thunder, lightening

woke up last night to LOUD thunder and bright lightening. turns out a huge storm came through the cities, dumped a lot of rain (which we needed) but it turned the neighborhood just north and west of me into a mulch-pit. HUGE trees and branches are lying in the street, all the business are closed and the stoplights aren't working, and those poor folks will not have fans or A/C on a day that's supposed to reach 90. yikes.

i'm busy cleaning my apartment and car to get ready for my california cousins to visit, but i needed a quick break for coffee. my 'usual' place had no power, so i had to come back down to the one that's within walking distance, but always too busy. luckily, the computers were free!

last time i was here, there was a guy reading about metaphysics on wikipedia, and muttering to himself. it was quite entertaining.

homo bulla est

reminded again today,
life is short

man is a bubble


trapped under a mountain, a river, a bridge
or laying on the sidewalk
sadly death will find us all


knowing one day, that clock will catch up to me
makes me want to live up the little moments
change direction, better myself


being reminded, it can happen.....instantly
could scare me enough to trap me inside
the apartment i hate to waste time cleaning

i've got to start making a mark on this world

knowing i'll leave behind goodness, art, and love

loving nephew, cousins, friends,

i suppose that's enough

life on the bubble

a rainbow, then....

pop

garage sale

helpin' my folks with their massive garage sale today. didn't make any art yesterday.

just about to leave the wilds of hugo to head back to the wilds of st. paul, to shower, nap, create, play some poker, hang out with a friend or two, eat, and clean....not neccessarily in that order.

hopefully, will post some new stuff tomorrow.

closeup of 'the shape of my heart'

busy nite last nite!

had a bite with a good friend at the birchwood cafe. where i also stopped for breakfast yesterday. we had gotten our wires crossed, and he thought i was going to pick him up. so i called his landline (how can you not have a cell phone these days?) and sure enough, he was waiting for me.

anywhoozle. once he got there, we had a lovely, laugh filled dinner. i'm going to miss him when he moves to beantown.

after dinner, i went home to shower and make a few quick thingamajigs. here's a quick painting/collage that i did, called 'the shape of my heart'.

it's a matte that i picked up at artscraps, then i collaged the background of a piece of rag paper also from artscraps, using newsprint and tissue paper. layered an old piece of map paper from paper source, some thai paper from who knows where, some sparkely gold paper from sample books my mom gave me, and some rhinestones (on the crown). Threw some paint spots down over it. then I made the lower piece, using the same stuff, and a paint chip, stamp, and sheer ribbon that had been accidentally overdyed.

went back in with a pen to give a little more definition to the wings.

i also encased a rabbit in one of the eggs from two days ago. it worked just great. look for some egg-bunnies soon, well, maybe in like a week. i'm pretty freakin' busy with other stuff right now, and my cousins are coming to town this weekend. yayy!!!

then i went to a fringe show. i'll say this about it. i'm glad it was only 28 minutes long.

came home, touched up the paint, and went to bed.

Oh, and my cute-arse kitty

Bein' cute. She loves to chew paper, so she's in heaven right now , as it's pretty much everywhere in the apartment.

Paper Flurry

Jeeze I've been a busy girl these past few days. Here's my table, you can see the buns in the upper left corner. I'd had an idea of putting wee birds and other creatures into paper mache eggs, a while back, and just got around to trying it last night.

First came the hunt for an egg-shaped object/objects to use as molds. After several failed attempts to make them out of plastic bags and crumpled newspaper, and a wild idea to use a potato, I settled on two wooden half-eggs taped together. I also found a few cups and pressed-glass bowls to make larger paper mache pieces which will be nests.

I love the paper mache paste mix-it's so easy and CHEAP. Microwave a glass of water for about a minute, add 2 T of corn starch, and then microwave at 15 second intervals, stirring between each session, until the mixture is the consistency of yogurt. It thickens as it cools, I usually end up adding a few more drops of water to it as well. Sometimes I mix in lavendar oil as well.

I used torn strips of the local free newspaper, and The Onion, which made for some fun reading as I worked. The molds were just perfect for the length of strips I had torn. On the first layers I used a lot of corn starch glue and on the upper layers, not so much. Didn't use a brush until I got to the decorative layers of tissue paper. My hands have a nice blue-green cast today!

Anyway. I molded them, let them sit for 10 minutes while I molded the next one, and then peeled them out or cut them off, and set them to dry on a muffin tin's backside (DIRTY!). 10 minutes in the oven at 200 degrees, and they were ready for a layer of tissue paper. I did re-inforce a couple of the early ones with another layer of newsprint. I added ribbons to the eggs, my plan is once they're totally dry, to encase the wee animals and cover one more layer of tissue paper around the ribbon, so you'll pull the ribbon to release the animal.

