Enjoy
*** FREE SHIPPING ***
(First Class Ground Advantage - U.S. Only)
Blog entry
Have a Heart for Valentines Day - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
Valentine’s Day is only a week away. There is still time to order a perfect handmade gift for your loved one(s). The theme of today’s blog is Have a Heart for Valentine’s Day. All of the beauties featured today have hearts as part of their design component. All are artisan handmade and most are one of a kind items. Give your sweetie a Valentine’s Day gift that contains a bit of the heart and soul of of the artist who created it.
MAKE IT A HANDMADE VALENTINE’S DAY!
Red for Valentine's Day! Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
Valentine’s Day will soon be here, so I thought I’d share some mainly red handmade items from talented Indiemade artists. Now these items were purposely chosen to not be overly “Valentines” - no heart designs here! Just wonderful designs that primarily deal in many shades of red, from deep reds to vibrant reds. So these beauties obviously can be worn most any time of the year.
Christmas Red - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
As everyone is aware, the color combination of red and green is closely associated with the Christmas season. From ancient history to modern time, color has been an integral part of cultural awareness and even an understanding of life. The meaning of colors touched all members of society, conveying deep messages that everyone could “read”: at one time, only royalty could wear the color purple and the red robes worn by Catholic Cardinals signifies the blood of Christ, even to this day. The red and green color combination can be traced to the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh stories from the 13th century. And these stories were most likely based on an oral tradition that dates back to the pre-Christian Celts many centuries before where a half-red, half-green tree figures prominently in one of the tales. In pre-Christian times, red represented male strength and desire and green represented female harmony and fertility.
Bohemian Rhapsody - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
It’s amazing how often my blogs are inspired by music. As you have probably noticed, music is, and always has been, a huge part of my life. For some reason, I have been listening quite a bit to the complete soundtrack to the Lord of the Rings movies. Heroic music for an awesome trilogy! It ended (for the umpteenth time) and I switched to my Pandora station. And . . . Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen started the mix of music. The song, which was released in 1975, instantly took me back to a time at university when several friends and I developed a Bohemian Rhapsody skit . . . and performed it at a university talent show! Am sure the skit was absolutely, undeniably horrible. But whenever I hear the song, it takes me back to all the hard work and laughter as we pulled the antics of the skit together. Am sure there is a photo or two around, but I have no idea where they are.
Early Christmas Shopping - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
Now that November is officially here, Christmas can’t lag far behind. The ever ticking Christmas Clock says there are only 53 more days until Christmas . . . and those days will fly by. It’s time to start making those Christmas gift lists and start shopping early! Every handmade item featured here was created by a very talented artist - a bit of their heart and soul are in each. Don’t buy mass produced this year - BUY HANDMADE!
The Sky is Already Purple - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
"The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world."
I have always loved this quote from Alice Hoffman’s novel, Here on Earth. It is so very evocative of watching the sky turn dark here in the Desert Southwest during this glorious time of the year. When the sky is transformed for a few minutes into a magical velvety bluish-purple color, a multitude of stars come out to to play, twinkling away. Then the sky will finally slip into a depthless black and even more stars will appear . . . and, hopefully, a shooting star will streak across the sky. Another reason autumn is my favorite time of the year.
Flora and Fauna - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
I have always admired Walter Cronkite on so many levels, but mostly as an intelligent and reliable newsman and as a vital, moral human being. Even though he died in 2009, I still remember his plain spoken grace in delivering the news, from moonwalks to war, assassinations to peace treaties and thusands of other topics. A favorite quote of his, made 2005 (but still oh so relevant today), is this one:
“I am joining the hundreds of thousands who shall be marching in the Virtual March on Washington to Stop Global Warming in order to demonstrate the concern that we all hold for the future of our planet and all the living things — flora, fauna, human and animal — that exist upon it. The governments of the world have tarried long enough, and the United States is scarcely without doubt the greatest culprit among them. We the people have the strength to bring our country from our weak-kneed stumbling gait in the last ranks of reason to the leadership of the great march to environmental victory.”
Radiant Rainbows! - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
The monsoon season is still going on here in the Desert Southwest. Most every afternoon, the sky clouds, the wind starts to howl, thunder can be heard and lightning seen . . . and if we are lucky, rain falls. As happens so often here, our house can get a deluge but a friend just a few block away may only get a few sprinkles. If the rain ends at just the right time, a magical rainbow can be seen towards the east. Sometimes a paler secondary - or even very pale triple - rainbow forms. A colorful, visual gift! The photo above shows part of a double rainbow (that tried to turn into a triple rainbow). At the end of this post is a single rainbow, both taken with my trusty camera.
First Artisan Item, Second Page - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
The week since my last Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade blog post just flew by. Here is is Tuesday evening and I suddenly realized I hadn’t even thought about the post for tomorrow. Heck, I forgot it was even Tuesday! Not to fear though . . . there are so many beautiful handmade items in the shops of Indiemade artist friends, that I have a wide range of beauties to choose from. I decided this week’s post would feature the First Artisan Item, Second Page (as of my typing this). Even though the picks are widely diverse in style and materials, they all fit beautifully together since they all are handmade from the heart.
The Charismatic Color of Copper - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade
The first recorded use of copper as a color name in English was in 1594. It is a charismatic reddish brown color that resembles the color of polished copper. According to Wikipedia, however, there are about 25 different shades of “copper,” from a verdigris green (copper green) to a dark brown (dark copper). It is a trendy color, found in everything from jewelry to clothing to household decoration and accents. Beautiful with shades of green and blue (mint, teals, turquoise, navy), it actually works well with almost any color as this article in Lushome shows: 30 Modern Interior Designs.
