New on French DaWanda: "les groupes"

So I've been playing with this and gone and started two teams, oops, sorry, "groupes":

The Auld Alliance, to bring together Scottish and French people with a similar taste for the genuine handmade and vintage:

This is meant to use the new "group" function of the French site to allow Scottish and French DaWandians to get together, NOT to keep other British members out, of course...

The group is fully open to all members with a connection to France and Scotland; so that it could be the perfect place to leave "Wanted" ads with a regional / national focus—, for example.

Bord'eau, for all DaWandians who live in / love Aquitaine as well as genuine handmade, OOAK, unique, small series artefacts as well as genuine that is not merely second-/ or third-hand stuff:

For all DaWandians in Bordeaux, Gironde or Aquitaine who wish to come together to create and exchange.

This is a place to make, find, invent, dream, chat, share and recycle— just not other people's ideas, of course.

The group, though "closed", is fully open to all site-members with a connection to Aquitaine, not just sellers; so that it could be the ideal place for you to express your wishes and see them fulfilled by local designers / artists / crafters.

Nouveau : les GROUPES sur DAWANDA

Une nouvelle fonctionalité sociale sur le site européen du fait-main...

J'en ai profité pour en créer deux :

Bord'eau, pour rassembler l'Aquitaine autour de boutiques authentiquement artisanales, créatives et vintage :

Pour ceux et celles qui, à Bordeaux, en Gironde ou en Aquitaine, souhaitent se rassembler dans un esprit de créativité et d'échange.

Ici on fabrique soi-même, on chine, on invente, on rêve, on cause, on partage et on recycle (mais pas les idées des autres, bien sûr !).

Le groupe, quoique "fermé", est bien sûr ouvert à tous les DaWandiens qui ont un lien avec l'Aquitaine : pour celles et ceux qui ne sont (pour l'instant) qu'acheteurs, ce pourrait être un lieu idéal pour contacter des créateurs / designers / artisans de leur région et leur faire les demandes les plus folles...

The Auld Alliance, pour célébrer et entretenir dans le vintage, les arts et l'artisanat ce lien si ancien qui lie France et Ecosse :

J'espère avec ce groupe donner la possibilité aux membres écossais et français de se retrouver grâce à la nouvelle fonctionnalité de la plateforme française : PAS d'exclure les autres membres britanniques !

Le groupe est bien sûr ouvert à tous les DaWandiens qui ont un lien avec l'Ecosse et la France : pour celles et ceux qui ne sont (pour l'instant) qu'acheteurs, ce pourrait être un lieu idéal pour contacter des créateurs / designers / artisans de l'autre pays et leur faire les demandes les plus folles...

FOW Two

My Finding Of this Week is one that I came across a few months ago and bought without knowing how I was going to use it— I just had to have it, because it was "paper thread".
Paper and thread! The best of both my favourite worlds!

And here I am, now, using it to bring together my contribution to the current DaWanda challenge, "Ma Région" for which we have to create an object representing our region. You can see a few loose ends waiting to be tied... Suspense!
Cette semaine, ma trouvaille remonte à quelques mois. A l'époque, je ne savais pas du tout ce que j'allais pouvoir en faire, juste qu'il me fallait ces bobines : du fil de papier. Du fil et du papier : le rêve !

Aujourd'hui, je suis en train de m'en servir pour ce qui sera ma participation au dernier concours créatif de DaWanda en date, pour lequel je cherche à créer un objet qui évoque "Ma Région".

Merry-Go-Round - Compass Words for 2011

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).

If they haven't posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month,

We decided to do Tonya davidson' 3Rs exercices, to "REnew, REenergize & REcommit" (www.theartistsuccessprogram.com), order to find our three "compass words" for 2011.

More than just interested in changing for the better, but finding it a bit difficult to stay committed— that's me!

Still, the minute I started "exercising" my sens of purpose, the compass words I need and want to focus on came cropping up bold and bright like

spring

flowers:

Smile

After dark emotional months when I just wanted to curl up and focus on myself, I've suddenly remembered how smiles beget smiles even more surely than violence and selfishness beget violence and selfishness. It always amazes me, and in a very pleasant way, how many difficulties a smile literally smoothes down.

So I will commit to smiling rather more often than I feel like...

Forge

This one's more tricky.

As I've mentioned before on this blog I have a dangerous tendency to want to explore different crafts

and

techniques. Lately, I have spent an awful lot of time researching sources and potential inspiration as well as hoarding supplies.

Not only is this absurdly costly, it is also sterile and frustrating. Whereas the pleasure of crafting lied in using my hands to make things I liked, it has become something I do as quickly as possible before I go back to day-dreaming about all the wonderful stuff I could create.

Procrastination's my middle name!

So I am commiting to getting my projects done!

Enjoy

Having someone else lavish you with "positive thinking" when you are in any kind of anguish, trouble or pain and what you want is compassion (even if it's just over an untimely broken finger-nail!) I find very irritating.

But waking up thinking of all the small joys and comforts I can look forward to, every day— because I am really lucky in sooo many ways— and going to sleep feeling grateful for all the pleasures of the day, hoping for another such day, now that's being in a good place. It should be mine by rights...

Carpe Diem, I say! ;)

So,

from now on

, "Smile, Forge and Enjoy" must define this year for me.

Ça bouge à la Fabrique !

Au 87 bis rue du Loup, à Bordeaux, il se passe des tas de choses et on trouve des trésors de créativité (dont la mienne, c'est vous dire...).

