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Coincidentally Awesome
LOOKS LIKE I AM NOT AS ORIGINAL AS I THOUGHT. Or maybe I can amend that to being equally as awesome as someone else at the very same time. I guess it’s like Edison vs. Tesla, only with crafts. Also, better photography.
I was flipping through the internet today, and happened upon this:
Neon Chain Earrings by A Splendid Assemblage
Look familiar?
Pastel Chain Earrings by Creative Uncommons
Also, isn’t her photography way better? And also her tutorial, because she actually documented what she did for you visually? I think she whooped me in the awesomeness factor.
Honestly, though, I am totally impressed and inspired by A Splendid Assemblage’s tutorial and blog – things to aspire to, notes to take (like not using my neighbor’s fence as a display background).
DIMyFail: Adventures in Spray Paint 2
You remember the first failed spray paint issue, right? The one where my two cans of spray paint did not match? Well, I sent a very polite complaint in to the folks at Krylon, and was immediately taken care of with two brand new cans of matching spray paint. Great customer service, yo.
So I set out to finish my pretty jewelry display trays in matching colors. Well, the exact same color, really, which I guess could also be construed as matching. A couple more coats and all was golden, quite literally. Since I was doing this in the evening after work, I had taken advantage of the last remaining sunlight and left them out to dry overnight so as not to suffocate my family with paint fumes.
BAD IDEA.
Turns out, and this we already knew: DEER ARE JERKS.
What Robin Williams says is true. And this I now know because of this:
Crap.
That, my friends. That is where the deer hopped the OMG deer fence after eating my parents’ decorative backyard foliage and stepped his hoof right on through not one, but TWO of my trays. While I know, or at least think, that this was not a spiteful deer of vengeance and wrath, I can’t help but feel slightly as though this project was not fated to be. I mean, how many outside disasters must a project go to before a crafter decides “hm. This might not be fated to happen. Perhaps the devil is involved in my jewelry trays?”
Anyway, now I’m going to attempt to superglue them back together. I’m sure my next blog will occur once I’ve unglued myself from… most likely myself. I have a poor track record with superglue.
Reverse Bucket List: Furry Knee Socks
Now, I don’t know what these are actually called, or if they even have a real name, but you all know what I mean when I say furry knee socks:
These Things
Turns out they are “leg warmers.” Why didn’t I think of that when I was searching? My calves would DEFinitely be warmer in some pink polyester shoe covers. I found these at “discountstripper dot com. And I am not linking further to it because that could just come up as weird in the future when I could potentially attempt to have a job.
Whilst bravely searching for “fur” in the search bar of above website, I encountered a whole slew of costumes involving said “leg warmers.” Costumes I would NEVER have thought of as being sexy. Such as Courageous Lioness, THE VIKING, Cheshire Cat (deviously named “Chester” to avoid copyright issues,) and apparently an incredibly sexy Unicorn. Who knew?
What I do know is that now, in this day and age, these are what actually marks you as a stripper. They are the only difference between girl-in-a-bikini, which seems to be not shocking anymore, and Stripper. Nevermind the bared thighs or midriff, which are seen displayed prominently on many a college student, nevermind the triangle-top-as-shirt. No. Furry leg warmers.
This model is called “The Yeti.”
Anyway – this is a reverse bucket list post. And I never want to be seen in these. I have been known to sport some pretty bizarre clothing – not in the “pushing the fashion envelope” sort of way, but more a “purple rayon foldover pants OMG must wear them?” sort of way. I make no claims of fashion taste and class in this blog. I’ve been known to follow a potentially disastrous fashion trend or two (overalls in the 90′s, anyone? One button undone? Hat with a sunflower on it?)
However.
I will never wear something so blatantly stripper. I don’t even understand why these are so sexy that only strippers and people who want to be seen as strippers wear them. I didn’t know that semi-yeti-ness was a turn-on. I just don’t know.
I also couldn’t find any legitimate pictures of real-life people wearing these, though I have seen them out in Vegas and in my hometown on a Friday night. Apparently people wearing these are too afraid to exist on the internet.
