By the Way...

PostCrossing 2: The Medieval Collage Series

2009-06-21T17:32:00Z

These were lots of fun! I sorta-kinda followed a tutorial on PSD Tuts, although I obviously changed the theme. (Unless you consider “medieval” really vintage, I suppose….) I had to do a lot of research to learn about layer overlays and some of the other techniques, and how to accomplish similar effects in GIMP, but that’s the whole purpose of these exercises, after all!

I ended up with three versions, two of which have reached their destinations. (Click through the pic above to see them all on flickr.) I only have two cards traveling right now, so I need to get on the ball and come up with my next batch! Maps seem to be a popular request, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll try something along the lines of this map collage that I did a while ago.

Jump Ring Jamboree!

2009-06-21T17:15:00Z

Mom came to visit last weekend and we tried some new things. We put together a saltwater etching setup, and it actually worked, somewhat to our surprise ;-)

We called it our “6th Grade Science Project”….

We tried brass and copper, and got good results with both, although we did learn that if you’re using Sharpie markers for the resist, you should use a black one, and use a regular old-fashioned felt-tip type, not one of the new retractable super-fine-point jobbies. See the November 2008 issue of Art Jewelry for all the juicy (ha!) details.

We also played with pliers and made some great chain jewelry. I started with an article from the March 2009 issue of BeadStyle and very quickly had an awesome necklace. It’s an easy project, although I didn’t like their version of the earrings once I had put them together. I just eliminated the bottom two sets of rings and was much happier with my results.

I get all my brass and niobium jump rings from SpiderChain, and I recently discovered her other site, Silver Weaver. What a feast for the eyes and imagination! Having previously realized that the tiny niobium rings are great with larger sterling rings in Japanese 6-in-1, I was inspired to try a variation that I saw on Spider’s site. I’ve worn this bracelet almost every day since :-)

Now that Spider has more sizes of niobium, we’ve ordered some of each size. I can’t wait to see how Byzantium or some of the other patterns work up with them! (And yes, obviously I talked myself into trying a different color mix! This batch is “fire,” and we ordered some “water” and “peacock” in the larger sizes and I honestly cannot decide which I like the best.)

PostCrossing 1: The Colored Zentangle Series

2009-05-31T13:59:00Z

Hooray! My first postcrossing postcard was marked received yesterday, all the way from Germany :-)

I’m using postcrossing as an excuse to learn how to use GIMP. My plan is to work in batches, making a series of similar layouts so that I get to repeat the techniques I learn several times. Plus I like groups of things, and it sounds so capital-A Artsy to have a series.

Thus, the Colored Zentangle Series (plummy BBC accent, please!)

A while ago I scanned one of my conference call doodlings and have been thinking since then that it would be really cool to color it in.

If I didn’t have a pen and paper around during conference calls I’d go nuts….

This turned out to be a bit more complicated than I had expected. I started just using the Fill tool, but that left little white artifacts along the boundaries between the color and the black lines. So I did some research and learned about the Color to Alpha tool. That got rid of the white, but using Fill on the result still was not satisfactory. Then it occurred to me to make the alpha-ized image its own layer, on top of the background, and color on the layer beneath. That way the color could come right up to the black lines, or even extend into them a little, and since the lines were on top, it would look nice and neat.

For most areas I could use the Fuzzy Select (magic wand) tool, grow the selection by a couple of pixels, switch to the background layer and fill with color. For areas that had open boundaries or where the scan was not as clean, I experimented with the Free Select tool, which I really liked once I got the hang of it. For very small areas it was easier to just color freehand on the background layer. I got a lot of practice with my pen and tablet!

Here is my first result:

(Note: The postcrossing links won’t show the postcard’s journey until it is marked received at the other end.)

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I also made a simpler color-blocked version:

US-417769 (first one received!)

From here it was just a matter of playing with the sliders in the Hue and Saturation dialog to come up with some other color combinations that I liked.

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I love them! They look really nice printed on photo paper, and I’m using 4x6 adhesive labels for the address side. I hope they stand up to mailing well. (I suppose I could mail one to myself to find out….) Now that one has been received, I can get a new address to send to, so I’m off and running on my next batch, the Medieval Collage Series.

Crazy Cat

2009-04-20T01:50:00Z

Lorax has decided that her favorite new spot is one of my dresser drawers. If I leave this drawer open too long in the morning, presto, it sprouts a cat.

Here’s a tail….

And with a bit of trick photography, we find the rest of the beast!

Finally!

2009-04-15T03:19:00Z

We have done so much “invisible” work on the house, it’s nice to finally have something to show off! We used the Behr online color tool and despite a miscommunication with the contractor (our fault) we love the result. The scariest part was wondering if the main house color (we chose “Spanish Galleon,” partly because of the name ;-) would be anything close to what we saw on the computer screen. Happily, it is just the color we wanted.

The Behr tool is really neat—you can upload a picture of your house (or room, if you’re painting an interior) and then apply the colors to various areas. We had this awesome Don Springer watercolor of our happy abode so I scanned it in to see if it would work. Here’s the original:

And here’s what we came up with after some online fiddling:

This really gave us a great idea of what to expect! We tried lots of different colors and settled on these (except for the red—we ended up with something darker, but this is close).

