Wait A Minute Mister Postman...

Hey Mister Postman ... look and see. Is there an Art Card in your bag for me?

Indeed there is! And not just one ... but three!!! Today's mail brought these wonderful and very thoughtfully packaged ACEOs from Etsy Artist, tapestry316.

Kathleen (aka tapestry316) created "Aslan" in response to an "ACEO Bounty" Challenge to create an ACEO with your favorite character. She says she loves the Narnia stories ... and that "if you haven't read them - by all means, do!"

She created "The Pink Place" in response to a Challenge she initiated to "paint your favorite local landmark." Kathleen lives in Paulden, AZ, and she decided to paint their landmark.

According to the description of this piece, "The Pink Place is a gas station and a small store, and it is where the town started. The original family that settled here lived in this location and the first post office was here, too. It is still, by the way, the only landmark in very rural Paulden, AZ!"

I was especially touched by the story behind this ACEO, titled, "Rain for Simangele."

Kathleen made this card in response to a Challenge to create an ACEO for "a good cause - something that tugs at your heartstrings."

In the description for this very special ACEO, Kathleen writes:

Simangele lives in Swaziland, Africa, where there is a drought, a famine and AIDS claims the lives of too many people. Against all these odds, Simangele wants to grow up to be a doctor. Growing up will be hard, though – and her single mother, who is a school teacher, will have a difficult time helping Simangele go to school to be a doctor.

Kathleen says that she mailed the original of this ACEO to Simangele, with a little personal message to her on the back of it. She is donating all of the proceeds from the sales of this print to World Vision to help children like Simangele all over the world.

If you sponsor a child through either World Vision or Compassion International and you would like tapestry316 to do something like this for your child, please contact her through her Etsy shop. She will paint an original ACEO dedicated to your child and sell the prints to raise money for either World Vision or Compassion International (your choice).

Filling The World With Moments

Today I received not just one, but four ACEOs from Etsy Artist WorldOfMoments as part of my September ACEO Mini Bounty win.

These very special ACEOs (in order of appearance here) are titled, "A Quiet Moment", "Super Whinny", "Buddha Belly", and "Fight, Live, Win."

From her Etsy Profile, we learn that the Artist behind the works available at WorldofMoments is Mel, a mother of "three wonderful children."

Two of her children are on the autism spectrum, as is she.

According to Mel, her store came about "out of daily painting therapy sessions with her two boys to help with sensory issues, ADHD, and imagination building."

She says that she wanted to share the beauty she saw in what they did, and share her own works as well. I find this sentiment to be a very good fit with the WorldOfMoments tagline, "Filling The World With Moments."

Furthermore, ten percent of the sales from each item sold at WorldOfMoments directly benefits The Dockery Foundation in Olive Branch, MS. From time to time, the full proceeds from some items are donated as well.

Mel is a proud member of Etsy for Autism and the ACEsty Team ...

... and now, I am the proud owner of these four fabulous cards from a fabulous Artist an undoubtedly fabulous mother!!

The Art Cards Are Coming ... The Art Cards Are Coming!!!

Today began what is sure to be a wonderful and exciting time for me and my mailbox as the first of the ACEOs that I won in the September Mini Bounty arrived.

This beautiful ACEO by LDphotography is titled "Eastern Goddess." I have always admired LDphotography's photography ACEOs. She has an extraordinary eye!!! Her Etsy Shop contains some of her award winning work both in photography and collage that is available in print or ACEO card form.

I love learning about the lives and experiences of the artists behind the works that they create. The diversity of their backgrounds never ceases to amaze me, and the information I found in LDphotography's Etsy Profile did not disappoint!

In it, she writes, "I am a psychotherapist who specializes in seeing people with ADHD. My creative outlet is photography and art cards, beading, crocheting and gardening. I have been a photographer for over 20 years. I have had public shows in San Diego and Santa Barbara, California and my photographic prints have won awards over the years."

I am proud as a collector and humbled as an artist to now have this beautiful ACEO from LDphotography in my personal collection of ACEOs.

You can see more of her photography up on Flickr and be sure to check out the jewelry she makes in her other Etsy Shop, Althena12 Jewelry and Crafts.

Tiny Art In Toledo

At a wedding I performed this weekend at one of our local Art Galleries I was speaking with one of the Exhibit and Event Coordinators and was pleasantly surprised to find myself discussing the gallery's recent ATC Exhibit and Trading Event.

Even more surprising was an e-mail I received this afternoon from the Exhibit Coordinator & Consignment Contact. In the e-mail, she included a link to an article in our local newspaper, the Toledo Blade, that was published about their recent event. I was so excited to see the publicity generated about ATCs (even though ACEOs were not covered) that I wanted to share the article with all of you!!

You can find the article here.

