peek sneak!

Here's the first batch after they cooled...



More to come! It's so cold in the basement that it took almost an hour for my toaster oven to get to temp (ack!). This is why I much prefer sculpeying in the warmer months...

I have something in the works...

Something neewwww! Almost almost, well, not quite, but I spent the entirety of sunday smooshing sculpey into a palette of very autumn-y colors (reds and browns and yellow ochres and such) and trying to create a mass of beads for future projects. Last week we hit up the recycling center (which has apparently gotten extremely popular in the past few years) for unique bits (spools, thread and leather scraps).

It was actually over 40 degrees today. Happy Imbolic. :) I wore a floofy new black light wrap frock-type thing with thigh-high off-white and brown striped socks. Hurray spring! (almost spring) Time to break out the lighter clothes! Er, after the cold-snap this coming week.

Things are on hold until my cheap-o laptop arrives in the mail.

blood or beets?

I was trying to cook a fantabulous dinner last night, using up as many leftovers as possible (although I still missed some mashed carrots!). The theme was beets. Beet casserole (which came out looking very bloody, a casserole in a pool of blood!), beet salad and beet/spaghetti/veggie stir fry (and mashed sweet potatoes, the whole thing was very colorful). While grating beets I accidentally nicked my thumb, and spent a little while trying to decipher blood from beets. (I didn't let any get in the food!)

For a vegetarian, having a faux-bloody meal was pretty exciting.

Home today due to snow (snoooow!). Registering domains, working on website, ordering a reeeally cheap laptop off of woot.com! It's nothing special, but it's affordable and light years beyond this computer from 2001, which runs at the sight of flash.

Oh and art. Always with the art.

Reasons to go to the mall..

Most of us, at least in the US, have a mall somewhere relatively nearby. Today, my friends and I decided to go out to the Natick Mall (scratch that, Natick Collections, ooo) which is the most utterly riduculous, useless mall of overpriced designer crap in the area. (they even have condos in the complex, for those folks with too much money who enjoy the mall's comforts a bit too much to ever really leave)

Then again, they do have a lego store.

So we piled into my recently repaired volvo 240 (which, as I realized, is mentioned in "the jeep song", as it's a light blue volvo wagon. Hurray!) and went off.

On the way, we stopped at Toys R Us, (to look at their lego selection). I kinda started yelling a bit when one of the first things we saw was the endcap for "girls night in". PINK board games just for girls! What? Since when did Scrabble or Monopoly need to be FRICKING PINK? The folks coming up with these *brilliant* ideas must be seriously messed in the head. Almost as good as Careers; FOR GIRLS!

Aside from the non-gendered classic toys section (with some sweet blocks, remade vintage toys, a JACK IN THE BOX and those great detailed medieval toys), Toys R Us is a vast, gendered wasteland. Even the legos seem primarily gendered... and lack the awesomeness I remember them having. The girls section is PINK PINK AND MORE PINK. How have we not improved since I was a kid? How are we only slightly beyond this?

The mall was crazy and bland at the same time (go mall!). Although I admit, I'll go back when the American Girl store is up and running just for fun. We got some tea samples at teavana (yum!) and I apologized to the poor guy stocking cups for all of us being jerks. Mostly we just walked around and tried to understand what was going on... Pretty much all of my clothes are from thrift stores. It's a little more time-consuming, and you never know what you're going to find, but I honestly do pretty well. Why would people need all those hideously overpriced bolts of fabric? Why in the world would you shop in a nearly pitch-black environment? I admit that I'm an anti-consumerist who likes things, (art supplies, books, vintage clothes) but I don't understand the need for such a vast wasteland of (overpriced) useless crap. I probably never will. I'd much rather support indie artists and makers any day.

So, I'm still searching for actual reasons to go to a mall... because I always leave in a fit, disappointed with humanity. (Which actually, might be the best reason after all, because I leave with inspiration to improve and change)

In better, less ranty news; I'm starting Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain again. My drawing skills have really gone downhill in the past few years (and I've never been a great fan of proportion) so I'm starting again and will post the results here. Unless they really, horribly suck. Everyone *and* my mom has suggested this book, so I figure it's worth a shot! I'm going to try and draw every single day for the next few weeks, and see what happens.

