I had a great chained productive chat with my friend Hannah today—not only did I learn what poi really is and how to safely feed piranha, I made the first of the Fruit Juice collection! Yeehaw and woohoo! Then I made earring and got to working on another as yet unfinished necklace. A night bus from Yokohama, it turns out, is great for waking me up in time to be my most productive.

Firstly, the inspiration board:

One of my goals for my Etsy shop has been to streamline my products. The whole thing is pretty much thrown together; there is little consistency among the designs, materials or colors used. But what’s a girl with eclectic taste to do? The answer hit me figuratively because inspiration and I had a healthy relationship—create lines of jewelry under the umbrella of my hard-to-pronounce brand.

Having the iPad on my during downtime at work has been a creativity saver. I’ve been using the DrawPad application as an offline Pinterest, or maybe as a digital cork board. When I tried out a new piece in what was going to be a line called “Fruit Juice,” Kim-Chi told me it reminded her of a Calder mobile. And so the “Modern Art” line was born.

Thus far I have three pieces specifically for this line, so I feel confident in at least sharing the inspiration board screen capture. This won’t be another failed project, by Jove!

Another line I’ve started is, for the moment, called “Riche.” It’s my foray in to dichromatic schemes and cold luxury. Richeness and luxeury for the fabulously riche. [Autocorrect is dying inside.]

I briefly debated doing the line in all sterling silver chains and clasps, but the availability of that material was sadly cost ineffective. I’m sorry, sterling lovers. You’re welcome, wallets.

Now, I make no promises as to when items based on these looks will hit the Etsy shop. I just got excited and wanted to share. There’s a third, more summery line in the works as well, but since I haven’t yet made a single piece for it I reckon I should keep that under my hat.

Also, does anyone have a better suggestion for those collections than “Modern Art” and “Riche?” my inspiration was in color and imagery, not catchy titles.

I’m gathering supplies for three distinct lines of jewelry, so I wanted to get some good photo props beforehand. Yesterday I decided that the recycle shop near my office was worthy of my illustrious presence, and while gracing it found these thingies.

The two wooden boxes once held sake service sets. The dogs are just cheap porcelain zodiac figurines that everywhere sells come the new year. I just chose dogs because there were more of those than anything else, and had a variety of colors. They could use a wash, but I’m pretty pleased that the whole shebang cost less than 7 dollars! The most expensive item was the vase at 500 yen, and the boxes were only 10 yen apiece. Now I know that the best time for me to shop is when I have less than 1,500 yen in my wallet.

I’ve noticed that I don’t have much handmade jewelry for my own wardrobe. I do a test run on all my pieces, but beyond that my goal is to keep them smoke-free and pristine. This may sound like a paltry concern, but as a jewelry designer (which I can’t type without squirming a little. It just looks pretentious) I need to be able to market my wares. Oh, like my necklace? You do? Can you have? No, but I make especially one for you. Pretty lady. My card I give for you. Now big kiss; no running! That is how I talk to strangers. My Lecherous Yoda impression works every time.

Finally, after whipping something up for a friend’s birthday, I realized that I could do some very simple pieces in the same style. I call it a “braid,” which is a word that I made up.

These are pretty easy for a seasoned artist like me to make (Pretention: start!). I can do what I’ve been wanting to do for a while: put items on Etsy that are within the price range of my target market. Though this and likely a couple more are meant for my neck only, it gives me a good basis for a signature style. We’re looking at shiny, bold, and unobtrusive.

I realized that my skin is the same tone as a paper grocery bag.

Wait! I see how you’re trying to figure out my secret. “How does she make it?” you ask aloud, because you’ve called all your friends and coworkers to see the streak of sunshine on my goosebumpy chest. “Could I make one if I had beads, string, chain, a clasp, and beading thread?” Answer I you right now. You CAN’T! No one can. The Braid. Trademarked! Don’t steal my original genius ideas.

