Leap, frog!

I have a wonderful idea for making starfish bead pendant things. I need to go make the frit for it though, and that's kind of a hassle unless I'm feeling the need to be destructive. I think I might put a bunch of rods in the kiln and heat them up and drop them in a bucket of ice water and be done with it. I hate the "heat, plunge, heat, plunge" method. Takes forever.

My torch and marver are supposed to be here tomorrow! Also expected tomorrow is a package of glass from Frantz! Husband located a flamework supply shop in Golden that carries everything. So $15 I don't have to spend on shipping every time is $15 more that I can spend on glass. Woot!

***


Ghost followed me into the shower last night and decided, a little too late, that she didn't like it in there. She needed a bath anyway though, so she got one.

Ghost kitty is eating solid food and has finally figured out how to drink water from a bowl! Yeah!


Spectre, on the other hand, isn't having any part of being weaned. I have to force him to eat solid food, and then he bites me and spits it back out. I can stick it clear in the back of his mouth and he'll eat it, but then he goes limp and plays dead until I stop. *sigh* I need someone to wave a magic wand and get him weaned.

***

Thanks for stopping by and reading!

Burn, baby, burn.

I spent most of the weekend working on some Pandora-style beads as a special order through Etsy. It was cold and windy, so it took forever. They did come out perfectly though, and I was really proud of them. You can read details about them on my deviantart account.



Ghost is mostly on solid foods now. Still hasn't really gotten the concept of drinking water out of a bowl, but I'll take solid foods. Spectre isn't having any of it and still insists on either drinking from the bottle or starving to death. I'm going to have to force feed him soon if I ever want him weaned. *sigh* On another side though, they're actually turning into playful kittens now. They chase each other and wrestle and chew on everything and run around like they're crazy. So cute.

Very exciting news! My darling lovely husband bough me a fancy glass torch for my Mother's Day / birthday present. It's a Nortel Mega Minor and it can do all sorts of fancy stuff, including boro and making marbles up to 2". I'm so excited! He got the marvering pad that mounts on top of it too! Silver glass here I come!




So that's the summary of my weekend. Maybe something exciting will happen this week that I can write about. Thanks for stopping by :)

Deception

It's bright and sunny out. Only a few clouds. Cold as hell. Like 28 degrees. Bleh.

I hate my oven. I also hate the evil glass cook top crap stove it's in.

I would like to do glass work so it needs to warm up outside and NOT have the wind blowing.


That is all.

Nothing clever rhymes with "Thursday"

Wow. Three days has come and gone before I even knew what was happening. My stepmom's birthday was yesterday, so I called and talked to her on the phone. She says she got some acupuncture and quit smoking more than a month ago and hasn't even had the craving since. She's swimming laps at the gym three days a week. She gained some weight (this is good because she looks like a skeleton, seriously) and has been venturing out to go bowling and do some stuff by herself since my dad works all the time and doesn't do much when he's home.

I went out and got two new sets of paintbrushes last night. In all actuality, I need more than a hundred at any time because I use them for everything; clay work, painting, resin. Everything. And they're always all used and sitting in a bowl of water to be cleaned. I'm really NOT good at cleaning them until I don't have any left and I'm desperate. I also got a set of oil pastels and a tube of glass rods (which I only got because I needed more blue to make more of a frit mixture). I usually don't go to the craft store with a shopping list. I normally need one or two things and leave with six or eight. Guilty as charged. But I stuck to the list and got everything I went for (except oil cloth because it's ugly and expensive) and only one extra thing! The extra thing I got was because I had sudden inspiration of exactly how to use it. Yeah, me!

The wind was blowing so hard yesterday that the National Center for Wind Technology (or something like that) closed because it was too windy. Crazy. Semi trucks were blown off the road in Boulder. Huge pieces of aluminum were blowing across the road when we were driving, signs are down all over the place. Awful.

The kittens are doing great! Spectre even tried to bite the end of my thumb off last night. He's showing a slight interest in solid food, and that's awesome. He's just not sure about the texture and the chewing part. Soon though!

I got 14,273 steps yesterday! Not so good any other day this week. I keep hoping motivation will suddenly strike but it just isn't happening yet.

