Thursday, October 29, 2009

Gee, RealLife, you sure take up a lot of time, don't you?

So I've fallen off of the Blogtoberfest wagon, due to my "Real Life" (a.k.a. job beyond Etsy that helps pay my bills on a regular basis) getting in the way. I wouldn't change it for anything, since I love my job (I care for cats at a local animal shelter), but it hasn't given me much time to make art or blog lately.

It hasn't, however, kept me from taking funny pictures of my cats (Chester, specifically) in things I've knitted. Enjoy!

"You'd better not make me look stupid on your blog, you got that?"

My version of Chester as Furry Potter, lolcats-style.

"*Siiiiigh. I don't know why you humans find this so amusing."

Monday, October 26, 2009

Josh Simpson - Glass Master!

An entire planet encased in glass...

I'm a big fan of glasswork and one of my favorite glass artists is Josh Simpson. I first discovered his work in the giftshop of the Museum of Fine Arts - Boston (a favorite hangout for me back in undergrad, since BU students get in free!) when I saw some of his large and small planets for sale. Most of his work tends to be these planets. Some are metallic, some inhabited, some potentially inhabited (look for signs of "buildings" on the land masses or "spaceships" in the planet's atmosphere, which is the clear glass surrounding the planet) and they come in varying sizes. My husband bought me a large planet for my birthday last year and I absolutely love it!

He does more than just planets, though, including vases, plates, glass "baskets" and collaborations! My favorite item he has for sale is one of his collaborations with Joyce Roessler. It's a portal into an underwater scene, and you know how much I looooove glass underwater scenes!

I looooooove it! The fish, the anemones, the iridescent trail left by a guppy swimming by, the rocky exterior! Fabulous!

The exterior of the portal is beautifully craggy and dark, highlighting the bright scene within!

And here's a close up of the fish! Divine, no? *Sigh. It's works like this that make me wish that I could do glasswork. So beautiful! So this is on my wishlist of things to buy (once I have over $6000 of disposable income. So yeah, that's probably not going to happen anytime soon). Maybe it's a good thing that I don't own it, since I already spend a little time almost every day looking into my Simpson planet (there's always something new to discover inside it. "Is that a road? An island retreat? Is that an alien boat crossing an alien sea?"). I imagine that I'd spend hours at a time looking into this, getting lost in the glass depths, remembering that I can't breathe underwater!!! *cough, choke, cough!
All photos taken from Josh Simpson's amazing website!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Sophie and Michael Create on Etsy

Are you looking for that perfect custom dog tag for yourself or your beloved pet? Perhaps want to purchase yourself a piece of original art that won't break your bank (I'm talking under $20, or often under $10!)? Looking to support and encourage young artists? Look no further than

Sophie & Michael Create! An Etsy shop featuring art made by Sophie (age 8) and Michael (age 7), where "1/2 of our money goes into savings for our future and the other half we spend how we want to (which is usually spent on Ugly Dolls or Pokemon)."

I purchased two items from them: a fancy "Man in the Moon" necklace made by Michael
Note the star cut-out. Very artistic, no?
And me wearing it. I feel so avant-garde! :)

and a set of custom identification tags for our kitten, Cupcake, made by Sophie (and maybe Michael too? I got three tags for the price of one, so there may have been multiple artists involved)!
The three beautiful tags!
And a really dark photo (sorry) of Cupcake wearing one!

They have other jewelry available for sale, as well as many affordable art pieces!

Little Canvas Art Storm in Space (a collaborative piece with direction mostly by Michael)

Junk Mail Art by Sophie (made out of, if you couldn't guess by the title, junk mail!)

Or an original Dove and Sun necklace (the pendant is hand-drawn on shrink plastic)!

Probably the best part of the whole purchasing experience was the convo I got from Sophie (dictated to her mom) after I purchased the items. What a friendly gesture to get a personal convo from an artist!

So if you're in the market for any of these things, and don't want to end up with moths coming out of your wallet (that's just in cartoons, right?), consider making a purchase from Sophie & Michael's Etsy shop!

Friday, October 23, 2009

Worst/Most Hilarious Nightmare I've EVER had!!!

Note: Okay, I know this post is text-heavy and has no pictures (I just couldn't bring myself to draw them), but trust me. It's worth reading.