The miscommunication was that we intended all the major trim to be the lightest color, but the printout that we gave the contractor was … unclear. So they did the columns in Vanilla Custard, as intended, and the rest of the trim in River Bank. Oops! After we got over the initial shock, we decided that the mistake might have been for the best. The columns really pop, and the lower contrast between the two greens on the rest of the house is sort of calming. They also did a fantastic job of picking out some extra details—the red around the attic windows and the tips of the chimneys, matching the window sashes and the trim on the columns, was a nice finishing touch.

We’re not quite decided what will be next, but we have plenty of time as we have to rebuild the war chest before we embark on the next Renovation Adventure.

I was going to buy the book anyhow…

2009-04-13T23:11:00Z

Now I may buy two copies, just because.

I got a form email from Amazon explaining that Patrick Rothfuss’ second book would not be shipping when predicted. Ensaddened, (I stole that word from the link I’m about to post—what a great word!) I did a quick google on “patrick rothfuss book 2” and very quickly came across his explanation.

I’ll be adding a new blog into my RSS feed, obv. And whenever the book does appear, I’ll finish it all too quickly, as usual, but I think I’ll actually appreciate it even more….

Godspeed, Curtis Anthony

2009-02-26T04:33:00Z

If you’re lucky, there are some people in your life who simply are. They’re people that you love and you know they love you, without question.

I am immeasurably lucky to have had my dad’s best friend, Curtis, to care about me for my whole life thus far. I believe that he still does.

OMG Squeee!1! (Hollywood Edition)

2009-02-26T02:40:00Z

I got email from Wil Wheaton!!

I mean, yeah, it’s because I bought a book of his from lulu.com, but still! It’s pretty cool :-)

Time-suck, thy name is FaceBook

2009-02-21T14:41:00Z

So I finally signed up for facebook, and I have to admit that it is uniquely addictive. My high school wasn’t very big, and it seems like just about everybody is already there. I let it get my email contacts and it found a whopping 55 matches! (I am really quite sure I don’t know that many people.)

I’ve been reading about facebook from a technical and business standpoint for years, so it was kind of weird to actually be in it. There are some things I can’t figure out, things I have to be overthinking (if facebook turns out to be as difficult for me as my short-lived affair with a mac was, I think I’ll cry), but the friend-finding stuff is pretty wild, and I especially like that you can have a conversation around any object—a status update, a photo, a new friend. The umpty-eleven views of it all are still kind of confusing, but it sure has been fun catching up with so many folks.

The moosaic is done!

2009-01-31T16:29:08Z

moosaic, originally uploaded by serhio.

Guess where my pic is....

SUPERcross!!

2009-01-31T16:13:00Z

Last weekend we went to the Supercross. I got tickets for the MO as a Christmas present. They were good seats:

The whole thing is much more of a spectacle than I remember seeing in Atlanta many years ago. The top ten or so riders had WWF-style introductions with videos, theme songs and laps around the outside of the track to collect all the screaming encouragement from their fans.

The one thing we really couldn’t see much of was the starting gate, so our whole section stood up for the first lap of each race, trying to make sense of the muddle in the first corner, but it was not much use. Being right in front of the big jumps was easily worth the tradeoff of missing the holeshot.

This video is of the first lap of the first qualifying heat for the Lites:

One of the most surprising things was that we could feel the heat wash over us each time those Monster fireballs went off. This video shows the fireballs when James Stewart crosses the finish line to win the main event:

Finally, I cannot resist the opportunity for a great panorama shot, so here is the whole track as we saw it:

(More pix in the Supercross pool on flickr.)

Game On!

2009-01-21T02:41:00Z

Nan’s gift certificates + super-cool 3d edition of Settlers for Christmas + awesome friends = potential for January to be a banner month!

So many games, so little time….

Gooooooo Gators!

2009-01-09T04:52:00Z

That said, that was some horrible sports coverage. Did Fox forget there was a football game going on? Why no replays of the bazillion penalties? Why all the stupid camera angles on the few plays they did deign to show us again? What do they have against showing us a play clock? Weird (and very long) broadcast. Good result, though :-)

Chicklets

2009-01-09T02:26:00Z

Check out this post at Cute Overload! Okay, here’s a preview:

Baby chicks (redundancy alert) really are cute. When I was a kid we had chickens for a while. (Rabbits, too, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this story. I just tossed it in there because bunnies are cute, too.) I built (well, prob’ly my dad built) an incubator for a sixth-grade science project and hatched a couple of eggs. I got a yellow chick and a brown stripey chick. I named the brown one Parsley (nope, no explanation for that) and I don’t remember what I called the yellow one. Buttercup, maybe? They were very cute but not really exactly fun pets—messy and not very affectionate. Which is just as well because neither chick lived to chickenhood. The yellow one got et by a weasel or some other predator-du-jour and the brown one drowned in a water dish. Not too bright, chickens.

More Wire Work

2009-01-06T02:38:00Z

In my fit of creativity last week I also finished up a bracelet that I started quite some time ago.

The larger links are sterling that Mom and I made and the tiny ones are niobium (the “air” mix) from Spiderchain. It’s a Japanese 6-in-1 weave and I finished it off with two foldover clasps right next to each other.

This is super-comfortable and I’ve been wearing it almost every day since I finished it. The only sad news is I’m almost out of those luscious little niobium rings, so it’s time for a reorder! (Okay, I guess that’s not so sad after all, is it? The big question is whether I’ll be able to talk myself into a different color mix. I love love love these colors but all the others look so pretty too….)