Atari Teenage Riot

!!Atari Teenage Riot!!

1!2!3!4!

One of those shows that I had a lot more emotionally invested than I realized. It was like a loud, crashing flashing time machine, and it was awesome.

I had to make some gifs from my videos. I am going to make more gifs from now on.

And then Alec Empire responded to my twitter declarations of love, and I am pretty sure I am officially in the band now.

Yes.

Hey internet.

Living with someone who can't really use their hands is kind of crappy because you always have to do the dishes and feed the cat. But living with someone who can't use their hands is also an AWESOME excuse for not updating your blog... Right?

Ok, my cyborg is on the mend, the excuse is wearing thin...

I have something worthwhile to post about anyway.

THIS.

This amazing woman is Velouria Adore, and she contacted me to ask about getting a tattoo of one of my illustrations... Of course I said yes and then she actually went and did it!!!

 

Here is the original illustration.

I did this little painting for a student organized book project at the end of University (OCAD in Toronto,Canada) All the students illustrated "Candy" in black and white only, in a square format.

Love this one...

and this one shows the tattoo really well...

If you want to creep on her (like I know you do) there are a few more photos at my Flickr, and of course you can visit her model profile, www.modelmayhem.com/x_kitten, where there are many more.


So impressed with the work of her tattoo artist. All the subtle gray shading is perfect, its the closest to a copy of my work I have ever seen in tattoo form. :-) Grah, its gorgeous!

Thanks for making me look good!

Human meat accident!

So. Pavement is stronger than human mean and bone. Now we know for sure.

*Someone* might have fallen off his bike and turned his wrist to mush and bone dust.

This guy took a flip over the handlebars when confronted with a streetcar track on his way to work. I was unaware for hours and hours he was at the hospital!!

After his trip to a few emergency rooms, and surgery to fix him up, he is new and improved with metal parts.

Hospitals are scary and weird. I wasn't too helpful as the unhurt party, as I am a hardcore fainter, who can't seem to keep conscious in the same building as a band-aid. I actually had to sit n the floor with my head between my knees at times. SIGH. Been that way my whole life, gotta deal.

So now the surgery is done, he is on the mend, and I am playing nurse. It doesn't come easy to me, I am kind of a mean nurse actually. So my shop and creations are on hold for just a little while. But I am sure once the arm heals a bit it will be back to business as usual.

He is doing well and I am doing well and even though I have to do the dishes for 6 weeks, its still kind of fun to have a cyborg around. Yay for science!

P.S. We are both buying bike helmets. :-) Lesson learned!

I have been back from The Farm for a week.

Maybe its time to stop pretending I am still on vacation.

or maybe,

I will just stay there...

for a bit longer.

Impressing people. Its easy!

You are so lucky to have learned this lesson for free. I should be charging for this gold.

Haha. 

:-)

Its ok.

That is it. I am declaring it.

Blogs are for interesting people, and when you aren't doing anything interesting, they feel like a lead weight. 

I am not quitting blogging, or anything drastic like that. Just putting it out there that times come and go where I am bored and bored people are boring. Bored yet?

I think I need to try something new with this blog, because its a dull advertisement space for my Etsy shops, which I also find incredibly dull these days. I don't produce any design or product when I am bored.

So there it is. I am bored of me. At least this me. Just part of the insane freakout that is my rapid aging.

At least it made me make this graphic....

Stay tuned. Or whatever.

It was too hot.

Too hot to blog. Too hot to live.

Sure its an excuse, but life sucks when its hot. Plus a repairman broke my freaking door. See? Valid excuse for not blogging. (heh heh...)

So I finally got a new bookmark in the shop...

Choose...

Its a dual sided bookmark, with white wings on one side, and black on the other.

The bookmark has the word "Choose..." on the bottom of both sides. I didn't want to label black or white, because who knows who the real good guy is on any given day.

I worked on this image first a a pin set, the idea of the wings being the pins. I actually have the sets completed, and they are ready to go, just need to 'shop the pictures. Might have to wait until tomorrow.

Just for fun, here is the sketch it came from (its a Photobooth image)

Looks the same essentially! Haha I was sketching some ideas, but once I scribbled this one down I was like "Thats it!"

So tomorrow the pins sets will be posted. I am thinking of trying to do a few new pin sets in the upcoming weeks. I have retired older sets over the years and my pins section is getting sparse. :-)

Thanks for looking!

Earthquake. Yeah.

Wait. We can have earthquakes in TORONTO?? NO WAY.

