Yeah. Assuming I a: have fans at all, b: number of fans > 1, c: actually adore me.
Anyway. I wasn't at the farmer's market yesterday because I wasn't feeling well. I'm much better today, just a bit tired. Note to self: don't eat there on a day you need to go somewhere.
***
I did, however, make more progress on the mosaic, and now I remember why I stopped.
Basically, the red tiles that I'm using must have come from a different manufacturer than all my other tiles, because instead of having these straight lines across the back (really easy to trim to shape), they have some kind of waffle pattern, and there's no guarantee what kind of shape you're going to end up with. I have a number of pieces that look like Massachusetts, which would be fine except I was going for squares...!
If you're curious, red, yellow, and orange tend to cost much more than other glass mosaic tiles, because of the pigments used.
Also if you're curious, I got mine from wonderfully nice people in New Jersey who operate Mosaic Glass Tile Enterprise. I never realized there were so many different KINDS of glass tiles available to the people who make kitchen backsplashes or, y'know, restrooms in shopping malls and theaters.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Whee!
Categories:
coming soon,
henna,
mosaics,
none of the above,
origami
Global-fest, Global-fest, oh global Global-fest
Global Fest!
*pop*
Ba-dum bum bum...
Saturday August 30, Morton Community Center!
I really want to attend this, and the coordinator really wants to have me!
BUT, I'm not officially booked quite yet - all that is pending feedback from a planning committee.
Hopefully I'll be allowed to charge a *little* bit of money while I'm there. If it looks like I won't have any chance to at least earn lunch money, I'll probably end up heading to an event up near Chicago instead. That won't be a henna thing, that will be a chance to see friends I haven't visited with in close to a year.
Excited!
***
I managed to add about five red tiles to the mosaic that has been sitting unfinished on my project table since about November. Yes yes, and you should see the state of my flower beds and the pile of clean-yet-not-put-away laundry, too.
***
On that note, there's a nifty book out titled Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, that has me all curious and intrigued. I plan to check it out of the library as soon as it comes back in. Basically, the idea is that your personality affects everything from what you like to wear to how you like to decorate, and to a trained eye that means we leave clues about ourselves all over the place. The book sort of explains those clues, and how they can be "read back" to find out about the personality who left them.
Right now, my house isn't saying anything too flattering, but I'm working on it. I'm just thrilled to finally have my CD collection alphabetized, and to have started consolidating all the books we own into one big stack so I can start sorting them as well.
***
I am a nerd.
Most people who make origami go for flowers or little birds and things, right? I am learning how to make flat, regular polygons (octagons, pentagons, all those), which I then will be able to join together to make three-dimensional shapes like cubes, pyramids, dodecahedrons, and other crazy things.
My brain is enjoying a trip back to Geometry-land for the first time since, oh, 11th grade.
I am SUCH a nerd.
Global Fest!
*pop*
Ba-dum bum bum...
Saturday August 30, Morton Community Center!
I really want to attend this, and the coordinator really wants to have me!
BUT, I'm not officially booked quite yet - all that is pending feedback from a planning committee.
Hopefully I'll be allowed to charge a *little* bit of money while I'm there. If it looks like I won't have any chance to at least earn lunch money, I'll probably end up heading to an event up near Chicago instead. That won't be a henna thing, that will be a chance to see friends I haven't visited with in close to a year.
Excited!
***
I managed to add about five red tiles to the mosaic that has been sitting unfinished on my project table since about November. Yes yes, and you should see the state of my flower beds and the pile of clean-yet-not-put-away laundry, too.
***
On that note, there's a nifty book out titled Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, that has me all curious and intrigued. I plan to check it out of the library as soon as it comes back in. Basically, the idea is that your personality affects everything from what you like to wear to how you like to decorate, and to a trained eye that means we leave clues about ourselves all over the place. The book sort of explains those clues, and how they can be "read back" to find out about the personality who left them.
Right now, my house isn't saying anything too flattering, but I'm working on it. I'm just thrilled to finally have my CD collection alphabetized, and to have started consolidating all the books we own into one big stack so I can start sorting them as well.
***
I am a nerd.
Most people who make origami go for flowers or little birds and things, right? I am learning how to make flat, regular polygons (octagons, pentagons, all those), which I then will be able to join together to make three-dimensional shapes like cubes, pyramids, dodecahedrons, and other crazy things.
My brain is enjoying a trip back to Geometry-land for the first time since, oh, 11th grade.
I am SUCH a nerd.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Not a marketing thing...
Categories:
none of the above
Technically, since this site is intended to be about the various artsy-fartsy things I do, I probably ought to stick with happy marketing things and stay away from the personal or the potentially offensive. But you know, the blog is mine, and the intent I set it up with was my own idea and therefore subject to the occasional random exception to the rules.
For instance:
There will be a party scheduled in January at my house (even if my candidate doesn't win the election - Bush being gone is enough to make me heave a sigh of relief). Details to follow.
