Print is alive, and creepy.

I'm so incredibly inspired today to start some bookbinding. F.B. Steampunk group posted this insane and incredibly detailed artwork by Brian Dettmer. He painstakingly hand carves out-of-date medical texts into works of art using surgical tools. They almost appear to be alive, like they are crowded cities with multiple organisms all waiting on the brink of taking a breath, so that they may begin to move. There's so much potential energy in these pieces. The photos do not do them justice (as pretty as they are) I really want to see the exhibition for them whenever it's around. Some art needs to be experienced, there's a level of physical depth (like the actual depth of the piece) that photography sometimes never captures. You have to see these pieces in person to full appreciate the details and the space it uses. This article is very visual with very little text (just the way I like it) and I highly suggest checking it out since there are tons of very pretty photos of amazingly detailed work.
So, now that I have your attention with pretty art, did I mention that I'm super inspired to try some book binding? I picked up a book via B&N called Book Craft. It's a pretty basic book making, well, book, and takes you through the supplies, to traditional and non traditional bindings. The whole back consists of art book images and more crazy in-depth methods of binding. I have a plan for some old record covers that I salvaged from my dad. He was going to throw away some record albums, but I saved the covers (they're bound books). The art on them is so amazing, there's the Barber Shop of Seville, Don Quixote, Mahler's complete works and some Russian name I can't for the life of me spell. My goal is to repair the spines and fill them with blank pages to make up-cycled sketch books. My only problem is that they are huge covers and buying the paper to fill them is going to be expensive. So I'm thinking of finding some inexpensive recycled paper that I can fill the books with. Staying a little Eco-friendly. This is definitely a project for the future, I just don't have the time or money right now to do it.
Well since I can't make the books right now, I'm continuing to knit the second caplet. Here's how it looks so far: (to the left) yeah, beautiful right? Well hopefully it'll be done really soon. This pattern is modified from the original, and I'm typing it instead of hand writing it. I die a little every time I have to type up one of my patterns. I don't always remember why certain steps were important since I don't make notes to myself. I'm lazy. It's easier to type it up and I can edit them more efficiently instead of using an eraser and getting little shavings all over the place.
Oh yeah, for MangaNext, I made 4 sets of greeting cards! And I remembered to take photos of my process! Check it out! I think they look really cute. Only managed to sell one set (thank you Eric). They're Penguins!! If anybody remembers the Facebook post I sent out to a bunch of people, I asked if anybody wanted a card and sent them out. Those were basically my testers. Now that I know people like them, I'll be making more Penguins, Mugs, and whatever else I have carved. As You can see I'm not terribly organized when working and I have a rather small working space. I don't use the designated Sewing/Studio room for this kind of thing, mainly because my tv's in my room. What can I say, I like to watch movies while I work. I had to hand paint each and every one of those cards, that's why they're $9-$10 a pop. When I minute managed myself, I found that it only takes me about 3 hours to complete the process, and only 22 minutes to print 22 images. I'm pretty proud of myself. These are kinda like my babies, but as if the babies came out as 18 year old kids and all I want is some peace and quite and am encouraging them to go to college far far away. Yeah, my babies.

Speaking of babies, my freak plant did something, well, freaky. I have a lithops, a type of split rock, they originate from South Africa and look kinda like a brain. That seems to be a reoccurring theme. Anyway, the first picture (on the right) is what it looked like when I first got it. And it was growing just fine. It was really nice and pudgy and green. Then all of a sudden (I wish I had photos of this) the right half started to turn brown and shrivel up. The left side followed about a week later. So while I'm freaking out since I'm convinced my plant is dieing, I see this pimple-like bump on the side of it. Eventually I was able to gently pull back the dieing parts, and found this (pic. on the left) inside (it's a photo from a few days ago.) It's a Freak Plant I swear! All of the websites said that this species propagates through seeds. Lies!! And god forbid Home Depot or Lowes know anything about what they sell beyond flooring or plumbing. I'm now flying by the seat of my pants here. I now have two separate baby Lithops plants. I need to re-pot them on a nice day into something made of terracotta and shallow. Oh and I'll add a few buddies for it to hang out with! Alright, I've got a plan.
Well I'm out of things to write about. I'll post again super soon. Oh yea if anyone wants a pack of those cards I made, leave a comment below.
See Ya'll Later!