DIMyFail: Adventures in Spray Paint
I learned some lessons today, specifically involving spray paint. My right finger is telling you so right now, complaining due the extreme stress I placed upon it whilst spraying the paint.
I got some lovely stackable jewelry trays for displaying my wares at the craft fair I’m anxiously preparing for – but they were black, which is only my style when it is t-shirt material and on my torso. So after thinking through my booth plan in my head, I decided on gold – much more awesome, all of the time.
So I happily went out and got a can of spray paint in Gold, labelled “Outdoor Spaces: Indoor Style, Outdoor Durable,” which is also grammatically incorrect. And I sprayed. Here are the first two lessons:
1: Read the “substrate” listings on the cans, which is foo-foo-speak for “what you can spray it on and get good results.” Mine did NOT include plastic – which honestly, proved to be no problem but worried me enough that I stopped mid-project.
2: Gold does not go over black. I’m sure no other colors do as well. If you want to make it solidly another color, either buy like ten cans of spray paint and a forearm massage, or a can of primer. I went back to the hardware store and bought this:
See that big yellow banner? I should have looked for that the first time.
Which is a champion painting magician. GooooOOO primer! Truthfully, the whole reason I’m writing this post is for this sentence: When in doubt, primer it. It can’t hurt, and it can probably save you the two additional trips to the hardware store that I had to make.
So post-priming, I got down to bidness: I made them gooooollld, mostly… because of my pre-priming adventures, my can of paint ran out after 5/8 of the project. But those 5/8 were looking awesome. So… back to the hardware store I went, waving at all my new hardware store friends, confusing the paint department guys who I’m sure thought I was high on paint fumes which I was.
So I got my final can of spray paint back to the house and shook like there was no tomorrow so I could finish my soon-to-be beautiful gold and white display trays. The results!
What the crap.
Sooo… I’m sure you’re thinking that lesson #3 is “Make sure you pick out two cans of the same color of paint.” Which, yes, is a very good lesson to learn, but check it:
I am at least awesome at checking the label...
I checked the bottom, even, to see how vastly different the lot numbers were (if indeed that is what is on the bottom) – and they match too. So… crap. I did my best, and I have failed. Let’s take a look at this again:
Again... WTF?
It’s not quite so bad as the photo, as in the ones on the right don’t look completely white in real life, they are more like the difference between yellow gold and white gold jewelry. Which, well, I like both gold and white gold, but I was hoping for a little more continuity.
So tonight I’m going to write my very first letter to a company – I’ll let you know how it goes.
The Photoreprieve
I’m sure you know how I’ve been panicking about the closing of the online photo editing service Picnik. I’m not even going to post a link because it’s shutting down in less than a week (le sob). I received a farewell e-mail from them, in which they suggested that maybe I look at this:
Dreamy, isn't it?
I mean look, it says “This is your photo on awesome juice?” Is that not awesome juice in and of itself?
I’ve had minimal functional-computer time to fiddle, but I immediately saw my dream button for a future household project or two:
And after fiddling around with it some, I can achieve my dream results, which I have spent some significant hours trying to reproduce in various other free programs that have been suggested as alternatives to Picnik. ALL OF WHOM FAILED TO POSTERIZE LIKE PICMONKEY KNOWS I LIKE TO POSTERIZE.
Now, after snooping about the website, I find it’s made by two former Picnik engineers, who I now have crushes on and feel the need to write fan mail. Fan like “fanatic.” Ecstatic fanatic. The About page is headed “Photo Editing Made of Win,” and I now I’m officially in love. I guess I need to change my facebook status.
If you were a fan of Picnik, or if you were out of the loop on the great ease of placing crowns on top of dinosaur photos or eliminating red-eye or adding cool effects to your photos FOR FREE and for the photoshopally deficient like myself… please check them out. I don’t know how they make money, but I want them to, so they don’t leave me brokenhearted again. It’s always rough to see a facebook status go from “in a relationship” to “single,” especially when your relationships are in your head.
A Cabin! On the Island!
I’ve been on vacation for the last week – I latched myself for free onto the trip that my parents were making to visit my sister and fam up in Kirkland, WA. I had an entire 5 days of complete, intense 4.5 year old girly-girl favoritism and infatuation, and I have this to say to all you parents in the whole world: I do not how you do that without lots of help.
