Closin' Out 2010 Y'all....

So the month of December is generally the month I have a total nervous breakdown. From the 50 hour a week "day" job, to the craft shows, to the shopping, to the making of presents, gaaaahhhha;ldkjfa;lkdjfa;lkdfa;dkf;alkdfa;lkdf = BREAKDOWN.

So generally blogging is out of the question. But now that the dust has settled I can re-cap the highlights & hopefully get back on the blogging bandwagon. Which I will naturally fall back off of.

LIFE IS CYCLICAL PEOPLE. Gahd.

Sooooo first up was CraftyWonderland. It was awesome. Lots of crafty goodness & frantic shopping. I tested out the new vintage lace bow necklace, the mini-book necklaces & some varying bullet baubles & all were a success! Agnes = Happy. And I had awesome helpers all weekend & visitors & shoppers & junk.

Here's a crappy pic (my phone sucks) of my new & improved booth display. When, in attempting to simplify, I actually made heavier & more complicated. Semantics.

Here's a picture of me (EAT YOUR HEART OUT, STALKERS) most likely scowling whilst setting up. Nobody puts baubles in a corner.

Overall it was an exceptional event, something like 12,000+ people came out over two days. Can't wait for the Spring Show! Honestly, if you haven't gone, you're probably the lamest person on the planet.

I forgive you though.

Next Up: MY KICK ASS CHRISTMAS

Ok...so I love stuff. Particularly moderately creepy things. So imagine my complete feeling of yumminess when I opened THIS:

That. That is Agatha. She's your basic, run of the mill collection of succulents. BUT GROWN FROM BABY DOLL PARTS. And making a cameo are my awesome new Salt & Peppa (they're still ARTISTS people) shakers that I've named "The Twins". It was a baby doll part kind of Christmas. I also got some panda slippers & a headless panda stuffed animal. What I'm starting to realize about myself is that I'm beyond help. I'm ok with this.

And FINALLY: I GOT THESE FOR FREE OHMYGOD.

So, I work for Parks & Rec (yes it's just like the show), and the Special Events crew was cleaning out their room full of useful/useless crap & piling it out in the hallway. Then I spotted them. Perfect little bird cage christmas lights....areyoufuckingseriouspeople.

They were gonna throw these away. THESE. Sheesh.

Needless to say I saved them from certain doom & ran away before anyone could try & claim them. Because they're mine. All mine.

Feast your eyes bitches:

I also did the Handmade NW sale & traded with the lovely MOSS Handmade...which I will rave about in a later post. The bird cage lights are enough for you to drool over in one post. Pace yourself, dear reader (s).

Merry Christmas y'all....

Agnes Friday Y'all...

I've never really understood the whole "black friday" mania. I mean, I get that people want to save money & all that but then when I turn on the news & hear that some poor schmuck was trampled outside a Radio Shack 'cause he wanted $15 off a TomTom I find myself thinking...what the fuck is a TomTom?

Anyholidaymadness...I've decided to throw my creative genius to the sale zombies & do a Black Friday Sale at the Etsy shop.

It will begin on Midnight Thursday night & end at Midnight on Friday.

Get to it kids.

Here's what you do.

1. Go find a bauble you lurv.

2. Click Buy, or Add to Cart or whatever it says (come on people)

3. When it takes you to all the payment junk, it'll ask for a Coupon Code...enter BLACKAGNES (see what I did there?) & you'll get 15% off that bauble you were lurving.

4. That's it...the rest is up to me & my ability to ship things in a timely matter

Let the madness begin! No really, you should take advantage of this because after the Crafty Wonderland sale I may only have like 3 necklaces left & then you'll be pissed.

This is my crazy black friday sale picture.

My New Favorite Listing

Those of you that know me know I rarely ever do "little & simple"...It's just not in my repertoire. However, I found these little horsey charms at the last antique fair & challenged my need to GO BIG OR GO HOME and made THIS little bauble. Once it's gone, it's gone folks!

If you lurv it, you better snag it.

Busy Busy Busy...

I will now take a break from being "photographer" Agnes & be "bauble maker" Agnes. Deal with this.

I totally got in to

Crafty Wonderland.

Which is freakin' awesome & I'm waaaaay too excited for this. I've been busy people...no really, I've actually been doing stuff.

For example....I made freebies:

Over 300 to be exact. THREE HUNDRED. That's alotta buttons. Just sayin'...

All those bad boys will be handed out to the lucky first 150 shoppers on each day! Get there early...or come buy something from me ( I give the extras away with purchase). Me = awesome generous. For realz.

THEN. I made an ad to go in the Crafty promo guide they're putting in something like 40,000 copies of The Mercury. BAM. Mass advertising y'all!

You don't even have to tell me how cute that is...I totally already know.

Website Launched in 3, 2, 1...

Awwww yeah I built me a website. With the patient help of Lettuce Press' Allison & her awesome hubby, I was able to build THIS little gem. I also discovered that I am a horrible word-mixer-upper & have spent my whole life saying stupid crap wrong like "intensive purposes" & "detrius". I sincerely hope you are all entertained by this...

Anyway....

WWW.AGNESBAUBLES.COM

is officially here!

It's your one-stop shop for all your Agnes-made things.

The House I Couldn't Find...But Then Did & It Was Totally Awesome

Soooo lately my alter ego bauble making self has been making a lot of sparkly things. Rhinestones, crystals...you know, SPARKLY THINGS. Which I'm pretty sure chicks love...it's an Audrey Hepburn thing. Case in point:

Anyway BECAUSE I've been making all these sparkly things I decided I needed to do a bridal-esque shoot to showcase them.

