teeny tiny

I was invited to be a part of DKE Toys' custom show at Designer Con this year. The custom platform was their 3" YOKA bear figure. He came white, jointed, and without features. This is what I did to him:

I have to admit, it was a challenge working so tiny - he's only about 2.5" tall at his ears! But it was a good exercise, and I loved the figure....he has this really cute, slouchy shape, and his little body sort of looks like a fat egg. I used epoxy putty to seal up his joints and after slicing off his face (sorry yoka!), I used it to build up a new face to set in the eyes and teeth. His little party hat is covered with printed cotton fabric, and I made the cotton pom-pom on the top. I think he came out really cute.

All Hallows' Eve

So of course, Halloween is pretty much my favorite holiday ever. Not only is it a sanctioned occasion for full-blown makeup and costume creativity, but it takes place at the best time of the year. Just before autumn gets yucky - the leaves are still colorful and smell crisp and papery when they pile up, the wind is still a little bit warm, and there are blooming mums and pumpkins everywhere. It's heavenly!

My pal Chris and his wife throw an awesome Halloween shindig at their house every year - along with the usual Haunted Mansion-quality lawn decorations and sophisticatedly creepy interior decor, this year they featured a costume contest and a live DJ hosting Skaryoke!

My idea for this year's costume was a sort of pale, anemic-thin alien/vampire/queen of the underdwellers sort of thing. It was my first time ever using a bald cap (quite uncomfortable). I had a thrifted pair of black leather jeans that I cut up and reassembled into the neck corset and tops of the gloves, and made the skirt and top out of fabric, spraypaint, and a thrifted grommeted belt. It had a black tulle bustle that came out of a slit in the back of the skirt, with tiered black ruffles (from a thrifted skirt) coming down into a slight train.

The gloves extended my fingertips by inches, and were made of cheap plastic green "witch fingers" sold in the party favor section, painted black and attached to thrifted black leather gloves. All in all it was a success, though now I know to shave the little hairs on the back of my neck first, should I ever wear a bald cap again! Yeouch!

Me and the host of the party - our outfits went together well.

I added UV-reactive paint to my face and arms, after finding out that the entire kitchen would be blacklit.

So now I have to start thinking about next year....

The power of perfume

So now that I'm working from home, I'm trying to establish a good schedule for myself.  With whole days of time and very few mandatory obligations at set times to break them up (no specific lunch break, no meetings, no review deadlines), the workday can be a little meandering, and less gets done.

One of those things is to get myself up and dressed and ready to take on the day.  And I've found that even if I'm going to forego a shower until afternoon, or just want to pin my hair back and get to work, I will brush my teeth, wash my face, and every single morning, apply perfume.

I feel like in our culture, the idea of perfume is that it is some magical potion that will help us attract a mate, or exude some kind of power of our gender to others.  But for me honestly, it is simply something that *I* enjoy, and I don't feel quite dressed without it.

If something so simple, that takes so little time, and for the most part is inexpensive makes my day a little better, why not?  A soapmaker I admire once said this about lip gloss "without it i feel poorly groomed. and homely. and plain. and life is too short to feel like that, even for a second."

And that is how I feel about perfume.  It surrounds me with a beautiful fragrance, and even if it is subtle, it is something I enjoy very much and to me it is very important to enjoy each moment, if it is at all possible.  

Transitions

So, I wanted to post some pictures of Renegade, but first, I thought I'd share some good news with all of you.  

I quit my job.  Starting October 1, 2009, I will be employed as Owner/CEO/Production/Art Director and Sales of Squeaky Queen Laboratory.   And I couldn't be more excited and comfortable with the decision.

It's been YEARS in the making.   I've been doing SQ for nearly 7 years now, and now is the time to take it further.  This is going to be a lot of work, but I would rather break my back for something I am passionate about, then break it trying to do my own thing but having my time dictated to be elsewhere.  Of course it means less money, but we really don't spend much and will still have our needs met comfortably.   I am so happy :)

So, onto Renegade.  It was a long, hot weekend.  Drove from Cleveland to Chicago on Friday night, and drove from Chicago to Cleveland on Sunday night, arriving at 2:30 am (ugh).  The crowds were good, and people seemed to be in good spirits.   The event was meticulously well-organized, which was much appreciated.

Your hostess with the mostest.

View of the tent from the entrance.

Lip balms and body balms.

Some of the soap piles.

RENEGADE!

Come see my zombie-tired face this weekend, in Chicago!

I'll be selling soaps and smelly-good stuff Saturday and Sunday.  Booth #128, north of the food.

Insomnia

Well, I'm too amped up to go to bed tonight, so I thought I might do a post on this sad little blog I've been neglecting.

So, I have an antiques habit.  One might think that would get expensive, and you know, if I counted up my receipts every year I might be dismayed, but the antiques I go for aren't exactly Antiques Roadshow material.  I just LOVE old stuff.

I love the way things were made before the days of mass factories and plastics.  Yeah, they're heavy and tend to rust, get water damage, and look kind of shabby, but I'd much rather have scratched old wood than yellowed plastic.  Appliances and technology are the worst.  My friend Emily calls them "blobjects" - the über-smooth, modern, gigantic plastic contraptions for baking bread and mixing stuff and watching movies on.  