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.

So it's been super busy here. Just finished with MangaNext and helping Dory out with her table. Of course Dory nearly sold out of bows, but I even managed to make a small profit! Now that I know what sells, I'll start making more of it. I've got two red roses, but they dried to a nearly black color. So now I'm debating about how to address the petals, do I want to keep them as a full rose, or individual petal necklaces? I'm also thinking of closing down the Etsy store. I'm not selling through it and I'm losing money. Wondering if I can sell through this blog.... or if I could get the damn software, through my website.
I wrote a knitting pattern and knit it, it looks super cute. Eventually I wanna post the pattern up, and get some pictures taken of it. People at the convention seemed to really like it. I was really happy about that. It takes me like a week to make, so if I ever wanted to make and sell them... it'd be too expensive. But I have all this yarn T-T. I will probably post the pattern to this blog, just cause I'm super lazy. I would like to make more, maybe change the cable pattern and make it longer. It was super short, only reaching just over my shoulders. It's a pretty simple pattern it's just a whole lot of stitches to cast on. So I'm going to switch up the order so instead of casting on 300+ stitches (for the bottom) I'm going to start from the top (far less stitches to cast on). This also means that I need to find a cable knit that looks the same knitting it from the bottom or the top. Hopefully I'll have the kinks worked out in the next week.


So I raved too hard at MangaNext. Saturday night was awesome. There were a lot of people who I think were really confused and not terribly willing to let some random chick with glow sticks join their circle, so I found this one group near the front with this really cute guy (who happened to be the vendor with the Gundam00 plastic Haru ball) and started dancing with them. It was awesome, and they were so nice. I was jumping around like a rabbit with a pogo stick up it's ass and nobody said a word. I was a nut job. But now I'm in a lot of pain, and next time, I'll do some pre-game stretches before raving like a crazy person.
I'll post some more photos in the next post of the pretty things I made, and whatever else I've got started... maybe when the pain stops?
See Ya'll Later!

Brain Blast!

So, recently I've had a whole lot of ideas... nothing I can put into production. Just these ideas for projects and items that I think would be awesome or useful. Like a cat walk. My Aunt had this really old cat that could not for the life of her get into the litter box. Like her joints were all arthritic and painful so lifting her legs to get into the litter box was just not happening. Which meant my Aunt was cleaning up cat feces from the kitchen floor ever day. Eww. So I was thinking, "why isn't there a ramp that you attach to the side of a litter box so the cat doesn't have to jump a ledge?" Brilliant. So why hasn't it been made yet? I've seen ramps for cats to climb on but nothing litter box specific. Unless I'm just not digging deep enough into the internet. There are other ideas but I'm not gonna bore people with a description of each, but I want to know how I could get started on some of these ideas. Is there anywhere I can go to get something made or put into production? Seriously help would be awesome.

In other news I found a great little posting at RetroNaught of a Knitting Clock. It measures time by knitting a scarf, making the immaterial of time into a physical and wearable object. Definitely read the article cause the pictures are super awesome and I think the concept is really brilliant.
Well now it's a quarter to midnight, and Dory was here earlier. We mixed up another resin pour to dip her flowers, just in a bigger batch. We were able to dip my dried flowers, her pieces and make four cabochons. The resin was new and fresh... so there were far less bubbles and much clearer. Everything looks great, and now it's all about getting ready for MangaNext. Dory's been kind enough to allow me some space to sell, I'm only bringing a the pin board I made and a few pins. If any of my stuff sells I'll be surprised. Really I'm going to help her maintain the table. I've gotta play some classic 1980's songs for Dory. I think she'd get a kick out of it. I gotta play some Queen for her.... A little Bohemian Rhapsody maybe? We watched The Lost Boys to add to her monster movie repertoire. A totally ridiculous movie featuring the two Coreys of the 1980s, about vampires in Santa Carla. Next on the list, I think, will be Bram Stoker's Dracula featuring Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman... and Keanue Reeves. But he's not as awesome as the guy who portrayed Sirius Black.