Just had a little earthquake here, and sitting in my studio, which is in a hundred year old building (which may or may not have been built by unskilled townspeople) I felt the tremors. The building started creaking and the walls and ceilings were cracking. Sounds scary right? Not really because it always creaks and cracks and shakes when people walk on the stairs or sneeze really loudly.

I wonder if it shows a lack of appropriate action in a dangerous situation, because I didn't run to a door frame or whatever you are supposed to do, I complained then looked on Twitter. The cat didn't even wake up.

Anyway, I *was* working on listing a stuffed Skull and Crossbones!

Its available at my Etsy Shop.

The bones are not attached and they can be arranged how you desire, or you can hit people with them.

I also listed a plush bow...

It is also available at blacklilypie.etsy.com

Its a nice tapestry style fabric. Would look great in your boudoir!

I am already tired of people on TV and Twitter and Facebook talking about the earthquake. "I totally dropped my ice cream!" and "It felt, like, shaking, and...stuff." Already BORED of it. Even bored of my own anecdotes. I am such a grump! ha ha.

Guess I should get back to work...

Bones

Hey. What is that? Those?

I have no idea.

Ever make something you don't really know what its purpose is? Heh heh. Working on a few stuffed items this weekend, will probably put them in the shop next week.

weekend recap

Look at my bike. Isn't it cute?

My leg looks funny.

Its small enough that legally I could ride it on the sidewalk (its based on wheel diameter) And even though I usually don't ride on the sidewalk, it just necessary sometims when you live in a big city. I like knowing I am *in theory* allowed to do so.

This is where I rode it to...

And this is me at a True Blood Party on Sunday.

It might have been rude to park myself dead center to the screen, I realize now. But I was there first!

There was pickled eggs! Jealous? No me neither. (Sorry Tracy! I bet your eggs are the bestest eggs on earth, but they are still eggs. :-) ) You were there in egg-spirit.

So this weekend, I got to see ducks (cute!), had cake delivered to me in bed (hazelnut actually...), watch like 6 episodes of Rome (sad but awesome!), see bill and eric (Team Bill), drink sambucca (I want to wear it as perfume), and buy products from the drug store (My favorite store on earth.) The little things make the big things suck a bit less.

Now back to reality. I guess.

Lil' painting

A little painting is finished...

This tiny little painting started out as a face doodle on a scrap of board...

It was inked with acrylic ink then painted in acrylic paint. I sealed it with glossy varnish.

Her little face is cute, no?

I am waiting to put her into a little Ikea frame. A painting this small just seem like it should be sold as a complete package. I will just let the varnish cure a bit more and probably will list it on Wednesday...

(UPDATE!: Here she is in her frame!)

Think she would make a nice bookmark? print? hmm. Will have to do some test printing tonight too. Much to do, much to do...

New painting and more bread rambling...

Worked on a new little painting...

First, a little pencil sketch emerged...

Unsurprisingly, he seems to be some sort of fox-like creature...

And then the painting...

A Fox Soldier! He is dressed in his best uniform with his buttons all shined up.

and the I scanned it and printed it and matted it!

This is a photo taken in my studio. I have not had the official listing picture photoshoot, as it is rainy and gray today. This little print needs natural light! I really love the print in real life. I had not planned to mat it in an oval, but the subject matter just seemed too perfect to not try and it worked.

I think I will mat the original and sell it too, it needed almost no Photoshop and is pretty much identical to the print.

(Update: I listed the print at Blackforestcake! Check him out...)

And...

On the weekend I got a cute new toy. (Ok, its not a toy,  but this thing is fun to me.)

A teeny, tiny bread machine!!

After much use and abuse of the old second hand bread machine I was gifted, it became clear that I needed a new machine. The old ones pan kept popping out and then it wouldn't let go of the loaves!

After scouring reviews, I decided on this little baby. The Zojirushi Home Bakery Mini Breadmaker. It IS little, only making 1 pound loaves. That is about 9 slices of bread per loaf. That is really small for bread machines. Its about half as big as my old one.

See? Small little perfect loaves of bread. This one is a light rye. 

I have made two loaves of bread so far, and its a dream. For two people its perfect to have such small loaves. Bread machine bread only has a short lifespan and we would always have mouldy leftover bread at the end of the week. It also has a handle on the top so you can move it around. I really struggled lifting the old machine, it was the size of a microwave!

We had to drive to the super faraway Pacific mall to buy it, but a trip to "The World's Largest Asian Mall" is hardly a hardship...

I am going to try to make pizza dough in it next. Like, right now. YAY!