Also included in the article (if you click on the slide show icon under the picture of one of the cards) is a slide show of 20 of the artists' cards. She said that the photographer took 1 photo of every artist's work. She doesn't know why there are only 20 on the slide show. Also, the caption under the picture in the main article is wrong - the artist of "Froth" is Jim Rich.

Click here to go directly to the slide show.

While the whole article is a great read, there was one little story that I found particularly interesting. One of the artists stated, "I came across artist trading cards two years ago while visiting the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. I paid a dollar for a token and obtained an original piece of artwork from a vintage cigarette vending machine filled with ATC’s."

How cool is that?!?!

So, anyways, if you have a moment check out the article (and the slide show) and know that even in an "artfully challenged" city like Toledo, Ohio, the Art Card scene is growing in interest and popularity!

Best,
Hope

And The Winner Is ... Me!!!

On Monday, September 15, I received a most wonderful and unexpected e-mail from Etsy Artist, bellsakabin, the amazingly talented and ingenious creator of the wildly popular “ACEO Bounty” Challenge. She was writing to inform me that I was the lucky winner of the September Mini Bounty.

What does that mean?

It means that I had won 33 ACEOs from a wide variety of extremely talented Etsy Artists, along with 2 ACEO Mats for framing and 1 cleverly designed ACEO Hanging Display. All in all, not including the shipping costs for these items, my windfall prize was worth $168.43! If you include what would have been the cost for shipping, since I didn't even have to pay for any of that, the overall value of my Mini Bounty Win totals $197.08! That's nearly $200!!!

To be honest, when I first found out about my win, I was feeling more guilty than excited as I have been AWOL from the Bounty Thread on the Etsy Forum for quite some time ... but then I started to think that this event may be a plan enacted by the Universe as a way of jump starting my creative mojo by ensuring that I am surrounded by beautiful and inspiring works from an amazing collection of witty and creatively talented artists!

And really, the timing couldn't be better ... wedding season is slowing down and I should now have some time to work on repaying the Universe by creating some more ACEOs (and Bounty Listings) of my own!! In addition, I will be spreading my Mini Bounty loot around a bit by sharing some of my new acquisitions with some of my friends and family in order to help increase awareness of the fun and beauty of collecting ACEOs!!!

I plan to pay special tribute to all of the Artists who contributed to September's Mini Bounty by sharing the ACEOs here with you as I receive them and also including a bit of information about the Artist(s) that created each one.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to once again say "thank you" to all of the Artists who participated in the September Mini Bounty (and in the greater Bounty Challenge as well) as your artistic vision and generosity have very much helped to get my creative mojo jump started once again!

Best,

Hope (aka harvestorm)

Are You Sick As A Dog?

As I sit here surfing the web and the television at the same time I thought I would pop in and ponder on screen about a phrase I just heard someone utter on a channel I surfed by a few moments ago. I heard this character in whatever show it was claim that they were "sick as a dog" and as I continued my simultaneous T.V./Web surfing I began to wonder why it is that we use that phrase.

I know that "dog" has long been used in a negative or bad sense (like in "dog days," "dog tired," etc.), but why do people say "sick as a dog" and just why is dog used in this negative sense? I thought dogs were supposed to be man's best friend?

This just doesn't seem right. Given their devotion to us, I think dogs have gotten a bad reputation. "Dogs of war," "going to the dogs," "hair of the dog that bit you," "dog in the manger" and the like, are hardly compliments to our canine buddies.

"Sick as a dog," which, to me, means "extremely sick," may not be so much a negative expression, I guess, but is maybe meant to be more descriptive in nature.

I would think that anyone who has or knows dogs knows that while they can and often will eat absolutely anything (and I mean anything!), there are times when their diet disagrees with them and the results can be quite dramatic.

Now, while Americans may consider themselves "sick" when they have a bad cold, in Britain that would be called "feeling ill." "Being sick" in Britain usually means "to vomit." (Isn't it amazing what you can remember from reading some book over ten years ago!)

So, to really appreciate the original sense of being "sick as a dog," I think you would have to imagine yourself seated in the (to be said dramatically, in an upper class British accent) parlor having tea with the Vicar on a lovely Sunday afternoon, (switch back to regular voice) when Fido staggers in from a meal of sun-dried woodchuck and expresses his digestive upset all over your heirloom oriental carpet.

So, Here's To Our Health,
(and to the health of our beloved animal companions),
~harvestorm

Milli Vanilli Said To "Blame It On The Rain" But I Know It Was The Karma Monkeys

Now, it has been a while since I have had to address the issue of Karma Monkeys, as they seem to have been playing by the Cosmic Rules of Karma without incident very well for over a year or so now, but this morning’s moldy coffee incident got me thinking about them again.