I'm working on a pattern for a cape. My process basically consists of a loose draft on graph paper and then fudging around with the knitting until it works, while writing out what I'm doing every row. This is also the main reason why most of these knitting adventures don't really work out. So far so good, I'm just putting in the bottom border right now, the problem is that every row takes a god awful long time. I have at least 300 stitches per row and will not be decreasing for another 4 rows. If this works out as it should, it's gonna look amazing... I even have buttons picked out. My goal ultimately is to create a series of patterns that will tell a story or be based on a theme, then make a book! I thought about making a book of patterns based off of fairy tales. So the short-cape represents Little Red Riding Hood, while Snow White has a puff sleeved cardigan. Or, at least that's the plan.... whether or not this pans out has yet to be seen.
I've already perfected a knitted tie pattern. Josh wears one every now and then. He's got the first tie I've ever made, and he reportedly wears it out when he DJs every now and then. Josh is a DJ/ Composer and goes by the name Faith in the Glitch, he makes his own music and visuals, and he often is the video guy at Otakon's Rave (he's the guy with the liberty spike mohawk and macbook.) He's pretty awesome with a wicked sense of humor and really kick ass beats so I highly recommend visiting his website and listening to his work. Hehe, I'm looking at the pictures and remembering that day, it was a good day at Viking clan. Look I even made labels for my knitted work! I've modified the pattern since then to have a point at the end, but the flat bottom to the tie really suits Josh's personality: edgy and modern. I'm not too sure what fairy tale would go with a tie. The tie wasn't even invented when these stories were penned. Most date back to the middle ages and are morality tales... so unless Jack and Jill were business partners, I don't think I'll be able to tie the two together. Pun totally intended.
I think that's it for now. I really want to get back to knitting, and since I can't knit and type at the same time (sadly I'm just not that talented), I'm going to bring this entry to a wrap.
See Ya'll Later!

That Which We Call A Rose, By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet...

Wow, been quite some time since I last posted. Let me give the short version of what's been happening. I got hours at work, then that time-of-the-month thing happened, and finishing up some little projects. Yesterday and today were incredibly productive. I volunteered to help out Dory at her table at MangaNext from the 24th-26th. I remember her telling me about how she got stuck at her table during Otakon and what a miserable experience it was, so I thought it would be nice to offer some support in running her table. So since Dory is awesome, she's allowing me to use a little bit of space for my stuff (among other things), and I've been helping her with production of her work. Really the only thing I'm doing is varnishing or dipping the origami, Dory does all the hard work. So yesterday I made a little pin board and found a frame to fit it as a display piece for the convention (to the right). I recycled the stretchers from a painting that was un-salvageable, and found some fabric samples from Crate and Barrel that I picked up from the fiber lab back in my college days. I think it looks pretty. I made up a resin pour about a week ago, to protect some dried flowers and get some practice with the molds. I'm pretty happy with the results... just haven't been able to photograph the cabochons that I made due to working during daylight hours.(to the left) Yes, that is my work station and yes it is a mess. That's my set up for the flower dipping, although at the point I remembered to take a picture the resin was already settling (on the right). Those flowers held a lot of resin but most of it dripped out onto the cardboard... it was incredibly messy. But on the bright side, the flowers look amazing and I learned how to make fake water droplets. As you can all see I prefer photographing when there's sunlight for obvious reasons. Look at the flowers they're so pretty! So now that you're up to speed, yesterday I started putting those flowers to good use. I made a few necklaces and started some pins. I was given some really beautiful lace trimmings by Jillian, which was super sweet of her, she's Awesome! I had a third necklace but my mother claimed it for Valentines day. The necklaces are made out of individual dried rose petals dipped in resin. I thought they would harden more, but they are rather flexible, which makes me think that maybe I didn't mix the resin right. I have a few more petals to dip and a leaf or two as well. I already coated one leaf and it looks really great, I just need a bail to glue to it and a chain to hang it from. I'm thinking that I should add a small ribbon to the bottom of the lace and trim the stems of the roses a little bit. There are holes in the stems from where the wire was inserted to allow them to hang dry and it looks a little ugly. I'm really proud of them and I hope they sell. I could definitely use the cash.

