Geometric

A friend of mine suggested I do a tic tac toe design for the newest Spoonflower contest.  Sheesh, I was just going to do a plain chevron - I am so out of ideas.  Here are the O's of the game or if you prefer the hugs in hugs and kisses.

Looks like when I exported I cut off the top of the 2 O's but the design itself here at Spoonflower Click here to see it is perfectly fine and not cut off.And I didn't do any clean up of small white lines (I'm in a terrible hurry right now).

The choice of color was part of the brief rather than my own choice.  I'd probably do it in lots of color so it were bolder.  I'm ok with the green, I'm less fond of the grape color. 

The next contest is Endangered Animals and that should be realllly fun and way more to my liking.  Yay.

Ickly sickly

Oh, it's been a tough couple of weeks.  I was sick, sick, sick.  Flu? Walking pneumonia? Whatever it is, I've still got the tail end of it and it's wiped me out.

How many weeks can you cough because of icky goo?  So far albout 3 wks.

My sister was in a car accident: a few injuries and she'll survive but dang, hearing that the inside of her Camry is now only 24 inches wide sorta puts a bit of fear in you.

Got my ticket to go to PA for my nieces wedding. Huzzah. Even got a ride to the airport from a really nice friend who will drive me 60 miles there and then her 90 min drive home.  Boy, do I owe her!

Ok, that's it for tonight: I hope to do a post with some crafty things by this weekend!  Or at least post something funny or entertaining or something (I hope).

Night night.

Number 17!

What a great experience to take part in the SewMamaSew.com 2012 giveaway.  I loved checking the comments and seeing really yummy and fabulously easy things to make and eat.   You all outdid yourselves with every kind of yummy choices for me. Thank you so much! Without further ado:

Drum roll Please!  

Using the True Random Number Generator the winner is #17!  SewLindaAnn!  So, Linda Ann I've sent you email and when you reply with your address I'll send out the apron kit to you asap!

Scooters and Sidecars

I've created a whole slew of coordinates to go with my watercolor scooter fabric here at Spoonflower .  It's currently entered in the Motorcycle contest there (if you choose to vote in the contest the link is here

I wanted to make a kid design, specifically boys.  Those poor boys they rarely have a big choice when it comes to fabric design.  I like this because it's geared towards toddlers both boys and girls.  If you look at my coordinates you'll see designs geared for both styles of kidlets. .

 

 When my son was teeny I could basically find cammo or truck fabric.  Both are fine but I wanted MORE.  He loved vroomy things so that's what I kept in mind as I drew the scooters.

Oh and I might end up using this as a coordinate too.  :-)

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway! Woot!

Yahoooo!  It's time! I'm participating in the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway!  See this logo proves it!  Isn't it exciting? You could have a free cut and sew kit in your hands in just a week or two if you just continue reading.

You cook right?  And cooking can be messy right? Especially if you have a 3 year old who wants to get his or her fingers right into the bowl and then after licking their fingers must wipe the rest of it up on your clothes.

Well, I have just the kit for you (even if you don't have a 3 year old and even if you don't actually cook...you could use it while cleaning the house, but it really is cute in the kitchen especially if you have FiestaWare dishes).  You can win (ding, ding, ding!) this apron kit by simply posting your favorite easy recipe (or a link to a recipe) and in a few days (on May 25th to be exact) I'll randomly choose one of you to receive a A Tribute to Fiestaware apron kit!  It's that easy.

It'd be great if you followed me (that would be swell), you don't have to make 500 of your twitter followers follow me with a link back (but if you have 500 twitter followers I'm suitably impressed), all you have to do is the recipe thing AND include a way for me to contact you.  If I can't contact you I have to choose another! I will ship internationally so don't be shy, comment away!

Ohhhh, you wanna see the apron?  It's free you know!  But here it is modeled by my best friend.  And here it is with some fab Fiesta dishes.

