Alice in Wonderland Flowers

I had this idea and I thought about selling them in my shop. They were so much fun to make, I may still do that. This one I’m using for Halloween though. Prior to making it, I didn’t know what I wanted to be for Halloween and now I’m going as American McGee’s Alice in Wonderland. She’s a little darker and scarier, perfect for Halloween.

I have the boots already and I made this screaming flower to go with the costume. The idea being that evil Alice picked the singing flowers. I think it turned out pretty damn cool and the photos don’t do it justice.

Edited: October 30th, 2008

Gone fishing

My husband drove down to my cousin’s house in Huntsville AL yesterday and I must say I am very very jealous right now. She’s a hoot to hang out with and we always have a lot of fun doing artsy stuff.

So why is he there and I’m not? Because the kids are in school and someone had to stay home with them and because he’s the one that’s going to the Tech Expo. There’s an apparently huge Tech Expo going on there right now and you need a security clearance just to get in. I don’t qualify, but he does.

So he went down there on a fishing expedition. He did his preregistration, printed out a bunch of resumes, and is going job fishing. We still have a year (ish) until he gets out and he has job offers at this base, but I don’t want to stay here (neither does he).

Apparently a lot of the companies have overseas positions so we’re hoping for not only a job offer, but an overseas job offer as well. If you’re going fishing you may as well try to catch the big one right? Even if the job of is “only” in Huntsville, I’d still be happy because I’d be near a family member and it would even be one I really really like too. I have vision of doing artsy stuff with her and selling artsy items at the Saturday art market she told me about. That would be tons of fun.

On his way to Huntsville, the husband stopped for lunch and got a fortune cookie with his meal. The fortune said something about starting a prosperous new relationship soon. I hope its right haha

Edited: October 28th, 2008

Abandon All Hope Fish Tank

I lived in Japan with my family for three years and we weren’t allowed to have real pets in the house we were living in. Naturally this meant I bought some goldfish.

My oldest was about 2 1/2 or 3 at the time and he loved his fishies. I bought some cheapie goldfish from one of the off base pet stores. Lemme tell ya, it wasn’t exactly the neat freak pet stores you see in the states, but all the ones we went to had dirty fish tanks.

I’m not sure what happened, but my fish started dying. One by one those little buggers just died on me and I’d try to flush them down the potty without my son seeing me do so. I was ecstatic the day I woke up and no fish had died.

My oldest sat staring at the fish while I cooked breakfast. He turned to me with a very column face and asked in all seriousness “What fish are we flushin’ today?”

It seems that he thought that every morning when you wake up, you flush a fish down the potty and make breakfast. He didn’t realize the fish were actually … dead… when you flush them though. He thought I just randomly picked a live one and flushed it down the potty…

So with that in mind, I made this fish tank. I’m not allowed to have fish any more (although maybe I’d do better in the states where I can actually ask questions). If only my own fish had at least had a warning…

Edited: October 28th, 2008

Smoking is death

I was thinking of my mom today and also had the urge to paint something so I painted this ashtray. I have one for my house already, but I wanted to add one to my store as well. I rather like the way it turned out.

You can find it in my store

Edited: October 27th, 2008

Frankenstein Love cards

There’s a craft fair coming up so I’ve been working on various things to sell there this year. A friend also needed an odd anniversary card for her parents’ wedding anniversary. The Frankenstein Love Note was born.

Edited: October 22nd, 2008

Bookflakes

My husband’s dog likes to steal my things from my room and feed them to our new dog. Their favorite chew toys are my shoes… they’ve eaten 8 pairs so far. Their next favorite toy is paper, specifically book paper. They ate two hardbacks so far and I was really upset. Just the covers were damaged though so I ripped out the pages to see if I could make something from them.

And I did.

Bookflake Garlands.

They’re about floor to ceiling length and have 8 flakes on each garland. I’ve made seven so far with enough flakes cute out to make 5 more and enough paper lefter to make like a billion….

damn dogs eating the thick hardbacks /sigh

Edited: October 21st, 2008

And We Stay

We (supposedly) finally have the orders issue resolved. The orders have officially been canceled and we’ll be staying in the lovely state of misery… I mean Missouri for another 367 days. We found out last Thursday and I made party invitations for our 365 party we’re having this weekend.
What’s the 365 party? It’s the “come help us celebrate only one year left in the military” party that we’re having. I made a fat stack of mini fliers and took them to the husband’s office. We’ve been passing them out to people we know and some of them have been putting their mini fliers up in their little desk areas.

