Franken Art
Hi friends! Happy Blog Day! It’s crazy how long a week can feel, and it’s definitely felt much longer than 7 days, especially in this case. Much to my surprise I still managed to have viewers on my week off, and I genuinely appreciate the visits and views while I was away. It absolutely made coming back a lot more enticing! Quite honestly, I missed unloading thoughts and I am happy to be back!
For some more honesty, my week off was on account of a number of things, but if we get to the heart of it, I had started to run out of good topic ideas. I had burned through the list I made at the start of this site, and couldn’t think of much more to elaborate on without running in circles around the same topics. That’s something I have very, very little interest in doing, however. In the time off I’ve had a lot of thoughts make themselves present, and now, I have a new list!
I want for this blog to remain as close to the subject of art as possible, and I realize the term can encompass a large range of categories, Thankfully that opens up the stage some, and gives way to allowing me to BS about the places my interest finds itself. One of these interests being, what I will call, “Franken Art”.
I’ve always been rather fond of collecting odd and random things, binding them together in some way and making use of the creation. It stemmed particularly from frugal roots, and watching my elders throw away very little and repurposed items in ways you wouldn’t imagine. So it’s very simple for me to see an afterlife in what most would see as garbage. It also adds a new found meaning to something that could be deemed meaningless, and I very much appreciate that idea.
Seeing things in this way can prove to be problematic when motivation and productivity are lacking. Over the years, I’ve gathered and saved an entire room and closet full of odds and ends, and haven’t exactly made my way through much of it at this point. I’ve taken pretty serious measures to sort and organize my room of treasures, but unfortunately on wildly creative days it gets really out of hand and super quick. (Grandma used to say messiness was a sign of genius, I cling desperately to that lol) Suddenly in the chaos, my collection starts to look a lot more like hoarding, and there’s only one way (in my eyes) to part with all the excess. It means I’ve got a lot of imagining and creating to do. I told myself at the beginning of this year that I would spend very minimal money on art supplies. Between my overgrowing collection and slow business, it made sense to prove my intent upon saving all my random things. I’ve been making good on this little promise I made to myself. It certainly didn’t take long before I realized, I could create for at least the rest of the year off of what I have, possibly longer haha! I have a crazy array of beads, broken jewelry, old watches, ribbons, at least 5 different types of string, old light bulbs, bottles, sea shells, beach sand, stamps, feathers, boxes of mardi gras beads, playing cards, and oodles more! That’s making no mention of the various types of paints, pencils, markers, pastels, chalks, ink, crayons, glitter, epoxy, mod podge etc. Taking inventory has me feeling like Ariel from The Little Mermaid, but with a much less fabulous lair.
I was recently reminded of a company I worked for ages ago that sold a significant amount of recycled and reclaimed items, and did so at a pretty high cost with much success. Being reminded of this (stir in a pandemic with more time home than usual), I decided to focus on creating an inventory of quick and cheap items, and build an ArtShop on my website! If you happened to be keeping up with my previous ramblings, you understand how this is twice as enticing to me, it’s definitely one way to enhance my minimal web design skills, no doubt.
For months I’ve been maneuvering through a lot of obstacles and setbacks, but keeping the focus aimed at my web store goal, I came up with a few affordable art ideas, and have been spending any spare moments hand crafting a new series of items to sell. I’m anxious to say it, but yesterday I officially announced a date for the virtual opening of my ArtShop! And for the time being, I won’t say much more about the recycled and refurbished goodies I’ve been working away at. The virtual shop will officially open October 1st @ midnight CST, at www.artbymikilen.com!
I suppose this is as good of a place to wrap up as any, let’s see how well I make use of my “junk”. Thank you again for taking the time to take in my crazy thoughts, I enjoy spilling my guts for you all to see 🙂 I hope you all have an amazing weekend!!! See you next Thursday.
<3 Miki Len