Okay, so I'm the kind of "lucky" person who remembers her dreams when she wakes up. My brother is the type of person who claims that he never has dreams, but eventually admits that he's sure he has dreams, he just doesn't remember anything about them as soon as he wakes up. Sometimes, I wish I was that type of person, because I rarely have good dreams. On the flipside, I rarely have bad dreams either. What I have are WEIRD AS ALL HECK dreams. Seriously. Salvador Dali has nothing on me.

My husband says that every time I'm about to tell him one of my dreams, I preface it with "I had a really weird dream last night." Every time. And since he's told me, I've noticed that he's right. Every single time. "I had a really weird dream last night!" "Oh, more weird than normal?" "Uh, well... I guess not. I guess it was just a regular weird dream. Regular for me anyways."

So enough stalling. Last night I actually had what I'd consider a "bad" weird dream. Not just weird, but the kind of weird that had me frightened when I woke up. And then when I thought about it, I realized that it wasn't that bad (it's never as bad when you wake up and realize that there's no way it could ever happen); it's hilarious!

Here goes: It started off with me looking in the mirror and realizing that I looked exactly like Jennifer Connelly (my favorite actress, ever since falling in love with her in "Labyrinth"). Not bad at all! I had blue and purple hair, but hey, that's pretty cool. Then I went outside to play in the snow and had to chase this brown rabbit around (not an Alice in Wonderland-type rabbit. A real, live, not-wearing-a-pocketwatch-or-waistcoat-type rabbit) before it managed to hop onto the ice and potentially fall into the frozen lake. So picture a blue/purple-haired Jennifer Connelly running around in the snow, frantically trying to catch a brown rabbit. Remember the brown rabbit. It's foreshadowing of things to come.

A bit harrowing to say the least. But this isn't even the bad part. This is the "regularly scheduled weird" part. Then the rabbit disappeared (not into the lake. Just *poof! Gone!) and my "dad" (a guy that looks nothing like my father, but who in my dream I somehow *knew was my dad) called me inside our apartment building, which was actually a shopping mall. I go inside, get told that there are zombies around and if they bite me, I'll turn into a zombie. Cliche, right? Oh, except for the fact that the zombies can be held at bay by playing steel drum music. Weird.

So I'm in our apartment (in the MALL?!?), with Caribbean-style steel drum music playing to keep zombies away, when one of our cats comes over to me. He looks a little weird, and I notice that he doesn't have eyes, just brown spots where his eyes should be. This is the weird/scary/hilarious part. I then somehow knew that this was a side-effect of the zombie infection spreading throughout our world. What is this side-effect? *drum roll please................

Our cats' litterbox craps had come to life, covered themselves with our cat's shedded hair to look like our cats, and would infect cats (making them zombie cats who could infect humans if they bit them) if we didn't catch them and squish them back into harmless piles of poo.

Yeah, really scary in the dream (I have to squish a poop cat back into a poop pile while somehow managing not to get bitten by their poop teeth - which maybe were made up of our cats' shed claws? - in the process or I will become one of the living dead!!! AAAAAAUGH!!!!), really hilarious when you wake up and think back on it.

Yeah, so the rest of that dream involved me chasing around three craptacular cats (to match our three cats), trying to squish them into oblivion, all the while making sure that they 1) didn't bite me; 2) didn't bite my cats and make them zombie cats; and 3) didn't escape our mall apartment to wreak havoc upon other humans and felines!!!

*Sigh. Sometimes I wish I was one of those people that didn't remember my dreams. And I'm not even going to mention the dream I had a few nights ago that involved Nathan Fillion (of Firefly fame) and me getting sucked into a medieval-style video game and having to fight our way out. "I had another really weird dream last night." "Really weird? Or just regular weird?" "REALLY weird!!!"

Thursday, October 22, 2009

If I only had a dog...

I would definitely buy him this sweet Sherlock Holmes (or perhaps Sherlock Bones?) costume for him/her!!! Made by Etsian DownUnderDogDesigns.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Who doesn't love Socks?!?

Found a new favorite shop on Etsy: The Missing Sock!
They've got great cards for many occasions (including same-socks marriage)!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Free Association

Thanks to KnitIsAFourLetterWord for the idea of Free Association as a blog post. Let's see how this goes!

Goes
Shoes
Run
Fun
Happy
Cat
Fuzzy
Lint
Socks
Hole
Dirt
Construction
Summer
Swimming
Aquarium
New England
Foliage
Orange
Pumpkin
Halloween!

And I'm going to stop there! What's better than Halloween? I love how when I think "Socks," I think "Hole." Methinks I need to replace some socks...