fancy birds

June 9, 2006
by annwood

These are a couple of fancy, tattered and tragic Miss Havisham sorts of birds. They are made out of the incredibly fragile scraps of an amazing victorian dress. The bird in profile was one of my very first birds and her sister was made last night. I’ve been picking up scraps and lace and too far gone victorian and edwardian clothes on ebay lately and plan on making more fancy birds. I’m trying to decide between these three photos for a little postcard. I used OvernightPrints for the first time last Christmas and was very happy with what they did, happier than with things from more expensive printers. If anybody has another great postcard/ printing source I’d love to know about it.
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Thanks Marianne!

June 9, 2006
by annwood

This is the first of several thank you posts for all the great stuff that has come in the mail the last week. Marianne sent this wonderful package.
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3birdstring.jpg She included this felt bird string as a surprise and I love it. It’s adorable and beautifully made with
lots of interesting details. Each little bird is meticulously embroidered with a unique patten on one side and a little wing on the other. It’s hanging on the deep burgundy shutters in my apartment looking as if it was custom made for that very purpose. And the buttons!3applebuttons.jpg Little individually wrapped packages of fantastic buttons. One of the green buttons is featured on todays horse. I had a too busy (still catching up on email) and kind of lousy week and Marianne’s package arrived on one of the most miserable days. Beautiful buttons and gorgeous handmade birds were just what I needed. Thanks Marianne!

horse #31 roulette

June 6, 2006
by annwood

I barely, barely squeezed in a horse today. My nightmarish busyness ends tomorrow afternoon. It’s still a busy week but nothing like the overload horror of the of the last six days. I’ve got lot’s to catch up on and lots to report in the next couple days.3roulette31.jpg

Horse #27 bitty

May 31, 2006
by annwood

OK, I took full advantage of the legal holiday and did not make a horse yesterday. I figured I had it coming since I pretty much worked all weekend and it was, after all, a National Holiday. Today’s horse is another baby – Bitty.
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I like bitty’s little flower button. I think I’ve had it my whole life.

furniture

May 30, 2006
by annwood

Hope everybody who had a holiday had a nice one. This little painting /drawing is part of something I was doing a while ago and abandoned but started thinking about again this weekend.
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dioramas

May 28, 2006
by annwood

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I found this photo at the NYPL Picture Collection. The picture collection is one of my favorite places, it has saved me again and again (a little of it is online now). I love dioramas but I think I love photos of dioramas even more. This one has ships in it so what’s not to love? It’s sad and sweet, creepy, nostalgic and precious.

This quote from “Small World: Dioramas in Contemporary Art” talks about the fascination with miniaturization:

” The urge to create small worlds, however, is primordial. Humans seem genetically engineered to want to simulate the terrain of life and to see the world in miniature, or preserved as if in a time capsule. In dioramas, the concrete and the imaginary, the authentic and the artificial become magically intertwined. Writing about miniaturization in her book On Longing (Duke University Press, 1993), critic Susan Stewart notes that the atmosphere in a diorama is charged; mood and time are crystallized, and the viewer is given the extraordinary opportunity to step outside of his or her time and place to view life.”