(Update: I totally made it too. It was so fat and ugly! But tasted soo goood.)

When they say "thick crust" in a recipe, they mean THICK! hee hee. Next time I will make two instead...

Waiting and Updating

I am stuck in the house waiting for a delivery man to ring my bell. My least favourite state to be in is waiting. Its stressing me out!! This delivery has been lost in limbo for days and if I miss him, its going to be sent back to the middle of nowhere. *bites fingernails*

I listed my little graveyard I sneak peeked a while ago...

Its a set of eight, and they are super cute in person. So fun to make!!!

I also completed the project I had sneak peeked in my last post. The funny thing is the part that I showed in the photo actually got axed! I had originally been painting a black, a white and a grey cats paw to make bookmarks out of. After scanning and test printing, the grey one just wasn't doing it for me, so I trashed it. The actual painting of the grey cats paw is really cute though, I might just sell it!

Here are the completed black and white. The white is really a cream colour... The backs are a print of a fur-like pattern I painted and scanned.

Lastly, I joined formspring.me

If you haven't heard of it, its a site that makes it easy for people to ask you questions, even anonymously. So of course it has the potential for people being rude and horrible, but also the potential for people to learn things that they don't feel comfortable asking that they genuinely care about. I guess it can be sort of a scary concept. We shall see how it goes. Its fun to learn about the bloggers you follow, so lets hope I get some good questions someday. I added a formspring.me box the left sidebar of my site, so if anyone has a question, ask away with the box, or at my profile page.

I am going to test my doorbell now to make sure it works. That is how much waiting for this delivery man is stressing me out. haha. 

Those brushes were in that jar of water for two weeks.

Working on a little painting project.

I always add all the colours of paint I own to my wet palette, even if I don't plan to use them. Because I am a bad planner, and who knows what will strike my fancy once I start painting...

P.S. A new clean palette sucks. I know artists sometimes go on about how they love preparation for painting, and some elements of it, I do enjoy. But the setting up of new paint is annoying and I usually avoid it until my palette is a murky, sloppy mess that is almost unusable. Weird huh?

Ok, less posting about painting, more painting.

On my desk right now...

This little graveyard...

Made from sculpey and hand painted in acrylic. I finish them with a super matte varnish, that almost gives them a dusty look when dry. They are so cute and a bit wonky. I try to not to be too rigid when I sculpt them, keeps them fun (Yeah, I think they are fun!) but still real enough to be spooky. I want a halloween dollhouse!

The gravestones still need their little bases painted and signed, so they aren't quite ready to hit the shop yet. I will probably wait and photograph list these on Monday, because I can.

I totally borrowed these pics from a friend...

A few friends ventured to the land of suburbia to see The Agonist.

I didn't bring my camera, all these pics are by Vivien H.

FOOD.

My parents gave me an older bread machine.

My parents live a healthier life than I do, I guess. They stopped using this old machine. Yay for me! I am loving it.

Breakfast: bread!

Lunch: bread!

Dinner: bread!!!

I have only had it for a week or so and already I already have said the phrase "My pants are so tight, wait...these are my loose pants!" ARGH. That might have something to do with me cutting fat slabs of it and then slathering them with butter and peanut butter for ever meal.

My breads have been quirky. Dude called them artisan bread. I guess I can blame the machine. Its not like *I* had anything to do with it. The machine is an artisan.

I also was handed down this book from my grandfather, which has more hazardous recipes for me to try. I am going to make a bread from each continent.

I laughed at a particular chapter in the book...

What? You need someone to tell you how to slice bread?? You shouldn't handling a knife then, because you obviously have the brain of some sort of chimp.

Then I tried to cut my bread...Pathetic.

I sucked it up and went and read the chapter. I must have chimp brain. My slices were 2 inches thick at one end, and paper thin at the other and the whole loaf look like wolves tore at it.

But it tasted SO GOOD.

*Explodes*

tokidoki overload!

I know I just did a post that consisted entirely of "Look at this stuff I got", and that posts liket hat can come off as obnoxious, but LOOK AT THE STUFF I GOT!

I died of cuteness.

They smell of blueberries. *melts*

And this little thingamabobber.

Its the softest thing ever. I am having a hard time even touching this kabuki to makeup, I want to save it and pet it. :-)

These items were ordered from Sephora online, after my fruitless visit to the downtown Sephora left me heartbroken, as they didn't carry the tokidoki line (yet?) I wanted more things as well, but a few days into the release, some things were already sold out! 

Gawd, its cute! The packaging destroys me. I would buy it if it had a lump of coal in that box.