Youngest Daughter has been feeling icky the last week or so, fevers and teething and won't eat much and sleeps all the time. Today she got up and didn't have a fever and ate more than she has in weeks and played on the floor and squealed and drooled and is doing awesome.

I'm in limbo again about where I want to build my official glass studio. I kind of want to put it inside where I can be sure of decent temperatures regardless of how it is outside (too cold in the winter and my glass will shock, too hot in the summer and I feel like my head will implode, the kiln does NOT help), but in a way I want my own separate space where no one is going to bug me. But a studio is gonna cost lots to build and paint and insulate. If I put it in the basement, we only have to finish that one spot and get the icky spiders out (I'm crazy arachnophobic) and ventilation would be the last necessary part. Except for that whole part about HOA approval to plumb in my propane. HOA is teh suxxor. That whole plumbing in thing was the first major reason I wanted a separate studio. So I don't know. I'd just like to be able to do glass work SOON and for more than a couple months out of the whole year.

My grandmother got a phone call yesterday from her sister's daughter. Sister fell and broke her hip the other day. Had surgery on Tuesday. Don't know much else. Grandmother is worried because people frequently die of pneumonia after they break a hip. Truthfully, the sister isn't gonna be around too much longer anyway as dementia is eating her brain :(

So that's my update. Thanks for reading.

Silence of The Lambs.

By "lambs" I do not mean children. My children are never quiet. In fact, it's not yet noon on Monday and they've spent an hour separated in their rooms because I couldn't take any more screaming and fighting.

There isn't any exciting art news. After spending two days heavily focused on the mask, I haven't had any motivation to work on anything since. I fiddled around a little bit yesterday and made a couple pendants, but that's it so far. I have a marriage equality piece that I've been working on for about a year now, probably, but now that it's time to finish it, I don't want to. That's the way it goes with every project.

Here's how it looks at this time:


I need to make a hat for it and get it mounted and then I can explain all the different aspects and why it's made the way it is.

***

Kittens are good, kinda. Spectre gave us a scare yesterday when he was very lethargic and wouldn't eat or move or do anything. He seems much better today, and for now, he's back on kitten milk until he gets a little bigger and we can try weaning again. Ghost is good. Loud and obnoxious as always, and she seems to be doing fairly well with weaning. She just can't seem to figure out drinking milk from a bowl.


***

I've recently become obsessed with the show Oddities. There are more crazy people on that show than I can wrap my mind around, and I love it. I also now want all the weird old stuff that they have on there. Like a lamp made out of a baboon foot. How awesome is THAT?! I need one.

I laid awake with an upset stomach for about four hours last night, so I spent most of that time pondering how I could contain a bunch of flesh eating beetles and where I could get a cat carcass so I can learn to articulate skeletons. Don't worry! I'm not going to take up hunting or killing animals or whatever. I just want one that's all ready dead.

To hear it like that sounds totally wrong, but I just want it for the scientific and collector-y aspect. Besides, cat skeletons are crazy neat anyway. Also, I don't have any place to put a human skeleton.

I've decided that I'm going to get a taxidermy-ed raven. Partly for the nifty "I have a stuffed raven" thing, and partly so I can put it on the fake headstone I'm making for Halloween decor for the yard this year. I specified to the taxidermy person that I needed it NOT mounted on a block of wood. When it's not out on the headstone, I'm gonna keep it by my art desk.

Now might also be a good time to confess that I'm slightly obsessed with birds. All of them. Owls! I love owls! Peacocks and flamingos are also some of my favorites. It's kind of a problem, really. I read the other day that large parrots can learn to play with a Jack-in-the Box. How cool is that? I need a parrot.

***

I'm done now. Partially because I'm rambling, and partially because I need to go take some mail and find something productive to do.

Fin

Le Masque du Péché is finished and will be in the mail today!




The kittens willingly ate solid food for the first time last night! No more force feeding!

Oldest Daughter is well on the road to being potty trained!

That's all I've got for this Fantastic Friday. Have a good weekend, y'all!

The Mask is almost complete.

Le Masque du Péché is almost complete!

