Yuletime!

I hope everyone had a splendid Yule. My mom sent me this amazing tree, a tall growth of spiraling black metal, very chic! And as this is the first year I've lived somewhere I actually had room for such a thing, she sent me boxes and boxes of splendid trinkets to suspend from it.



I've also been busy with more boxes. One a creamy collage of wax and paper and little metal treasures.



Another one that is a spunky use of some very strange shell parts that have been teasing me to use them in something for years.





And another encapsulating a grape vine beetle, Pelidnota Punctata.




I hope to have them up on Etsy sometime Monday.

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It's cold out there!

Brrrr! We've been waking up lately to a lovely coating of shimmering frost everywhere.



I finally finished a few of my boxes and got them put up on Etsy. They look very cute, and in one day have gotten more hits then any of my ornaments have in the weeks that they have been up.




I've gone through so much glass trying to learn how to cut, it's insane. I have a huge pile of shards, and just one remaining piece that is about 5" by 5". I need to go get more somewhere.




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Success!

Yay! So I was finally able to get some nice cuts in my glass. And thank goodness for the glass grinder, that thing saved me about three days worth of sanding glass by hand.



I'm pretty much just cutting the glass as close to size as I can get while leaving room for error, and then grinding them the rest of the way down.




And I really need to either get a temp control for my soldering iron, or a new one all together, cause I'm melting through my bits at an alarming rate. But at least I managed to get one piece done. It's pretty rough, and I'm probably gonna go back and touch up the solder, but it's nice to have at least one 'done'.



And it turned out really cute. A little eastern stink bug with some watch gears and paper. Small and cute and shiny.

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Butchering Glass

Eek. So it seems my glass cutting is going to take a lot of practice. I've looked at an array of online glass cutting how to sites. I've got my supper nifty glass cutting oil. My ever handing glass snapping pliers. My apparently bottom of the rung glass cutter. And lots of lovely curved shards of glass. Not a straight line to be found amongst them. Not even one. Oh this is disappointing.



I've always had a problem of giving up on things if I'm not good at them right away. There's plenty of things I know how to do and know how to do well, so I've never had the patience to stick with something if I can't do it great right off the bat. And that's a pretty lousy way to be. Okay, gotta go get back on that horse.

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Filling my etsy shop

Spent the morning trudging through the process of stocking my etsy shop. It wouldn't be so bad, but out here in the sticks no one provides good internet access. So what should take about a minute or two to upload images to the store is taking about twenty five to thirty for each ornament. Egad that's dreadful. Oh well, it's all worth it.
I've had a few people stop by that saw my things at the auction, which is nice. It's good to know that people who have seen them in real life liked them enough to come check out my at the moment meager stock.
I'll be picking up a stamp pad today. I'd like to be able to deck out my shipping boxes a bit. It's nice to get something in the mail that is more interesting than a plain brown box. And I have managed to amass a nice array of stamps, yet no stamp pads. I've never actually had the need to ink them up, I just press them into clay. It will be strange to actually use them for their intended purpose.
My glass grinder is still sitting in it's box. I'm being a good girl and focusing on getting my ornaments on etsy before I delve back into glass, but oh the temptation is horrible.
I have been taking breaks though to search the internet for interesting fonts. $2000 for a new computer, and it didn't come with an Olde English font. Go figure. I've found some dandies though. And I've rummaged around for some old poems, and sent them through an online english to german translator. Print those out with my lovely new fonts, and I should have some very delectable papers to cover my boxes in.
I would love to find an old book of sheet music. Have to keep my eye out for that.

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Pleeeeeeease stop moving...

Oh the joy of photographing dangling objects.

I really wanted to shoot my ornaments outside, hanging from a nice mossy tree branch, but it's either been too rainy or too windy as of late. So I was relegated to the inside.

I first tried to make a little back drop and stage out of a card board box. I crumpled up some old book pages, and gave them an antiquing wash of paint and mica powders, and covered the sides of the boxes in them.