This weekend, I bought a dented and chipping painted-metal pie safe for the kitchen.  It's probably from the 30s or 40s, and is a great thing to sit the coffee pot on, while storing coffee mugs in easy reach.  I also found a white popcorn chenille throw for the guest bed.   

I guess I just love the fact that I bought metal and cotton.  Not nylon and plastic.  If the hinge breaks on the pie safe,  we can probably figure out a way to fix it.   If the blanket frays or rips, I can easily patch it.   I want to fill my life with things that can be fixed, and understood. And kept for a long time.  Plus, using old stuff is recycling, and buying it at my favorite shops supports local merchants.  I don't mind doing things "the hard way" sometimes.   

Sometimes, I think that actually improves my life.

July, at Rivet Gallery!

public service announcement

Okay folks, I know I've said this before, numerous times, but I feel like I need to iterate it again.

I keep seeing these long rants on "natural" body products' sellers pages, about how their stuff is made without "icky" chemicals, and how natural essences truly have some cosmic depth and amazingness that "chemicals" do not have, and how they are inherently better for you, for the earth, and everybody.

I often observe the words "safe" and "ethical" tossed around.  Saying essential oils are safe because they are natural is like saying nothing in the animal kingdom can harm you, because it's part of nature.  Nature is also full of deadly things, and things which can harm you, and I keep seeing people throw these substances around with wild abandon, gleaming with the satisfaction of being safe and natural.  Also, the harvest of a number of extracts is far from ethical, requiring large volumes of rare and endangered plants, as well as the destruction of natural habitats to supply to the ever-growing demand.

Essential oils are NOT magical plant spirits in liquid form.  They are complex mixtures of chemicals (yes, chemicals. You and I are also made of those "icky" things), some odorous, some not, that make up the volatile oil of that plant.  It is really, really important to know safe practices for these, if you are producing consumable products for the public and selling them.  The same caution that is taken with synthetic aroma compounds should be taken for essentials - and that includes not using things just because they smell nice.  They are volatile compounds, many of which absorb directly into the bloodstream, very quickly.

The boom of the DIY body product/aromatherapy industry has made all of these natural compounds available to anyone, and I hope that people are taking the time to really research what they are mixing together in their hand-labeled bottles.   I know there is a danger of this sounding like jealousy (I don't know why though, I use both natural and synthetic ingredients), or just bitterness in general, but I promise you, it is not.  I just want to see makers and sellers in the home-based bath and body industry take serious precautions in terms of safety, before somebody gets hurt, and some of our freedoms, in this respect, are lost.

catching up

It's been a long time...

...not much has really happened out of the ordinary. We both keep working at our jobs and working at our personal projects at night. Spring is finally coming on, and I have a lovely bunch of daffodils from our backyard in a vase on the kitchen table.

I've been sculpting and painting a lot of faces:


Which in turn get attached to fabric bodies I've sewn on my old machine:


I've been experimenting with putting sawdust and wire inside some of them, so they can sit up on their own, and be posed:


A few weeks ago, Shoparooni in Cleveland had a show/contest/event for customized vinyl Munny toys. For the uninitiated, a Munny is a 7" tall blank vinyl toy that looks like this:


I used glass eyes, epoxy clay, sculpey and paint, as well as a small metal wagon I found (and rusted). My Munny also came with a small bear, so I customized that too:





I've also been working on a larger scale, experimentally. This guy is over 52" long!




Whew...I guess I HAVE been busy!

Autobahn is this coming Saturday, so if you're in the Southern Ohio area, come on down - it's cheap, fun, and lasts all day! Great line-up of bands, and coffee drinks available too.

vacation time

A few weeks ago, Jon and I went on an uncharacteristically "All American" vacation - to Walt Disney World in Florida. He'd never been (though growing up in SoCal he's been to Disneyland countless times), and I hadn't been for about 15 years, so we thought it would be fun to check it out. The great thing about vacationing at their resorts is that everything is immediately available for you - all you have to do is open your hotel room door, hop on a bus, and you're driven to whichever park you choose that day.

At the Animal Kingdom, I got to touch an Agouti (and was told by the animal handler than nobody had ever guessed correctly what he was, when asked, I was the first true nerd to know!)


We ate our way through the parks...



Jon at the Lego store, purchasing some A la Carte pieces.


Animal Kingdom is Disney's newest park, and divided into large sections, one called "Asia" and another "Africa", where they house animals and attractions relating to those regions. I was incredibly impressed with the amount of authentic detail that went into creating these areas - this is only a little beverage stand in Asia, but every inch of it has been detailed so well. I took a lot of pictures here, for reference - they aged things very realistically; good textures.


Our resort, though part of the Disney resorts, was a little off the beaten path, and about as quiet as you can get when surrounded by families with children. It was really pretty, and was on a series of manmade rivers.



I don't ever want to see or hear anything Disney-related again for as long as I live, but we had a really, really great vacation. It was so nice to actually relax and not worry about anything - no cellphone, no appointments, no work, no email. I desperately needed a break like that.