The sanding and gesso of the volto (face mask) are done. Next comes painting and mounting. The columbina is done, except for the baton. I need to find (or likely make) a finial for the baton and find out how to mount it to the plaque. The plaque is painted and drying. Then comes putting it all together and getting the nameplate on. Then I can put it in the mail and call it good. Another piece to my portfolio. Another creation that's helped my maintain my sanity.


I'm so excited to see it all done.

Le Masque de Péché

I've had a nameplate ordered for The Mask. Yeah, that mask. The one I'm sending to NYC that I've been putting off forever. So now it's crunch time. If I can get it mailed by Friday, it will be there on time for delivery Tuesday. Or, Mardi Gras, if you speak the language of sin and religion. Mardi Gras is the final night of sin and the feast before the start of Lent.

I'm not religious in any manner, but I know lots about it because most of my family are religious nuts and I'm fairly fascinated by all of it. I just choose not to participate.

Anyway, I named the piece "Le Masque de Péché" which is French for "The Mask of Sin". I started the actual papier mache volto (face) part last night. It will have a columbina (half mask) over it. It should be pretty neat when it's done. But now that we're in the home stretch, I'd really just like to get it over with and stop looking at it.

The other part that I haven't mentioned yet is that I'm applying to art school for a degree. So I can be a "real" artist. I should have done it ten years ago, and now that I'm starting the process, I'm quickly being reminded why I never went back to school.

I hate the whole process. Waiting to hear if I'm "good enough". Having to do things the way someone else says I should. The constant strain of having to study. Pah. I'm not terribly excited about the whole thing, but it's been the one thing I've wanted to do forever and just haven't done. Better late than never, yeah?

Due to a terrible PR fiasco, Walmart will no longer offer a Super Soaker full of cat pee.

"In a world ravaged by keeping the Christ in Christmas, our only solace is being a motherfucking sorcerer."

My sister and her boyfriend came over for dinner and game night last night. I have the cutest picture of her and Spectre. That cat just loves to cuddle and be wrapped in long hair, so they'll be a perfect match. I'm sure going to miss him when he goes.




I've got another pendant started but I think it's going to take a while to complete because it's going to be filled with little tiny roses and they take forever to make and get cut without squashing them.

Not much else to say today. Spent most of the weekend feeling relatively crappy so I didn't get much done.

Kitty Kitty Bang Bang

For those of you wondering, the kittens are doing wonderfully. They're big and healthy. They're FAST, too. It's become a constant game of watching where we step now to make sure that they're not underfoot to get stepped on.

We're working on weaning now, but they're not terribly interested in solid food. They have sharp little needle teeth that they love to bite me with. They also spend quite a lot of time fighting and wrestling and making each other upset. Aside from that, they love to be cuddled and to play.

They're now four and a half weeks old and weigh right around 12 ounces each.

Circus and prints

I'm getting ready to send pictures in to get proofs made. Resizing is all that's left.

Tonight Husband and I are going to see Cirque du Soleil's Dralion performance at the 1st Bank Center. We saw Kooza a couple years ago. If you ever get a chance to see them, do. They are the best circus performers in the world, after all.


Today I got the Spring Fashion 2012 colors so that I can make more effort to tailor my etsy stuff to the fashion conscious masses. I made a lilac colored pendant before I even knew it was on the list of upcoming colors. Here's a rough picture of it, just post-completion.




Will take better pictures of it when it's completely set so I can list it on etsy. I also need to seriously work on getting my banner and all that professional nonsense done... But it's a hassle and I'm awesome at procrastinating, so it isn't happening.

The mask is also not done. Actually, it wouldn't be one of my projects if something didn't go wrong right in the middle and subsequently derail all motivation. That's where we are now. I need to go get a new base mask and paint two more parts and put it all together, and that's it. But there's that procrastination demon again.

As it goes now, I need to go make dinner and get ready to go.

Benefits

So I got an order off Etsy today. Good pictures apparently really do pay off.

I've decided I'm gonna to try my hand at bath products as a separate side endeavor. I even have people willing to be guinea pigs and who I know will give honest feedback.

Terrible stress headache tonight, so it's going to be a short post. Youngest Daughter is teething and it's making for long, miserable days for everyone. But tomorrow is finally Thursday so it's just her and I.

