Time Management Skills

There are so many creative ideas that come through via the Internet or personal observation that it's easy to get overwhelmed to the point you end up more like a deer in the headlights as impending deadlines race towards you like a Mac truck. You can literally only do one thing at a time, and prioritizing things cuts down on some of the frustration. I use a simple A,B,C system. A's are the things that have to get done and are time critical like hanging art in a gallery, mailing custom orders out on time, and paying your rent. B's are pressing but can be put on the back burner a little while, like cleaning, ordering supplies, or mending clothes. Just don't wait to long or all those become A's. C's are all the things that you probably fill your hours with that don't really get you anywhere. C's are things like sorting your stash, writing long lists, curling your hair, or catching up on Farmville. If you fill your day with C's it's going to take a long time to steer your life in the direction you want it to go.  So hit some of those A's first. It will take loads of pressure off of you and free up your energy. It's good to ask yourself 'Can I do anything about this task right now?" If the answer is no, try to drop it and press on with something you have some control over.

Brown Knitted Scarf With Great Texture

I got my newest scarf listed on Etsy just moments ago if you want to check it out.http://www.etsy.com/listing/48357163/fluffy-fun-brown-knitted-scarf 
Even in summer I wear scarves for those walks along the beach at night, or in the movie theater where it's often as cold as a refrigerator. When you want to give a special friend something, you can buy this without breaking the bank because it's only $10 plus shipping.

Seize the Bacon

I couldn't resist opening a new website on Weebly. And the name I wanted was taken, which is Carpe Noctum. So I went with bacon instead. HAHA. http://carpebacon.weebly.com/ I must be hungry.

But seriously, it's good to have a back up to Etsy, because you never know. And the shopping features are so easy on Weebly. Just click and drag and edit the photo, price, and description. Easy Peasy.

The page is in no way finished, but you can take sneak peek.

The Hypnotist Drawing

Haha, the Internet is so addicting. I'm still up at 2:30 AM doing the social networking thing. I spent hours on a drawing today. It seems there is no middle ground with drawing...you are either good enough to get oohs and ahhs or you're not. I'd like to be in the oohs category someday. So anyway, here is the drawing I spent hours on today. I really need to unbury my drawing table so I can actually sit there instead of on the couch trying to balance paper, pencils, books, erasers and my sketchpad. Talk about a juggling act. I used an all graphite pencil and a #2 pencil.

I did the negative image with Paint Shop Pro. Hopefully I can get a better photo of the drawing when it's light out.

Spoonflower Contest

If you haven't heard of Spoonflower, it's a site that lets you order your own art on fabric in small quantities. They have a variety of fabrics to choose from and you can get yardage or fat quarters or what have you. It's pricey, but haven't you always wanted to have your own art on fabric? I know I have. And you can get a sample square for a mere $5 plus shipping.

Yesterday I was on the Spoonflower site and saw that their recent competition was a tiki theme. I wish I'd known because I have some cool tiki carvings. So I checked the upcoming contests and they had robots, Renaissance, and Apron. So I entered something in each category.I didn't even think to check to see what the prizes are. I was just so excited to even enter it. You don't need to buy anything to enter the contest. You just have to upload your art and use their fabric generator button to see what your design looks like spread out over the yardage.

Even if you don't want to design your own fabric, at least hop over and vote on your favorite entry. It's a lot of fun to see if you picked the winner.

Here is the drawing from yesterday tweaked and turned into a fabric design.

Today's Drawings (And I Don't Mean Raffle).

My best drawing today is too risque to post here, but if you want to see it, it's here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/almostfamous/4646804698/ Or I can show you her head at least.

My second best drawing and the only small one I really liked is this jester girl.

  If I ever get any more Moo cards made I'll use an inked version of her.

The ballerina one turned out okay too.

The paper is actually bright white, but you know how it is with cameras and bright paper indoors. What do you like to draw? If you don't like your work, do you crumple it up and toss it?

Drawing

Lately I've been bitten by the drawing bug after seeing this exquisite shop on Etsy. http://www.etsy.com/listing/9862819/original-steampunk-drawing-9x12  
This one is of a steampunk woman, but some are racy so best not to open it at work

So I drew my friend Paige at the archery range and gave her the drawing. Unfortunately I didn't have the camera with me so I don't have an image to show you. But I hope to do a lot more drawing this week. Now where did I put my sketch book? I always find them whenever I reorganize, then don't  know where I've squirreled them away. Drawing can be tedious. The trick is to draw something you really love and want to understand better. Otherwise you might lose motivation partway through.
What do you like to draw?