For instance:
There will be a party scheduled in January at my house (even if my candidate doesn't win the election - Bush being gone is enough to make me heave a sigh of relief). Details to follow.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
New directions
I got a phone call last night to work a bridal shower! I'm not sure which is more exciting - that I'll be doing the shower, that the lady heard about me from two different sources, or that I finally figured out a party rate that I think will be fair for all parties.
For those curious: Parties consist of a non-refundable $30 booking fee, and then a design-per-guest charge which the HOST gets to set. For example, if you want your eight-year-olds to have simple designs, you would probably be looking at $2 to $5 per kid. For something bigger and fancier, oh I don't know, say a bridal shower?, you might consider something like $10 per guest to cover more detailed or larger work.
I REALLY like this structure, because the host gets to determine how much they are willing or able to pay, thus how detailed the work will be for each of their guests. I get an idea ahead of time of how much work I will be expected to do, and the guests themselves have the opportunity to pay for any additional work at a reduced price, since the host will be covering the first part of the design cost.
(In other words, if you want a $15 design, and your host has covered $10 of that, then you would only need to pay $5 to make up the difference.)
***
I'll have to add more later about the "new directions" I'm going with books, origami (husband is already rolling his eyes), and a nifty book I just learned about titled Snoop. At the moment I'm on the verge of being late for a doctor's appointment that has been rescheduled twice now. Stupid physicals.
For those curious: Parties consist of a non-refundable $30 booking fee, and then a design-per-guest charge which the HOST gets to set. For example, if you want your eight-year-olds to have simple designs, you would probably be looking at $2 to $5 per kid. For something bigger and fancier, oh I don't know, say a bridal shower?, you might consider something like $10 per guest to cover more detailed or larger work.
I REALLY like this structure, because the host gets to determine how much they are willing or able to pay, thus how detailed the work will be for each of their guests. I get an idea ahead of time of how much work I will be expected to do, and the guests themselves have the opportunity to pay for any additional work at a reduced price, since the host will be covering the first part of the design cost.
(In other words, if you want a $15 design, and your host has covered $10 of that, then you would only need to pay $5 to make up the difference.)
***
I'll have to add more later about the "new directions" I'm going with books, origami (husband is already rolling his eyes), and a nifty book I just learned about titled Snoop. At the moment I'm on the verge of being late for a doctor's appointment that has been rescheduled twice now. Stupid physicals.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
This, that, and the other
Categories:
bookmaking,
good times,
henna,
mosaics,
origami,
scribal,
writing
The Mosey Down Main Street was roughly two weeks ago now, and I still haven't put up photos. Oh, naughty me. The problem is that I have about a zillion pictures of the clients I worked on through the evening, and I loved just about every design I did. The whole atmosphere was terrific. I had a blast, and made double the money I've earned at any prior gig. I figured I'd have to wrap up once things got dark, but it turns out I was perfectly placed to take advantage of the light from the storefront behind me, and the streetlight across the way. The event ran till midnight, and I finally decided I was done around 11pm.
***
My family and I spent the holiday weekend with my parents, along with my brother and his family, getting ourselves drenched, waterlogged, bruised (I whacked my elbow HARD exiting one of the water slides), and thoroughly exhausted playing around at Splash Universe up in Shipshewana. Bigtime Amish community, world-famous flea market... and a water park. *shrug* Okay.
One unexpected highlight of the weekend was when my mother mentioned that the books she had ordered for my birthday present had finally come in, after being on backorder for three weeks. I had forgotten all about the backorder, so receiving books out of the blue like that was terrific. Even more so, since they were both how-to books for making other books, by Cheryl Moote. The first is titled Simply Bound: Beginnings in Bookbinding, and the second, Sleight of Binding, has more fun stuff, like "books" with hidden pages, pockets, jacob's ladders, and so on.
Of course, I started playing with these as soon as I got home, and of course, got interested first in the origami Chinese Sewing Kit. It's a series of (kinda) simple origami boxes that are stacked and glued in such a way that the whole thing is very compact, but opens to reveal layers upon layers of storage for needles, buttons, etc. Except Cheryl Moote uses it as a nifty book/journal/greeting gift kind of thing; you can hide messages in each of the boxes, pressed flowers, stamps, tiny drawings, whatever. So it turns into a kind of treasure packet.
Most of the things in these books are not really related to origami at all... but between the Chinese Sewing Kit and the meander-books, I've gotten interested, again, in playing with paper. In 8th grade or so, I learned how to fold an origami horse (me, horse-crazy? nahhhh....), and of course the notorious "cootie catcher" fortune teller. Now with the scrapbooking industry being what it is, gorgeous paper is everywhere, and there is quite a lot of info out there for "scrappers" to make origami additions to their pages, along with popup engineering and who knows what else. I'm heroically resisting getting into scrapbooking - like I need something else to spend money on - but the origami and the pop-up stuff fascinates me.