That's me

Today I went to Dory's place and set up shop with the resin there. I thought I had more left in the kit, but apparently that was not the case. Since I'm not in any rush to create stuff, I put Dory's roses as top priority to be dipped, and to experiment with a few of my things. We had tried this once previously with some really great results, her origami roses took on a plastic-like quality while retaining the look of folded paper. This way the paper is protected from hand oils, weather, and being crushed by slamming your hand into a wall... or LARP-ing too hard. (Seriously, my first Katsucon I was signed up to LARP and they this disclaimer before we started that people needed to ease up on the rock-paper-scissors because the year before someone had been sent to the con-infirmary from playing rock-paper-scissors too hard and injured their hand.) We had some great surprises this time around and I hope if anyone is going to this Convention that they check out Dory's table and buy some of her cute stuff... or buy it online... hint hint nudge nudge. We spent most of the time prepping her pieces for the resin, and also setting up the station (on the left: me working on some resin dipping. On the right: our set up for drip drying). While we were doing this we were watching Tangled. I've never seen Tangled before and it was so cute. It bothers me that Rapunzel is rather ditzy, but she kicks some butt too. I liked how she wasn't a helpless princess (most of the time). Speaking of Tangled, that reminds me of this picture floating around on the internet...

Anyway back on topic, I worked on two new brooches while at Dory's place. I had these half faces that came off of a door hanger... thingy. It was supposed to be a Christmas/ Mardi Gras themed door hanger but it was butt ugly. So I salvaged the little plastic faces to reuse and thought this would be the perfect opportunity for that. Since they're hollow I decided to fill the backs with hot glue, (a trick I picked up from a workshop on "How to mod out your nerf gun") so that i could give it a backing and pin. Of course nothing is that easy, and I snapped my hot glue gun in half. Really not sure how, but it's beyond repair at this point. On the right is the copper toned one. I wanted to use fabric with this one, and I like how it turned out. Reminds me of an Illustration of Monks Hood I saw in a book once... which is a whole 'nother story on it's own. I might add a flower or something but I'm not too sure. On the left, is the second face, which was supposed to be an antique gold color, but has turned green for some reason. haven't quite figured that one out yet. All I can come up with is that the metal in the pigment oxidized? Not a clue. Anyway that lace part is cut out from the background so it has a really nice shape to it. The only thing I dont like about this whole process is the glue fumes. They stink to high heaven. It's this stuff called E6000, and it's essentially an epoxy meant for crafting and jewelry making. It's really strong stuff but it smells like a two part epoxy and gives me one massive migraine.

So during the week I get lazy and all I want to do is surf the net for anything remotely interesting. I stumbled across this artist, Jacek Yerka, a painter from ( I believe) Poland, and he makes some really lovely fantasy art. There's this one painting that really struck a chord in me, a painting called Autumn (pictured to the right). I love this painting. It's what I imagine the lost boys from Peter Pan would have lived in. You know the whole "hollowed tree as a hide out... Capt. Hook will never think to find us here." I kind of wish we were able to live like this within the trees, almost a symbiotic relationship. Understandably the tree would never survive being hollowed out like that, but the romanticized notion sticks with me. One day, when I'm a rich and famous artist (lol), I'll have the ability to design and build a house that's in a tree. I never had a tree house as a kid... I'm also not a great climber, but I've always wanted a house in a tree. I don't really want the squirrels and possums that come with the territory, but the idea of waking up to see the sun rise through bright green leaves is really... calming.







On a more random note, found this image on PoorlyDressed.com of the Disney Princesses... if they were Hipsters. I had to laugh. Honestly though, I secretly wanna wear Belle's outfit. It just looks so cozy and fluffy! (Original Artist Here)

Well that's about all that has happened recently. I'll post something else real soon... during the weekend... maybe. Yeah I'm gonna get some sleep since I have work in the morning (thank god).
See Ya'll Later!

You're Just Not Thinking Fourth-Dimensionally Marty!

Not much has been happening for the past few days. I'm still reading Offspring, there was a Superbowl party at my sister's place and I happened to land myself some hours from the temp. agency. Highlights from the past few days.