The Braid™

Can you have? No, but I make especially one for you. Pretty lady.

First, the Before photos:

Spring Cleaning has consumed me. I think about it while at school, wishing I had a car so I could leave at lunch mop lean a cabinet. This trusty device has been helpful in channeling that futile willpower into preparation. The simple, handy dandy Reminders app on ye olde iPadde gave me ample opportunity to make lists of what I wanted to accomplish, and the Draw Pad app, while flawed and not my favorite tool, served to make the following action plan for the kitchen.

I knew that I was off scale for my table and newt tank (hence the “doesn’t exist” space), but it turned out to be much narrower a fit than I had even imagined. Remember when I said that I solved clutter issues by buying Muji containers? At one point I had decided that all my vanity cabinet junk needed was a shelf, and Muji just happened to have a sale on acrylic organizing items. A minute later I was trying out different combinations of plate and bowl storage.

I realized that as far as the kitchen is concerned, if something isn’t within reach while standing straight, I probably won’t use it. If I can’t see it, I won’t use it. That’s why I thought all the stuff in the cabinet needed to be things I wouldn’t need to touch except for on the occasion, and the stuff I used regularly went under the table.

The other side with the microwave ended up like this. Again, that’s some very open storage for my peabrain: 

It’s still in progress; I realized that I have extra cabinet space above the kitchen counter, so I might need to rethink my Everything In Plain Sight policy for under the table. The small cardboard boxes have since been moved. The large one is a ceiling fan that I need to sell or give away. The foodstuffs on So far I’m pretty pleased, but what do you think? Are you for or against open storage? Is the microwave area really an improvement?

Laurel vs Spring Cleaning I

There was never a plan for this. I didn’t think, Spring approacheth, thus and therefore shall I eradicate all putrescence from mine humble lodgings. Two Mondays ago I got home from work and realized that I had only four days until my supervisor would come to my home to help fix my Internet, and the state in which my apartment lay was plain embarrassing.

The hair went up, the apron went on, and my grandmother’s pearl earscrews went in. This was a task for the 1950s Housewife..

The issues in my apartment would not be solved simply by putting things in cabinets and sweeping the floor (though that would help). One of my goals for my five remaining months ohm muh guh five months there are only five months that’s insane it’s too soon panic panic panic! at the disco was to prepare my apartment for my future replacement. No one wants to walk into an apartment full of dirty corners and useless junk. However, Rome was not built in a day and Petunkalunka headquarters was not cleaned in an evening. Besides having classes for which to prepare and evening activites, I was battling three and a half years of accumulated disorganization and weeks of dust.

In the past my most common solution to clutter has been to buy yet another Muji brand container to hold it. This time not only am I staring at only five remaining months of certain income hohmuguhwhatamigonnado, but I will be hitting up Seoul at the end ot the month. Also I want to go to China. Also my siblings are coming in June,and showing people around gets expensive (worth. It). Also, student loans. All this to say that I set my budget for this apartment overhaul at a whopping zero yen, not including what I would spend on paper towels and “Kabi Killa” cleaner because I was almost out of those anyway. I can’t paint, I can’t put nails in the inner walls because they’re concrete or tiled. The name of the game was Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Let me blow your mind. Literally.

This series of posts is about to be shameful for me, because my apartment is really not that big. It’s a decent size by Japanese standards, small by Midwest American, and I still manage to make it inhospitable.

Every home has problem spots. My home is full of them. I started with one of the smallest: the toilet. Its main crime has always been extreme ugliness. Who puts this combination of colors in anything?

There is definitely a dead plant back there.

The windowsill needed some cheering up, and even the Thai king’s resemblance to an adult Harry Potter couldn’t do it. I wasn’t allowing myself to buy mirrors or brightly patterned art to brighten up the space, so I settled for using spray paint and paint pens to jazz up some glass jars I had in the recycling bin. A succulent in need of a little less direct sunlight made its way from the kitchen to add a nice touch of dying green. I might need to repot it. Whatever. Here are the new handmade tchotchkes.

