sound&fury

Round and round and round and round and round...

2008-12-10T13:50:00.003+10:00

Yes, hello, I know I know... I haven't updated in ... oh... let's just not mention how long, shall we?

Anyhow... here's what I've been up to this week:

So what the hell is that thing?, you ask. Well, it's a Temari. Wikipedia can explain it much better than I can. This website, and this blog have been my guiding light in this odyssey of balls, yarn, cotton, thread and needles. In the event that you were wondering... the other side, which has not been photographed in order to give the illusion that I am actually somewhat competent at my new found obsession for wrapping things in thousands of layers of thread, is an absolute mess.

Creative Destruction - Part Two

2008-10-20T12:14:00.003+10:00

Anybody whose been following this blog (and lets face it, there's probably only about three people who do) will remember my predilection for attacking books with Stanley knives. Well the good news is that at least one of these three has finally reached a state which can described as 'finished'.

The spine and inside are painted gold, which looks much better 'in person', the black fabric is somewhat furry and had I known the rate at which it would pick up fluff I never would have allowed it into my life. The red bit is actually bright red cotton fabric with a sheer layer of something black over the top of it (you can tell that I know ALL about fabric, can't you?) which gives it a weird 3d kind of look (again, only 'in person'). The darker inside painted bits are actually black. I'm not sure why my camera is being so creative with colours today. The black ribbon, of course, hides the sloppy bits where the bits of fabric join up. Please assume that it is a small book, not that I have a giant hand.

Please don't ask about what happened to the other two.

Officially awesome... and poor

2008-10-09T11:53:00.002+10:00

Schmap is yet another online map website... but what makes this one so awesome is its photos, collected from flickr, one of which just might happen to have been taken by me... What's the lesson here? Tag all your flickr photos with where they were taken... you never know who's looking for what.

In other news, the Australian dollar has gone down the toilet. This is extremely unfortunate given that everything I want to buy is in America. You can help this sad and pathetic situation by BUYING SOMETHING FROM MY SHOP. In this time of economic uncertainty (well actually it's probably gone beyond uncertainty now and possibly a time of 'economic despair' would be more appropriate... but lets not try to get too depressing here) what you really really need is... a pair of cutlery earrings. Just think about how much further you'll be able to make the weekly grocery shopping last if you have to eat everything with a fork that's about an inch long!

Ahem... I never claimed to be any good at advertising. Or blogging on regular basis, for that matter.

Treasury!

2008-08-18T16:12:00.002+10:00

So I thought I'd give creating a treasury on Etsy a shot... and here it is:

"At home in the second dimension"
A collection of improbable abodes.

You can go and visit it here, in order to view the items and check out the shops of the featured artists.

Detour!

2008-07-29T21:32:00.003+10:00

This post is really nothing but a desperate attempt not to kill my blog. In the event that you hadn't noticed, if you check out the number of posts made each month, they're steadily declining. At the rate I was going, this thing would be over and done with by September... so I'm making a radical token effort to save this thing by posting ... shock horror... in order to at LEAST equal the number of posts I made last month. Since that number was exactly three, it's not exactly a difficult task. Unfortunately this is the bit where it becomes blatantly apparent that I actually have no content to blog about. Fortunately, there's a whole big wide internet out there full of interesting things to look at, so let me point you in the direction of a few my favourite things. And when I say things, I mean webcomics, so anybody who prides themself on not being the kind of person who reads webcomics, stop reading here. (Also, I should probably warn that these aren't necessarily 'family friendly' good and wholesome type sites... but at the same time they'd probably be out of their league at a serial killer convention).
Firstly, there's A Softer World, which can sometimes be quite dark and often a little uncomfortable... but incredibly appealing nevertheless. I guess a lot of it comes under 'things we don't tell other people that we think about'. This and this are are just two that I like.
Second, there's XKCD, which can be REALLY geeky and/or nerdy. I think for me it's appeal lies in the simplicity of the artwork coupled with the wit of the text. This is kind of 'yes, that is so obvious now that they've pointed it out! I can't believe I never saw the world like this before' stuff... or at least some of it is... some of it may be too geeky for me to understand.
Finally, The Perry Bible Fellowship ... which actually has nothing to do with religion. Yet again, another series of extremely witty, offbeat, 'isn't that kind of wrong?' type strips. I particularly love this one.
And I know I said finally... but then I remembered Dresden Codak. This one is a serial which has been going for a while now... and unfortunately probably won't get an update for a while given that it's creator recently shredded his hands in a bike accident. I particularly love the artwork in this one, not to mention wonderful wacky concepts like the Historical Preenactment Society.

Fence? What fence?!

2008-07-10T22:30:00.004+10:00

Yes indeed, it is just safest to assume that everybody is stupid.