***
I mentioned something called a meander-book. Meanders are booklets made of zig-zag folded paper (aka "accordion folds") that unfold in crazy directions, rather than just in a straight line. Since they go all over the place, they're great for representing a little trip, or a story about traveling, or - this was my inspiration - "cumulative folktales".
It sounds fancy, but you already know what cumulative stories are:
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt....
Or, here's another one:
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to meeee...
Cumulative tales exist all around the world, and they're a lot of fun. I got the idea of creating a meander book and using the text of some cumulative story or other. As you unfold a meander, the pages don't disappear the way they do in regular books, so page two will show you page one as well.
Weeeellll, I made a test meander out of a piece of construction paper, and it has a total of 32 "sheets", which I suppose could turn out to provide 64 discreet pages to work with, depending on how the thing unfolds. Me being me, I got to thinking about what sort of cumulative story would be long enough to fit in a meander like that... and then I ended up making one up myself. "The House That Jack Built" has a total of ten elements in it (Jack, rat, cat, dog, cow, maiden, man, judge/priest, cock/rooster, and farmer). Mine has something like 22.
Yes, I know. You have my permission to just sit back and shake your head at me. I'm doing the same thing myself.
***
One of these days, I'll sit down and finish the red portion of my mosaic, and then it will be ready to cast - and I promise I'll take a picture once it's done. For today, however, it's going to be all about the data entry, and about getting some display henna back on my skin in time for the Farmer's Market tomorrow. You'd be amazed at what four hours of splashing around will do to that top layer of skin...
Cheers!
***
My family and I spent the holiday weekend with my parents, along with my brother and his family, getting ourselves drenched, waterlogged, bruised (I whacked my elbow HARD exiting one of the water slides), and thoroughly exhausted playing around at Splash Universe up in Shipshewana. Bigtime Amish community, world-famous flea market... and a water park. *shrug* Okay.
One unexpected highlight of the weekend was when my mother mentioned that the books she had ordered for my birthday present had finally come in, after being on backorder for three weeks. I had forgotten all about the backorder, so receiving books out of the blue like that was terrific. Even more so, since they were both how-to books for making other books, by Cheryl Moote. The first is titled Simply Bound: Beginnings in Bookbinding, and the second, Sleight of Binding, has more fun stuff, like "books" with hidden pages, pockets, jacob's ladders, and so on.
Of course, I started playing with these as soon as I got home, and of course, got interested first in the origami Chinese Sewing Kit. It's a series of (kinda) simple origami boxes that are stacked and glued in such a way that the whole thing is very compact, but opens to reveal layers upon layers of storage for needles, buttons, etc. Except Cheryl Moote uses it as a nifty book/journal/greeting gift kind of thing; you can hide messages in each of the boxes, pressed flowers, stamps, tiny drawings, whatever. So it turns into a kind of treasure packet.
Most of the things in these books are not really related to origami at all... but between the Chinese Sewing Kit and the meander-books, I've gotten interested, again, in playing with paper. In 8th grade or so, I learned how to fold an origami horse (me, horse-crazy? nahhhh....), and of course the notorious "cootie catcher" fortune teller. Now with the scrapbooking industry being what it is, gorgeous paper is everywhere, and there is quite a lot of info out there for "scrappers" to make origami additions to their pages, along with popup engineering and who knows what else. I'm heroically resisting getting into scrapbooking - like I need something else to spend money on - but the origami and the pop-up stuff fascinates me.
***
I mentioned something called a meander-book. Meanders are booklets made of zig-zag folded paper (aka "accordion folds") that unfold in crazy directions, rather than just in a straight line. Since they go all over the place, they're great for representing a little trip, or a story about traveling, or - this was my inspiration - "cumulative folktales".
It sounds fancy, but you already know what cumulative stories are:
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt....
Or, here's another one:
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to meeee...
Cumulative tales exist all around the world, and they're a lot of fun. I got the idea of creating a meander book and using the text of some cumulative story or other. As you unfold a meander, the pages don't disappear the way they do in regular books, so page two will show you page one as well.
Weeeellll, I made a test meander out of a piece of construction paper, and it has a total of 32 "sheets", which I suppose could turn out to provide 64 discreet pages to work with, depending on how the thing unfolds. Me being me, I got to thinking about what sort of cumulative story would be long enough to fit in a meander like that... and then I ended up making one up myself. "The House That Jack Built" has a total of ten elements in it (Jack, rat, cat, dog, cow, maiden, man, judge/priest, cock/rooster, and farmer). Mine has something like 22.
Yes, I know. You have my permission to just sit back and shake your head at me. I'm doing the same thing myself.
***
One of these days, I'll sit down and finish the red portion of my mosaic, and then it will be ready to cast - and I promise I'll take a picture once it's done. For today, however, it's going to be all about the data entry, and about getting some display henna back on my skin in time for the Farmer's Market tomorrow. You'd be amazed at what four hours of splashing around will do to that top layer of skin...
Cheers!
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