"When there's naught else to be done with them, frame your foreign bills." —Laurel Ryan

"This is what layers of spray paint and purple paint pen do to the inside of un-primed glass jars." —Science.

Does that not look better? Know that grammatically speaking, your two possible responses are “No, it does,” or “Yes, it doesn’t.” Know that according to my absolute monarchy over comment monarchy, your only possible response is to agree with me.

The wall color is awful and depressing, but I can’t spray paint that, and after using a hairdryer to loosen the glue on those decals I discovered that taking the tree off the wall could cause potentially expensive damage to the ugly paint job. Ne’ermind, then. Lucky for me I had two more of the fringe curtains hanging out (pun!) in the living room from way back when I had removed the doors to my bedroom. The doors have since been put back in place and covered in packing paper, so there was no reason not to move the curtains and the one tension rod I had into the bathroom. It only covered one wall (again, one tension rod), but I’m calling the other an accent wall so that it sounds designed and not sad.

The trash can, which I always thought was a kappa but on inspection of the sticker is a penguin, has been in the apartment longer than I have. It’s cute, but it doesn’t go with anything, including my aesthetic. Spray paint to the rescue!

Never you mind that I broke the left side of the beak trying to put it back together. Does it not work better now? (Remember your options) By now you may be able to tell that I only had two colors of spray paint in my home. No matter how badly I wanted to grab a can of white from the 100 yen shop, I was sticking to that budget.

For the sink there was not a whole lot I could do as far as the vanity is concerned. Apartment Therapy even agreed that the best I could do is hide it from the eyes with a curtain. Good ideas, but ZERO DOLLARS BUDGET prevented me from doing as advised. Since that Apartment Therapy Post I had done this:

Yikes

This thing never stays in place

I did dust and clean the entire vanity, including the light bulbs and taking those cup holder shelf things off and washing them out. I even cleaned the walls. The drawers were cleaned and reorganized so that the contents matched the labels. I cut the matting for the rugs to the proper size, and shoved the towel rack up a little higher and lengthened one side so that it would quit slipping down and dumping my clean towels on the floor. Since I’m not a total mess I only needed to dust inside the cabinet as my collection of cosmetics bags, backup American deodorant, extra contact lens solutions and lady products had remained organized for a year. When it comes to products and food I’m very much an out of sight, out of mind user. To make sure that I didn’t purchase something that I already have I reorganized my toiletries into the vanity cup holder shelves. Get this, guys who are into design, I have an accent color. Yes indeedy, hair products and lotions with tangerine orange bottles seem to find their way into my shopping cart, so each section has an orange bottle to “tie it all in.” I don’t know who I’m quoting, exactly, but I’m sure someone on a design show has said that at some point.

I realize now that this doesn't look much like a thumbs up, but that's what I'm doing.

What another design show decorator would call “oversized art” was a gift from one of my fifth grade classes on our last day together. They included their favorite greetings, which we do use at the beginning of every class, and is far more contextually appropriate than “Do you have a green cap?” And since the name of their school includes the word “kame,” or turtle, they added a bunch of turtles (one is asking, “Kame?”). The teacher made sure to point out that there was a joke on the paper—the students drew ten ants, and if one were to ask how many ants there were the response would be, “There are ten ants,” or in Japanese, “Ari (ants) ga (are) to (ten).” Get it, Mr. Roboto? I thought it was funny. I also thought my tomato-shaped face was funny, though I really appreciate that if you look close enough, you can see the brown and blacks underneath that Caucasian peach.

That's totally my face.

One yet unseen touch was the toothbrush holder. My new toothbrush’s handle was too big to fit through the holes, but all the other things I had put in there were too small and kept slipping through to clatter into the sink. In then end I would just jam them in with all the other things I had sitting on top of the drawers and in the vanity. Necessity huffed and puffed and birthed this solution:

Before, when I had a small toothbrush

That white fabric is the hem from the sheet I tore up to make the rag rug, held in place with thick double-sided tape. Now nothing slips out, so I can keep all of those cosmetics items in one place.