Très bientôt, une exposition-vente de vêtements miniatures de grande classe. C'est l'hiver et, pour régresser agréablement, il n'y a pas que les bonbons et le chocolat, il y a aussi votre pourpée Barbie : elle au moins, elle ne vous fera pas grossir. Et cette garde-robe ne rendra pas votre porte-monnaie rachitique !!!

Et puis aussi (sur rendez-vous), le samedi 22:

CONCOURS / GIVEAWAY sur / ON Facebook

Une autre bonne raison pour trouver et "aimer" Le Bar du Vent sur Facebook : laisser-vous aller à rêver votre cahier, carnet, journal (secret ou pas) à vous et racontez-moi ça sur Facebook, et vous pourriez bien le recevoir au printemps prochain...

Yet another reason to seek and "like" Le Bar du Vent on Facebook— dream up your very own journal or notebook, tell me about it on Facebook and you just might receive it next Spring...

Merry-Go-Round - Comfort Zone(s)

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).

If they haven't posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month's theme:

Get out of your comfort zone and try something new.

"Comfort zone"? What's that?!!

I don't think I have that in stock.

First things first— I should apologize for taking my seat on the merry-go-round a bit late this month.

Excuses: yesterday evening, I had planned to finish knitting a cashmere jacket. I am not a terribly competent knitter*, but I have knitted, on and off, for over twenty years. For some reason, I knit a lot during heat waves. Don't ask... I don't know.

So anyway, being only moderately competent, I make mistakes. Bad ones. Yesterday, as I was finally trying to sew the pieces together, I realized I had made one of those bad mistakes. "Bad" means I have to unmake. I had to. Quite a bit. So I unravelled the whole collar and the top of both front pieces [yes— I had bound off on the wrong side].

And I re-made them. Well, I had to go to bed before I had quite knitted the collar again; So I had to do that today.

But this morning I had to do some paperwork and this afternoon I was going to the bookbinder.

To learn bookbinding.

I started taking lessons from a professional bookbinder a month ago. It's something I have long wanted to do and now that I don't take upholstery classes** anymore, I have decided I could make time for bookbinding.

Yes, I am supposed to make jewellery and I do have plans to explore silversmithing and artclay again, but I am an uncurable Jane of all trades. Mistress of none, but never bored...

I swing from one craft to another.

Mixing and matching materials and crafts.

Exploring life and the world as I go.

That sounds good, doesn't it? But really it's pathological— I cannot stand the idea of living just one life....

Plus, just you wait until you see the wonderful notebooks and accessories I am going to turn all this discomfort into! Not sure you're going to have to wait, but I know that in the meantime I won't be bored.

* Rather better than at crochetting, but I am working on that.

** Still have to finish covering a chair for my mother

Merry-Go-Round - Flying colours

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).

If they haven't posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month's theme:

What is your favourite colour and how does it come into your work?

This is both easy and difficult to answer, I find.

My favourite colour is red. Mostly. And then there's black. Together and separately, they make up my comfort zone.

I look at red and black and I see beauty.

When I reupholster chairs I like, they turn bright red.

When I make a Jag ring for myself, it's deep red (maroon).

When I knit a cashmere jacket— for myself, you bet!— it's deep red again ("merlot", yummy!).

When I want to pick a shirt to wear, long- or-short-sleeved, black and red are the two colours most represented in my "wardrobe".

They are my feel-good colours on any day.

When it comes to creating jewellery, strangely enough, it doesn't really show. If you go through my shop on DaWanda or Etsy, it won't be obvious, I don't think. The necklace in the photo is a rare example. And I recently gave it to someone who had the good taste to like it...

But then I guess that comes from the fact that jewellery, like accessories are small "islands" of colour and texture that you add to your "mainland". They come to complement and compliment your main colours. Well, mine anyway.

So I realize, now you make me think of it, that I have been working with colours I wouldn't have "given the time of day" before. Also colours that I can appreciate and enjoy mixing and playing with, once it is not all about me and my complexion.

I recently made several all-black pieces, but that was because I really needed to take a day-trip to my comfort zone...

My other colour, the colour I just need around me, is green, and you'll definitely find much more of this one in my shop. And in my photos!

Blue is for my dreams...

I've also noticed that when I look at a red bead (plenty of these), a black gem, or a green leaf, or the very green eyes indeed of my cat, with their black eye-liner, I lose all critical sense: I see beauty and I'm dazzled. Probably why I use so little of my many red beads. Mmm. Shame that. I'll have to take another look... ;-)

Celebrate the Fleur de Lis and donate

I'd like to show off a few photos of my first Fleur de Lis items, all created with Louisiana in mind, celebrated the old tie with this "cousin", and trying to help.

I've already made a donation because I wished to help in any small way to clean up and save as many as possible of the unsuspecting creatures that have been victims, as usual, of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but there is only so much I can do on my own...

Now, when I posted a question about this on the oh-so-friendly Etsy forum, I got a biting remark about the first victims which happened to be the human fatalities and casualties at the site. So I guess I had better point out right away that however saddening the loss of these lives, I still find the the loss of innocent animal lives (and the wrecking of quite a few human lives too) even more saddening and quite maddening. Not that I'm happy about the plants destroyed either...

I should also add that I'm fully aware that Louisiana is not the only state suffering from the consequences of the spill— I just had to pick.

Anyway. I have begun listing a few original Fleur de Lis items and whenever I sell one— nudge, nudge—, I will donate half the price to the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation (here, scroll down to the very bottom). To help clean up the mess and save lives and keep people busy in a good way.

I began with the two "Carnet de Bal" notebooks, and then went on to create two different pairs of earrings. Everything handmade by me. Everything listed in my Etsy shop.

So— thanks in advance— nudge, nudge...