Bajemas Scriptorium

These are some new craft items I’ve been working on to sell at our convention and craft show stops this autumn. These keepsakes are multiple purpose items. In their beginning stages, as shown below, they’re a decorative flower swaddled in ribbon and bows that hold a mini-art print and a unique charm. The keepsakes can be kept as is to be used as decorations for such things as being tucked into the soil of a house plant, collect a few of them and put them together as a little & unique bouquet as pictured below, and whatever your creative little mind can drum up.

The flowers in the keepsakes are handmade by my aunt and she paints each using soft color stains and India inks. The sepia colored ones are the coolest. She stains them with tea and then brushes just a hint of black ink along the edges. I made the mini-art tags out of an old French book on Marie Antoinette that is falling apart. The charms are my best attempt to make metal replicas of the various insect themed scissors and skeleton keys I drew for my Etta Diem stories. They’re not perfect yet, but they’re still pretty cute. I made the keepsakes mainly as a way to package the charms and make them look spiffy. Now I’ve grown fond of the items as they are. I keep these around my work space.

I’m currently working on putting my aunt’s shop online. She makes these flowers from scratch out of coffee filters, of all things. She makes them in three sizes, sort of the three bears sizes, pappa, momma and baby bear. She also has some very stunning floral photography. I’ve been combining the photographs and the handmade flowers into different types of scrap-booking kits and gift collections. What I especially like is that she takes requests so I’ve talked her into making a variety of more somber, autumn inspired flowers. I have my “Tim Burton” bouquet she made for me –it’s a variety of black, silver and silver blue blooms wrapped up in striped papers and tied up in pretty black bows. I’m hoping we can accommodate people who fall into my style of tastes… those who really like the whole Martha Stewart projects/home decor, but who prefer darker colors and more spooky, dark Victorian and Halloween themes in their homes.

Anyhoo, it’s been quite some time since I last posted here. I’ve been trying to get some more traditional projects done and get caught up on all these ideas I have. My health has been up and down again, mostly down again this past week. It’s a tad frustrating to me. Of course, art is great therapy, as is writing and I enjoy both no matter what state of mind or ills I am. Oh, and if you like the keepsakes above we’ll mostly be selling them at actual cons and art shows, but I will be putting a few ordering options up for them on the EttaDiem.com store. I’m currently giving that site a good overhaul and better organization. Oh! And let me not forget to mention the strange but squidy cute eyeball critter in the images is a small sculpture of Myke’s. He is the tentacle master.

Etta Diem’s collection of enchanted and cursed sheers

Available as a limited edition metallic print, ordering options found here.

There are many things to be found in Etta Diem’s eccentric attic shop. I remember visiting once where I spent nearly an hour sorting through a shelf full of beautifully crafted bottles — often called Egyptian Tear Catchers. Each of these small and elegantly spun bottles held a small tag that offered a name of the bottle and the properties of the fluids kept inside. One of the most tall and narrow of these bottles, painted an incredibly pearl like black and crimson and extremely beautiful, claimed to contain the tears of a mythical dragon of very old legends. When Etta’s back was turned I did a rude thing on impulse and removed the stopper of the bottle and lifted it to my nose. The smell alone caused my noise to recoil in pain and my eyes instantly watered. Nervously I tipped the bottle a pinch and watched a droplet fall from the bottle and hit the wooden floor with an evil hiss of burning. That one droplet burned clear through the floor, and then through the items that lie in the basement below. I quickly put the bottle back and excused myself from Etta’s shop. So it didn’t even cause me to pause or doubt the strange shopkeep when she showed me her collection of antique and very special scissors. Each elaborately crafted tool that she finds I take up to the Archive and do my best to study and document its cursed or enchanted properties. I drew up the diagram of the individual sheers that Ms Diem currently has in her shop. And below this image I have summed up the things claimed of each sheer. Please admire their eerie beauty, however… I don’t recommend you touch any of them, even for a second… (more…)