I mean seriously. I was about ready to pass out from exhaustion after ONE DAY of “ZOMG Aunt Jenny let’s play high school and pack our lunches in our pretty backpacks only I get the pink one and you get the monkey one from the back of the closet and I will take these pretty fruits and vegetables and pizza and bread and you get this plastic chicken breast and this piece of wooden tomato BECAUSE SHARING IS CARING AUNT JENNY.” I did, indeed, pack my lunch and go to high school with her. And then I took a nap.
See that milk? I didn't have any.
Now the minor point of this trip for my parents, besides seeing my sister and changing a few diapers for her (not me – I’m holding out on that responsibility until I can no longer avoid it), was to take my niece on a big-girl “camping” trip with Gramma and Grampa up on the Olympic Peninsula and spend some time on the “beach.”
I fell in love immediately:
Yes, yes you are smitten.
And began hatching daydreaming plans of moving there and opening my own little bead and jewelry shop in Kingston near the ferry and Jesse having a thriving practice in a town that is not already oversaturated with chiropractors and also in an area of the country and state where people have both amazing insurance policies and also the willingness to participate in their own health and… perhaps I was getting a little ahead of myself. Although jobs may have been researched and housing prices checked on my phone during spare times.
We spent two days in a little cabin right on the water on Marrowstone island, and I got thoroughly spoiled by my family, both in laughter and also in beads. YOU KNOW WHAT, the beading/quilting/crafting stores up there are SO MUCH BETTER than in Northern California. I might have been a bit flabbergasted. Or it could have been the niece induced exhaustion.
Jobs and housing prices look good…
And I’m taking Jesse up to visit in June.
Keepon Keepin’ On
It’s been nearly a week since my last post, and not a SINGLE THING has been D-I-did in this household. For a number of reasons, such as the aforementioned lil bro visiting from the army (he sliced his hand open with a mortar today. My life is really not hard), as well as le grandmother breaking her hip and becoming, quite literally, a raging lunatic. Now before this past weekend, I had always thought of the term “Sundowners” as something vaguely referring to cocktails after work – not that I have ever really given that term a whole lot of brain space.
Turns out, it’s also a symptom in dementia patients which causes them to go batty in the evening. Yesterday, she thought the Republicans were attacking and my mom and dad had to stop them-that’s-just-not-ok-why-don’t-you-do-something?TheRepublicansaretryingtokillusall. If you could not tell, my grandmother is a Democrat (sort of), though why she has chosen an entire political party as her hallucinatory opponent is really beyond my ken.
I also bought one of these:
I dare you not to dance along with your shoulders while you’re watching from your computer. Double Dog.
Thing takes EIGHT batteries! But that video has obsessed me so much for the last I don’t know how many years (insert your judgments here), and he was on sale at Toys-R-Us for $9.99. How could I resist? In no way, that’s how. I’m going to make him a little scarf and keep him near me all the time.
Segue here – dude, Toys-R-Us? Didn’t that place used to be super-clean and loud and busy and AWESOME? Was that just because I was a child that I thought that? It was nerve-wracking going in there today and seeing all the NO CHILDREN IN THE WHOLE STORE. Like 5 adults, max, plus the extremely bored-looking employees. Hey girl, I just paid 1/6 of your day’s wages with that tiny robot. You’re welcome.
BUT. The action figures section was awesome.
Famoo
Whilst ordinarily I’d have spent this relatively low-busyness week crafting my pants off (not literally, there is an anti-no-pants-rule in this household), I’ve spent it hanging out with my lil bro, who is on leave from the ARMY for one week. The only person in this family to have ever been in the ARMY. I think they are feeding him human growth hormone in his biscuits n gravy, because when he left I came up to his clavicle, and now I barely top his armpit. Regardless of his freakish height, it’s been awesome having him around.
Side note: this same young man is the instigator of the anti-no-pants-rule, which has been observedly lax in his absence.