If  you want to see the pattern kit go here to Spoonflower (btw, I have tons of designs there: cruise them if you're in the mood to check out a slew of fabric designs) the directions are printed right on the kit, all you need to do it cut it out and sew it up!  What could be easier? I know, having your significant other go out and get a fabulous dinner for you would be easier and if your partner does that then you can still WEAR the apron so you'll match the dishes you'll surely eat from right?

Ok, commence with the recipes...I'm hungry and I really want to try some out!

Oh and p.s. All my commenters so far have blogs! Go read them, give them some bloggy love!

2012 Solar Eclipse

I live in southern California and we had a solar eclipse today.  In 15 mins I created a viewing box out of a soda cracker box, some tape, paper and a nail.  Oh and tape to tape it shut.  The eclipse was cool, the light shifted and everything had a golden quality to it.

I didn't stare at the sun. I like having eyes that can see but that pin-hole box was just not cutting it.  I mean, I could see the shadow, the box worked perfectly but thing all around me was far more dynamic.

I noticed on the side of our barn this:

 

Isn't it fantastic? It's the shadows of leaves and branches from our giant sycamore tree.  I thought it was gorgeous.  I thought I'd take a photo of what it normally looks like tomorrow night.  

I'm sure there are better photos of the actual sun, but this make me feel all wonderous.  

Of retro bananas and anteaters

Bwhahaha, the result for the Retro contest came out today and yep, it was as I expected; my erect candle salad placed dismally. S'ok as I added the erect banana at the last minute because I couldn't come up with a good solid design so I went for the laugh factor. I loved my design once I added the banana...wanna see it? It's here: click here and then zoom on the design to see the detail. It got a decent number of views (which only means people were curious about it) and a number of comments from designers and regular Spoonflower members. But I guess there aren't enough Amy Sedaris fans or Charles Phoenix fans that came out to vote! Dang it!

Onto the Spoonflower hand drawn contest. The criteria is it must be hand drawn. Basically anything goes. You can color it any way you want. To me the better ones are those that are not colored digitally and not converted from hand drawn to vector. I like that somewhat rough look if it's going to be hand drawn. I mean, because I hand draw ALL of my designs...I just draw them with a wacom tablet and pen and in Illustrator. Totally hand drawn. Eh, doing that makes me feel like I'm cheating so nope, it's going to be totally hand done with real materials.

Tough not having a specific theme so I tried watercolor flowers...looked great but too boring as there will be lots of florals. Ditched it. Did a different floral with pencil and used odorless mineral spirits to melt the wax. Nice but still too boring so I ditched that too. Anteaters have been sort of on my mind since the Not Owl contest so last Monday at lunch I drew out my anteaters in ink no less and then started coloring them with colored pencil. I didn't have time to do 3 or 4 of them in diff poses since I had to enter the next day. Drew one, copied it and colored them with different color combos.

That's one of the combos. I love it, it cracks me up. I've watermarked it so if it looks a little uneven it's because the watermark is there. Wanna see the seamless repeat? Go here and check it out. Wanna vote for it so it doesn't have the same dismal showing as my candle salad? Go here and page thru the millions of entries (I do so apologize for the time you'll take going thru them all but really there are some good designs in there!)

I'm thinking anteaters might look good on my couch. And I might just be the only person in the world with anteater pillows! Woot!

George Clooney's birthday

I'm on Facebook quite a bit.  I read all sorts of stuff my friends post.  In some cases I've "liked" an outside organization such as Associated Press, ABC News, Huffington Post, etc.  Because I like to know what is going on. 

I hate having outside organizations pop up with a subscribe notice so "All your friends can see what you're reading!"  IF I WANT OTHERS TO KNOW SOMETHING I'LL ACTIVELY POST IT ON MY WALL.  I don't need Huffington Post (btw, AP and ABC does not use the popup social plugins and I'm thankful for that) to use me as an advertising tool to my friends by posting what I might have clicked on.  So Huffington Post - I like your articles mostly; at least some of the sections...others not so much. 

This appeared on my wall this morning. 

I do not care that George Clooney turned 51 or that he had a birthday.  George doesn't send me gifts or cards or helps me pay my bills.  He doesn't even know I'm alive.  So, no, I'm not going to click on that story, I'm not going to "Like" the article and if I did read it I certainly don't want to push that kind of stuff to my friends. 

