Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Halloween!

Have a fun, safe holiday, my babies! I'm sure that tomorrow you can expect many a hilarious photo.
2006 - Pocahontas or Cleopatra?
10 cool points for guessing correctly, haha!

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Today

I am missing this place -

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Domo Domo

Last night, Jojo informed me that she was not going to celebrate Halloween! Agh! This is obviously not acceptable, and we are now working together to make her Halloween dreams come true by constructing the most hilarious costume EVER. In fact, as I sit in my little cubicle writing this I am trying my hardest to suppress my creepy giggling.

I will not say at the moment what said hilarious costume plans entail, but they do have something to do with this:

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

This House Is Old Enough

I usually hate regurgitating other people's posts here, but I can't help myself today. Craftzine has posted a link to this little project.

My partner in crime and ex-roommate, Fish, will tell you that I have been in need of this device for many a year. She used to say that I should have my own TV show called "Arts and Cracks" because I had the habit of sitting on the living room floor in ill fitting pants, working on my craft projects. You'd better believe that as soon as I got my big kid job, I went out and bought the highest high waisted pants I could find, as a precaution against those NSFW moments.

This one's for you, Fish.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Prepare Thyself

Halloween is fast approaching. I still need to take a trip to Goodwill and pick up a pair of khaki short shorts.
This is me on Halloween of 2005 in my dorm room. Just so everybody knows, I am not intoxicated in this photograph. I was just havin' a really good time. My badass grandma(who taught me literally everything I know about krafting) made me this costume when I was in the fourth grade, and I still bust it out when I need something original but am feeling cheap/lazy.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Talk of Toilets, Continued

I was thinking the other day about how happy and free I feel now that I'm finished with school(for the moment). However, I do miss taking art classes and all of the neato equipment/facilities that the university provided. I haven't been able to screen print in a long time because I no longer have a power washer or a lightbox, which makes me pretty sad. Here is one of my favorite printing projects that I did in school:

The "Krunk Seat"

The assignment was to print on a non-traditional surface. I cheated a little by printing first on rice paper and then cutting and appliquéing the shapes onto the seat. At the time, I was listening to GZA's "Liquid Swords" on repeat, and I must have been overcome with visions of hip-hop grandeur, i.e. pimp cups and gold chains. A few more coats of shellac, and this sucker should be ready to use.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Paulo

It happens much too often that I am left standing outside my front door doing a little jig because I have to pee like a racehorse and I can't find my keys in the dark crevices of my faux-leather uber-purse. To solve this problem, I came up with the most ginormous keychain possible. I present to you "Paulo", the personified cupcake:
Actually, he was supposed to be a cupcake, but he looks more like a brown bowl of gelato. I suppose cupcakes don't usually have whipped cream and a cherry on top.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

I Actually Find Lots of Things Delightful

I was at Daawuud's house the other night, porchin' it up, when I discovered his DELIGHTFUL toilet. I have never sat on a tinier piece of porcelain in my life - I felt like Buddy the Elf at the North Pole. I thought all toilets came in the same size! Maybe this means that they make extra large toilets, too!?

Random Fact: Circus people call toilets "donnikers". Love it!


On to the real post of the day, ahem. I finally scanned the first coloring book page for my public art project, kunstkabinett (means, roughly, "cabinet of curiosities).

Featuring "Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai" starring Forest Whitaker and featuring the music of RZA of the Wu Tang Clan. This movie incorporates all of my favorite things: gangstas/gangsters, wanky eyes, ice cream, the French language, and small children of indeterminable gender. Go watch it! And if you want a copy of this page, give me your e-mail and I'll send you the JPEG. Cheers!

Monday, October 20, 2008

Final Product

Finalement! Photos of the Pattern Is Movement dress:





Too bad it doesn't fit properly, haha.
I'll wear it anyhow.




So....

Let us now focus on the bag instead of my ridiculous brother:

My friends, I give you the duct tape bag of the future. And by the "future", I mean the "present", heh. Anywho, this isn't your sticky, wrinkled, junior high makeshift messenger bag, ooooooh no. This sucker is sleek, chic and, er, probably not biodegradable BUT! perfectly capable of serving as a reusable tote for those small shopping trips.

You can pick one up here as soon as I get my act together and post it.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Oh My Sweet Lord

This weekend I finally had the time/camera to take pictures for minihorse! My brothers wanted to make it a creative family project and this is what we, ahem, produced: art direction: Bub
photography: Breezy
model: Jan


The photoshoot went something like this:

Bub: Ok, ok. Now stick your gut out more. MORE! There we go. And curve that finger a little. Perfect.
Dad: Oh my. Um. The camera loves you.