I would have some snarkily awesome post observing his hanging out with my own friends, most of whom graduated high school before he hit middle school, but I am TOooOO tired. We took him out to the local cowboy bar on Wednesday and committed horrible acts of alcoholery upon his newly-21-year-old liver, woke up too early on Thursday, and then my grandmother broke her hip. Which I’m sure made her very tired as well. Especially after those painkillers they give you in the emergency room.
Naptime.
Challenge: Accepted
Hot Dang. Or should I say, cold dang. Just a few hours ago I went to lunch with my hubs and brocito, in my cropped pants and flats and denim jacket, and I was fine. Just now, I went out to get something from my car and my toes fell off. And now it’s snowing. Heya winter, I was hoping you’d be that one guest at the party that I manage to avoid making eye contact with for the whole time and then see a year later and be like “heeyyyyy, it’s been so long…”
Moving on.
I’ve been entertaining the idea of having a booth at a local craft fair to sell my jewelry (and other random things I’ve been making/hoarding). The idea itself is kind of terrifying – I remember the tedium of working at the hot dog booth for the Key Club in high school, and the residual emotion of hot dog burns may be jading me a little. AND I’d be there by myself, with the public. The kind who go see parades that celebrate either large gold nuggets or Mr. Johnny Appleseed (these are the two fairs in my own town). WOO DONKEY DERBY.
I will never take part.
It’s not only the public that scares me, but the commitment to actually making a large volume of work, and the not having a totally bobo booth. Especially the first – I mean, filling up a 10′ x 10′ booth when you are selling 2′ x 3′ photographs or hand-painted milking stools isn’t so daunting, but when the items you make each take up about 4 square inches of space, that is SO daunting.
So I’ve made myself a challenge. Which will not only help me create a volume of things, but also pare down the ENORMOUS stash of beads I’ve collected and/or hoarded over the years. Some of the things I pick up and think to myself “Jenny, WTF? This is a string of possible meteor rocks or just regular rocks. WHAT were you going to make with this?” (Answer: I have no idea).
The challenge is: pick an item in my hoard I’ve never used and never had a plan for, and make something wearable out of it. Bonus points if I use up all of the item.
I started on Friday with a $1 strand of teardrop beads that I don’t know why I bought, besides the dollarness. Normally when I’m picking out beads, I don’t buy multi-color packs, and I don’t do random assortments… making me wonder if I actually bought them at all or if they magically appeared in a bag on my desk. (It’s possible. My desk is a void of magic and mystery).
Challenge 1: Dominated.
You can almost smell the winning.
I’ll let you know how it unfolds when I finally decide to tackle the space rocks.
On the Effects of Superglue
I used to have another blog. A different blog in which I pretty much wrote what happened to me every day while I was living in Los Angeles, because LA is on a different planet than the rest of the state of California. I was re-reading my older blog to remind myself of that experience, and at the same time working on a piece of jewelry involving embroidery floss.
Given that I was never a boy scout or sailor, and am thusly limited in my knowledge of knots, most of my floss jewelry has its final fastening made with superglue, or krazy glue, or some unbranded cyanoacrylate glue to bond the floss instantly. And also my fingers. This is something you’ll learn whilst following this blog for the rest of your life:
I ALWAYS superglue my fingers together. Or to the object I’m gluing. Invariably.
I just superglued my fingernail to my embroidery floss. I have glued a needle in between my fingers while I was trying to unclog the bottle of glue. I have glued fabric to my finger. I have had a superglue topcoat on my thumbnail. I have glued my fingernail to the nail bed below it. I have never gotten superglue in my eye, though – that talent is reserved for a coworker I once had. The same coworker who told me she didn’t like my aura.
ANYWAY. I was just noting, as I was picking little pieces of cotton and dried glue off my fingers, that even though I have been blogging for a few years now, and have moved across the state and back, I am still the same crafter as ever. I still glue my fingers together regularly. I still am mildly obsessed with T-Rexes and beads. I still can’t sew very well. All that’s changed is that I’m no longer using a bead loom to create pictures of 80′s pixelated game characters, and my craft space is WAYYYY bigger and more awesome now.
But now that I think of that awesome pacman bracelet I once made… maybe busting out the bead loom isn’t such a bad idea.