Now if I knew the guy and I liked him as a human and we were actually friends I might go to HIS wall and wish him a happy birthday. But posting a happy birthday wish to him via your article is just inane.  Again, the man doesn't know who I am, nor does he care.  As far as he knows people who post birthday wishes on your site are all nutcases who *think* they know him because he's some kind of entertainment celebrity.

Can you do me a favor Huffington Post? Can you put a No Thank You function on your social networking popup so if I decide to read an article I can go to your site without having to be faced with a danged popup and read it without advertising to my friends?  Come on Arianna...can you do that? 

I'll bet if George asked you would.

In which I recount my work week

Lazy Saturdays! Worked on a design, changed it up from a very boring shape-driven design to something tongue-in-cheek funny. Not a winner type of design but it totally cracked me up. Can't post it here yet; must wait til Tuesday.

The last week was very busy for me. I was asked to project manage a press conference and I had great fun doing it. In my old work world I project managed long-term, somewhat largish projects. At my current work I project manage nothing but myself. I consider myself quite easy to manage. I rarely talk back to myself. My new boss gives me things that are outside of my assigned duties and that makes me happy because at least I'm doing something besides managing myself. This project wasn't really project management, it was really a coordination effort but they call it project management and who am I to quibble with their institutional lexicon?

I digress. I had 5 days to coordinate this thing. Luckily I saw every email so I could coordinate as things changed or made suggestions on how things should go or should not go. There was total cooperation at every turn so it made it easy as pie. My phone was ringing off the hook, my email groaning at the volume of mail. I thrive on things changing every 5 mins so this was right up my alley.

Thursdays press conference went without a hitch which is the mark of a successful event. We had good press coverage, fabulous technology coordination, great attendance in the audience and we didn't really need the plainclothes officers (we had 2). I sort of cracked up that the officers were in plainclothes but each of them had those ear piece things with the clear cord running into their suits - not very incognito if you ask me.

Friday was catching up with all the things I didn't do during the coordination week. Hahaha, to give you an indication of my normal volume of work I finished all of that with time to spare. But if the boss asks, I was sweating bullets trying to catch up (Ha).

Outside of work I saw my son, he drove into town Thursday, he came to my work to visit me with his friends and invited me and his dad to dinner: he was going to cook. We arrived at 9:20 (yes, it was a late dinner); about a dozen 20-something guys, a couple of girls and us. I don't know that some of his friends knew we were coming. We walked in and those that didn't know us looked at us funny. We're 30-35 years older than them and we're PARENTS. hahahaha. I think those that were smoking blunts in the backyard did a (slow) double-take.

The son cooked mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, pan-fried steaks and a green salad for about 15 people. Everything was yummy. We ate around 10:15....rather I ate at that time as I got served first (good son!). It was fun seeing the kids we knew; most of them we've known since they were in grade school and now they are all 23 or so. Most have jobs, most have graduated from college and most are just now embarking on a real life. I don't think any of them live with their parents anymore. Probably for the best, parents don't want to know everything their young adult children decide to do.

Got home around quarter after 11 and straight to bed since I get up at 5:30. <----another mark of a parental-type.

Yep, a full week, a fun week. So I deserve this lazy, somewhat warm Saturday (and yes, I read some of my book, "The Tigers Wife" and even took a nap earlier. Wheeeee. Perfect Saturday.

Satisfaction

Argh, it's morning. Slept like a log, still feel like a log. Must wake up. The last few days at work have been jammed-packed with things to do and I had fun. I'd love to be that busy all the time! Maybe that's why I've slept so good over the past couple of nights.

Busy, satisfied and feel like I'm contributing. Hooray.

Isn't it nice to feel satisfied with something? Yet, not feeling satisfied creates a need for me to do something better or more interesting so there is that aspect of the push/pull of whatever you're doing.

Speaking of doing...I'm way behind on a couple of projects and MUST get it together so I don't add to the pile of not done yet. My plans for this weekend is go not design for hours but to get some of those projects done.