The Etsy Down Under Satire

2008-07-04T13:57:00.009+10:00

In response to this and this, I present you with my version of what an 'Etsy goes to Australia' Storque article would probably look like:

"Coming into Sydney airport our landing was delayed while they rounded up all the kangaroos and shooed them off the runway, but not to worry because we got some excellent views of Ayers Rock as we were circling. As we stepped off the plane into the dusty dry desert some locals came over and explained to us in the native dialect that as a special treat they'd rounded up some emus for us to ride to the terminal. It was a bit bumpy, but we got there.

Once out of the airport and in our clapped out rusty old Holden ute that the bloke at the hire desk had assured us was the latest model they had we had the pleasure of driving along a bumpy windy dirt road underneath the gum trees. Yes folks, we truly had found ourselves on a whole new planet. Suddenly it occurred to us that there might be bush rangers out here in these wild parts. Thankfully the only other folks we saw that afternoon was a jolly old swagman and a man in khaki who shouted 'Crikey! Get a load of them Yanks!' as we drove past.

Our hotel, really just a multi-storey corrugated iron shed, afforded us a fantastic view of Sydney Harbour, including that great big coat hanger thing they call a bridge and that white building that looks like it's going to sail away (the woman down at reception told us what it was called, but we couldn't understand her Australian drawl... we think she said it was an opera house, but we didn't think that they had opera in Australia... Maybe it's a really big sheep shearing shed).

The next morning dawned bright and hot. The dust swirled a bit in the faint breeze. It was time to drive 'out back' as the natives so quaintly call it to visit our feature artist. Before we left we bought some of those big round hats with the little dangly corks that Australians wear so we'd fit in. The man in the shop overheard us talking and suggested that if we really wanted to fit in we should invest in some flip flops (quaintly called 'thongs' in Australia, apparently. But then, who knows what passes for lingerie here?), some short blue work shorts that the he called 'stubbies' and a singlet. We declined his generous offer to help outfit us in the national costume as we didn't really have the right kinds of tans to pull it off.

Bumping along the dirt roads once more we went in search of our feature crafter, Didgeridoo Dan's, place. Modern luxuries such as street signs and house numbers seemed to not have yet made it to Australia's 'out back' yet, so we had to pull over and ask scraggly looking sheep for directions. Eventually we found Dan's shack and he invited us in for a lovely lunch of kangaroo and witchetty grub stew. He then gave us the grand tour of his hovel and a demonstration of his musical talents. To be honest neither of us could really understand how the strange noises he managed to elicit from that wooden tube really count as 'music' ... but I guess it's an Australian thing. Then Dan gave us an in depth explanation of how he hollows his didgeridoos out of wood from trees that he chops down. Or at least that's what we think he was talking about, still not having had gotten the hang of the local dialect we really weren't able to understand very much of what he said. Thankfully we recorded the whole thing, hoping that once we were back at the Etsy Labs in civilisation someone would be able to decipher it."

Creative Destruction

2008-06-26T20:53:00.005+10:00

Optimistically subtitled 'Part One', with the intention that at some point there will be an update on the progress of this project which will, hopefully, not just consist of a picture of a rubbish bin full of chopped up books.

So yes, I'm mutilating books again. Quite a large number of people took my last attempt at this as being some sort of profound anti-psychology statement... so this time I'm not going to mention which books I'm hacking up in case someone takes it as an indication that I'm an anti-earth worm, anti-gravity, anti-knowledge illiterate maniac with a Stanley knife out to destroy the entire wealth of knowledge amassed by the human race since the first caveman worked out he could scratch on a wall with a stick.

So far I've managed to successfully negotiate gluing the pages together and hacking the middles out of all three books with my trusty yellow (and since I managed to get a bit of paint on it this afternoon, black and green) Stanley knife. After I took this photo I got started on painting the insides (and, for some reason, my Stanley knife). The end goal for these three is too look either like extremely fancy books or very bookish boxes. Hopefully awesomeness shall ensue.

Snip!

2008-06-21T22:45:00.006+10:00

"Mother and I went to the ballet on Thursday evening."