The result, way too busy. I think I may be able to salvage it for something else. Give it a few aging washes to tone it down and make it more subtle. But for now, not an option. In the end, I resorted to hanging a piece of ribbon from one of my tall floor lamps.

Then came the fun of trying to get ribbon suspended objects to stop moving. All they wanted to do was twist, and spin, and wobble. Every little draft sent them dancing. Each time the cat would walk by, it would send shivers through the little glass orbs.



It was quite the exercise in patience. And when they finally came to a stop, it would always be with the same side towards the camera. No matter how I would turn them, or rig the ribbon at a different orientation to the camera, whenever they came to rest from my touching them, the same side would be to the camera.



After much struggling, grumbling, and shutting of cats into the bedroom, I was able to get four sides of almost all of them. Some refused to exhibit but two of their lovely angles, and in frustration I was forced to put them aside for a later photo shoot. Some models can never be reasoned with.



So, I've come away with decent shots for most of them, I think I've got a little over half of them photographed. They should be going up on etsy today.


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Cutting Corners, Are We?

So I've got this thing coming up. A fundraiser that I'm going to have some pieces up for auction. Problem is, I have neither the time nor money for new business cards. I have this huge box of cards from about fifteen years ago, with completely outdated info. So what do we do? We get creative.

Print out some new info tags, a little x-acto work, edge with water color, glue down, and presto, new workable business cards. Ugh. I feel dirty. I hate doing something so substandard, but I don't really know what else to do for it at the moment. It'll have to do.

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Happy Halloween

Ah, Halloween. One of those wonderful pagan holidays, much like Easter and Christmas. Always fun. My fiance, father and I carved pumpkins last week. I haven't done that in years, I'm sorry to say. And there was a perfect Horror Movie moon out tonight. The sky has been thick with clouds for about a week now, but it opened up just enough tonight for me to snap some shots.






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Watch Me Now

My mom found something wonderful. Little plastic watch face covers on Ebay. They're teeny tiny domed shells. And I've been dying to use them. They've been sitting on my table begging to be filled with treasures and magic. I think I've finally figured out what to do with them.

Recipe:

Several parts book pages, hand painted with water colors and mica powders

A healthy dash of watch guts, rinsed, dried, and shined

A pinch of micro no hole metal beads in gold, metallic pink and green

One or two tiny rhinestones

And there you have it. Lovely little baubles filled with tumbling shifting sparkly bits. They're scads of fun. And soon to be adorning the backs of my little glass boxes. I've only done six so far, and I think I have about twenty five left. Oh the possibilities.

Earlier today, I went outside and scraped the paper wasp nests out of the shed. Not very pleasant, but the rewards were well worth it. All the corners and crevices contained dilapidated webs and weathered silk cocoons of small alien creatures. It's funny that the empty homes of such small insects and arachnids can still make my skin crawl. I just know as soon as I reach over to shift some of the empty card board boxes out of the way, a brown recluse will scurry onto my hand. It's been pretty cold the past few days, so I was confident most of my sheds denizens would be slow and sleepy. My freezer now contains an innocent enough looking tupperware, inside of which are the honey combing constructs of paper wasps. Delicate works of art unto themselves, waiting to be added to a glass box that just needs that extra touch.

Banner Ho!

Oh how I miss Photoshop. Struggling through Gimp, I was able to create a makeshift banner. It should not be complicated to deselect something on an image editing program, and yet it is. It'll have to do till I can update my software.

Currently playing: the soothing sounds of my dishwasher

Birth of a Blog

So here goes. My first little step into the vast bloggosphere. Soon many steps will follow, I have big plans, and it's too pretty outside to keep it to myself. I need to read the instructions on my camera, it's still new to me. My little stack of business cards is laying in a rumpled pile on the desk. Seeing as how they are about fifteen years, two address changes and three phone number changes too old, I need to do something about it. The fund raiser is coming too soon for me to order new ones. I'll just have to adapt the ones I have. Time to be creative...