Mammoth on a Gourd

We got two new tips for our woodburning tool. So of course I had to test them out. I wanted to do another wooly mammoth to match the t-shirt I drew for Paleoplanet. So I sketched it with pencil first and then burned over the lines. Then removed the pencil with a soft kneaded eraser. I think I'd like to make a trilobite gourd too, especially since I got invited to join the trilobite group on Flickr. Triblobite group.

Liquidation Sale at Tall Mouse.

I couldn't resist these $35 bolts of trim for $3.50 each.

I'm going to use them for my Steampunk Belly Dancing costume.

I think one lady was going to buy every spool of ribbon in the shop.

 Luckily I nabbed this one before she saw it.

I love wooden eggs.

The white things are bells

I lucked out and found my initials.

Yarn and needles from Tall Mouse

The last 2 skeins of yarn in the store.

Here are the photos of some of the things I got at the Tall Mouse 90% off sale yesterday. I do a lot of different catagories of crafts, so it was good to get a little bit of something for each craft. And I couldn't resist getting 2 flag poles for a dollar each. If you've ever had a craft booth then you know you need flags to provide excitement and so people can remember where they saw your booth.

I think I literally bought the last 2 skiens of yarn in the store. And I got some nice Clover wooden needles and brown yarn and started a scarf.

I also got some grout and tiles. Usually those cost an arm and a leg, so I stocked up because I love doing mosaics.

Let's just say I have enough craft supplies to last until next year. What fun though.

20,000 Hits

Over twenty thousand people have viewed this blog. Isn't that remarkable? And I didn't even add the counter at the beginning of this journey. Now if only more of them had commented. But alas, you can't expect miracles. I love blogger. I hope it's around forever. Don't know what I'd do without it.

Tall Mouse 90% off Sale Today in Cerritos

We went back to Tall Mouse this morning for the 90% off sale. I spent another $50. But I bought several bolts of upholstery trim for my Steampunk belly dancing costume, 2 flag poles, a bunch of tile and grout, some heart shaped nailheads, more feathers, and lots of beads. It was a bit of a zoo this morning. One of the ladies that ran in right before us grabbed a shopping cart and blocked the whole row that had the feathers as she shoveled spools of wired ribbon into her cart.  She had so much stuff they gave her her own designated checker. She rolled her cart out the door piled about 4' higher than the top with fake poinsettias, all of which tumbled off when she went down the sidewalk ramp. I helped her scoop them up, and she said she still had 18 more bags of stuff inside. And these were big giant bags. She said she spent $400 and I believe it.

I was determined to buy whatever yarn they had left today and they only had 2 skeins. Yesterday they had about 20 and I didn't get any. Wish I had but what can you do? And I wanted to get more packs of that scrapbooking paper but it was gone too. Even still I filled my basket until it was almost two heavy to lift, plus the 2 flagpoles.

Thursday is the $5 per bag sale, but I doubt they'll have any inventory left worth going back for so I'm not planning to go back. Now I just have to figure out where to put all this stuff.

Not all the Tall Mouse stores are liquidating, just the one in Cerritos.

Tall Mouse Liquidation Sale in Cerritos

I got kidnapped to the Tall Mouse in Cerritos today and took part in their 80% off liquidation sale. For about $55. I got 4 yards of fabric, five knitting books, two giant circular knitting needles, some focal beads for pendants, jewelry findings, pencils, a package of  fancy scrapbooking papers, some pheasant feathers and more stuff than I can list so I'll just post some photos. And thanks to my boyfriend who generously let me use his ATM card until I get some more money next month. Oh and all their fixtures are on sale so I bought a shop clock. And I also bought a wooden clock face because I've been wanting to make an archery clock.

Painting Small Wooden Frames

I've been hoarding wooden frames for a while now because I thought it would be fun to paint them. So today I grabbed four of them, coated them with white gesso, then a background color, then painted them. I'll have to finish them tomorrow so they can dry a bit. I forgot how time consuming painting 3D objects is.

 

The background color

 

Framed

Almost finished.

Turquoise Necklace and Earrings

This afternoon I made a turquoise necklace and matching earrings. I saw some earrings at a PowWow but since I had no money on me I thought I'd see if I could just make some. And I'd recently seen my turquoise container. I just wasn't sure where it had gotten off too. But luckily it was in the 2nd bead bin I opened. I found some glittery black beads and some silver beads to nestle between the turquoise chips. I'll share the photo tomorrow. This pair I made for myself, but I could always make one for my Etsy shop if one of you just has to have it.

What Is This Thing?