Friday night the husband received a phone call from someone he used to work with that is now in another area on base. He said there’s a GS9 and a GS11 position opening up and either can be my husband’s job if he wants it. H has also had a standing job offer from the local guard. They’re (thus far) the only people to give him a coin the entire time we’ve been at this base.

So we’re no longer worried about him getting out of the military. He’s also going to a Tech Expo in Huntsville AL on the 28 that you need a security clearance just to get in to the thing. We’re hoping something international comes from that. That would be so fantastic. I really *really* think this getting out thing is going to work out well for us. It’s a shame I’m finally finding fun geeky people just as we’re close to getting out. Ah well, that’s life right?

And now that I’m no longer stressing about possibly moving in a couple weeks, I can get back to making and posting my geeky stuff. I’ve made a couple things here and there, but nothing much because I was just stressing way too much. And on that note, I really did appreciate the kind thoughts people sent my way while we were trying to handle all this. It made dealing with it just a little easier. Thanks

Edited: October 20th, 2008

Paintings for the house

I started painting things for the house a while ago and I’d like to share a couple of my latest. First, I suck at drawing period and I thought that I had to draw it realistically in order for it to be art. I took an art appreciation class that changed that attitude. Then I thought you have to be trained in order to make “art” and talking to artist friends of my cousin changed that attitude as well.

So I’ve been looking at other people’s art and dabbling here and there. I’ve found that for me, the easiest way to learn how to do something is to replicate someone else’s stuff and then change it so it fits my style. For these people paintings, I went to “a beautiful mess” because frankly some of her art is just plain neat and I love that she took the jump to sell her creations. Anyway, loved her new people drawings/paintings, but the lovey dovey stuff is not really *my* style. So I geeked it.

With that, I give you “Warning” and “Soylent Green”

Warning lives by the front door and Soylent Green lives by my desk although my husband my steal it for his computer room.

Edited for Some more info: Why the Warning sign? Because my house really isn’t okay for kids under 3 or 4 years of age. I have a 5 year old and an 8 year old and both of them don’t need the baby proofing anymore so I shed that bp stuff as quickly as possible. What I failed to realize at the time is that I have tons of friends with small children and they come to visit. I’ve tried to move the breakables away from where kids reach, but the final decision comes from how it looks, not if it’s bp.

So I posted photos on this blog of my home and some people made comments about the house isn’t okay for small kids. Then some IRL friends made the same comments and my husband said “you should just paint a sign.” Naturally I ended up painting one. It’s only half serious, but the house really isn’t babyproofed um at all.  All in good nature though right?

Edited: October 15th, 2008

On another note

I had finals in one of my college classes today. My classes are 8 weeks long because I go through the base for classes. Anyway, I heard horror stories about this class and the teacher. I heard it was really hard and the teacher was… awful. The final project is a 5 to 6 min persuasive speech that had to include a power point presentation. The class average was apparently pretty low. Guess who screwed up the curve?

—>>>> this girl

Yeah, I got a 100 on my persuasive speech. I was giddy with excitement. It was probably the first time I didn’t get blue pen written allover my outline too. I literally made my teacher laugh out loud at one point. The only problem she had with my speech was one of my sources, but she liked how I presented the material. I even got the coveted “Take this on the road” written on it.

It was… fullfilling? rewarding? It felt nice to have someone appreciate my hard work and effort and give me grades that reflected my work.
So what was my topic? I tried to persuade people to not use toxic chemical cleaners in their homes. You know, things like Windex, 409 etc. It seemed to go really well. My power point itself was well done, my presentation was good, I could even answer questions from the hecklers, and I didn’t need my note cards.

It was a good feeling to go from getting a 100 on that project (which was hard) to going to my English class and seeing the 100 on my 9 page paper I turned in last week. Just a good day all around.

I earned As in both classes. Still a 4.0. YAY

Edited: October 15th, 2008

Apartment Therapy Unplugged

I love this site and have read it and its sister sites for a while now. They have one of my projects on their site now and it made me a little giddy for some reason.

So here I am on APUnplugged

Edited: October 14th, 2008