Dear Deer Designs

When a mischievous sense of humor, fine-tuned illustrations and environmental consciousness collide the ingenuous cards/finger puppets and gift tags/bookmarks at Dear Deer Designs are the result. With a Dear Deer finger puppet greeting card you can make a host of literary luminaries including Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare “dance, dance, dance” any time, night or day!

“It’s about fun. Lots of fun!” says Dear Deer Designs founder, Dan Leanio, “At Dear Deer Designs, we provide unique cards and stationary items with an air of sophisticated silliness. I hope these creations will put smiles on faces everywhere they go.” One look at his catalogue of creations and it’s clear that his mission has been accomplished.

In addition to detailed artwork and a generous helping of good fun, this shop also features a distinct attention to sustainability and reuse in all aspects of the shop. “We focus on making items with extended life cycles, and only use one hundred percent post consumer recycled papers,” explains the owner of this Minneapolis-based shop, “So a greeting card is also a finger puppet, a gift tag becomes a bookmark, and a tree stays a tree.” Like so many of the truly wonderful things in life, a Dear Deer Design creation is much more than it first appears to be.

To learn more or to purchase an item from this shop, please visit:

http://www.deardeerdesigns.etsy.com

(All Images courtesy of Dear Deer Designs. From Top:"Oscar Wilde - Finger puppet Greeting card,""Tattoo - Gift Tag and Bookmark," "Shakespeare - Finger puppet Greeting card" back view).

Roses and Strawberries

"Then she became aware of the spectacle she presented to their surprised vision: roses at her breasts; roses in her hat; roses and strawberries in her basket to the brim. She blushed, and said confusedly that the flowers had been given to her. When the passengers were not looking she stealthily removed the more prominent blooms from her hat and placed them in basket, where she covered them with her handkerchief. Then she fell to reflecting again, and in looking downwards a thorn of the rose remaining in her breast accidentally pricked her chin. Like all the cottagers in Blackmoor Vale, Tess was steeped in fancies and prefigurative superstitions; she thought this an ill omen--the first she had noticed that day."


~from Tess of the D'urbervilles  by Thomas Hardy

The Love Shop

Has your "get up and go"got up and gone?  Do you find yourself wishing for simpler times or divine guidance? Are you concerned that your bad mood is keeping you from getting all the nutrients from your multivitamin? If so, look no further than The Love Shop for remedy. Effervescent, expertly-designed prints will lift your spirits and bring a pop of personality to even the most austere living space. Based in Melbourne, this shop brings together dynamic messages, eloquent images and all-encompassing good karma. “This shop is my attempt at giving a little love to you and the world,” explains the founder of the Love Shop, “I’ve experienced some very challenging times over the past few years and throughout those times when things looked dark, I grabbed a hold of love and held on for dear life. I noticed that when I focused on love, I felt better. This was when the idea for the Love Shop was born.”

Literary inspiration for Love Shop artworks is varied, from Jane Austen and Edgar Allan Poe to the Beatles and the artist herself. A selection of matte and glossy archival papers in a range of easy-to-frame sizes make a poster or limited edition print from this shop a great gift for any occasion. It’s difficult not to feel renewed zest for life when looking at the gorgeous colors and uplifting messages that each artwork celebrates. But then that’s the point:

“I love nothing more than to utilise my experience in designing to create what I hope are artworks that bring you joy (and if I’m very lucky, maybe even inspire you). That’s my intention anyhow.”

Feel the love on Etsy by visiting:

http://www.theloveshop.etsy.com

or on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/yaytheloveshop

(Images from top: ""Love Poe" featuring two star crossed crows," "Deer Birdy," and "Bewitched" print in French Blue. All images courtesy of The Love Shop)

A Late St. Patrick's Celebration

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.


~from A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man by James Joyce

The Black Spot Books

Like the London fog that shrouds everything in a Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, objects found in The Black Spot Books are touched with the marks of antiquity and care. Margaux Kent, the founder of this shop describes her penchant for materials with a history, explaining that she likes to work with “treasures found and recovered from misfortune and neglect, relics of the unusual, the confused and the macabre, cut and pulled and bound into wearable curiosities and inscribable keepsakes.”

The hand-bound book receives new life in the hands of this Philadelphia-based artist in more ways than one. Lined with hand-torn and individually stitched pages, the uniquely tactile journals and notebooks are also produced in miniature as petite charms and utilitarian necklaces. The components for these books come from myriad sources: “The leather I use has been bartered from farms in Ecuador, ripped from old chairs in Holland, taken from boots and shoes and saddles and bags and wallets, and found in abandoned houses across the United States,” says Kent. This practice not only adds a nostalgic mystique to these items, but makes them both green and animal-friendly.

In addition, this shop offers an assortment of found and vintage objects crafted into delicate jewelry, Victorian curiosities and intriguing prints and photographs.

To learn more about The Black Spot Books or to purchase items from this Etsy shop, please visit:

http://www.TheBlackSpotBooks.etsy.com

Also, please visit this shop on Twitter, Facebook and Blogspot:

http://twitter.com/TheBlackSpotBks


http://www.facebook.com/people/Margaux-Kent/1347784159


http://www.theblackspotbooks.blogspot.com/

(Images from Top: Autumnal Library 11 antique and scrap leather books for the neck black walnut, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, crimson, sap green and soot; The Jellyfish 1885 Victorian etching journal covered in vintage deerskin; The Hester Pryne Necklace. All images courtesy of The Black Spot Books.)