Ch-Ch-Changes

Time for a personal update!

Quite a bit has happened since I last posted. 2010 got off to a rough start with my very first traffic ticket earlier this month. I failed to make a complete stop before turning right at an intersection, and despite being nicknamed a "California Stop", it's illegal to do, even in LA! One expensive lesson learned.

The other lesson I'm currently in the midst of learning is that one can never be too secure in anything. The short story is that I lost my job at the company I've been with for almost 9 years. Even though there were whispers of layoffs circulating, I was still caught off guard on Thursday when I received notice that they were eliminating the Graphics positions in our department. Thursday was a really tough day, but I've already brushed myself off and I'm looking forward to the next phase in life.

I know that losing my job had nothing to do with my performance and it's actually been a great boost to my ego to know that my boss and coworkers were just as shocked and upset about the "change" as I was. I had so many supportive emails and messages from everyone I worked and I have many people looking out for me, and the potential for freelance work with the company to come. Financially, I think I will be fine. Personally, I only see this as a great opportunity for growth and a new direction in life.

I'm going to end this with a little photo-documentary of a hike my boyfriend and I did two Sundays ago. It was a six-mile loop to the Parker Mesa overlook and you can see from the photo below that "getting there" was quite a challenge to me. I'm not the most athletically inclined person, and I was willing to give up several times along the way, but my boyfriend made sure to coax me on to the top, which was completely worth it.













After the hike, we both felt great about spending time in the beautiful outdoors and vowed to do something away from our apartment every weekend. So far we've kept to that promise with a bike ride to the beach last week, and a group bike ride touring some community gardens in a nearby neighborhood today.

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And for those of you who actually come here for DoodleFactory news, there has been a new set release in the StarvingArtistamps.com shop. Those of you who liked last year's Classic Decor furniture set should definitely give the new DoodleFactory Boudoir a look.

The Big Day

It was a beautiful day for a gorgeous bride and everything went perfectly at my sister's wedding, thanks mostly to my childhood friend who did ALL of the planning and arranging. Above is a glimpse of some of the paper items I created - the wedding program, thank you tags and menu, which my friend had tucked into little "tuxedo" napkins. I wish I'd taken photos of the invites before I sent them out a few months ago, but they looked similar to the other items.

Seeing Snow in Hawaii

I know I have a tendency of abandoning my blog and disappearing for weeks, but this time I have a legitimate excuse! My sister is getting married and I'd been busy creating and designing the menus, gift tags and printed items for the event this weekend. I flew to Hawaii (our hometown) last Friday and it's been non-stop wedding prep since my best friend is also my sister's wedding planner and we're doing a lot of this DIY-style.

I did manage to borrow my sister's computer tonight so I could catch up on emails AND get a glimpse of the blog hop for the latest Starving Artistamps release, DoodleFactory: Arctic. I'm really sorry I couldn't participate this time around, but it was so much fun seeing the design team's creations. It's especially funny to me since I'm at the "polar" opposite in terms of weather here in Hawaii.

Sorry, I'm too late to give you a heads-up on the chance to win this set for free, but I think everyone should still check out the hop and see the awesome cards the Design Team created with this set. I hope none of the ladies mind that I'm going to repost my favorite card from each stop (Please click on their blog links to see the rest of their creations).

Juliana Swanson:

Donna Duquette:


Lori Tecler:


Lydia Fiedler:


Tracey Berkey:


Jenn McMillan:

Eva Andren:* *(By the way, Eva emailed me many months ago with the initial idea for this set which is why we named the little girl eskimo after her. You can also tell the girl eskimo must be my favorite stamp since I picked it in almost every feature card here!)

Nina Aaslund:


Dawn Mercedes:

Normal is Boring

Three years ago, I made some christmas cards using my friend's gocco machine. I believe it was that same year that my boyfriend gifted me my own Gocco machine for Christmas.

Shortly after that, Gocco was rumored to be discontinued and I decided I couldn't possibly use such a rare resource, so it sat in my closet perfectly untouched for years. This weekend, I finally decided to get the machine out, hoping to make a few little art prints. Suffice it to say, my results were less than satisfactory and I (literally) blew half the screens and bulbs that were supplied. *sigh*

I don't have my final gocco scans to share, but here are some digitized versions of the images I was trying to play with.



A little back-story on this piece. When the DoodleFactory first moved to Starving Artistamps, and I became aware of stamping communities, I would often see comments on message-boards that the DoodleFactory characters were too weird for stampers. I felt like my odd little creatures (my kids!) were being shunned by society. I made myself feel better by repeating my own mantra "Normal is Boring", and Tracey even promised to make that sentiment into a stamp some day.

Since then, I think I've (mostly) toned down the whack-factor in my drawings, or people have become more accepting, or I've just tuned that stuff out. I was going to put the following little guy into the next stamp release as an abominable snowman, but my boyfriend informed me that he didn't look like BigFoot at all. I'm sure he'll be worked into a future set some day, but I couldn't wait the many months before that would happen to share him. Consider this a SUPER Sneak Peek!

Weekend of Art

This weekend my boyfriend was part of a very interesting project called "1 Day of Art". On Friday night, he and a group of a dozen+ artists met with the creators of (t)here magazine where they learned about the project and were interviewed for the publication and documentary. Each artist randomly selected a word, then spent the next 24 hours creating a work of art centered around that theme.

Mike used every one of those hours and didn't sleep all night. Because his project was so ambitious (with the 4 ft x 8 ft scale, and his time-consuming choice of medium), he didn't quite finish, though he probably needs just a few more hours to fill in the rest. I think by the end of the 20th hour, he was ready to fall over from the lack of sleep, but he pushed through and I passed out well before he did on Saturday night.


That's the piece hanging on his studio wall. His word(s) were "Modern/Power" and the photo doesn't quite do it justice. He did his own documentation of the process using his time-lapse camera, and I'll post the video when he finishes. I've posted this before, but here's another time-lapse video he did of a much smaller "tape painting", so you get an idea of how he works.

The film crew for the documentary dropped in on our apartment mid-day Saturday and I hid in our bedroom while they interviewed my tired boyfriend. I was wrapped up in my own Day of Art, working madly on the next DoodleFactory set, which I'd been putting off for ages. I finished! And while I can't show you the full set, here's a sneak peek and huge hint of what's to come:

Deerie Me

I figured out what I wanted to be for Halloween on Friday night, and put my costume together relatively quickly on Saturday.


I made my own horns out of Ultralight Sculpey, which is feather-light and quite easy to work with. Actually it's almost too easy to mold, so I put a wire in the center to help keep the bend while it was baking in the oven. After it was done, I painted them with watered-down acrylic paint.



Before baking, I also fluted the bottoms and poked holes around the base so I could sew the horns to my headband. This part looked quite "inelegant" as Mike put it, but it was secure and so comfortable I often forgot I was wearing antlers.



It was handy to have an artistic boyfriend around to help with my make-up, which we copied from a photograph I found on this thread.



The final look!

What did you all do, or dress as for Halloween?

**EDIT**For those curious about what Mike dressed as, he went as Twitter. [Here's a photograph].