Yesterday I found a wonderful beret, complete with POM POM and a gigantic spoon. Pictures to follow shortly!

Where I am...

So, I suppose I'm officially on an etsy break. My shop is still there, but I'm not working towards adding any new items at the moment.

It's more than that actually. I'm on a mental etsy break. I realized after years of struggling to make enough money to eat (I'm ok now, thank you full time job) and fully diving into etsy, that I lost the very reasons I created in the first place. It's one thing to make something fun, something you know others may enjoy and create with that in mind. That's great if you're trying to run a business. Unfortunately, trying to run a business, however small AND sustain yourself from the perspective of an artist are two very difficult things when intertwined.

I love etsy, I love it, the people who run it, the community and the creativity so deeply. It's a wonderful thing. Unfortunately it's just so easy to lose the art aspect. I'm no longer creating from a central idea, or maturing as an artist. I need to concentrate on that fully and whole-heartedly, without even considering if someone will purchase my piece nor any aspect of selling it... at least, for now.

I have ideas, but they're scattered, so difficult to hold onto long enough to form, mold and comprehend. At the very least, I started painting again a few days ago... nothing special, but I painted for myself. I'm working on an art penpal letter to send to one of my favorite humans (and most amazing artist I know) and making myself sit and draw.

I want to be an artist first, and an etsyian second.

That said... here's what I've been up to...

I started a found fabric cuff the other day, needed to learn how to use my roommate's sewing machine (easy!).

I'm learning tatting. So far I can make a little chain of rings attached to each other via picots, but I haven't found a suitable beginner's pattern yet. I actually really love it, it's so similar to macreme in the patterns and hand motions. I'm hoping to incorporate the tatting into some pieces soon.

I really love feathers.

Drew two bees in two days. I'm still terrified of bees, but I respect them pretty hard too.

When I've figured this out, my etsy shop (maybe as tangerined, maybe not...) will be back up with new pieces.

For now, I'll try to keep updating this blog and posting pictures.

Thank you for reading. <3

Online/reallife

[When Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.

I love this quote. I should really find some Vonnegurt books to read. It's kinda the same reason why I ENJOY doing even those most menial tasks sometimes. Grocery shopping at traderjoes is still fun. I don't care if I've been there 300+ times, you get to meet interesting people and maybe strike up a conversation or two. I even met the lovliest mom and daughter whilst thrifting about a month ago. (I always meet the most interesting people thrifting) Today there was a 3-4 year old boy who was running around with a horsie (ya know, the kind that's just the head on the stick?) and chasing his older brother. He exclaimed "dammit!" when he fell and frequently mumbled about how he'd never find his brother to me while walking past... Then there were the hoardes of thrifting newcomers, college students, the kind who prefer malls, looking for "ugly" clothes for their ugly sweater parties. They were at every single thrift store today, talking loudly about how horrible all the clothes were.

Malls were never this interesting and I have to agree, online shopping surely isn't. Let's all play around a little more and interact with the random people we meet.

It's amazing how similar laughing and crying can sound sometimes. Try to put yourself in a situation where you can easily hear both. I wish I could take a little of the laughter to ease the crying, but life isn't that simple.

Hiding and Secrets...

Things are definitely changing around this time. I've been sad about not having the time to work on my etsy shop between organizing my room and working full time.

So, the obvious choice to to start a second etsy shop? right?

Well, maybe not, but that's what I'm doing. Tangerined will still exist, and become a home for the brighter, wonkier things I create (uteri + boob earrings will stay with tangerined). The new shop is poppetry. Don't even look for it yet, because it isn't up. It's contents will be a surprise, although I might drop a few hints along the way.

The new job is great. It could only be better if I could manage to work 32 hours a week instead of 40 (which, in actuality is 42.5). Continuing with the theme of information and media-related jobs, I'm now a digitizer for very, very old content. Essentially, I turn pages. ;) It's an amazing job, although a bit tedious at times. I'm allowed to work with and touch precious and priceless materials, printed between 1777 and 1877 (generally). Most are the only known copy. The only down side is not having the time to read the material. The knowledge that I'm working to preserve this information, previously unavailable to the general public, for generations to come really makes it all worth while. (having a steady paycheck in this tumultuous economy doesn't hurt either)