I think I need to find a larger egg mold, the wood one worked great but it was just a bit too small. The animals are going to be SMOOSHED in there!


Lastly, as I was going to bed, I decided to cover my journal with a new cover. I used tissue, stuff from the newspaper, a vintage French postage stamp, a snippet of iron-on lettering my mom had made for me a billion years ago when I was in dance (hence, no middle name), and a flower cut from the lace that was in my sister's wedding gown. I wasn't sure it was going to stick with just the corn-starch paste, so I covered it with a few layers of tissue as well.

Just a quick little photomontage of a new bun, and a photo I took last year of a lotus from the rain garden at the Como Zoo.

More tomorrow, I'm going home and sewing up a bunch more buns tonight!

Work from the weekend

Alrighty well I'm going to try to get a personal blog going again. Wish me luck.

I won a considerable amount of cash again at poker, so I went and bought some canvasses at Michaels as well as a book on artful blogging, and the DVD for 300. I basically then just holed myself up in my house (barring the trip to the Uptown Art Fair with my folks) and worked.

Here are two wee rabbits, with painted-lace wings and embroidered faces. They are about 3 inches tall, made from recycled sweaters.

They'll be going to I Like You on Wednesday, along with a few other small stuffies.

Here's the detail from a collage/painting that I did. The bird's wings and bodies were made with bleach-painted construction paper, I used a scrap that was lace-printed for their beaks and legs, and the 'nest' is part of a vintage photo-holder that I got from my gram.

I'm not 100% happy with it yet, but it's getting there. I'm thinking I'll add real branches to the bottom where they're painted, right now, which you can't see in this photo.

Lastly, here's a collage/painting, once again, in a vintage frame. Still needs a title, I'm thinking,

"Muffy the Explorer. Got off the couch, did great things"

Work for Craftstravaganza

Here's some recent work so the good people at the St. Paul Craftstravaganza can see what I've been up to.....most of this stuff has sold but this is the style of what I've been doing lately. Enjoy!

LORETTA'S TREE
This uses a tree branch, coral, crystals, paintchips, a model railroad figure, and sterling silver wire.



BE MY VALENTINEMore of the same.....turquoise, paintchips, old maps, railroad figures, sterling chain and wire, tree branch, and vintage French postage stamp



Paper mache bird, using 100% recycled materials


Necklace using vintage French postage stamp in handmade (by me!) soldered frame. Too many beads to list, but basically I just threw everything blue and green that I had at this mammajamma. I lurve it. My sister has it now.

Ok so that was a lie....

things have changed so much in beccajotown, that it's not even funny. well, perhaps it's mildly amusing.

i have taught myself many interesting things, how to solder being one of them.
see?

but it hasn't freed up ANY more time.

i'm working at a college now, doing costume design for their theater department, and it's super exciting. and now i'm trying to decide if i want to a. open a store, or b. go to grad school and become a prof. ARGH CHOICES!!!!!

watch out internets, i'm back baby!

Well, it's been a whirlwind month. My show, Wonderland at the MN fringe fest was the #1 selling show. There's too many stories to go into at this point, but let me just say it was a wild and exciting ride, one which I hope we get to repeat very soon.

I have been neglecting my body, my room, and my art for so long though, that to do any maintenance on any one of them depresses the hell out of me. I've stopped walking every AM, and am starting to gain back the weight I'd lost. Deeeeepressing.

It's not *so* blasted hot any more, which is good, so I think this afternoon and evening I'm going to do some serious cleaning and organizing in my studio, and go through my closet again. Generous co-workers have been giving me clothes, but they're not always my style and yet I have a hard time saying 'no thanks.'

I'm looking forward to a nice, relaxing fall. Which means of course that it's going to be insanely hectic. And I wouldn't want it any other way.......

ten mile stretch on a nine mile line...

well the new necklaces i posted on etsy have disappeared. i suspect they were stolen. but i'm not sure. i'm going to wait 2 more days, and then de-list them and make all new ones. but not with new material. still trying to use up what i have.

i ran into an old babysitter @ the mall today, when i went to get a cookie at mrs. fields. yeah, i know i shouldn't be eating cookies. eff that. those cookies are worth being fat. yum! anyway. her grandparents built the house i grew up in, and she was in my older sister's grade in school. she checked my ID against my check card, recognized my last name, and we started to chat.

funny how the random fact that i used a card instead of cash meant i talked to her, instead of not.