I'm all happy that my chickens took 5th place in the Not Owls contest at Spoonflower. Check out the design here: Click for chickens Not too bad out of 226 designs eh? I'm fairly satisfied with that! And that bit where I'm not - means I'll try harder next time.

I'm working on a version of this right now.  There are major issues with this version but the idea is there.  I may change the background to white or a lighter color.  I kind of like it. 

 

The last storm

In southern California we don't really have huge storms. Today we had a good one with thunder and lightning. It was pouring sheets of rain. The sky was gray all day, it was prety in a wintery kind of way. Early evening there was a nice break and I got this shot. It made me happy.

Camera 360 which I like better than Instagram

The storm has passed and we should get back to the 70's and 80's and let spring really begin!  Hooray for those last storms of the season!  I hope your weather was whatever makes you happy! 

Textile design: hobby, business, and is it worth it to you?

Value is such a slippery thing. Recently I've seen a couple of posts regarding value and success in terms of turning your hobbies into money-making ventures. I pondered and thought I'd put what I think down on paper.

Melissa Averinos of Yummygoods.com writes a thoughtful post in her blog and it's worth a read. Read her blog post here For me it's eye-opening in a good and bad way. I'm totally lucky to have had some successes and realize it's a long road to designing self-sufficently.

How do you judge whether you're good enough to be successful in your artistic ventures?

I design at Spoonflower.com I've had a moderate amount of success; I count that success in a couple of different ways. Here are my many measurements. Your milage may vary.

Sales: Nothing beats a sale to let you know someone out there can see a use for your design and clicks on the Purchase button. They don't have to buy but they chose that particular design to come live in their home. I love the idea that my design is out there in the world.

Comments: Comments from people who are not designers and comments from those who are; the timbre of the comments is important and what they don't say is important. Other than sales, this is an important feedback tool.

Favorites: Like it enough to be inspired by it or marked so maybe if the right project comes along this design was good enough for someone to mark as a fave.

Contests: I've entered a lot of contests. I count it as a success if I'm in the top 20%. I'd probably stop entering if I consistantly fell below that percentage. It's a great feedback tool too.

Personal satisfaction. I get huge satisfaction from creating, and creating something that others like is pretty nice validation. It makes me happy to create.

I'm extremely lucky that I won a Connecting Threads design contest. My collection of fabrics will debut in about August. I'm excited and impatient to hold that fabric in my hands. I expect when I get my samples I'll be estatic. I'm already so happy I regularly do a hop, skip and a jump for no discernable reason...but I know the reason. bwhahahahaha. It's ok if strangers think I'm a bit of a nutcase.

Now does any of that mean I can quit my day job? Nope, unfortunately it doesn't. Do I dream of that? Yes. What I'd really love is to have my day job be designing - whether for textiles, cards, websites; whatever allows me to create something. I'd still do my designing at night; to give more freeform designs a chance to live outside of my brain (where sometimes designs cook for a long time!). Can you hear those ideas simmering?

All of these things are valuable to me, they're all measurements of success. Add them all up and the internal value of creating is priceless. The external value is a huge bonus on top of the internal value. I'm happy creating, I've got extra happiness when I get money so I can exchange that for goods and services. Win. All of it is worth it to me.

If only all day jobs gave you tasks that always made you fulfilled. Each person doing that which gives them the optimal satisfaction. Now that's a big dream. Dream on!

Holiday!

Living in California we celebrate a holiday that only a few states celebrate. Tomorrow we celebrate Cesar Chavez day.

And that means I get a day off. Not every business celebrates it but government offices do so it's a light day in terms of traffic, etc.

I'm going to be spending the day designing and my original plan was to send my tablet off to be fixed but duh, the post office will be closed.

I'm already feeling like I'm having a Calgon Take Me Away moment...relaxation all day and then 2 additional days off! Hooray!

I feel free.

Thrifty

I have to send my Android Transformer 101 away to be fixed. The screen will not turn on. bah! I bought a box and was going to buy some bubble wrap.

