New year, new jewelry

I just made a huge upload of new jewelry to The Bone Forest Collection – 19 necklaces and 2 bracelets! Here you’ll find antler burrs and tines, bones of sheep, deer, elk, coyote, opossum, raccoon, skunk, mink, and bobcat, dog teeth, coyote claws, a preserved squirrel paw, and a whole mink skull! All nestled amidst sparkling glass jewels and stones such as garnet, magnesite, lava rock, onyx, quartz and jasper. Come see what the Bone Forest has to offer:

Jay Long and Andy Kehoe

A couple of new artists to share with you today. The first is Jay Long, whose work has sort of a “dark surreal carnivalesque” vibe.

"Chat Botte"

"Magic Flute"

"Coniglio"

And next is Andy Kehoe, whose work would be perfect as illustrations to the most amazing children’s book ever about dark spirits who live in the woods. And, he has an Etsy shop!

"Lord of Ghouls"

"Revel in the Wild Joy"

"Vessel of Venom"

Felted Skulls

Just have to share these amazing felt sculptures of animal skulls by the talented Stephanie Metz. Two of my favorite things – the resonance of bones, the texture of felt – brought together with astounding skill:

   

Her other work is extraordinary too, such as this:

Skulls and Pelts

Check out the new additions to Goblinesquerie… there’s a cute little case-skinned ermine (not pictured), a lush, gorgeous otter pelt, a great old pig skull, and my absolute favorite – an African warthog skull! Not your everyday find. Come see the treasures I have gathered for you:

More treasuries

Honored to be included in these great Etsy treasuries:

Carved Elk Antler & Freshwater Pearl Necklace from The Bone Forest Collection, featured in the DEER Inspiration treasury by YarnworksbytheCreek

 

 

 

Real Bone Cone Incense Burner 2 from Goblinesquerie, featured in the My Lovely Bones treasury by earthmama9009.

 

 

 

Whole Coyote Jaw Bone Jasper Beaded Necklace from The Bone Forest Collection and Vintage Copper Cuff Bracelet with Coyote Tooth from Goblinesquerie, both featured in the SHOW YOUR BONES treasury by Amyrose Ahlstrom 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: the bird and rabbit skulls from the last post are all gone! But I still have several pigeon wings, and will be uploading some new treasures in the next week or so, including a pretty exciting and fairly rare skull.

Wings and Skulls

Just uploaded a few new items to the Goblinesquerie shop – three rabbit skulls (from humanely raised meat rabbits), and three wings and ten skulls from a batch of pigeons! The wings range from white to mottled brown to gray and were dried for months in borax to preserve them. The skulls are fascinating to me, as I rarely get to work with birds. They make such a great collection all together, but you can buy just one of course.

Expect to see more “raw” animal bits at Goblinesquerie now and then, as I often have more than I can use for my own art. And I know some people might want just a plain skull or other piece to use in their own work or make into a ritual item themselves.

By the way, I’m donating 50% of proceeds from the pigeon wings and skulls to a local avian rehabilitation center, so your purchase will go to help rescued birds!

Kywitt! Kywitt!

I’ve got another strange musical discovery to share today – the Russian ensemble Caprice, whose new album “Kywitt! Kywitt!” is… well, very strange. I can’t even say that I like all of it. Rather, I obsessively like two songs on it enough to justify making this post. Apparently this group’s previous trilogy of releases was “an attempt to show what the music of the parallel world of Faerie sounds like” – while I haven’t heard those, I can say that this description seems fitting for these particular songs on this album as well. Enticing voices sing in several different languages and not all of them sound human. The instrumentation is unusual, a combination of Ren Faire and electronica. I can’t think of anything to compare it to. I love it.

The title song, “Kywitt! Kywitt!” is actually based on a fairytale, a Grimm offering called The Juniper Tree. It is sung in German, for the most part. The lyrics are straight from the tale, a very gruesome one as you can gather:

“My mother she killed me /My father he ate me / My sister, little Marlinchen / Gathered together all my bones / Tied them in a silken handkerchief / Laid them beneath the juniper-tree”

The other song I’m currently playing several times a day is Dundellion Wine. I can’t say the lyrics make a lot of “sense” but they feel somehow meaningful nonetheless. There is a lot of repetitive rhyming that is almost trance-inducing. The music itself is a mad rollick, punctuated by a variety of goblinesque voices during one part.

“It’s quarter to nine / Dinner time / Come and try / Dundellion wine/ All soundss are blind / All colors are white / All numbers are nine / Dundellion wine”

If it’s dundellion (dandelion?) wine they’re drinking that’s done this to their minds, I think I need to try some of that.

A couple new treasuries

Goblinesquerie has been featured in its first treasuries on Etsy! Thanks to the curators for including me.

“Real Coyote Skull Chalkboard” is featured in the Contrast treasury by Anji Marth Resonanteye (a fellow Oregonian bone-collector)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Real Bone Cone Incense Burner 1” is featured in the Brittle Little Bones treasury by Layne Mikesell

 

 

 

 

 

 

[By the way, tomorrow marks the one month mark for my little goblin shop - thanks to everyone who has favorited items, and the shop itself, added me to treasuries, and most of all purchased things! Stay tuned for more good stuff - I've got an upload planned soon to de-stash some awesome skulls, bones and wings.]

Small update: shop name-change

If you go visit my first Etsy shop, you’ll notice that it’s now officially called The Bone Forest Collection, with a corresponding brand new Etsy URL: www.TheBoneForest.etsy.com.

This is thanks to Etsy’s new policy that allows shop name-changes. When I first began imWalde, that name was taken on Etsy so I chose to use my moniker “The Bog Witch” as the shop name instead. Later, I started calling my specific line of beaded bone jewelry “The Bone Forest” (after a Robert Holdstock story, by the way), thinking I might eventually start a second shop for other work (which I recently did: Goblinesquerie), all under the umbrella of imWalde. But I was stuck with the original URL. Now, all is as it should be. All old links will still work, and redirect to the new address.

And let me just take this chance to remind you that in addition to the new crafts at Goblinesquerie, I’m still offering a lovely collection of jewelry over at The Bone Forest, with sparkling beads and interesting animal parts such as tiny squirrel bones, a whole coyote jaw, carved elk antler, beaver claw, and many other curiosities! Come see what’s currently available.

Goblinesquerie

For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men

["Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti]

imWalde is proud to announce a new shop (companion to The Bone Forest Collection) called GOBLINESQUERIE, which features curious and creepy artefacts from the forest’s underbelly – assemblage jewelry, ritual implements, decorative art, and any other thing the night creatures might uncover.

Expect plenty of animal bones in the mix, along with wool, leaves, crystals, copper, wood, clay, silver, leather, and other enticing materials. Here you might find skulls becoming art, antler and felt transformed into jewelry, and strange objects for a curiosity cabinet or natural history collection.