So onto the art, there's been some work on the Brain, the Whale and two other projects shown left and below. I started another Pseudo Sphere months ago, it's a different expansion rate, where the Brain is increased every stitch, this one is increased every fourth stitch. This gives a better idea of what the Brain would look like if you were able to flatten it out in some fourth-dimensional-wibbley-wobbley-timey-wimey way. On a whim I decided to only use blue toned yarns to create this pseudo sphere. I figured using only one chroma would allow for more texture to be seen and cause less confusion when looking at the form. For those of you heading to the google/bing search bar in the corner, Chroma is a term used for a family of colors. So a blue chroma includes all shades, hues and tones of blue. So the other piece is an oblong shaped... thing. I don't know what to call it. I don't know the name of the hyperbolic plane... heck I don't even know if it is a hyperbolic plane. I started off with a line of stitches and crocheted around the line on both sides and go back and forth doubling the amount of stitches each time. It's like a little hotdog... with the texture of a brain? Well I'll let people decide what they see and allow them to assign an identity to the piece. I kind of wish I had started it off longer, I bet people would wanna put it around their shoulders like a feathered boa. Well the next resin pour is still in the works, I need to find my spring clamps which have, yet again, disappeared. I still have flowers to prep and I want to get them all done at once.
Talked to Dory earlier, and she sent me links for these silicon molds for her charm making. I was thinking about what a great idea this is. Why can't I make cabochons from say buttons or some of my sculpted pieces? I could cast my own buttons too! That would be amazing! If I could get the method perfected I could get a lot done. Ooooh ooooh then I could cast specific shades and sizes of buttons for my pieces!! I could get very specific gradated tones!! That won't be as much fun as hunting and color matching ( I had this A to D moment where I envisioned hunting hounds and rifles and hundreds of buttons flocking away...) for buttons but it would allow me to get very specific with the colors. That would also mean that I wouldn't have to deal with nasty mothball smelling boxes of buttons. So many ideas are floating around in my head that it kind of hurts. That happens a lot, too many ideas and I can't get them out of my head fast enough. Great, now I have a headache.

I had a great section written out about the next few pieces I want to make, but blogger lost the info. Damn you internet! SO now I get to rewrite it... much shorter. (look! I got another 2 inches done on the whale!)

Well today I pulled of some paintings from their stretchers so that I can reuse the frames. I want to make more beaded pieces like the Whale but using different animals. I like the juxtaposition of the gruesome dead animals to the sparkly and almost cheerful medium of glass beads and buttons. It's almost taboo to make something so dark out of materials that are so cute. But I want to explore this idea of the taboo animals. We're brought up to believe that roadkill is disgusting, diseased and beneath our notice. We don't have emotional attachments to the deer or raccoon or skunk on the side of the road. We also don't treat the animal's body with respect after hitting it at 60mph. Animal control or a licensed removal company take away the carcass and cremate it. More often than not I've seen carcasses left to rot for months on the side of the road until there's nothing left. It's rather odd though. People will go out of their way to take care of their pet's bodies after death, either burying or cremating it, or articulating the skeleton or taxidermy. Because the emotional attachment is there we find ourselves treating the pet with more reverence than that bird that the cat killed in the back yard. I kind of want these pieces to form that emotional bond with people. Force us to see the animal and give a damn about it. Also on a spiritual level, this is like my way of providing a resting place for the souls of those species of roadkill that have no body. Almost like an effigy, just without the burning. I swear I had better text written out than this earlier in the day. Goddammit. Well it will have to do for now. I think I got my point across on what I'd like for people to get out of the next few pieces. If not then leave a comment.
~See Ya'll Later!

Crystalize, Testify!!