Do you know how much bubble wrap costs? OMG, it was 20.00 for a box. Far more bubble wrap than I need to wrap a 10 inch tablet. So I'm walking around the party store to figure out what I can buy that won't cost me 20.00. Nothing. Those foam peanuts are 10.00 and I don't need that many peanuts either.

I spied a cart where one of the workers had been unpacking something and there were a bunch of plastic bags stuffed into a larger plastic bag.

A light bulb moment. I could use that discarded plastic as stuffing in the box and it wouldn't cost me a cent.

The clerk didn't bat an eyelash when I asked if I could have it. He said, "Absolutely you can have it...one man's trash is another man's treasure."

Well, I couldn't call it a treasure but he did save me 20.00 so he was the treasure really.

I feel very thrifty and smug with my multi-purposing ways.

Hooray for DIY people!

Reports made

Having your credit info stolen is a big pain in the butt. Spent the morning at the police station, the bank and trying to do it all without being too late to work.

No help for it as my bank doesn't open until 9 a.m. Totally bankers hours. The police station visit was a breeze, the woman behind the glass took my info, Zeroxed it and told me the report would be ready in 7 to 10 days. The bank didn't turn me down this time...since they already turned me down to do a fraud report on Saturday I took a different route. I told her I wanted to dispute the charge because it wasn't my charge. I told her the story, including how I knew it was older than 60 days but my rationale was if someone embezzled money from them 6 months ago but they only found out on Sat. would they only go after that person for the last 60 days of theft? And since this was an airline ticket it should be easy to find out exactly who sat in that seat. It probably helped that I had a police report number.

She agreed and I filled out the fraud reports. She notarized it and off I went to work.

I am crossing all my body parts that I get my money back...if and when I do I'll be so happy I could do a happy dance. Wish me luck that the agencies that should help me works hard to get my money back into my account!

Hooray! A free drink!

Psych! Oh never mind...I got a birthday postcard from Starbucks giving me a free drink for my birthday. But it came today and my birthday was Feb. 8th and it says I need to use it by Feb 15th.

Now that's one way to save some money...send it out after the birthday!

It's been a day of disappointments. Yesterday I found an airline charge I didn't make. Unfortunately it's an old charge and my bank only deals with charges in the last 60 days. No, I didn't notice the charge at the time...during a 3 wk period I'd bought a Kindle and a android tablet AND returned the Kindle and had to recharge the Kindle (because I upgraded to the new version that came out a week after I purchased my Kindle) so I assume I didn't notice because my account was going up and down.

I don't get paper statements and my bank requires that I log in to see my statement. Which I don't do and may be the death of me that as long as my balance is in the green I'm not looking at them. I've decided to go back to paper because at least with paper it's in my hands and I always tear open that envelope. I don't really care at this moment that having them print my statement costs money. Having a passive statement cost ME money.

I have to file a police report and am disputing the charge with the airline but I have no idea if they'll do anything about it. There is added complexity since that VISA has been cancelled due to a different fraudulent charge that I DID catch. In that case my bank froze my account because someone charged 2 $90.00 transactions at Walmart and that's how I found out...I couldn't use my card to make a 30.00 purchase at the craft store.

I don't know why my bank didn't call me to verify an airline ticket. It's larger than $90.00 and way off my normal patterns for my card. They've called me before when I purchased a computer. I was happy they called me. Now I'm unhappy that they didn't call me on this charge.

So Monday I have to go to the police dept and file a report. Grrrrr. But it will be worth it if I can get my money back. Cross your fingers.

I'm just thinking I could really go for a drink right now...and not just a coffee drink.

Onward!

Well, I was a bust in that Spoonflower - Textile Design Center - Urban Sighting contest...didn't make the finalist list. Onward! But if you want to read/view my post about making the contest entry read it here.

I'm bowing out of a number of contests so I can focus on doing designs that I want to do as opposed to fitting things to a theme that is chosen by someone else: I'll be putting together a portfolio of coordinates to send out.