Problem #1: I have no wedding dress. No, you weirdo, I'm not gonna go buy one 'cause that's creepy. I already have 2 birds & a cat. It doesn't take much for "eccentric" to turn into "oh god there's that bird lady who wears the wedding dress to the grocery store". Trust.

Problem #2: There's this house I found once that I reeeaaaally wanted to do the shoot at but I couldn't remember where it was. I even drove around for like 2 hours trying to find it. Alas...

I did, however, have an awesome model. I also happen to be her boss so I was all like "hey, wanna be a model?", and she was all like "yeah" because I'm super authoritative & stuff.

Problem #3: Said model has shorter hair...long hair is awesome so we decided that we would buy hair extensions. This made me uncomfortable. See below...

The day before the shoot I managed to find my little crooked house on google earth (thank you for this somewhat unsettling advance in technology, smart people) & was SO happy 'cause ohmygodthathouseisawesome.

Then...the dress. Well, I already have all these cute vintage slips & dresses so I just packed those then turned my attention to my tulle curtains in my closet. Then...because they were white & boring...I did this:

Sorry, those are totally my boobs at the bottom of the picture. Didn't notice til now.

EAT YOUR HEART OUT PEOPLE. Moving on...

I dyed them curtains a blush pink...

Then....the short haired model. I BOUGHT A WEAVE Y'ALL. Seriously. I bought a real human hair weave. It was a scarring experience to say the least. Mainly because all I can think is where the eff did they get the hair? Are there hair sweatshops with like baby Cambodian girls taking vitamins & shit? I don't want to know honestly.

I have a new found respect for all those reality show girls that have their weaves ripped out in fights though. That hair gets sewn on clips (I sewed them myself thankyouverymuch) then clipped in your hair. That HURTS to get ripped out. The price paid for beauty is steep folks...STEEP.

**Really feelin' the CAPS lock key today...

So once the house was found, the weave was purchased & clipped in, the dress was make-shifted & the necklaces were packed in the car, we did THIS:

We also took some more "everyday" wear shots which I am also particularly fond of...

As always, jewelry is available HERE...but my website is getting launched super duper soon so keep an eye out for that!

I Shot A Wedding.

A surprise wedding no less. No really, like people showed up for a BBQ & ended up watching a wedding. It was pretty cool.

Here are some of my fave shots...

Lettuce Photograph Lettuce Press Stuff

This post deserves a back story, by the way. Feel free to read or scroll...just know that if you scroll without reading I'll know & judge you & probably won't like you anymore.

For those of you that know me, you know that authority is not really..."my thing". I don't take direction well, I hate people telling me what to do, & for the most part I will refuse to do something if it doesn't fit in to my schedule. (Please note: my schedule includes setting aside copious amounts of time to watch things like Teen Mom & Hoarders)

This being said, you can imagine that school really wasn't the best fit for little Agnes. Here's how college went for me: I showed up, got a cat, then quit. Now during my brief stint in higher education I met this awesome chick named Allison. She was crafty & short & taught me how to fold jeans the right way & junk. We ended up living together for a little while until my soon-to-be-obese cat peed all over her bed & I moved back to Portland (not from the pee, just 'cause I liked sleeping more than statistics). She went on to normal school-type activities like, you know, GRADUATING, and I got a job taking pictures of kids in a mall. Hey...we all have our paths people. Mine just included riding the studio tricycle prop down the mall hallway so I could get some cotton candy. Me = Class. Be jealous.

Anyofftopic, after *bleep* years of unintentionally not-talking little Allison (who lived in Tacoma, WA) signed up for the Crafty Wonderland show with her ridiculously cool Lettuce Press printing & our creative brains were fatefully reunited. NOW, you need to know that when I say "letterpress", I don't mean whatever little rinky dink letterpress you can buy down at PaperZone. I mean one of those 2 ton, made in 1800 & whatever, AMAZING letterpresses. And this greedy biatch has TWO.

Is that not fully awesome? Yeah. Yeah it totally is.

And she prints things like F* You & beating hearts which is astronomically cool in my book.

She moved to P-town shortly thereafter so I took a trip to her studio & took pictures....

Her creations are available HERE. I highly recommend purchasing some goodies. I, personally, turn in my rent check with the F* You cards.

How sweet are these typeset drawers?! Gah...so great. I want to live in them.

**Pretty sure that says "Thank You" in braille. Er...something. It doesn't really matter. At least SOMEONE cares about blind people, right? Right.

I love this old machine. I have no clue how it works even though Allison showed me...

She also does wedding invites!!! I plan on buying a puppy instead of a husband so wedding details aren't my expertise. But I'm pretty sure you need invitations. And if I end up marrying my dog I'm totally having her print my invitations.

In all seriousness (this is hard for me people), Allison is by all accounts an ARTIST. I've known her for like 10 years now & everything I've ever seen her make is clean, classy, fresh (both in the springy clean way AND the hip-hop way) and new. Which is rare to see honestly. It's been a treat being able to mesh creative brains & I look forward to more collaborations to come! Jeez I hate being genuine...sarcasm is so much safer. Like a cozy warm woobie.

You can also follow her blog HERE.

Senior Pictures: Agnes Style

So when I think back on the senior pictures taken "in my day" I think of lots of soft focus, maybe some granny hand-beneath-chin type poses & a generally LAME experience. In some ways, times haven't changed TOO much since then when it comes to the dreaded senior pic. I realize that mommies & daddies like that stuff but, to be honest, this blog isn't about them. It's about ME. And how great I am. So below you will see my dude-version of the senior picture. It has a sweet ass car...and industrial shit...and...and... MANLINESS.

Eat your hearts out peeps....

Ok ok...so the paper heart picture isn't manly. Shut up. I'm a girl & I like hearts so I made him do that one.