Alterations to Vintage Cards

I cut out a bunch of shoes from a 1970's Sears catalog not knowing what I'd do with them.

Of course -  giant shoes in landscapes. What else?

I didn't keep a copy of what I wrote on the reverse for most of these before I sent them off. You can think up your own stories, if you'd like.

A giant shoe on the lawn of the United Daughters of the Confederacy building. Can you imagine how perturbed the ladies were to find this on their lawn?

 I have the story for this one - Who decided on a shoe ornament for the garden was never discovered. The gardeners disliked it immensely. It filled with water when it rained and was hard to drain.

I amuse myself, make myself laugh.

Write a few stories yourself and let me know if you do. 

A bit of a break, now Mail Art & More....

 I made another of my Cactus and Lily series.

I have lots more of these cards, so I'd better get busy coming up with "poetry" for them.

I was inspired by seeing some collages made with old papers. I made a few like this the previous week, too. Very satisfyin.

 I have a very old, very falling apart, plan of Paris. The paper just about crumbles as I touch it. The colors are so nice.

 I made this specifically for Jo Maeder, the author of a book that I read recently - When I Married My Mother. It was a lovely memoir. I decided to send her a collage using one of my friend's baby photos. Other people photos, what to do with them? Make collages, of course.

Here's a lovely surprise. Many of my long time readers might remember The Shelf! Well, here's another one that appeared on a pole at the end of the block down from our house. It's very neatly constructed which leads me to thinking that it was made by the dad of the little boy living a few houses away.

I put a couple of things in it.

The original shelf is up again, after a brief period of being away. It's better than ever, and more sturdily attached to it's pole. You can see it in my archives searching under "shelf" or "elflog."

A couple of Friday's ago, we stopped in at the tango dance at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. I took lots of photos of feet that night.

Besides the regular dancers, a couple of professionals from Argentina did a demonstration of fancy dancing. It was quite fun and I'm thinking maybe we could try to dance Tango.

Do you dance? What do you do, ballroom Tango, Salsa?

Some photos from our promenees

 This is a small corner of the huge book section of BHV (Bazaar de l'Hotel de Ville.) Imagine, a big department store that still has a book store in it! Amazing. This is no longer the situation in the United States, sadly.

 This shoe was in the window of a frips shop, second hand and vintage clothing, accessories, etc. What era do you think these are from?

 These are in the window of a small shop on rue Pavee, that carries shoes from Sweden. They just changed up the display to show warm weather shoes. I really like these a lot.

 We stopped into a small cafe by the Metro St. Paul. There are three in a row. We picked the one that looked like it had the most local people in it. Good choice. This is an omelette with goat cheese and potatoes in it. It was quite good and we sat next to a woman, who does photography, and had a lovely conversation with her.

 This is such a lovey line of trees, in the Palais Royal garden. This is the beauty of French gardens, the lines. Around this area, are many shops, including Serge Lutens, the perfumerie. Amazing, small inside with purple walls, and black display stands, and lots of interesting scents.

 This shoe was in a shop in Palais Royal! Can you imagine walking in that shoe? Not me! That said, I'm still attracted to fancy shoes.

After walking around Palais Royale, we walked over to the Tuileries. This line of trees was so typical. The sky was threatening rain, but we were happy to be out walking around. There was a group of men playing Boules, down in the garden to the right of me. They were having a big discussion about about it, with a measuring device.

The air got colder, the wind picked up, we walked quickly to the metro and headed back chez nous, to our warm studio, and some hot tea, with a pack of Serge Luten samples to remember our day by, and lots of photos.

Tuesday, out and about after French class

 After my French class we started out for a walk to an area where there were a lot of galleries. Along the way, we came to a florist shop, oh but there were shoes in the window, it was a shoe shop - a shoe shop/florist! What a nice combination! Even though it was quite chilly, the flowers were out waiting to be purchased.

 Everywhere I go, I have to be mindful not to twist and ankle! I love the old courtyards and streets, but even in a solid shoe they are treacherous. I can't imagine how some women walk over them in high heels.

 Autolib' - There were four spots marked with this and four numbered metal posts, where one uses their pass card to get electric recharge and then GO! This was the first time I'd seen anything like this. All of the vehicles were gone so I guess it's useful.

This older woman was stopped in the street in front of us. I loved her blue coat and matching gloves, with her white knit hat and brown boots. She went on her way shortly after I snapped her photo.

 We went to see the exhibit at Galerie Karsten Greve. They were showing a huge amount of work by James Castle, who was a naive artist from Idaho, in the U.S. We'd seen some of his work before and have a book of it, but this was work we hadn't seen before.

This was a nice surprise. In a small shop/gallery we saw these "shoes" on a glass shelf in the window. We glanced then went back and looked again. They are wonderfully painted old wooden shoe forms. There were two more shelves. One had baby shoes on it. I'm sorry that I didn't fotograph the name of the artist. They are wonderful illustrations.

Mail Art, a note, a feather and some new shoes

 This fall, we have 3 weddings to attend. When I saw these shoes, I was tickled pink! They are so fem and yet so comfy, and on sale! They are now my wedding shoes.

 Yesterday's mail art pieces are more of the minimal (or as Katerina writes Mimimal) with graphite. With these, I made marks, somewhat in the Cy Twombly style, Oh I wish, with the 9B graphite, on a large piece of watercolor paper. I ran a big brush with water over the lines I cut the paper into standard postcard sized pieces, getting 4 cards and some book markers out of it.

 Then I wanted to add a piece of collage to give a focal point. I used my large hole punch on my 1965 McCall's Magazine to get these nice gray-ish circles.

 I was really pleased with how this circle laid on TOP of the line fits so perfectly. Doesn't it look like the graphite goes OVER it? It doesn't it. I can't tell you how satisfying it is for me when this kind of thing works out.

 I do think these aren't very minimal, however. Even though only one collage element, too much line work. Today, I'm going to try to minimalize my pieces.  More to come, or rather, Less to come!







My doorbell rang this morning, it was my young neighbor. She handed me an envelope that said "open it" on the back and a cartoon balloon which said "Hello, Mim! Buy a new Dog!" Inside was this note and a feather from a Blue Jay.

 

We'll have to be sure that the next dog we get will be child friendly and like to play ball. See drawing above.

Arthritis Walk

Saturday morning, I joined with my friend and his team of walkers for the Arthritis Walk. It was only 3 miles and it appeared to be a cool morning, which as things go here, got to be a hotter moister morning. But look at the lush view as we started our walk. Beautiful. See my feet, with striped socks and comfy shoes, ready to go? The quartet of women were getting their official photo taken. Lots of walkers brought their dogs, but we didn't. He'd want to smell every new smell and the walk would be three times as long for us. We walked from a medical park, under a roadway, and around the parking lot of a shopping center, which is set in a wooded area, with some slightly hilly places, adding interest to the walk. We didn't time ourselves but moved at a nice clip. It was a good walk.

Dancing shoes

These are my new dancing shoes with leather soles.
I took a photo of my feet as I was doing a salsa step. We'd been to Emilio's and had danced for an hour, it was nearly midnight, but the shoes felt so good that I had to dance a bit in the kitchen before heading to dreamland.