Print Preview: Terrariums

I finally kicked the holiday hangover and got back to normal with a little printing action this weekend. I have been stopping in at Amy Merrick's charming blog for awhile, and was amazed when she shared her lovely dresser of terrariums in all of their Victorian-esque glory. For her well-written instructions, visit this how-to she put together on Domino's website-- which is where my terrarium photo a few posts back comes from.

Anyway, Chris treated me to a terrarium day of awesome for my birthday. We drove around town collecting moss, potting soil, gravel, old glass containers and a couple of houseplants, and I spent the rest of the day assembling them into my first terrarium village. I sketched out a fun little print inspired by this process a few weeks ago, but just got around to printing and listing today.

My favorite part of this whole process, like making actual terrariums, was deciding what to 'plant' into my containers. In the end I went with a tropical plant, a little cypress tree, two stalks of jade, and some ivy. You can find this print up on the Etsy shop.

I also printed a small companion edition of the jade in the clamp jar on leftover bits of canvas. I will not be stretching these, but custom matting and framing them instead. In fact, I may even mat and frame some of the larger ones-- I think a heavy wood border will give this print some nice weight. Anyway, here's a sample of what I intend to do with the small ones:


This is popped into a 4x6 frame, I think they'll look a little better matted into 5x7". I will be on the hunt for those in thrift shops tomorrow, and they will be up on Etsy soon as well. I'm getting braver about shipping glass* so I will probably be offering more framed prints on Etsy in the future.

Lastly, here are the prints from my Icy Tundra Trade with Shannon of Loaded Hips.


I received so many compliments on this pair while over the holidays. They hang in our bathroom right between the doorway and a set of shelves.





* My childhood friend Vicky purchased a framed print over the holidays and it got stuck in the package chute at the post office in such a way that the box was taking a direct hit anytime you tried to open the drop box door. I couldn't get it out and couldn't get it to drop down. I ended up leaving a note on the drop box begging for USPS patrons not to bust it open on a Priority Mail address sticker. After all of that it came to her in perfect condition!

Finding Me

I always find out later if my work has been featured anywhere-- like the time I had no clue that my shop was on the front page of Etsy until I found a photo of it after a Flickr search:

(center column, third row)

I had four items in my shop at the time-- all slow sellers that I was growing less fond of by the day and have since taken off of their frames and retired in the lessons learned category.

Such was the case again when a random search turned up this article. A pleasant surprise from the paper of my most recent alma mater. I vaguely remember talking to someone from the Echo-- I think I was still star struck after meeting Jennifer Guerra of local NPR fame.

Anyway, no surprises were necessary after swapping prints with Shannon Buck of Loaded Hips Press last week-- she wrote a lovely post about our Icy Tundra Print Trade in her blog, and I will be returning the favor very soon.

I've also recently started a Flickr account, you can find a brief synopsis of the last six months of my life here.

To answer a few questions ahead of time:
1) yes, we really did canoe that much this summer. we're addicted.
2) the 2 photos of my cat only represent about one half of one percent of the total photos I have of him. my poor coworkers can vouch for this.
3) the big green monster biting Adam's finger is actually a timed sculpture I made with my art team co-workers to benefit the Scrapbox. This is one of my favorite places in town. They have pieces of rubber that cut down like big lino-blocks (but easier!) for $1. They have envelopes for 2 cents each. I most recently found a pack of rounded-corner mat board pieces that I have been printing on and sending along as notes! My plan is to mail off a pack to one lucky blog reader (or maybe my only lucky blog reader, time will tell) so check back for that!

My birthday is this weekend, but I'm still hoping to kick out a new screen print I'm really excited about. Here's a hint-- the theme is terrarium.