So, I decided to take this opportunity to introduce the Karma Monkeys to those of you who are not aware of or have not yet acknowledged the existence of these Keepers of the Karmic Balance.

Not wanting to assume that everyone knows about Karma or the concept behind it I will start from the beginning. The following is an excerpt from The Law of Karma:

“In Buddhist teaching, the law of Karma says only this: “for every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant according as its cause was skillful or unskillful.” A skillful event is one that is not accompanied by craving, resistance or delusions; an unskillful event is one that is accompanied by any one of those things. (Events are not skillful in themselves, but are so called only in virtue of the mental events that occur with them.)

“Therefore, the law of Karma teaches that responsibility for unskillful actions is born by the person who commits them.”

So basically, there are consequences for everything that we do. These consequences will be good or bad, kind of like reward and punishment (but I don’t really think of it that way) based not so much on what we do (which many people think Karma is based on) but more so on our personal reasons or “mental events” that occur with these actions, events, behaviors.

So, now that we understand Karma, we can move on to those who enforce, coordinate, and produce the consequences, or the following “event whose existence was caused by the first.” Someone or something must have this responsibility in some sense, right?

Enter the Karma Monkeys.

There are Orange Karma Monkeys (the harbingers of what some would refer to as bad Karma). It is these Orange Karma Monkeys who hold the positions of those who coordinate, create, and enforce the following “event caused by the first” – which in this case would have been an “unskillful event”. On the other side we have the Green Karma Monkeys who coordinate, create, and bestow “good Karma” rewards for the performance of “skilled events”. Now, the Karma Monkeys are lightning quick and highly skilled at remaining undetected on our plane of existence by using skills that allow them to maintain an ever-present “watch” over us that falls far beyond our simple senses and limited detection capabilities. However, their actions, good or bad, provide more than enough evidence of their existence - as was the case this morning.

Right off the bat, the Orange Karma Monkeys made sure I found the moldy coffee remains first thing, meaning to catch me unexpectedly and off guard in a poor attempt at ruining my entire day by starting it off in such a “bad” way. Didn’t work though. (And I swear I threw out that filter last year… it was just the Orange Karma Monkeys that slyly placed the one I found this morning in my coffee pot, hoping to stop my efforts to take the joy out of their other responsibilities - including the management of the distribution of the Daily Dose of Difficulty which, when followed by my usual Feeling of Frustration and Funk-Up-Ed-Ness, gives the Orange Karma Monkeys great pleasure.)

Mind you, there are rules for Karma Monkeys, but there are also loopholes in these rules (just as there are in almost every set of rules or regulations). The Number 1 Rule that regulates the actions of the Karma Monkeys is that (now, I’m not so sure how often it is checked or if it is just at the end of one’s life this time around) an individual’s Karmic Record must be balanced when the Karmic Auditors come to inspect the Karmic Records. So, being the devious, mischievous, and prankster characters that they are, sometimes the Orange Karma Monkeys will throw the Karmic Records out of balance by dumping a load of “bad” Karma somewhere on someone to prove a point, play a joke, to test an individual (which I believe was the case this morning), or just to mess around because they too get tired of the same-old, same-old, day in and day out.

However, in order to maintain the necessary balance the Orange Karma Monkeys must immediately fill out a form 27b/6 (Tell me why and I’ll buy you lunch. I know the answer, I just wonder if you do ... bloody paperwork) to inform the Green Karma Monkeys of the imbalance created. You see, the Green Karma Monkeys are the only ones who can correct or rebalance the Karmic Record, which must be done before the Karmic Auditors come around.

Now, of course, the Green Karma Monkeys (that, in my opinion, exist in greater numbers than the Orange since people are innately good and therefore the Green Karma Monkeys have more work to do) try to prevent the Orange Karma Monkeys from performing any unwarranted action(s) that would require the filling out of a 27b/6, since correcting the imbalance only adds to their already heavy workload from just keeping up with their daily Karmic duties. However, as much as the Green Karma Monkeys try to prevent such things from happening, occasionally the Orange Karma Monkeys are successful in their plans.

(Note that the Green Karma Monkeys do not perform such regulatory violations as they are aware that in order to balance the Karmic Record an individual would have to endure undeserved “bad” Karma via difficulties, negativity, or whatnot from the Orange Karma Monkeys. The Orange Karma Monkeys don’t give much consideration to the “good” Karma they are inadvertently bestowing on an individual when they commit their illegal offenses - they are too wrapped up in the pleasure they receive from their own destructive disorderliness.)

So, while I was a little thrown by the mold-filled coffee filter fiasco, I have gone on to have a good day thus far, and I am looking forward to the action (however small it may be) that will be taken upon the processing of the 27b/6 for this incident. :-)

So, beware! The paranoids (and the Karma Monkeys) are watching you!

~harvestorm