Here we are at 26 days :)

I'm pondering adding options

I'm thinking about adding fine art prints to my line of stuff at etsy, just because. More options, I suppose. But then that leads to finding a printing company and getting proofs made and messing with the whole thing and that part is very discouraging.

New camera. Retails for $600. I got it for $150. It's amazing, really. I can take photos clear down the street in the dark with NO flash, and they still come out clearly.

I posted new pictures to everything I have listed on Etsy. They show all the flaws, and I don't really like that aspect, but they also show the detail I couldn't catch with my other camera.


I have a strange desire to paint a phoenix. I don't like painting. Or drawing. But the phoenix has become a driving need because no matter how I try, I can never get it right when I sketch it in the steam on my shower door. Maybe if I do one and get it right, I'll get that made into prints also.

***

Kittens are good. Eating about a bottle each per feeding now. They're not at all interested in solid food. They also have insanely sharp claws. I'm not a fan of the claws. They also run really fast now and they're constantly right under my feet, trying to get squashed.

***

I'm going on the record to state that whoever the woman was that I talked to at the Colorado State Patrol this morning... She's a bitch. I called in because a huge box full of metal blew off of a truck and spilled all over I-25 northbound and almost hit a car. So the dispatcher, or whoever she was, gave me all sorts of attitude about the size of the box and how many lanes did it spill over, etc. It covered EVERY lane and the shoulders on both sides! What does she want from me? I'm not getting out to pick it up. I all ready had an infant screaming in the back seat.

So I was glad when my phone disconnected. It was a real mistake, honestly. In fact, my phone decided to randomly shut off and reboot right then. So I suppose they sent someone out to clean it up because when I went by later, the mess was gone. Take THAT, bitchy dispatcher!

Creeper Feature

For those of you who don't know, Husband and I packed up Grandma and the kids in July of 2010 and moved out of Denver. Shortly before moving, we had a yard sale to get rid of some of our junk. The yard sale being a pain in the ass and the obnoxious people who came to it aren't even the point of this post. The point is, a day or so before, I posted an ad on craigslist (yes, craigslist is creepy, but oh well). I had a couple people email me for directions and stuff like that and that was the end of it. Or so I thought.

Last night, I got an email from an address I didn't recognize saying "Hey". Nothing more, nothing less. So I responded, basically asking "Do I know you?". The person asked if I'd posted an ad on craigslist, and I said "Yes, but not in a long time. Which ad are you talking about, exactly?" The next email I got from this weirdo was a picture of a half-naked guy in his bed and the question "Wanna meet up?" Baffled, I said something about not knowing who it was and asking how he got my email and he really said in response "You posted an ad for a yard sale like a year ago".

So okay, one more reason I'm glad we moved out of that house. Seriously? Who keeps an email address about a yard sale for over a year? Why is he emailing me NOW? What a total freak. He hasn't emailed me again, thankfully, as I really don't want to have to involve the police to get the stranger danger to leave me alone.


The moral of this story, kids, is to stay away from weird people on craigslist. Like murderers. Like people who email you a year later and send half-naked pictures of themselves.


However, if you need a quick laugh you might want to stroll on over to the "Missed Connections" section and just read the titles. Really. I saw one yesterday that said "I hit your dog with my car". Because running over my family pet really makes me want to date you. Or if you're worried about someone thinking you're looking for someone else, you can always read some of the stuff on The Best of Craigslist. You'll instantly feel better about your own life.


***

On an art-related note, I made a miniature cupcake base a bit ago. I'm going to put it into some mold making stuff and make more of them, and then make one big cupcake base mold, so that I can make lots of tiny cupcake bases at one time.

Also, I started cleaning my desk and my shelves last night. I need more shelves. Drawers too. Husband found this nifty pattern for a bookshelf shaped like an old-fashioned toe pincher coffin. I'm going to make him make me one with bookshelves and one with drawers.

I regret throwing away the ghetto Lazy Susan (the inventor certainly had a grudge, yeah?) that I had before I moved. It would be brilliant to stick some Crystal Light canisters on there to hold my pens and paintbrushes and all those long skinny things that are constantly strewn all over my desk.

Jack Frost is pounding on the door

Most of you in the US have probably heard about the snowstorm that's hammering Colorado right now. Here's a view of my back deck earlier this morning.




