Category Archives: Creative Stuff Happening Right Now

Nov11

Dear brain: don’t leave in a huff

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Sometimes, dear reader, your faithful correspondent is a stupid lazy-ass. Like when she decides to SPRAYPAINT ALL THE THINGS! without great ventilation or any filter mask. Not that I have just keeled over or gotten higher than King Kong’s kite or anything, just that I know that was immensely dumb.

The reason I got into this wild frenzy to do a million spray paint projects in one day is that we’re supposed to have a high of 62 degrees today and 36 tomorrow. So I think it’s pretty much time for the spray paint studio to close up shop so I can start putting my car back in the garage. I have a ton of other things to move around too, like the 4 tires they took off my car when I had snowtires put on and various boxes that need to be knocked down and random crap that I mean to turn into projects one day. There’s also a couple of planter boxes with high trellises that are still in boxes but meant to be part of the big porch project that fizzled out after early summer.

I don’t know why my Big Project Brain is all whirling again — scratch that, no, it’s undoubtedly GISHWHES-inspired. You get in a frenzy to glue Skittles everywhere, and it’s hard to shed. I’ve just traded Skittles-gluing for spraypainting everything that doesn’t move. If my cat were in the garage, he’d be in danger of gaining a hammered bronze coat, too.

So I’m inside for a while breathing respectable air.

I’m sure I’ll have something to post as a project before the day is through. Unless I do keel over.

Whoa, thunder!

Nov1

::waves hello::

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I’m posting from the thick of GISHWHES, plotting, reporting, emailing people, sourcing, etc. etc. etc. This weekend many creative things will be made, but I may not be able to post them immediately.

Just letting y’all know I’m still here but barely have a moment to catch my breath.

Sep28

Antici…pation

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Because of commitments, I won’t be able to post the final results of the chest of drawers project for a few more days. While I’m otherwise occupied I’m leaving it in the garage for a little more drying time. When I was finishing the last drawer-front, though, I was thinking, “This is going to look fantastic,” which I had not at all been thinking at any point during the pink version.

Sep25

Right in the chest

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I made it through most of the frame and 2 drawer-fronts on the chest of drawers before I didn’t feel I had enough light to continue. (And oxygen was an issue.) I probably won’t know until I can haul them out of the garage into daylight to get a good look whether or not the coverage is good enough to do it in one coat, but it looks good at this point. I hope so! I really need gloves and a mask to do any more of that. (Stupid not to in the first place.)

I have one drawer-front left and the rest of the frame, where I ran out of flat black paint.

I think the gray/pink and black/burgundy of the front/sides are going to look kind of cool together, when the drawers are open.

Now I’m off to continue writing a story I’ve been working on. Deadline is Sunday, and my Saturday and Sunday are kind of packed.

Hm. I want some ice cream, but I don’t want to have to go out to buy it. :(

Sep23

Not-quite project post

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Is there anything more tragic than realizing 80% of the way through a DIY project that you really want it to go in a completely different direction?

Absolutely correct! The answer is “about a million things.”

But it is a large pain in the ass.

I bought this 3-drawer chest for $15 at St. Vinny’s, planning to use it for a night stand. It’s old and beat up, but real wood and the whole deal.

It’s going to be AWESOME!!

My bedspread is burgundy and I’ve got some burgundy accents around, so I decided after obsessing over various ideas at Pinterest that I would do the ombre paint thing that looks so cool here (http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/2012/06/love-is-like-apricot.html), starting with burgundy. I further decided that, instead of buying 4 different shades of paint, I would get a quart of white and blend the tints myself so I’d know they would work together.

Tints of burgundy are pink, yo. I am not so much a pink girl anymore.

And I realized early on that my medium pink was coming out a putrid shade that reminded me of my grandmother’s habit of getting humongous rocks when she and my grandfather would travel in the southwest, then bringing them home and painting them an obnoxious pink, then in gold paint label them with where she’d found them. Urgh.

But I couldn’t think of what else to do or what other color would go with the room, so I kept going. Yesterday I painted the drawers, and today I started on the frame early enough that I could get the second coat of everything in today, but halfway through the frame it occurred to me that I really really wanted to do a black and gray ombre thing. Which made me very sad.

But the idea of starting the whole project over with several coats of paint made me even sadder, because I am profoundly lazy and this project is already stretching the boundaries of my tolerance for painting stuff. So I kept going.

Painting, however, is a very meditative activity — thus the big epiphany about what I wished I were doing instead, and several smaller epiphanies like I suck at wielding a paintbrush and always have visible brushstrokes. I played with various ideas on what to do to improve the chest, like decoupage Victorian crap on it (gag! Plus I am creeped out by a great many bits of Victorian ephemera), or seashells (blah).

See what I mean about, well, everything?

