Avoiding

I am avoiding folding show laundry. The mountain of it that you see here as well as what is still in the dryer. The newest issue of Artful Blogger came out and I just can't put it down long enough to fold that laundry. Darn.

New Toy

This came in the mail today. It was very exciting, and free! Now that we have a Small Business account with AT&T they are just trying to make me happy, something they never did when I was just another customer.
My kids are really shaping up this week, and Thank Goodness for my partner Glo she keeps me sane.

Sweet

Today's sweets: My new Target sandals and shaggy red bath mat from JC Penney's. Loving them!

I am so happy to report that my application for health insurance has been approved and I can finally go get birth control! Huzzah!

Everyone should see the movie Fur about Diane Arbus, I caught it on Cinemax this evening and I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

As You Like It

Started rehearsals tonight. I've been teaching myself to play guitar so that I could play and sing for this show and it looks like it might actually work. I'm working on the songs with a cool guy named Mitch, whom I may have to develop a crush on. It went way better than I expected. Hoorah!

Play

Thursday night I found one of my favorite childhood toys at Urban Outfitters. Although it is now called a "hypotrochoid art set", it will always be spyrograph to me. Here are some of my experiments:


This is what I would call Super Sweet!

In Progress

The room I am moving into has awful fake wood paneling, so to deal with it I am hanging a grip of art on the walls. Since my jewelry box was exploding with stuff I decided to move everything into the built in drawers, but I'm hanging the necklaces on a pin board, then hanging it on the wall as art. When hanging my beloved "Rainy Day, Paris" print, I needed something lovely to hang with it. This fantastic print "Keep Calm" is something I had seen in a few magazines so I decided to search etsy and there it was. So excited. Don't they look good together.

Today was the company meeting for the Woodward Shakespeare Festival, which was very exciting. I got to see the stage and meet some of the cast who were not in attendance at the read through. Also got to show off my basic guitar skills. I'm teaching myself so that I can accompany myself and others during the show. It's really not as hard as I thought it would be.

Grateful

I had a day filled with negativity yesterday, so I thought that today I should conteract that with lots of positives. These are the things I am grateful for today:

1. My dogs (here Lego helps dad work)

2. Health - I have been living without health insurance for nearly my entire adult life, and so far have been lucky. I was reminded of this when I spoke with my insurance lady yesterday (the store is paying for me to get insurance) and I was denied coverage because my height/weight details were entered into the application incorrectly. No I am not 4'6" and 195 pounds, I am 5'6" and 195. Only slightly better!

3. Time - to myself, Grandma and my Mum have been on their drive across the country for two weeks, and I get four more weeks of blissful alone time before they return. In which time I must clean the house of my moving debris, ekk!

4. My Jobs - both of which have been remarkably flexible and willing to let me do a play in Fresno this summer. Hoorah for bosses that understand the need for someone to do what they love.

Have a lovely Friday!

nablopomo

I'm giving this a go.

Missed Weekend

I was planning to post some pictures of how my room is progressing, and the adventures I was going to have this weekend, but all went awry.
Friday night, when I was supposed to head up to the Lions Club Roping in Three Rivers, I was called by the alarm company. I had to return to the shop to make sure that we weren't being burgled. Turns out the battery in the alarm fell out of it's box, AGAIN. After dealing with the alarm company, it was too late to make it up to the dance at the arena, so I stayed home.
Saturday Heather and I were going to see a play at one of the local community theatres, but Heather had to bow out. It turned out to be a good thing since on of our boarded horses broke it's leg (with the owner out of town) and I had to deal with the Vet. It was 8pm by the time my Dad said he would take me out for dinner. As we were getting ready to leave I turned off the computer and broke the power switch! Therefore, all day Sunday was spent hand writing invoices.
Today things are looking up. I took the computer in to get fixed and it was a super simple repair. Huzzah!

Moving...

I've been moving to a new space. I promise to be back soon with pictures of what I've been creating. Right now, I'm working on a group of ACEO's that I'm calling the "Gallery of Broken Hearts".
I started rehearsal for "As You Like It" last week and am very excited to get to create three songs for the production. Wish me luck, this is new creative territory.

This is a prototype for a bracelet I wanted to make for my friend Brooke. Of course, once I started I realized all of the mistakes I was making, so this one will remain in my own collection.


In the one I finished for Brooke today, I used one color wire, and hooked the charms onto on ring back to back. I'll try to post a pic of the finished product tomorrow.

These were the fun little wires I worked with. Aren't they pretty!

Exciting news for me, I've been cast in "As You Like It" with the Woodward Shakespeare Festival. I will be playing Amiens, a part written for a man, but we're doing a sort of twist on it.

