready to go and have all the materials for Angelo's. I've even drawn out a plan for his costume pattern and done a body tracing (it's so hard to believe he's that tall!) Last night I took some more baby steps toward getting his costume made. I'm relieved to know that I have enough material and won't have to order more. Things are laying in the right direction, waiting for that first oh-so-scary cut. I trimmed up the body tracing to help make the pattern. When I got too scared, I started working on more Halloween cards.

Speaking of Halloween cards, I'm considering selling some. I think I mentioned that... Well, I'm still considering it. It has been fun, so I will keep you posted. I'll start by posting here and link to FaceBook, I'm sure.

As if I weren't doing enough already, I have been reading Amanda Blake Soule's "Creative Family". Reading about her and the other creative Mamas in Mothering magazine was what gave me the final inspirational push to start a blog of my own. I love the book! I have already been doing some of the things in the book, and that's what I connected with when I read the Mothering article. It was exciting and encouraging to read about someone else doing them. I had plans to do some of the other things (like make cloth blocks) and found simple, easy to follow directions for those ideas. Since my husband is busy building a pirate ship (see pictures above) to play on in the yard, I decided that it was absolutely necessary for me to make Angelo pirate dress up clothes. When I read Amanda's section on dress up, I was excited about my original idea and encouraged to make even more costumes; especially since I loved dress up so much as a kid ... and still do. I also really loved the section talking about making as many gifts for the holidays (and other occasions) as you can and buying handmade when you can't make them all. I've made handmade gifts over the years, but could only do so much. Committing to buy handmade will not only be fun, but more love and artistry goes into each gift, less commercialism, less materialism. I'm glad I've been buying natural toys for Angelo for this reason too. I also love her projects for making reusable cloth banners and party crowns for birthdays. How cool is that! And the ones she made are so cute! How great to put love into something that celebrates your child and also protects the Earth they'll be living on long after we are. And the "bed time bags" that hold pj's and bedtime stories? Adorable and ingenious! I'll be making one for Angelo in the future, I'm sure. Can't wait to see what else is in the book!

Also on the "make things" docket- a bag for Angelo to carry his trains in (he's in that stage where he has to have certain things, usually trains, in his hands most of the time and not being able to hold them all can be frustrating for him), business cards and a new halter, maybe a silk gauze blouse for Shimmy, New dance bra for the performance at Patty's, more Halloween decorations and costume accessories (I've done some fun stuff with antique photos lately), perhaps to sell, a tiara because I think the fairies who put the fairy ring at the entrance of our door may have run off with mine, costumes for FaerieCon ... I guess I start on those holiday gifts mid November. :-) I'll probably be setting up auxiliary work stations around the house so Angelo can be set up with crayons, pencils and paper while I create too. He's liked that a bit more lately. Or Daddy can play pirate with him while I sew, glue, paint, etc.

Baby Collage card

oh dear, I feel like Indiana Jones being chased by that big rolling rock again.   Am catching up on sleep, laundry, email, event posts, group moderation and now blogging. So, I thought I'd post a project I did at the beginning of March for a friend's baby shower. This was for Rachel Benbow/Baraka, a friend I met in the Pittsburgh belly dance community who now lives in Greece. And her husband Cristos Demetrius. She moved from Pittsburgh to NY, NY and has been living out of the country for a few years now. I tell her her life sounds like a movie script and that her journal is rich! :) I love hearing of her adventures. This latest one, Motherhood, is sure to be the greatest yet!   

So, the green, linen textured card base is from an enormous scrap booking pack I got at Big Lots.  I inked the edges with copper ink. The base papers I believe are from K & Company. The first layer I simply cut a little smaller than the card. The second layer is torn and the edges inked with copper ink (mosaic collection ...  the petal inks you can get at Michael's. ). The stamp I got on Ebay and is from Stampington (Baby buttons collage). I stamped it on card stock and antiqued it with sepia ink (used a cosmetic sponge and ink pad), then cut it out along the border. The baby fairy post is from Art Chix (www.artchix.com) and antiqued with the little brown ink pad in Memory Makers distressing kit. I liked it better than the sad baby on the stamp.  the tag at the top is from JoAnn's.  I have a journaling stamp (the kind where you can rotate the letters to say what you want. fairly wide, very useful. got it at Michael's). the red fiber tied to the tag is from a big basket I got for christmas one year... Sam's sells these types of baskets, but I'm not positive that it came from there.  I used a glue specifically made for metal (got it at Michael's ... I've spent a lot of time there. :) ) to attach the three spiral paper clips, which I got at the local grocery store's office supply isle.  

It was very fun and therapeutic to make this. I hope to work on a "rag doll" organic cotton bunny tonight for Angelo's Easter basket. Many of the same pattern pieces I made for the pirate.  I've got to make something... I'm dying to! :)