What We Know About Poppets, So Far...

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• You can get Poppets and Poppet art from our Etsy Store.
• some creations can be found on Ebay.
  

OR you can order directly by emailing Alison (aka Sunraybug Poppet) at strange_studios@yahoo.com

• You can meet other explorers on the Poppet Planet Forums.

• You can see and share Poppets On Tour.
  

• You can contact Poppet Planet directly by emailing to strange_studios@yahoo.com.

• You can click on any of the images on the ever-changing sidebar (right column) for more.

Blushing Poppets, Big on Cox, We want Poppets NOW!

A quick hello and check-in. I'm happily working away on book projects and helping with reorganizing the studio. It's a good mix.


The weather is weird. Dark and cloudy and cold. Bright orange fruit against cold gray skies is odd and oddly beautiful. They're a good mix too.



There will be two new open edition Poppets for February. We'll get them up in plenty of time for gift giving, and will even send them directly to friends and family for you, nicely wrapped and with your message.

Poppets like love. And candy.



Tonight we saw Walk Hard, The Dewey Cox Story. If you liked 40-Year-Old Virgin, you'll like this movie too. Pete and I, and many others in the theater, laughed from start to finish.

Your wish is our command! Poppets on Demand!

Now Little Red Poppets are available when you need them, gift wrapped and ready to send out into the world or to invite home to live with you.



WARM Little Red Poppets NOW
and
10% to Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

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And, if you're in the mood for expanding your mind, visit the edge. Take a Poppet along!

Hope you're January is going well.

g'night

Out of the frying pan and into the singularity

Welcom to Tatooine.

Nora is visiting. We went for a short walk in the desert.

It's hot in the desert.

So we went to Ben's house for swimming and dinner.

The skies were busy today, with clouds like spaceships. It wasn't like time travel at all, but was weirdly cool.

Under the surface, we ran into a tiny diver. I followed him around for awhile.

My favorite is this one. Looks as though he's headed into a singularity. Perhaps only the singularity in my head. Either way, it was a different way to spend an afternoon.

Eventually, he got bored with us and swam away.

Goodbye little Poppet!

Designated Poppet

Mostly what seems to be working during this last month of summer is dividing up the days into parts. Painting carousel, rats and other pieces that have been waiting in the studio for ages is a good thing. Now they won't be staring reproachfully at me from the shelves, and I get to re-discover details even I'd forgotten. I put some of them on ebay to look for new homes. Several people have emailed to tell me how glad they are to see Rats again. I tell them I agree.

The other parts consist of working on new pieces for Halloween, which is very much like playing, in my view. You see me working away at my bench. In my head I'm four, running full tilt through a field of daisies.

Evenings are for the Fortune Teller, who is technically done, except for sealing the glass front. Every day Orion and I get our fortunes told. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's downright creepy. Sometimes we run away.

And then there's time spent in water, for the mental reset. I've had my own demons to deal with this summer, artistic and otherwise. I make notes of lots of it. If I can't make notes, I make toys, dammit. Eventually, I'll put the notes into some sort of presentable form. One day, I'll decipher the language of the toys, which seem to contain stories like, When to Let the Poppet Drive and Lost on the Road to Crazy.

A few words on words:

A customer recently thanked me for the 'lagniappe', which was an entirely new term for me:

I appreciate the new word.

Lagniappe derives from New World Spanish la ñapa, "the gift," and ultimately from Quechua yapay, "to give more." The word came into the rich Creole dialect mixture of New Orleans and there acquired a French spelling. It is still used in the Gulf states, especially southern Louisiana, to denote a little bonus that a friendly shopkeeper might add to a purchase. By extension, it may mean "an extra or unexpected gift or benefit."

I enjoyed this list from Mental Multivitamins of One Hundred Words A High School Student (and parent) should know.

And, some photography coolness:

Mimi Ko was featured on Hey Hot Shot this week. I'm extremely pleased to see her work acknowledged there.

If you're a photographer, Poppet-wise or other, you'll find the site interesting.

Night time is for much- needed rest, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and something cold and chocolate.

I'm currently reading The Undiscovered Mind by John Horgan and for coffee breaks, re-watching the first season of Carnivale.

I am what I eat.

g'night

Poppets in Baltimore long to see Stardust

Neil emailed to remind me that I have friends in the Baltimore area. Yes, I do!
And you would likely enjoy an exclusive viewing of Stardust. Yes, you would!

Me too.

Gather together! Take your Poppets to see Stardust! And send me photos!


You can get your MOVIE PASSES FOR STARDUST HERE.

Fourth. Desert. Play.

Obviously your artist is taking a day off to play. I begin, sort of, to learn to play LOLpoppets. There are now a dozen or so various photos on the LOLpoppets on flickr page and Spare Parts.

(More will likely appear once readers return to the workplace...)

Orion and I are celebrating today simply with Pizza and Gamecube and soon, night swimming and underwater photograpy.

Underwater lomography actually, with a "frogeye" (a gift from Mimi, whom we seem to have adopted (ok, drafted) ) as the studio's resident HAC (hot asian chick.)

I have no idea what sorts of images we'll get.

It's just the two of us, as often is. Pete is in Northern California for the High Sierra Music Festival---he took a Hippie Poppet and a LRP for POT. I'm looking forward to the pics. Aubrey will be 16 this month, so is anywhere BUT here these days though there is the occasional sighting. Ben has been gone for nearly two months, moving into his house---which is a very cool old Palm Springs house---but should be back soon.