New Projects

I finally finished this frame. It was supposed to be a Christmas present for the girl that works for us, but it got put aside for more pressing projects, so now it is her birthday present. The idea came from Nicole, who makes jewelry trees every year. I said, 'why can't we put jewelry on other things?', she replied 'Let's go to Micheal's'. She is my perfect best friend. At any rate, I started with a basic unfinished wooden frame, painted it silver, then started glueing beads and jewels to it. It's such a basic project, with a wow result. I used Alene's glue, because it dries clear. It could turn out to be a pretty expensive frame, but I used a bunch of random thrift store jewelry.



My next project is a crown for one of my nieces. Here's the start to it. Since I started with multi-colored beads, I am going to continue using several different colors of wire as well. I plan to leave the wire under the loops unadorned, to allow for bobby pins.

New Edition

This little angel is the reason I haven't been on in a few days. Isn't she fabulous?! Her name is Susie Q, she's a nine week old Borgie. That is a Welsh Corgie mixed with a Border Collie. We have her older brother and sister and they have such great personality, I am loving getting to know her.

Fancy Dress

Here's my postcard for Sunday Postcard Art. The theme was Mardi Gras, and since I have been wanting to do something with the stuff from our NOLA visit, this was a good start. It's my first attempt at a postcard, and with embossing, hence you can barely make out the fleur de lis stamp in the bottom left corner.

I repurposed one of those subscription postcards that always fall out of magazines, an idea I got from a craft book by Mark Montano. The girlie in her Carnival outfit is Laura from one of the most beautiful Creole Plantations outside of New Orleans.

Haven't quite figured out the scanner yet.

My desk

So I have recently commandeered the office in my grandmother's house to use as a craft room. It's not a perfect space and I'm definitely making some adjustments, but I just love having a "Room of one's own". All of my grandfather's Masonic certificates are hanging on the wall above the desk, and it's nice to think that he's with me while I'm creating. I am slowly but surely adding my own pictures to the walls, including my collage from an earlier post. I also want to put up my favorite Impressionist painting "Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877" by Caillebotte. When Nicole and I visited New Orleans last June we found this amazing artist named Jamie Hayes and a few of his pieces will go up on the wall. Lots of inspiration, so I can create!

Packing Her Lunch

This sweetie is in our front pasture. The other day when uncle Jim was feeding, she turned at the last minute and ended up with her dinner on her backside. We joked that she looks like she's packing her lunch!

Out of the Closet!

In 2004, I directed an all-girl production of Twelfth Night. It was a great time, with some very cool and intense girls. After the production was over I took the archive photos and made them into a photo collage on a framed canvas. We rehearsed in two weeks, and this collage definitely has that frenetic energy. I wish that I had done some painting onto the canvas before apply the pics, but I still love this.




The first photo is a detail of the top right corner. Below is the full collage. Someday I'll have a better camera and be able to take better pictures, but this is way too big for the scanner.

The cast: Samantha Muse as Viola

Brooke Aiello as Olivia, Sir Andrew, and others

Sarah Howell as Orsino, Sir Toby, and others

Erin Hoover as Sebastian, Maria

Jennifer Medford as Feste, Antonio

Kristin Crase (yes, me) as Malvolio and others

I think I will take this collage out of the closet and hang it over the counter that I have just commandeered to be my craft table.

old stuff and new

Last night, going through a junk drawer, I came across these old matchbooks that my grandparents gathered in their travels. I want to figure out something really cool to do with them. There is one here that is from the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, I think it's from their honeymoon in 1946!


I was inspired today to take some pictures of the stuff in my store. Mostly because the colors were just making me crazy.

Everything seemed to be bubblegum and candy colored. Plus, all of the textures. I thought maybe I'd use these images as background for some artwork - collage maybe. But I also still have rubbings from the Water Meter covers in NOLA to use. Not quite sure what to do with those.

I am thankful, as always for my best friend. She gets my need to become more of an artist and she is the one who gave me my new mantra "My name is Kristin Crase and I can do anything." When my children's program started I knew that I would have to design the backgrounds, but I had no idea that I would be executing them almost entirely alone. Nicole helped me alot, but the initial design was mine. I want to share the pics here. They're not great photos, but you'll get the idea. It's the Jungle Book.

When we re-arranged the lay out of our store - without the boss' permission - I took some pictures. I thought this one turned out the coolest. You get no clear idea of the arrangement of our store, but I think you can definitely tell what kind of store we are.

After reading this month's Artful Blogging I decided I had to get in on the action. I hope that this can be a cool tool for me to use.