we held a going-away party for my bro, SIL, and wee nephew matthew. i cried when i left. and a couple of more times on the way home. i'm going to miss so much of matthew's life. missouri is not that far away, but, it is.

it got me thinking on the things that i've passed up in my 30 years. and how fast life really does go.

then i went to the book store, and then to mission improbable 3. tom cruise has only 3 front teeth on the top. i'm glad i'm not the only one with a screwed-up grill.

good intentions.....cause injuries

So remember my traffic accident from a few weeks back? I had stopped for a pedestrian in a crosswalk, which is a state law. The dude behind me did not.
He smashed his truck into my wee car, totaling it. I got a new car, which I like very much (although I REALLY want to paint some flames on it) but now I'm leery of stopping for people at crosswalks. "Sorry!" I shout, as I buzz by.
I went to go get a salad at the local grocery store today, and for unknown reasons they switched the dressing from ladle-your-own, to carafes. Like someone would put on your table, so they didn't have to keep refilling your water glass every 3 minutes. I get a nice healthy salad, all sorts of good veggies and what have you, and go to put a SMIDGEN of bleu cheese dressing on. It comes out in one big glop so I had to go back and add more lettuce and other veggies to it.
I get back to work, start eating it, and INHALED some broccoli florets into my lungs. I started coughing. Then I started gagging. Went to the bathroom, threw up my 4 bites of broccoli. Sweet.

Had the little silver comets in my eyes from coughing and throwing up at the same time. Turns out one of them was actually one of the nasty little millipedes that lives in the bathroom. Ugh. He didn't try to crawl up my leg this time, perhaps he doesn't care for bleu cheese.

Finally! Something New!

I got inspired last night, and instead of cleaning like I should have been doing, I was creating. I stayed up WAY past my bedtime, but I made 6 gorgeous necklaces. One is promised to a charity auction, one is currently on my neck and probably won't be available for sale, but the other four are read-2-goh.

Check them out!

gettin' artsy with the digicam

Unbusy at work and waiting for traffic to pass so I can meet the 'rents at Big Bowl. Yum! Nothin' tastes better than free dinner.


Jeeze I need a brow waxing.

If I was a character in 'A Scanner Darkly', which, I'm not.


New jewelry coming to my etsy shop later this week. I promise!

neglected corners of my brain

well it's been a busy-ass month. highlights and lowlights:

*landlord in hospital for severe pneumonia

*room and studio absolute mess due to low energy/no time

*rehearsals for fringe show have started, only able to attend 1 so far
because....
*got rear-ended by license suspended, apparently uninsured driver. SWEET.

*car totalled

*had a super visit to chicago to see my sister

*decided to go to graduate school

haven't been able to do my creating every day thing, i gott get better at making time for myself. uuuuugh.

creative time vampire

so i'm on a drug for the depression. and it seems to have also conquered what i used to call simultaneous multitasking, but in reality, ADD is prolly what it is.
this is good. it allows me to focus long enough to clean. but it's also bad, because doing one thing for so long wears me out. and organizing is tiring.

also, i'm not remembering my dreams anymore. which is fantastic because my whole life i've had extremely vivid nightmares and unpleasant dreams. i was waking up anyhwere from 6-10 times a night, usually frightened of the demon i was just hangin' out with in the bar, or the dead body i'd discovered under my car which was only the head of a baby and a body of a snail. stuff like that. it'd take me hours to fall asleep at night, and once i woke up, more time to fall back asleep.

so that alone is great. but i haven't had the desire, or the time it seems, to sit down and MAKE. and the days when i don't make anything, i feel a little funny.

i've been seeing some really amazing things out there on the internet that make me feel like a suck for not keeping up with my jewelry and yarn spinning and collage and what have you. so i'm going to try to set aside creative time once again. an hour a day that cannot be spent cleaning, rehearsing, working, eating, walking etc. can only be spent MAKING.

contest! whoopee!

The super cool glampyre is having a design contest. Here's my entry-a kimono style sweater made of lace. I think it'd be gorgeous. I dig the deep colors, and it's unusual to go from light to dark on top. As the pic says, it's inspired by two things I found on Knitty-the Kyoto Sweater, and the Branching Out scarf. Could I knit this thing? Hope so.

rainy days and mondays always get me down

it's monday. it was rainy today. bummer.

we cast our fringe show over the weekend, but then some peeps dropped out.
that's not as bad as the other show i'm werkin' on, where the stage manager, assistant director, and 4 actors have dropped. oh, and it opens in less than a month. whoopee!

the rain seems to have stopped. i'm going on a walk.

oh. but this is the funniest thing I've seen in months.