So now we are donning "glow" bracelets, and goggles, mostly just for fun. Later, Oreos and ice cream, and fireworks viewed from the hill.

Happy Fourth of July

I Know You're In There

I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE

Stargazer Girl was quite the good sport about playing our protagonist.

She can be found in the Midsummer Sale, along with lots of one of a kind Poppets. Red and Blue ones too.

More pieces will be added today.

But first, coffee......iced.

Poppet Salad

Here is one of my favoite POT photos.

And here is an excerpt from today's email:

Later, with a little more personal time on my hands, I was able to use my scope to pore through the southern Milky Way, delving into infinite depths of light and dark rarely visible from the NE. The sight of all those silent stars peering back at me from such distances, with the rim of the Grand Canyon only a couple hundred feet away, is truly one of life's rewards.

At the moment, the temperature in Binghamton and on the Canyon rim is the same.

The above photo is by SciFiLaura and can be seen on POT flickr along with this one by faerydusted1.

The email is from Joe Bergeron who, gives us a closer look at the night skies.

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Hy Bender, whom you probably know best as the author of The Sandman Companion, will give you expert advice through his websites Hy On Your Book and Hy On your Script. He will analyze your project with humor and clarity to rival any Dummies Books (of which he's written five.) He tells me that the word "Poppet" in your email will get you an extremely reduced price for his services. Hy Bender tends to be partial to Poppets, which could work out well for writers who are too. Check it out, forward it to your writer groups. Thanks, Hy!

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Today I received this Paper Poppet Carousel by Robert Johnson Jr. It has a loop on top and when I turn it, the Little Poppets, all in different colors, spin around. This is a very cool thing. All the designs are Robert's drawings. Thank you. It's truly clever and sweet and Poppety.

Also in the box were patterns and the prototype for our Poppet Doll, which is designed by Robert and which we hope to release for the winter holidays. Here Orion demonstrates size and cuddle factor which seems to be quite high.

THERE BE BLUE POPPETS

Blue Poppets.

And Red Poppets too. (If these links are wonky--just do an ebay search for my name.) I'm thinking that offering these now, before the Solstice Sale, will allow me to make more Poppets available without making shipping day more insane. Seems like a good idea. And, for some reason, at the moment, so do Little Blue Poppets.

Oh...and Little Pink too.

Just keep swimming...enough with the multitasking...collaborating

My earliest introduction to the art of multitasking would have to be watching my mother prepare holiday dinners. Wow. That woman was efficient. A dozen or more dishes timed to emerge magically, arriving on the table at the same moment, each at the peak of its 'done-ness'.

Later it was in the laboratory, with labeled timers ticking all around for adding this reagent or that, starting a centrifuge or taking readings. With practice, it becomes almost automatic, even for this human.

In the studio at any given moment there can be glue setting, castings curing and paper mache drying, clothes in the washer, water boiling in the kettle and me dry-brushing a panel while working out a paragraph in my head.

But not always.

Some things must be done simply, with no distractions, and with every bit of my attention, like listening to Gorecki's 3rd, or watching the stars come out, or making a piece of art.

And some time must be devoted to just being . Swimming falls into that category.

Find what your just being things are, and take time to be. Trust me on this one.

There have been periods in my life when I didn't direct my attention to one thing.

This way is better. I got that from my mother too, though I "got it" years later. I can see her on the beach, sitting in the sand, looking out at the water and smiling. Sometimes, she just was.

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Writing this, I recall making the poppet diving videos with Orion and Ravyn. (and, of course, Poppets) We started it on a complete whim, with no planning or preparation, and it turned into this really fun collaboration (aka, really hard work with laughing.) We agreed we both learned a lot from the experience and decided to delve into it on the Poppet Planet forums so we could tell you more about it and talk about the whole concept of artistic collaboration----especially the spontaneous sort.

Hope you'll join us here for "Collaboration Happens."

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The Gallery will be open on June 23 for Summer Solstice. There will be more Alice in Wonderland Poppets and in the spirit of the season some visitors from "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

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And now, of course, swimming. Go and be.

g'night!

Home, Poppet People and Strange Light

At Balticon on Saturday, it rained. I excused myself from the conversation I was involved in and walked directly outside to relish the downpour for a few moments. I lifted my face to the rain with joyful abandon, but without the usual nostalgia.
Then last night, walking through the micro-cooled mists of downtown Palm Springs, I felt an unexpected and sudden sense of home. Am I falling in love with this desert?

sheesh



In July, perhaps I'll come to my senses.



I truly enjoyed the Poppet Planet Launch party. There were exceedingly nice people there and I heard some insightful and thought-provoking comments.

Poppets tend to keep very good company.



There are some photos of the fun, and the fabulous cake created by Heidi (faeriedusted), here http://www.poppetplanet.com/forums.html in "Spare Parts."





I enjoyed a bit of clowning around with Larry Niven, whose brilliance is complimented by a twinkling sense of humor.
I'm extremely pleased to tell you that he has agreed to adopt the "Strange Light" title in the Strange chapbook series.
The title is Larry's own suggestion, and seems to fit him perfectly. I'm looking forward to creating images for Strange Light. How cool is that? Already I'm clearing a room in my brain. Now to clear my schedule. No better motivation than a project I can't wait to dive into.

There's more...but Blogger imaging program seems to have stopped working for the moment.

In the meantime, I've put some Little Red Poppets up on Ebay, and a few of the "Little Pink" open edition casting as well.

You can find them here: Poppets