The bath also is clean, but I’m not showing it to you because years of grime have turned it too ugly to fix. If the grout were supposed to be brownish-black after multiple bleach applications, you’d see a picture. So now the bathroom area is done.

The window

The walls

“From the window to the wall! Till the sweat drop down my ball[ed up fist]s!” –Lil John, cleaning lady.

Any further free improvements you’d like to suggest? I’m all eyes. Because of reading. The comments.

This month. Man, oh man. Is there anyone out there who loves February? The Christmas and New Year’s high is gone; we’ve stopped going to the gym and given up on nicotine patches and regular bedtimes. Valentine’s Day brings either anxiety or bitterness, sometimes both. Though the winter solstice is past, why is February the darkest month? February sucks.

I’ve had a bad case of the Februarys as I do every year. I caught a wicked cold, stopped cooking, skipped taiko and aikido (see “wicked cold”), started watching really awful TV shows online, and gave up on living in anything but squalor. Speaking of terrible TV, if you ever think to yourself, “I wonder what the Brits have done with the legend of Robin Hood lately?” I urge you to squash that thought like a bug. It’s horrifically bad.

Last Sunday I got a boost. Though the sermon at church was not related to productivity or taking care of one’s things—it was about the beatitudes—I came home ready to make goals. I didn’t, but I was ready. I also did nothing on Monday, but I sure thought about it. Today I awoke with vim and vigor, ready to tackle my Februarys by washing dishes, hanging up clothes, and organizing my beads [over the course of the next three days].

Having my Internet give up the ghost (or go into a coma) put a damper on the spirit, especially since I a lot to prepare for school that involved finding pictures. Most of my Monday was dedicated to finding ways around that hindrance, but I did start a rag rug to keep my little piggies warm while I practice piano. I was going off of the tutorial on the Little House in the Suburbs blog (the only one I could find that didn’t involve sewing or giant crochet hooks) and trying to make it ovoid, but it mostly ended up looking like fabric naan.

After weeks of zero jewelry making I cranked out two pieces that might never make it to the Etsy shop, I like them so much.

Number One: cracked glass rondelles with violet felt and sterling silver saucers (not visible at these angles) and a sterling hook and eye clasp (see “not visible”)

Also, I cooked. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to cook for myself twice per week, and I’ve been fairly consistent in keeping that resolve alive. During those weeks when I was sick I ignored the goal, but with nothing ready to eat in my house except marshmallows and a lime I reckoned it was time I renewed my cooking habit. My rice cooker is my new favorite tool; I can steam vegetables or make a jambalaya-style one-pot meal. Luckily I had a red bell pepper, black pepper sausage, and an onion ready to be used, so I threw those and a beef bullion cube in with an unmeasured mount of rice. The result is tasty, if a little salty. I add roughage by shoving a package of baby leaf in my mouth like a crazy rabbit.

*The voice of resentment.

- Posted from my iPad

In that long week of no computer whilst you pined for an update, here’s what happened on my side.

Christmas. It was surprisingly busy; I partied like a fiend. Which is to say that I ate out a lot with many of the same people. Look, I have friends on Christmas Eve.

Admittedly, most of this dinner was about Kim-Chi’s new haircut. We have the same hairdresser, hence this picture. See how I’m smizing so hard?

I finished the fruits on my mural with crayon. Why had I ever thought that using Posca paint pens was the best way to go? Done learned my lesson. Now all that remains is to turn these random circles into a fruit tree. I might break out my old calligraphy brush for this job.