My focus is always on usable fabric, it's something I have to watch out for that I don't just do a graphic that works as a single view but something that works as a single view AND as something that flows on a yard of fabric.

I love my repeat on those trees, I love the diagonal and the vertical feel of the design. A reminder:

I'm going to change the color scheme and get rid of the photographic bark and use my own fill for that so it should have a different look to it and I'm also going to lighten it up quite a bit. The underlying design will not have a nature within an urban message to it...it will be more of a woodland message.

I'm happy that I'm changing it up! Onward!

Urban Sightings Design Contest Entry

The urban contest asks that we choose a photo or two (provided by the Textile Design group) to use as a base for a urban renewal with this as the guiding prompt: "This exhibition is to celebrate the art that can be found in everyday surroundings and the daily transition of the neighborhood landscape during this large construction project."

My quandry is showing viewers what I am trying to convey: Here is my description for the urban contest: "Each new day brings renewal.  The texture of peeling paint gives character to the background shadows.  Growing trees leaf out and incorporate the old with the new. Merging urban renewal with new life, new changing scenery. 

Shadows - peeling paint
Leaves - yarn from the bike. "

In trying to convey what the prompt means to me I come up with this design that says what I want it to say...but I don't think it translates in such a small format for viewing purposes.  Judges (I assume) will view the initial round using a FQ view and I'm hoping to convince SF to use a larger view for more detailed viewing.  The design will translate in fabric form as the trees are actually about 6 inches tall. 

3 repeats is almost impossible to show the detail to show which recognizable elements I used for the Urban contest.  See the next graphic for detail. 

This shows the detail of the peeling paint as the tree shadows.  I really wanted the peeling paint to look like bark so it incorporates the living trees with the ever-changing urban changes using paint as a way to renew. The leaves use the yarn from the bike photo and because of it being very small it's difficult to see even in this single view. Check out the giant detail in the next image. 

The mottled leaves are mottled using the yarn that is wrapped around the bike frame.  It you scroll thru the bunches of leaves you can see the yarn better in some places than others.

The leaf detail

The contest is so open-ended that there is a huge array of designs.  As I put this together I wondered if the focus would be on urban,  nature,  redevelopment,  art, quilting,  etc.  I choose to focus on how an urban setting can perfectly merge with a natural park setting.  You can choose to see this design as dawn or dusk, in winter or summer, as sun-lit or shadow-focused.  

Good luck to all who entered!  

Motorola Razr Maxx out of stock

How many times in 10 days can you buy Verizon phone?  Well, I can do it 3 times.

Called Verizon to find out if the phone was in stock and available. The CSR said yes. Cool. Went to the store to buy. Cool.  I'll get it in 2 days. Cool.

Not cool when 5 days later I didn't have it. Called Verizon they said they had 15,000 in warehouses in my state. Cool. Cancelled my store order, ordered directly from Verizon who said they'd pay for overnight shipping and I'd get it in 2 days before 3 p.m. (I ordered late in the evening). Got billed for it as the store still had my money I originally paid.  Cool.

Oddly the next day I got an email saying my (original order which was cancelled) was being delivered to the store on Friday.

Friday 2:57 p.m. 2 days later. No phone. Not cool. Called Verizon who said it had not shipped. That they were on backorder and my order would not ship til the 16th.  NOOOOOOO, not cool.  That the phone had been on backorder since before my order on March 1st. and they'd never updated their list to show it was not available but on backorder.

Verizon called the store where my original order was delivered earlier that day and they agreed to hold it for me. Verizon cancelled my order with them and I'd go to the store to repurchase the phone for the 3rd time.

Finally at 5:30 I got my phone.  I was totally happy to get it (and it's a fabulous phone) but I can't actually believe that the entire customer service and indirect stores had no electronic word that the phones were on backorder when the inventory showed 15,000 in the 4 California warehouses.  Hmmmm, think maybe they're creating buzz to show how well that phone is selling?  It certainly crossed my mind.

So now I'm updating everything (there has got to be a better way to transfer apps/passwords between old and new phones!).  Right now I'm so enamored with my phone that I could do a little happy dance.