AND, I'm sure you're all curious: Jan is a 24-year-old security specialist seeking a good Christian woman who shares his interest in classic films, sports, and world history. He will sweep you off your feet, then eat all of the food in your refrigerator.



If this photograph won't sell my products, I don't know what will.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Why I Am A Horrible Person

These days, there are so many opportunities to put your money to good use. I'm big into feeding hungry people and ending child prostitution, but I don't help out financially nearly as much as I could. Instead, I must work to prevent myself from blowing my paycheck on crazy (and awesome) products like this:

cellfoam.com, $9.99 plus shipping
I can't help feeling like buying a foam rubber banana-shaped cell phone holder would be like a slap in the face to the multitudes of tiny starving children around the world.

But I will not deny its creator's brilliance.

Hurrah!

Due to renovations and changes in staff, I still haven't been trained to do some of the things necessary for my job, which makes for long periods of time in which I basically have nothing to do but check my e-mail twenty thousand times a day and wait. Luckily, I just got a lovely package in the mail, and I will once again be busy making sure that digital images of historical newspapers meet Library of Congress image quality standards - yay!

I also spend quite a bit of time in the library's mail room for my job, and who knew that any good would come from that? Not me, my friends! But I was oh-so-wrong, as I realized today when I was rummaging through a giant box of styrofoam packing pebbles and came upon a graphic-tastic British airmail bag!

Can you say "RE-PURPOSE"?

I knew you could.

Ima take that sucker home, cut it up, and turn it into bags and purses and wallets! And then.... Ima sell 'em! Hopefully, if I troll the mail room frequently enough, I can find even more cool stuff. In fact, I think I'll mosey down there now....

High Pumpkin Pie In the....Sky-y-y-y

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This picture has nothing to do with this post, but I don't caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaare

Last night, Wiki and I hung out with Daawuud and Keert. It was just like the olden days, when we used to goof off in Arabic class. And man oh man, how I loved that class. We were trying to learn to speak Arabic from a New Zealander who wore Armani pants and consistently mispronounced everyone's names. Also, we joked about the chemistry between him and one of our classmates....and now they have been spotted canoodling outside of university on several occasions - kinda freakay!

Anyway, replace University of Nebraska-Lincoln with Village Inn, and Professor Armani with a drugged-out-Zac-Efron-look-alike waiter, and you basically have last night. There was much pie, and much much laughter(for some reason the topic of feral children strapped to potty seats really tickled me). This morning I decided to wake up at 6:20(ha!) and go run off the pie(ha!), but instead I used the extra time to figure out which bus to ride to work so I don't have to walk there, thus eliminating virtually all exercise from my life. Someone call Richard Simmons and schedule an intervention.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

No More Gray Days!

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For my thesis project, I made a children's book based off of a Manx/Japanese folktale about a shapeshifting hedgehog/badger called Lucky Piggy. It's one of the only large projects that I've ever finished in my entire life(besides that latch-hook rug that LITERALLY took me twelve years to complete, hehe)!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Just For Good Measure

One more for today:
rightsizetiger
From high school! In 2002! I am old!

Dr. Strangelamb

Since I can't load any of my photos right now, I will entertain you with a few recycled posts from my old blogs.

Photobucket
I get way too emotionally attached to my work. I gave this guy away last year, and now I kind of wish I hadn't(even if it was for a good cause). Maybe I'll turn it into a woodcut or something.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Who's With Me?


"Scandinavian Farmhouse" by Jess Peterson - etsy, $15


Today, I am thinking about Scandinavia. I am thinking about Sigur Ros and Mew. I am thinking about Ranna and Elin and their cute duds. I am thinking about hot springs and green, green grass and shaggy ponies and trolls. I am thinking about my viking grandma, Bettie. I am thinking of passports and hostels and $2000 plane tickets.

Let's go now.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Ugh.

Ugh.

Ugh.

Today is unofficially the grossest day ever. Dare I say that I don't even know if getting my new purple hat in the mail could make it any better :( And that's saying a lot.

Here is a happy yellow page from my sketch book to make things a little brighter:

These were extra tattoo designs I did for Wiki this summer. The one on the left was inspired by a sad, beautiful poem called "Lady of Kicking Horse Resevoir" by Richard Hugo. The other is from a series of little drawings I did on the subject of loneliness. Ugh.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Dude or Dudette?

Here I am, sitting in my little cubicle, ready to be done for the day. I toddled home over my lunch hour and mixed some garlic cheesebread dough for a dinner party tonight(hopefully it won't rise too much before I can get back to it!). I didn't notice til I was back at work that my all-black outfit was spotted with flour. Yes, thank you, I am a slob.

