Saturday, October 1, 2011

BEST Featured Artists: Spice

Today I am in the mood for fall!  Which, as the pumpkin tender, makes me want to settle in with my robe, a hot cup of coffee and a delicious breakfast that is heavily spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves.  By the way, I highly recommend adding cinnamon to your morning coffee.. so delicious! But to continue with my mood this morning I am featuring "spiced" items from three artistic stores: Off the Wall Expression, the Orange Windmill and Sohlful.

Chalkboard Spice Labels
I love the home decor items over at Off the Wall Expressions, which is a store we have featured before.  Tina Ray and her husband (fellow Hoosiers at that!) make vinyl lettering, wall art and chalkboards you can use to decorate your walls.  The vinyls take the form of words, pictures, and phrases, including monograms for weddings.  Or, you can  also purchase a variety of chalkboards for walls or kitchen containers.  I love the spice labels pictured to the right.  Now you can re-use your old containers over and over again... and if you want to buy a new spice, you do not have to find a new container for it!  Very practical... and bring on the autumn spices!

Hand-Bound Leather Journal
I also love paper products and journals, so take a look at the Orange Windmill and the beautiful journals Shirley Lynne offers.  Each journal is hand-bound and wrapped in leather (cowhide) in a variety of earthy colors and sizes.  Shirley even offer mini journals that are about the size of your palm.  You can also easily organize your art, poetry and thoughts as the journal pages are grouped into sections.  I imagine sitting at my desk or next to the window writing (with my cup of coffee of course) in a journal like the dark brown leather journal to the left...  You can tell from the quality and time put into these products that Shirley is passionate about journaling.

Red Lily Fine Art Print
And finally, take a look at this spicy and beautiful giclee Lily created by Anna Cole of Sohlful, a photography and art store in Minnesota.  As you can see from the picture, this piece of art blends photography and digital art techniques.  I love when photographers enhance their photographs with digital coloring and effects... it gives the photographs an otherwordly feel to them.  And this Lily really caught my eye!  The colors are beautiful.  But Sohlful also offers other photographs that are more traditional photographs of natural settings, leaves and flowers.  But one of the most interesting aspects of this store is the paper (Hahnemuhle paper) on which Anna prints her artwork.  Hahnemuhle paper is a natural heavy-weight paper made from cotton, not synthetic photo paper.  Not only is this paper natural, but its natural whiteness allows Anna to print brilliantly colored art!  No wonder her prints are so beautiful. 

Well it is time for me to turn back to my coffee and breakfast.. Happy fall everyone!

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If you are an Etsy artist and are interested in writing weekly blog articles featuring other Etsy artists, while also gaining exposure for your own store, then head over and check out the BESTeam for more information.

5 comments:

  1. Great feature! I am absolutely in love with that journal! That Red Lily by Sohlful is one of my favorites too! Thanks for including our labels!

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  2. Love the feature!
    Lilly's have always been a favorite of mine, but this especially a favorite because of the color!

    Thanks for sharing,
    Cathy

    AND I want those spice labels too :)

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  3. Very nice feature, love the look of your blog! Mahalo Connie

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  4. Thanks so much for the very well-written feature! It's wonderful. :) -Shirley

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