Maddabling: Friday Friends - Australian ETSY sellers

Happy belated Friday dear readers. This post is a little late this week, my sincere apologies ! Work has been crazy busy and other tasks and chores, including blogging seem to have slipped by the wayside, I am hoping for a wonderfully relaxing weekend. Which started off with a brisk walk on the beach watching an amazing sunrise with my hubby and pooch. And, it will be relaxing, except for Sunday afternoon when I will be baking more cupcakes due to popular demand for my workplace to raise more money for the RSPCA ! It will be a combined effort this time with 4 cupcake chefs and we are hoping to raise or better the $80 made from the cupcake day earlier this month.

This week I have a new Friday Friend to introduce to you - meet my dear friend Judy from Travellingbeautifull on ETSY.

Judy is one of my creative muses and has always encouraged me to follow artistic endeavours and also to take my things to market now and then. She has encouraged me to embrace the handmade culture and to nurture my artistic side. I am very thankful to have Judy as a work colleague and as my friend.

Judy creates masterpieces from found and vintage items - I proudly own two amazing steampunk sculptures that she made .......

and I do completely adore Bad Alice ! Isn't she deliciously naughty !

There are lots of vintage shiiiiiiiny things to be found such as "Ruby" the red rhinestone bracelet

and this fabulous Vintage red AB goldtone choker circa 1950/60 would make a wonderful addition to any jewellery collection !

Dear readers, I invite you on a new visual adventure, through the shiny and steampunk world that is TravellingBeautifull. Have a wonderful weekend everyone x

The Travellingbeautifull Chronicle

Who is Travellingbeautifull?

My name is Judy Cecil, and I live and work in Albany, on the South Coast of WA. I am a compulsive maker and keeper. I make jewellery from vintage parts and sparkles and collect just about everything with the view that everything will be re-used eventually.

I love shiny vintage rhinestones, rusty metal, tatty old furniture, textiles, retro and idermy. Old newspapers and comics, handwritten recipes and letters, postcards, and vintage frames. Round eyeglass frames. I live in a cluttered house on the side of the hill overlooking the spectacular Princess Royal Harbour, with a demented little dog I found at a garage sale, who makes me laugh.

How and When did your handmade/artistic journey begin ?

My mother was a dressmaker and a knitter and I remember being given the most beautiful 1950's dresses to cut up and use for dressups - it seems a dreadful pity now but it was great fun at the time. I still knit in winter, and I keep a stash of yarn and vintage fabric for emergency sewing and knitting cravings.

A favourite aunt passed away when I was about 8 and my uncle gave me one of her beautiful 1940's rhinestone brooches. Later that year, I found a little sterling and marcasite ring on the footpath on the way to school. It started there - I still have the brooch and I'm wearing the ring now. In the early 1990's I was browsing a Good Sammy store in Perth and bought 2 huge bags of broken jewellery, buttons, rhinestones - they must have cleaned up and bagged up all the broken bits. I started to put a couple of the mismatched bits together and I haven't really stopped.

What inspires you ?

I think that most things are inspiring in some way- changes in light, shapes of buildings, the ocean, shells, leaves, broken glass on the footpath. Scrunched up metal, paper, fabric. Broken and discarded things. People's faces and the way they move. I get ideas from all sorts of things - colours, shapes, patterns. Random accidents - like dropping a pile of jewellery - can lead to all sorts of interesting pieces, and sometimes I will leave a piece half made for a year or so till the right bit turns up.

I'm fascinated by what people discard. I believe that people need to look around them more and look for those little things that they overlook every day. There are colours and shapes and patterns all around us, even in 'boring' or 'ugly' places. Being creative in some way, every day - by cooking or making or writing or sewing or taking photos or singing or gardening - is so critical to offsetting the stresses of modern life. It doesn't really matter if you don't show anyone what you've done. Make time to play with ideas, and look for the little details as well as the big picture, and you will find something interesting wherever you are.

What kind of things do you make/create ? What mediums do you work with - do you have a favourite ?

I really enjoy the jewellery, but I love drawing ( mainly pen and ink) and I also make sculptures using found objects. I've done a series of starships, which are my view of how the stars move around the night sky. There are also other impossible machines and some dolls from found objects.

Collage also interests me greatly, I just haven't had time to explore it fully just yet. But I am collecting all sorts of materials, just in case. I would love to make books and journals and drawing books. If I had to choose one thing to do, I would pick drawing, simply because it can be so engrossing and there's always something new to learn. My all time favourite medium is paper: collage, papier mache, drawing, writing, painting, origami, kirigami - so much to be done.

Do you have a favourite piece that you have made/created ?

My favourite pieces are those I keep because they remind me of a special place or time - funny little things like an angel made from wire and rusty metal picked up from the footpath, all on one afternoon, and a series of canvases with detritis from a loved beach house renovation and objects found in the sand. There's a dried puffer fish mounted in a frame with sheets of paint scraped from the walls of the beach house prior to repainting.

They usually have some personal connection and I prefer little bits of found objects to souvenirs when I want to remind myself of something or somewhere or someone special. Of course, this sometimes leads to interesting discussions with security at airports ("Are those large rocks in your handbag madam?"). My son brought me a cow skull he found while picking up mallee roots and I think that's pretty special.

What are your future plans/dreams/aspirations ?

I dream of a time when I don't have to go to work in a day job, and can spend of my time working on my Art, travelling, looking. Some friends and I have endless discussions about having a shared space where we can work and sell ours and other people's work - just the power ball and there we are!