My chopstick light fixture was coming apart because I kept hitting it with things. I figured it was high time I redid it, and maybe made it look less cock-a-hoop. Geometry or a degree in architecture might have really shortened this process, because it took me four hours and a lot of Christmas music to figure out that I would never be able to remake the bird nest structure with the giant fluorescent bulbs in the way. I settled for a more modern Japanese aesthetic. Materials: Kitchen paper, hot glue, chopsticks.

Additionally I remade the old light fixture into a crown. My computer was in the shop. I was bored.

I bought a new camera, completing one goal on my Projects list. I’ve been saving for an Olympus Pen E-PL1 ever since I saw it over on the Cozy Little Cave blog; although it helped a lot that there are two newer models. Blogging regularly about life in Japan, trying to sell jewelry online, and having dropped my previous camera in a koi pond all contributed to this decision, but I think part of that choice was to hold myself back from buying a different expensive toy that I didn’t really need just yet, like an iPad or a new computer. Never a shutterbug, I feel awkward just pulling it out and snapping shots of my friends and it’s real Japan winter now which means I don’t run around outside very much. What I’m saying is that all I’ve had to photograph is my messy apartment and myself. Even when I’m just playing with the art settings and aperture [like how I drop that in there, like I know what it means?] snapping dozens of photographs of myself is both narcissistic and depressing. To whom am I going to show these pictures? “This is me on the pinhole setting. Now here’s me in the same pose but in sepia. Same pose, but can you see that I’m smiling with my eyes? That’s the portrait setting so my pores are really obvious. Ah, from here on my hair’s in my face because the angle makes my forehead look huge. Doesn’t everyone, meaning me, look better in Grainy Film setting?” I did take a picture of some of the chocolates I was eating in bed. This is the Pop Art setting.

New Year’s happened. I was at home and in bed (with my new camera) by 9:30 p.m. on December 31^st. On January 1^st Nanami came over to feed me the best of traditional osechi left over from her family’s lunch. She was more excited about my camera than I was; as soon as I handed it over she started snapping shots of my apartment, explaining, “It’s your memory,” when I asked why I needed a picture of my dirty dishes. I said my itadakimasu and dug into the special New Year’s dishes. Amazing how readily I ate congealed fish eggs covered with fish flakes, and popped soy-soaked jako into my mouth without a second thought for the eyes that stared balefully at me from the dish. The ham is not tradition—it was a gift from business associates.

This picture is a twofer. In the background are the fruits of my labor mural and on Nanami’s head is my light fixture cum crown. When I make a short film about the queen of a ghost town in the Oklahoma panhandle, the props department will be ready. In the meantime there’ll be a weird chopstick twig hat sitting around my living room.

Okay, you guys, I need help. This is a cardboard elephant from Muji that I put together after I finished the chopstick light.

I feel that it needs paint. I have sky blue, silver, and white spray paint at my fingertips (not right now, per se. Figuratively) but a big part of me wants to make it a rainbow. Too childish? Or I could go with my favorite royal purple.  You’ve seen pictures of my apartment. Help me out.

Lastly, there is no change on the computer front. According to the apologetic Genius Bar supervisor, the reason only 1/3 of my laptop screen works is because of a mysterious liquid that has attacked and destroyed the blah blahs inside. Japan is very humid. It happens. We have to change the cost. So, instead of the original three Benjamins repair price it would have cost me seven. Nevermind, Apple Store. Never you mind.

I am without a home computer without further notice. Last night I took mine to the Apple store in Shinsaibashi to get the display fixed. Weirdly enough, the same guy from my last trip to the Apple store helped me out. Dear Ingen told me that because of the holiday rush (New Year’s is bigger than Christmas in Japan) the repairs would take seven to ten days. City Hall will close from tomorrow through January 2nd, so I’ll have only my iPod to keep me connected online. In a way I’m looking forward to it. I’ll read some books or play some music. Constant internet access is my biggest distraction; who knows, perhaps the upcoming days of disconnect will spur me to knock off a few of my goals on ye old Projects! list.

Anyone else gone computer-less in these modern times?