Thankfully, it seems to be letting up a bit.


What do we do when it snows like this? Well, here in my house, we're playing Skylanders and dipping pretzels in chocolate. I'm also brewing some French vanilla coffee for myself, as Husband thinks coffee comes from the Devil's scrotum. School and work were cancelled for Son and Husband, so we're all hanging out in the living room while the children ask repeatedly when it's time for lunch.

I should go take some new pictures of the kittens. They're both too big now for me to feed them holding them in one hand, and we're right at the brink of litter box training and weaning.

Reminisce with me minute, won't you?

Earlier today I was sitting at my art desk, pondering how to correctly make a polymer clay cherry blossom cane, and thinking how nice it was not to listen to fighting kids or wondering what trouble they were causing that it was so quiet. They older two are at school and daycare, and Baby was sleeping. Kittens were sleeping. Shadow Cat was napping downstairs. So rather than be productive, I spaced out. Somehow I ended up thinking about where I was 7 1/2 years ago, right before my whole life made a drastic change to include my oldest child. The memory in question was about dirty potatoes. Settle in, this story is a good one.



***


At the time, I was working about the biggest corporate retailer in America. You know the one; lowest prices, a happy face that wears a "Zorro" mask and slashes prices, they employ more people than anyone else in the country except the military? You know, the one that sounds like "ShmallShmart". Yeah, that store that everyone hates but goes to anyway.

Why I was working there isn't really important, but I can sum it up pretty quickly: I was in a junky little town in Wyoming and that's what there was besides seedy bars, motel service, or a call center. I ended up working at the call center later, but that's for another time.

So anyway. I started out as a cashier at said store, and worked there for a few months. I was good at what I did, averaging a scanning rate of 800 items per hour. Seriously. I was on my way to one of those goofy maroon vests that the uber-cashiers got. But before I got that vest, I got "promoted" to produce associate. Which means I showed up to work at 4:00 in the morning and pulled ten foot high pallets of produce out of the delivery truck. Then I cut and wrapped fruit and helped people figure out how to tell if stuff was ripe.

One day, I didn't have much to do, so I decided I was going to clean the potato racks. I talked to my boss about it and he was completely astounded that anyone would have that idea, so I got the clear impression that it hadn't been done in the entire time the store had been around (about six years, at that time). I loaded all the various kinds of potatoes into shopping carts and placed the prices and descriptions on them so that people could still get their potatoes. I didn't have to do so, because who buys potatoes at 8:00 in the morning anyway, but I did. Along the way, I found some horrific bags of potatoes that had turned to mush in the time they'd been on the racks. I still have a distinct memory of my thumb slipping into a mushy potato as I picked up the bag. *shudder*

Then I went to the produce backroom and got out an ancient-looking ShopVac that I'd never seen in use. I wheeled it out and hunted for an electrical outlet, finding none, then I found an extension cord and plugged it in back in the storeroom and snaked the cord out through the produce doors and over to the potato racks. I plugged it in, and joyfully not being electrocuted, proceeded to vacuum the HECK out of those gross potato racks. They dirt and potato skins and grime was about half an inch thick. About five minutes in, another girl from produce came running over to me yelling "STOP! STOP! IT'S A DISASTER!!!!" and the look on her face was more than enough to get my attention.

I turned off the vacuum and asked her what was wrong. She pointed toward the bakery tables about eight feet away. The ShopVac had been sucking all the potato dirt in and blowing it out the back, all over everything in the bakery! Um... WHY IS THIS SHOPVAC EVEN BACK THERE IF IT DOES THAT?!?!?!

While she went to get the assistant manager of the store, I took the ShopVac back into the back room and dumped what little remained inside into the trash before going back out to help the bakery workers clean off the tables that were covered in dirt. Eventually, the assistant manager and the other produce person came back, looked at the ShopVac, and went to get a new one.

I did the get the potato racks vacuumed, scrubbed and reloaded that day, after about four hours of constant work, and I was delighted with the visible improvement in the area. The bakery threw away everything that was covered in dirt. Then, literally the next week, I discovered the joys of decomposing, leaking tomatoes. But that's a story for another day.