New Stuff

The last time Dave went to Atlanta to play ball I made him come home with the last Billy. I put it together today and it wore me out. I guess I am not so recovered as I thought. But I had a good long soak in the bubble tub (and later Dave joined me) and that made me feel better.

I decided yesterday to get myself a nice tv for my studio. I like to have it on while I am fussing with fabric or getting stuff ready to paint, or just while I am sketching, so I justified it by remembering that I still have $1000 in my paypal from painting last year.

This is our old old old microwave cart that used to hold our computer and now it will be my taboret for painting. The turps and brush cleaner and gesso go in the cabinet part and the paint and palette go on the slider and the top holds whatever. I am glad we didn't get rid of it.

I will be moving the wire shelves from this spot because I also ordered a wall mount that comes out from the wall and can be angled to view from all sides. It won't be staying on the fireplace, in other words.

Birdy pictures

So yesterday I devised this background for the birds (to use for the Etsy site) and Terry spent hours taking pictures and putting them through editing software and I just wasn't liking anything. Then we looked at some other Etsy sellers' pictures, and it seems like everybody is either using a white background or some other setting that looks very unprofessional. I realized that what I wanted was natural lighting, so this morning I got up and shot these pix on my camera.



First of all, this picture is just to show you the stage. The base is a green door mat and the background is a piece of cardboard that I cut like a display board, and I taped that cloud fabric to it.

But I wanted a tighter shot, so I started taking the picture this way:






Now, the funny thing about it is that I had just gotten through taking all 15 birds' pictures when Terry stepped in and took the picture of the last bird on his camera - which was lucky because the picture I took wound up being blurry, so he saved the day on that one. We had to rush because the light was going to change and become not good. And also it's funny because I used my vastly inferior camera to take these shots, but I'm finally liking them. I think the soft morning light is really nice and having them sitting on the white doll chair is really cute.

But we are going to shoot some other pix in different settings, too. I may just use some of the white background group shots, because they work really well, too. For instance:



I know it's really hard to get my camera to focus in such a tight shot, even in the macro setting. But I'm not sure it matters, if the bird I'm featuring is in focus.

We also talked about taking pictures of the birds in a bonsai garden. That could work, but we'll have to be very careful about keeping them clean. And we need to do it in the next couple of days, too, since I am motivated to get this site up by next weekend.

But you can see how the time just flies and there's things you want to get just right before posting.

Some of the 60 pix I took

Of course, they loaded in the opposite order, and I haven't figured out what wonderful thing I'm going to say about them...  I'll let you know.

What I Meant to Do

This is the necklace I meant to make when I made that last one. I was surprised to find out the store I went to never carried Swarovski beads, so I went on a hunt for them last Friday and found them. The store had moved, but luckily, the concierge at the old mall knew which new mall they had gone to.

I took a 2 hour nap this afternoon and woke up feeling yucky and grumpy. So I made a yucky and grumpy dinner (spaetzle with leftover peppered Brussels sprouts stirred in - yuck. Very German) and after we ate, I decided not to inflict myself on my family for a while and went into the studio to make this.




I took many pictures of the process as I had requests for a tutorial, but Terry took these two pictures of the the finished product on my neck. The previous one is taken with the flash on, but I went in and fooled with the levels. The second one had no flash and I posted it here unfooled with. Which one do you like? Or do you like either?

My intention was to make the beads look like they were just tipped onto my neck and are floating there, and I think that I accomplished that. The necklace isn't very comfortable, tho. Bicones are pokey. But it's very sparkly when it catches the light, and very colorful. It only cost like $23 for all these beads. Not bad.

lunch box

I think I may have sent this to you twice, but the page I sent it from didn't have any way to tell me if the email had sent or not.

So this lunch box measures 7 7/8ths, so it's plenty big enough.  6 cost 19.99, so they're a little over $3 each.  I think that the company will ship to Singapore, too.  And the pristine whiteness of the lunch box begs to be decorated, doesn't it?

The Kitty Container

So this solution presented itself to me yesterday, and altho I wasn't fully functional this morning when I attempted to flesh it out, I think it turned out pretty good. Tell me what you think.






I don't know what else this little bag could be used for, but that was the idea: that it could be useful and functional. And of course it color coordinates with the doll. The next question arises: how much to charge? I'm in the $40-$45 range at the moment.
I wish I could conduct market research.