Sunday, April 24, 2005

Shopping is an Olympic Event!

Yesterday my new friend Janice and I went down to Bellingham for the monthly ATC swap and to shop. I took her to all my favourite stores and we had a shopping good time. I love to shop in the States-there are always things I find that I can't find at home. Here's the laundry list of what I bought for those of you who would be amused by such things:
-The Mini Stack by Provo. 144 sheets of 6x6 printed papers for a mere $5.99
-7 Gypsies Love Amour sticker sheet-fun!
-Collage Cards & Mini Books by Design Originals
-A beautiful Buddha rubber stamp-Bankok Post by Stampington (from Stampadoodle!)
-a package of 5 Dymo tapes in red, blue, green, orange and gold for $4.99
-four large wooden spools (50C each)

At the ATC swap one of the ladies had a trunk full of old Bellingham newspapers. Apparently she knew this doctor who recently died at the age of 90. When he family went to clean out his home, they found a whole box of old newspapers and were just going to take them to a recycling depot. She asked if she could have them and they said yes. They also sold her a dictionary (a HUGE one) from the 1880's for $2. She brought the whole box to share with everyone so I went out to her car with her and got a stack for Janice and I. I just had a very quick glance through the stack, but there are some papers there from the 60's and the ads are fantastic-all the old cars! She also gave us some dictionary pages. I haven't had time to go through everything yet, but I am excited about what I will find. I was hoping to have some old authentic ephemera for the Artwerx class I am taking in August, so I am going to pick through them carefully and clip what I want to save for this purpose.

Have I mentioned lately that one of the things I love best about the altered art community is the fact that people SHARE?!? I think this is one of the best things about this type of art. Everyone has such a generousity of spirit and it just makes for some very happy times and good friends.

The ATC swap was busy. There was a large group that came in from Mulkilteo, Wa. to swap with us. It was kind of funny because we walked into Fantasia and I spotted the group in the back (a bunch of ladies with binders, so I knew they were ATCers) but I didn't recognize any of them. Most of the regular Bellingham crowd wasn't there, which was odd. Anyway, they warmed up pretty quickly and the swapping got underway. I did a quick head count at one point and there were 22 of us there. I think a couple more wandered in later, but I lost track. If the regulars had all shown up, there would have been about 30 there. As it was, we about took over the restaurant.

I was excited to find Jan's books in stock at Stampadoodle. They had a very nice display of them and had also got the matte blank board books in. It's exciting to see a book on a shelf in a store and know your art is living between the covers. That made me enormously happy. I mentioned it to Wendy who owns the store when I saw her later at the ATC swap. She didn't know I had art in those books. *If you are looking for Jan's books, you can order them directly from her web site. Just go to my links page-I have listed her there.*

Anyway, that is my weekend thus far. I am heading out to Vancouver shortly to begin teaching another round of my 6 session AB class. It's a bit cooler today for which I am glad. Yesterday it was HOT-at least 23C and we were too warm all day long. Lots of the stores we were in were really muggy. Janice and I were thirsty practically the whole day. I told her I was beginning to wonder if I had distemper. ROFL!

I hope all of you are having a relaxing and artful weekend!

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