When I was almost at the end of the second coat on the drawers, it occurred to me that I could repaint the fronts of the drawers and the whole frame in the ombre thing, but leave the sides and interiors as they are, for what the magazines call (far too damn often) a pop of color.

The knowledge that I can fix this with little effort, and not have Mexico-rock pink in a visible spot in my bedroom, has cheered me up substantially. So I’m done for the day. I may even get spray paint to finish the job, because boy does my brushwork suck.

Even my helper Harriet got paint in her hair.

Aug7
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Aside

Well, besides the time-suck thing.

The trouble is when you find a project you really want to do, then when you click the link you get a warning about how Pinterest is not gonna let you go there because the site has malware, and every other source gets blocked because it has content from a site with malware, and all you’ve got is a series of tiny photographs that someone has made into one big pin. I’m trying to go on with just such a project, because I’ve done plenty of felt creations before, but there are two pictures in the strip that I just can’t quite figure out what’s going on.

SIGH.

And I’ve been very low on energy the last couple of evenings, so I’ve cut out my project, but I haven’t gotten further than that. Please be patient, and I’ll try to get this done and posted soon.

For now, I’m going to grab my Kindle and head for bed.

The trouble with Pinterest…

Apr22

ALL UR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

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So sunny and beautiful outside, that I just want to go out onto the deck and sit with my glass of iced coffee and read or do some embroidery or something. But it’s 48 degrees out there. That’s the cognitive dissonance that comes from having an early April vacation in Austin, Texas. All but 2 days of my vacation I sat out on the deck at the apartment I rented for two or three hours, reading or writing posts. Another day I went out to breakfast at Kerbey Lane and sat out on their deck, where I ended up in a conversation with multiple people and stayed quite a while there, too.

Austin was fabulous, full of inspiration and wonderful people to converse with, terrific food and entrepreneurship. So much creativity in so many ways. I should have taken a lot more photos than I did.

Came back to a week that was a bit disheartening, and with a place I needed to be every evening except Monday, so there wasn’t much chance to recharge. Yesterday was the day I planned to plunge back into creativity, and I just couldn’t get things going. And what’s the best thing to do when you’re already beating yourself up about not attending to creative work? Oh, getting into a Twitter argument with someone whose idea of political point-making is “Moron! Ha! Pwned you!” Not that I was stupid enough to try actual substance myself; I just kept pointing out, “That is not remotely pwnage.”

Why do we waste energy on such idiocy when we know that it’s idiocy? Am I the only creative person who pisses away valuable project time this way? Why?

I do have a project. I finished a piece I started a while back, and that gave me some energy to do prep work on art show stuff. I’m not done with that, but stopped to have a snack, and need to get back to it.

Oh, and I bought a Craftsy class on layering and slashing fabrics, as I got a half-price offer. Though the first lesson keeps talking about my fabric stash, which I don’t have much of. I did get some actual garments at thrift shops in Austin that I plan to use for the fabric.

Okay, on to the work of the day. Check this space out later; I will be posting my project.

Apr1

11 am progress report (at noon)

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Urgh. This day is annoyingly full of laundry and grown-up tasks. Yet I am still working in between loads.

As of 9 am:

Mmmmmm, Iced coffee.

The glass looks a little schmutzy because this one’s my third of the day.

As of 11 am:

I don't even.

Apr1

When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout

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So it’s Sunday. I haven’t really worked on anything this week due to a giant to-do list and some all-day socializing with a friend yesterday. I have some half-finished projects in my pocket, but I actually need a Kindle cozy. A Kindle cozy is, in fact, what started my whole felting craze.

So, even though I have a kajillion more things I should be doing today, I’m going to make the Kindle cozy. No, not the half-finished one I have floating around the craft room. A whole new one, based on an idea that I had sometime last week.

It is currently 8:58 a.m.

Let’s do this thing.

Feb12

Dye dye DYE!!!

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Paying attention to wash cycles is NOT my strong suit, people! But I have some items in the wash machine to dye, and I have to keep it from going into rinse and keep the wash cycle going for 50 minutes to an hour or so. Which is why I’m sitting in my hallway (the washer/dryer are at the garage end of the hall) with the timer set every three minutes so I can track how long a wash cycle takes.

This isn’t a project at this point, but it’s a little prep work for one that will happen later. And also just rescuing (I hope!) a pair of jeans that are a little too weatherbeaten to wear to work on the days when we’re allowed to.

I’m using iDye, which I’ve never used before. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever dyed anything with dye that is supposed to be used for that purpose. Never dyed anything in the wash machine before. I hope it’s as easy as the packet claims! Though I do generally trust Dharma Trading.

ACK! Good thing I was paying attention. It started to drain way before I would have thought based on what the dial setting looked like. Pays to be neurotic sometimes…