On a different note, I love the people in my neighborhood. Everyone says hello, and everyone calls me baby(including girls who are probably younger than me, meh). Last night, I had my best neighborly encounter yet! I was walking home from the grocery store around 9 o'clock and it was super dark outside. The streets are lit by lamps, but there isn't any light on the sidewalks. There was a large black man walking a ways ahead of me, and he kept looking back in an agitated manner. After walking like this for a couple of blocks, he angrily mumbled something that sounded a whole lot like "muthaf*cka" and started walking in the street instead of the sidewalk. A while later, I had caught up to him and we both waited for cars to pass so we could cross the street. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him looking at me.

"It's a girl," he said under his breath. I froze, mortified. A few minutes later he yelled, "Sorry Lady, I thought you was a dude!" I snorted. I've never been mistaken for a man before. Hadn't he seen my long hair? My handbag? My cleave, glowing in the light of the moon?

This reminds me of a similar event from last autumn. Wiki and I were in the Big City for a Regina Spektor show. On the way back home, we got lost in a rather seedy neighborhood and happened upon a chubby woman in a miniskirt and platform boots, standing on the corner.
"Oh look! A hooker!" we said. Then the woman turned around...and it was a MAN!
"It's a trannie hooker!" I screamed, and we zoomed off.

Oh man, good times.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Moan/Groan

I have been so productive lately [for once]! Here's what I've been up to:

- I finished/gave up on the Pattern Is Movement dress. I was so eager to have it done and be able to wear it that I skipped some important structural details and it is basically jerry-rigged with velcro and basting. But if I ever perform at the VMA's and need to make a quick costume change, this dress would be perfect.
- I made a pillowcase out of the Japanese strawberry fabric I ordered, and by golly, I will do my best to not drool all over it.
- I've been constructing little plush things out of my favorite poor-girl's fabric, felt. Mushrooms and cacti were my first experiments. Tommy requested a felt Ralph Lauren, complete with turtleneck, double breasted jacket, and pleated pants. I've made dolls before, but never with pleated pants, so we'll see how that goes.
- I've devised a crackpot art-in-the-community project which involves informing my fellow townspeople about interesting/obscure topics through the distribution of coloring book pages of my own design. The first installment will feature the movie "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" starring Forrest Whitaker. So good.

Of course this blog post would be way better if there were pictures of all of these crazy projects, right? Sadly but truly, I lost my camera's USB cord somewhere in the move. I have no idea where it is, and there will be no original fo-tos until I can find it or get a new one. Uuuuuugh :(

Monday, October 6, 2008

That's All

Oh Lordy! I hope my hat came in the mail today! And my Norway zine!

Today I had what may have been a combination of the best and worst lunch ever:
+ cheddar jack cheese stick
+ yoplait kid's low sugar extra creamy Dora the Explorer yogurt(discovered while babysitting last summer - delicioso!)
+ 35 cent fudge round(because I was going to go home for soup but then got lazy/hungry) - fudge rounds are amazingly filling/not nutritious. i'm expecting to go into a diabetic coma any minute now. . .

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

On My Obsession With Animals With Squished Faces:

I have recently found that one of the many wonderful consequences of working a full-time job is that I can afford things that were once completely out of my budget. And although I do currently have a few financial monkeys on mah back(paying off a loan, saving for a vehicle, etc.), I was mucho excited to realize that I may be able to acquire one of these little dears in the not-so-distant future:

I refuse to be a crazy dog lady, though! There will be no dog sweaters, no dog shoes, no carrying of the dog in a doggy handbag, and no baby-talking to the dog!

I'm currently open to suggestions for names. For a boy, I'm considering Merle, Vernon, or Waldo. For a girl, I think the name "Gul" is really funny(it actually means "rose"), but that might be a little too out there. Maybe Florence. Or Tottie.

Let's Not Mess With Johnny Law

Here is an essay I wrote back in the third grade(not really, I wrote it today at work):

"Domestic Emergency"

My maintenance man is named Frank*. Frank looks a lot like Viggo Mortensen. Except he has varicose veins. Frank is like a male version of my grandma. He bakes things and collects Thomas Kinkaid prints. I bet he knits, too. A few days ago, Frank got convicted of a white collar crime. He will be gone for quite a while. Who will fix my leaky pipe while Frank is in the pokey?

The End


On a happier note, I found out today that there are only forty-two high-risk convicted sex offenders in my neighborhood. Yay! At least Frank wasn't one of them.

*names were changed to protect the guilty