It bugs me to be sitting in front of the TV with empty hands. So while I watched the second half of Peggy Sue Got Married, I grabbed a crochet hook and some red Woolease yarn and started designing something. At first it was looking like a teddy bear, but then I thought it would be cool to make a mouse. Then for a minute there it looked like a tiny top hat. We shall see where this ends up.Then the movie ended and I crocheted through an episode of vintage Star Trek. After that I was partway through a bicycle race on the sports channel when I decided my hands and eyes needed a rest. I'm about done with the head and body but left it open for the stuffing. Tomorrow hopefully I'll do legs, arms and ears if my hands aren't too tired.

Busy Saturday and Pow Wow

I found myself unexpectedly at a PowWow yesterday over by China Town (LA). We had some great fry bread tacos with black beans. The vendors had amazing beadwork, feathers, skulls, drums and pouches for sale. So of course I didn't have any money to spend. What can I say...the Etsy market is really soft right now and I haven't sold anything in ages. I should focus on getting new items into my store. I really need to dig through my supplies for some turquoise because after yesterday I'm seriously jonesing for some turquoise earrings and I know I have some turquoise chips somewhere. I've seen that container recently too.

Tomorrow we need to go to the archery store to get more black feathers for a pending order. Arrows take about a dozen parts and we are always running out of one thing or another. We were in Arcadia yesterday chasing down transparent red nocks (thanks Sal) and we got those only to find out we were a few black feathers short.

If you want to go to the Pow Wow it continues through today. http://www.yelp.com/events/los-angeles-15th-annual-northern-southern-winds-pow-wow---honoring-our-mothers

The Orange County Fairgrounds still has the Gem Faire today as well.

Costa Mesa Gem Faire

Beads from the Gem Faire in Cosa Mesa CA

I was working on a wee bit of embroidery when my boyfriend came in and said he wanted to go to the Gem Faire in Costa Mesa, CA. The only bad part is I didn't plan to go and had no money saved up to buy anything. Torture!!! He bought some beads to hang on a quiver. I just fondled the beads longingly and sighed. It's still going on through the weekend and I have a free pass, but unless I find some money laying in the street it won't do me much good. And they did away with their free parking, so I'd have to pay another $5. to park. There were a lot of vendors selling seed beads this time. Sometimes I can't find many. So I was really sad to miss out.

I got to see some trilobite fossils, so that was pretty cool. And they had a giant Ligham stone at the same booth.

When we first got there it wasn't all that crowded, but by the time we left the crowd had at least doubled and those women were former roller derby stars I think. I was happy to escape. The ones with rolling suitcases were particularly dangerous. I had to do some evasive manuevers a few times.

Asian Comments

Is anyone else having a problem with getting Asian comments on their blog posts? All my comments are moderated, so weird stuff never gets through anyway, but it's time consuming to delete a few of those daily. I get excited thinking I have a comment and hop over from email to read it, and it's in Chinese or Korean or something. I'm guessing its SPAM, but have no idea how to put an end to it. Maybe you all could cheer me up by leaving a real comment now and again.

Illumination

I worked on my illumination a bit more today. I have to remember to take frequent breaks. I was so stiff and sore when I got up. From now on I also need to take notes on which color of gouache I'm using. I did a bunch of squares and tried to get the blues to match and then realized I was using the wrong tube of blue all along so there is no way it was ever going to match. How disappointing. So after that batch of pyramids dried, I put the project away for the day. I was hoping to take it all finished to the scribal meeting tomorrow night but I don't think I can afford to go to it now, and I didn't want to rush and finish and botch up the whole thing. Art can be so frustrated sometime.

Ning Will No Longer Be Free

For those of you that have NING networks, I just got an email that says as of July 2010, there will be no more free Ning networks. I think I have six of those, but none of them are all that active. I do most of my posting to Blogger. If you have a very busy NING that you've invested a lot of time into, you'll either have to start paying or make other plans. I guess everyone needs to make a buck, but it sucks when they lure you in and then close the trap on you. If they ever start charging for Blogger, I'm going to cry. I have so many photos and posts on this thing its not even funny.

Back from the Range

Beautiful Wood Arrows by Guy Taylor

Sal makes bows and arrows.

Aimee makes quivers, beadwork, and gourd art.

Tom Mills takes a break from bows and atlatls to play us some tunes.

Atlatls by Chris from Paleoarts

Well dear ones, I'm home from the Conejo Valley Trad Shoot in Simi Valley, CA a little sunburned, a lot tired and very happy.  I made new friends, renewed old friendships, and got to compete in an altatl match or two. I definitely want to finish my atlatl and darts now. Tom Mills was very helpful in loaning out equipment to people that hadn't made any yet and him and Kate and Ken gave out tips on how to hit the target. So now my name will be on some official International Atlatl website somewhere soon.