Hey ya'll! Today I popped the resin charms out of the mold today. They look pretty neat. Dory placed some of her origami cranes in the resin and I had gears, flowers and a butterfly wing in mine. Unfortunately since the resin had been sitting on a shelf for a few years unused, the resin did not come out crystal clear. There were multiple problems with the resin, including color problems and lots of itty bitty air bubbles. I kind of like the amber/ tea stain coloring, but I would have liked to then have more control over that. I'm definitely going to be mixing up more resin, especially since I found my bouquet from my sister's wedding. My sister got married back in April, and I left the bouquet in the back window of my car. Where it proceeded to dry out and essentially preserve itself. I love it, it was roses and lilies that became a yellow and purple color set. So now that it's dried, I thought about how I'm going to save them from falling apart. Well I'm going to dip and coat them in resin to help preserve them... then I don't really know what I'll do with them. Maybe I'll make some brooches? I don't really know but I'm open to ideas! I've also found some crab parts that i should really look into preserving, as well as two moths and a few insects. I think I might skip out on the insects, it's been done before. I'm always amazed by the things Dory can do with origami. She made those cranes by hand and they're tiny. They're small enough to be earrings. I can't figure out how she manages to fold them. She made these beautiful roses out of origami and the pre-folding process is so incredibly complicated that to me it doesn't seem worth it. But she manages to churn them out in about 10 minutes. Freaking. Amazing.

Oddly enough, a friend of mine posted onto my Facebook a small article for an artist who uses a combination of painting and resin pours to make "3-d paintings." Riusuke Fukahori painstakingly paints goldfish in layers. He paints a layer then adds resin, allows it to dry then paints the next layer. He does this until he has a full fish and the effect is mind blowing. It looks like he has put 3-d model fish into his work, but it's all 2-d. Boggled my mind until i watched the video of his process. I sat there watching, with my jaw hanging on the floor and thought, "This guy is pure genius... I'd never have the patience for this." Definitely check out the video below!

So I leave y'all tonight hopefully with your minds blown wide open to new possibilities.
See Y'all Later!

Hogs, Women and the Man Who Sings Like Them.

Happy Groundhogs Day... I think. Never was much of a Holiday person, and I feel like we can't even include this one as a holiday. Who came up with the idea anyway? A groundhog will determine whether or not spring comes early? Most people would rather poison them to get them off their lawns. Quick!! To the Internet!! Wikipedia will surely know the answer. Yeah, I did look that up just to prove a point. Anyway, not much happened today. The resin castings still need to finish curing, according to the directions it'll take 72 hrs from the initial pouring. So about 9pm tomorrow they should be ready to pop out. Ended up watching a bunch of youtube videos and reading all day. I watched Horror movie reviews on Reel Creepy's blog.

The guy giving the review on the video is Zak, he's a friend from college. I really enjoy the reviews, not only does it save me some money from watching crap-tastic movies, but his dry sense of humor amuses me greatly. This also gives me the opportunity to hear about all the awesome indie horror flicks that are straight to video. So one of the reviews (the video above) is for a movie called The Woman. It's pretty messed up but according to Zak a pretty awesome movie. I had interest in it before but couldn't seem to find it in the local library or Best Buy(my two sources for movies since my computer is a p.o.c.) . Well I got curious into the origin of the movie, found out it's based off of Jack Ketchum's books. Apparently there's 3 books, Off Season, Offspring and The Woman. The movie Offspring is the first two books and The Woman is the sequel movie. So now I'm super interested, so I ran over to the local library to find Off Season. So I look up the book and I locate the appropriate shelf and there's no book. The computer system says it's been checked in and in virtual reality it exists. But after 15 minutes and two librarians it clearly is no longer on the shelf... or in the library. But they had the second book Offspring, which takes place 10 years after the first book. I'm about one hundred pages in and it's not a difficult read. Goes pretty quickly too. Anyway, when I first asked for some help, the librarian clearly thought I was a teenager, since she took me to the 'teen books' section and proceeded to ask me where I saw the book. I blinked a few times turned around and pointed to the other end of the library where the adult horror fiction books are and said, "the other side of the library." It still bothers me that people think I'm still in high school. I should wear a sign or something, like: "I have a Bachelors degree... No, I don't want to order from the kids menu." And while I'm on the subject of teenyboppers, a friend posted a link of a rather lovely cover of Katy Perry's, I kissed a girl and liked it.

It definitely changes the meaning of the song, and overall I like the music better. The voice of this guy is soothing in comparison to the notes Katy Perry (almost) hits.
Other than that I worked on the Brain a little (started a new ball of yarn!) and had an epic poking war with my sister on facebook. Tomorrow will be more interesting.
See ya!

