Monday, August 31, 2009

August 31-Monday

Jellyfish fold-out card coming soon.
There are so many different kinds of jellyfish with such vivid colors-otherworldly, floating and fluid. I admit to having a vague sense of their structure. They are more transparent than this so I'm playing with layers but want the color to pop and the liquid quality of the lines to translate.

Earlier in the day, I walked the couple miles to Petco for kibble and biscuits.
First, I should say that Yogi, the dog who came with me is a Bouvier and a real couch potato-lean but not a real spark when it comes to "exercise." We got to the store after a surprisingly brisk walk and without his characteristic halts. (These are a mystery since he freezes in place and will not budge.) His first move was to pee all over the stack of baskets at the door. I suspect that for the remainder of the afternoon, other dogs may have repeated this maneuver. The clerk rushed for the back and returned to hand me a wad of paper towels. Once inside the store, Yogi headed in any direction that suited him.
I don't know if he's been there before since his person objects to the prices especially since Raley's has  kibble for $2 cheaper. Anyway, mission accomplished. Exiting the store without a further watering, we only got as far as the corner and that's where we stayed until I called for a ride.

Monday, August 24, 2009

August 24-it's Monday (all day) completely random, musings

Yesterday was an exceptionally long day, beginning with 5AM wake-up call for the flea market.
I bought a wicker backpack purse on a whim then decided I didn't really like it and left it on someone else's pile of junk stuff...isn't that a physics or chemistry concept...displacement of mass? My other purchase was a small bag of "porcinas," the pig-shaped Mexican bread, which is fresh, tastes like brown sugar and ginger. There is a(n) Hispanic woman who has a booth at the market but she's not there every week. This is the only thing I ever get from her. The pink and sugar-coated breads have never really appealed to me besides how can you beat a pig-shaped gingerbread?
The theme this week was motorcycle helmets and bad books.
Afterwards, we headed south and moved the rest of my things out of my apartment nearly completing a move that has been in process for the past three. We didn't finish until 11pm then headed over to the pho restaurant by 24 hour fitness to have the worst meal Dennis has ever eaten...I felt kind of bad about this because it was supposed to be a "thank you" for helping me.
There was definitely a this-is-junk, this-is-treasure theme yesterday.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

August 20-birthday cupcakes


I used to work at a photo lab. That was awhile ago...just before things went digital so people took photos, brought them in to us and on the tech side, we printed everything. Not only printed it but color and density corrected each photo. It was more like being an armchair traveler or sociologist. I saw a lot of things without being a voyeur. Every celebration, always had a snap of the cake...didn't matter if it was a wedding, anniversary, going-away party or a birthday, there was always that one obligatory picture of the cake solo. And what did people do with these pictures of the cake?
This papercut is a birthday cupcake, an element from a fold-out card.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=29180083
I've changed the purple frosting to pink, gotten feedback about the "caramel" frosting not being as appealing as the vanilla minty-looking one :o) *

One of my favorite blogs is cakewrecks.blogspot.com
which is written from a professional cake decorator's point of view. The commentary with photos can be very funny. One of my favorite toys was an electric oven that came with miniature pans and mixes. Seems very suzy homemaker to me now and the concept of a recipe still eludes me albeit to say
I have a few cake wrecks in my own past. One was when I was 8 or 9, we had out-of-town company visiting, my mom had a migraine and her birthday was coming up. My six-year old friend and I decided to make the cake. This was a supervised activity. I remember there was some problem with the oven and the cake "blew up" while it was baking. Since this was a craft project, the obvious solution was to paste it together with frosting. The real problem in my mind at the time was that we couldn't agree on the color so we compromised by alternating very bright green with the very bright blue.
P.S.! August 18 is national cupcake day....fyi for next year.

Friday, August 14, 2009

August 14, 2009-not Friday the 13th



http://www.youtube.co/watch?v=udY1Sar4pF4)

Brief hiatus from "daily" blog! I was away last week from Saturday through Saturday and of course, the return Sunday we attended "church" which is to say Dennis' version of it... the flea market.
Graphics on the left are variations of project I am working on right now- a card commission for a private school. The headmistress' office is very atmospheric and distinctive. The building is historic. A graphic of the door has been used before to identify the correspondence as coming from the school and more specifically her office.

I prefer the bolder, brighter colors with more asymmetric cropping but the muted, wood-tone palettes are probably more versatile and appropriate for fund-raising and thank you notes. The wood tones are sampled from reference photos that I took early on.

The first panel in black/duotone will be lased and form a "cut-out" with the second panel of color showing through those portions that have been burned away. Light passing through the cut-out creates another graphic in shadow. Hopefully to be reprised for luminarios!