Strange and Beautiful

I've become a bit obsessed lately with the paintings of Jeremy Miranda. Who he? you may ask.
Well, I found his work when he was a featured seller on Etsy. The quality of the painting is incredible and I particularly like it when the paintings become narrative. The central theme to quite a lot of the work seems to deal with the relationship we humans have with nature and how we attempt to contain, tame and take ownership of it. He tends to work on series of paintings reworking them several times. The floating greenhouse is so strange and beautiful I can't stop staring at it. I have to warn you that visiting his shop may result in separation from your cash! The paintings are however very reasonably priced - so you can buy 4 like I did!

Soviet Matchbox labels

I have really posted this in response to Roddy and Ginger's blog post. These labels which I got on ebay bear an uncanny resemblance to the folk art pottery she has managed to locate at her local charity shop-lucky her!
These are without doubt soviet in origin since they all have USSR on them. I'm sure someone out there must know more... Some of them are really more than a little odd- in particular the multi-headed horses! I have quite a few more - so let me know if you'd like to see them!
I've just had a quick look on google and found out that they are called Dymkovo toys

Mapping it Out

I am trying to get to grips with all the features of Etsy, some of which I can't quite get my head around. I've had an Etsy shop for ages but have listed things only sporadically and they keep changing the features, so I can't keep up! One of the gadgets they have is the "treasury" where you curate other people's items into collections. Anyway, I've come up a collection of items on the theme of maps.Its called Mapping it Out . It was good fun doing this actually, so I'll probably be doing some more as and when.
Its kind of like pretending you're the editor of a fancy magazine.