Just Keep Swimming...

Today was rather productive. I started off with some work on the Pseudo Sphere... or for those of you who have seen me recently, "THE BRAIN!!!" It's all crochet and I've been working on it since November of 2009. It's rather heavy now, it feels like a small bowling ball, so about 6 lbs. I love how in depth the project is. There are all these layers of yarn to get through just to see the middle, and it's all one plane. A Pseudo Sphere is a type of hyperbolic plane, if you were to stretch this thing out it would be one flat piece. It's like a labyrinth of tactile goodies, it's a piece of art that I wish people could experience everyday. I love the reactions I've gotten from this piece. The first thing everyone does is to put it on their head. I kid you not, more people have tried that thing on as a garment than looked at it as a sculpture ( I wish I had photos). I love it. I think it's great that people can have a moment of silliness no matter where they are. I guess it reminds us of a wig, or something that belongs in or on our heads, and the fact that it's so soft helps too. If this was made of glass, people would be far more hesitant to touch it. I've actually fallen asleep on the Brain a few times, it's just so fluffy and warm that I kind of doze off, and wake up with brain wrinkles on my cheek. (I added the photo on the right so that ya'll can get an idea of the scale. That is an ordinary tissue box.) There have been so many questions that have popped up as the piece continues to grow. Questions like; how big can I make it? How dense will it become? Can I make it big enough to fill a room or support my weight? Can I get lost in it and if so, will I receive cell service? I like to think that one day this brain will shelter an entire civilization of Lilliputian type beings. There are even cosmic questions that came up. Due to the weight being added to the outside of the plane and doubling with each layer, how long will it take for the center strings to snap and begin to unravel from the inside out? It's almost like the brain is its own small universe, and as it expands the resulting stress on the form causes the center to fall in on itself, so that as it grows it collapses simultaneously. Maybe that is the nature of our universe. That somewhere, out there, the center of our existence has collapsed in on itself and this void is continuing to grow even as new forms and life expand outward from this epicenter.

Well on a lighter note, after doing some work on the Brain, Dory (featured below) popped on over for a crafting day. This seems to be a new developing pattern for us and I like it. Dory makes crafts and has a thriving business for Cute Things. We had discussed that at some point she would come over to my place and we'd experiment with different techniques and materials. So today I taught her how to carve up dollar store erasers into hand made stamps. It was quite a bit of fun actually, we had a great breeze coming in through the window, plenty of sunlight and Interview with a Vampire in the dvd player. Dory is a Twilight fan. I said that was unacceptable since she had never read or seen some of the best vampire books or movies. So we started with an Anne Rice movie. Bram Stoker's Dracula is next on the list. We were so productive, after the stamps we worked on perfecting the use of sculpy clay for charm making. Dory made these really cute Macaroon charms and I made a pretzel. I'm very proud of my pretzel. For those of you who have never used sculpy clay, it's a clay you have to bake in an oven in order for it to harden (at left). My dad walked in and made some off hand comment about how he used that toaster oven when he had an apartment. I was like 'whoa, wait, this thing is from the 70's?!' I suddenly feel less inclined to bake in it now. Who knows what concoctions ended up in there. We tried our hand at pouring some resin charms today, as well as trying to coat some origami pieces to make them more sturdy. I pulled out the pressed leaves and flowers for this. I dug up my butterfly wing too. A little over a year ago, I found a butterfly wing wafting on my front porch. It was one of those moments where you can't quite believe you've just witnessed something beautiful and meaningful. So I felt I had to hold onto the wing and hopefully find a way to keep it safe from damage. I kind of felt bad for the poor butterfly that had lost it's wing, but I couldn't find the rest of the little guy. I think the neighbor's cat got to it. It's a mean s.o.b. Well today I embedded the wing in resin and I am eagerly awaiting the results of our experiment. I feel a little bit like a mad scientist, mixing chemicals, poking and prodding things into shape and setting things (almost) on fire.

I'd like to end this post with a link that my friend Kat posted to her F.B.
2 Squirrels Discuss Art (I would post the picture but half of it is cut off it's that big)
I think that link sums up most of today for me.
See ya'll later!