Filed under: greeting cards, photography | Tags: etsy, greeting cards, michigan, photography
Just read an email from Etsy about their enormously successful March - we’re talking over 400,000 sales totalling over $5.6 million in transactions. In March, people. March alone. More successful than last December. Etsy is insane.
The email also made mention of Etsy Teams, which are often geographically oriented. So I did a double-check on how Michigan is doing. Although we’ve got only one Etsy Team in Michigan (generally based around the Ann Arbor artisan market which begins April 13), Michigan etsies are designing and creating some really beautiful work.
Below is a little round-up and shout out to some favorites!
A super-duper rock star favorite is Alicia Bock, a photographer based in Lansing. Despite the fact that she doesn’t seem all too fond of living in Lansing (check out her recent interview with sfgirlbybay right here), her photography of everything around her results in a feeling of love-of-life, love-of-surroundings. To be honest, the only reason I don’t own an Alicia Bock photograph yet is because I just. can’t. choose. So much beauty.
Next up, another photographer with a totally different angle. Jim of Sweet Juniper fame has recently started selling his crisp and gritty photos of downtown Detroit and they have sold… fast. Only 4 available in his Etsy store right now, as he’s selling individual photos in limited editions, so check back often to grab yours. Jim’s photographs capture Detroit in a very raw and honest way - the result is often vibrant and infatuating.
An ultra-creative friend of an ultra-creative friend is now designing and making beautifully-detailed stationery. Above, Ignafruit’s greeting card with a vintage image of the Eiffel Tower is complemented by a lovely lined envelope. It just looks sooo professional.
I adore this tree-scape greeting card by Siskastudio, which features a range of different greeting cards and stationery.
Red Hydrant Press, located in Grand Rapids, also has a little etsy store including lots of different styles of prints. Above is a set of greeting cards featuring a carved block asparagus print. These cards totally popped out with that fresh spring green!
Lastly, Michele Maule, a printmaker from Pontiac, illustrates her own art cards (ACEOs), including several precious typewriters. Using crisp and poppy colors (lots of aqua + black), her etsy store shows off her very connected work. What that means is… you can’t buy just one precious typewriter print. You kind of have to buy a little collection, because they look so terrific as a little group.
Just learned about the artwork of Chris Kenny, a British artist creating three-dimensional “collage” pieces. I’m almost equally drawn to each of the three veins of his work, so will just have to divide this one up into two separate posts. Above are two of Chris’s three-dimensional poems using twigs to create his type. The delicate twigs are supported by tiny pins, displayed much like a butterfly specimen.
Chris uses twigs in forms other than type, creating mini twig displays - they become miniature twig “figures” and twig studies. Above is Twenty Saints - beautiful.
Another area of Chris’s work utilizes found type in phrases culled from many, many different books. He cuts the tiny phrases into slivers and arranges them into geometric shapes. Again, the found text phrases are suspended above the backing with tiny pins. Besides the stunning visual effect of the various types used, different layering depths and perfect spacing, he arrangement becomes original poetry in its own right. Such a beautiful way to create a three-dimensional poem - I just find this utterly inspiring.
Recipes (above) includes tiny phrases like “do something funny with a potato,” “transfer peas from one cup to another,” “spread peanut butter all over.”
Because my pictures are a bit small, be sure to click here to see them in full detail. (Painstaking detail, that is. Unbelievably intricate work.) Psst - most pieces are sold, but several are still available for sale. Coming up next in part 2 is another chunk of Chris’s art, which has quickly hopped to the top of my favorites.
{via Jen Bradford!}