Now THAT is a pretentious sentence! I'd never been to the ballet before. The prospect of men in tights leaping and bounding around a stage enacting incomprehensible plots is generally far far too terrifying to contemplate inflicting upon oneself*. Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands, however, appeared to pose a gentle, understandable and practically tights free introduction to the genre. The character of Edward Scissorhands was of course originally portrayed by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's 1990 film of the same name which told the story of the inventor's misfit unfinished creation with shears of metal for hands that was taken in by a friendly Avon lady and what happened thereafter. Matthew Bourne's stage interpretation is vastly different to the film while still managing to maintain the 'guts' of the story, so to speak, with probably only one or two scenes from the movie being interpreted faithfully into the ballet. Ultimately though, it is the same story. Since I know absolutely nothing about dance, I can't actually comment on the quality of that aspect of the performance, except to say that in my extremely underqualified opinion it was fantastic. Costumes and sets were also fantastic. I love seeing things staged on a 'grand scale' with elaborate sets. Minimalism has it's appeals as well, but seeing the stage change in the space of a second from an inventor's castle to a suburban street is always going to hold more 'Wow!' factor for me than 'See this grey wall? Well at the moment you'll just have to imagine that it's a balcony which should just be obvious to you because there's a woman leaning over the top of it, and a bit later you can imagine it being the inside wall of a house and maybe after that if you're lucky you can envisage it being the OUTSIDE wall of a house!'
So yes, overall Edward Scissorhands gets a great big two-pointy-shears-of-metal up from me!

*My grade 9 drama teacher was widely known to have been a ballet dancer in his younger, hipper years which has possibly led to my being mentally scarred for life by involuntarily having to imagine him wearing a leotard every time the word 'ballet' is mentioned. Lets just say that one can only assume that he was in better shape when he was younger. Much better shape.

My apologies for not being bothered to find any pictures.

Of mailboxes and vampires

2008-06-13T20:22:00.009+10:00

Bet you all thought I'd died... again. Blogging seems to come in fits and starts for me - three days of dedicated updates followed by a fortnight of silence... but I suppose I can just write it off as my 'unique blogging style'. Another aspect of this particularly 'unique' style could possibly include the ability to write under the influence of feline death stares.

So... what exactly have I been up to? Well quite a number of Czech beads (ordered from America, of course) arrived in my mailbox (the one at the end of the driveway, not the electronic one currently full of cheap Rolex offers and marriage proposals from people in strange countries I've never heard of), so I've been quite busy industriously threading them onto bits of string.

This one is called Purity, because hell, it's white...

Right, have we all recovered from the shock of seeing something made by me consisting of absolutely no black or red whatsoever? (Hey, the white beads were on sale!) Never fear, the next instalment is a little more predictable:

And this... thing... well I haven't come up with an eloquent way to say 'extremely annoyingly difficult piece of jewellery' yet, but when I do... I'll be able to list it. Joy! Also another one for the weirdo vampiric throat fetishists out there. Google analytics tells me all about you... and about you too, people looking for pictures of men who are probably more in touch with their feminine side than my grandmother would approve of.

Opera: not just for granny killers

2008-05-31T17:01:00.005+10:00

When I tell people that I'm going to the opera they tend to look at me as though I've just disclosed that I plan to spend the entire night murdering pensioners behind the local supermarket. So I'm writing to reassure you all that opera attendance is a perfectly normal, non-weirdo, socially acceptable activity, even for those under the age of 45. Don't get me wrong, opera lives up to all of its stereotypes - long, complicated ridiculous plots are certainly the order of the day. You know when they hand you a plot synopsis on the way in that it's usually because you're going to need it to be able to make head or tail of what the hell is going on on the stage, but really, one shouldn't fret too much about plot cramming in the five or so minutes between getting to your seat and having the lights go off because all opera plots are basically the same - once you get one worked out you're basically ready for anything. Also, you shouldn't worry that you're not going to understand a thing that anybody sings... it's ok, nobody else in the audience is going to either - that's what surtitles are for. Which brings me to another point - sitting in the front row at the opera isn't actually all that crash hot an idea. For starters you'll probably end up with terminal neck strain from trying to read the surtitles (which are like subtitles, except they're up the top) and it's quite possible that you may also need an umbrella. I'll let you work out what for. Basically opera can be summed up in a nutshell in three statements: Nobody ever does anything quickly (even if a character happens to realise the need to do something urgently, they'll probably spend at least the next ten minutes singing a song about it). Nobody ever says anything just once (even something as 'hello! My name is Chris' can take a good fifteen minutes). Nobody is actually who they say they are (which means that you should never ever assume that any poor beggar type who gets to sing more than three words isn't in actual fact insanely rich).

The Barber of Seville is a comedy set in a health spa owned by Dr. Bartolo who is determined to marry his ward, the beautiful Rosina, who describes herself as docile, meek, easily led and an outright manipulative bitch if anyone tries to stand in the way of what she wants. The Count Almaviva is the creepy dude lurking around the place singing under balconies and whatnot who has fallen in love with Rosina (which is totally cool with her, because hey, she's in love with him... whoever he is), but doesn't want her to know that he's a Count and thus in his attempts to see her goes through about a million or so improbable disguises which Rosina sees through immediately but the Doctor falls for every time. Helping Almaviva is the town barber, Figaro (yes, this is the 'Figaro Figaro Figaro!!' opera) who actually doesn't have any ulterior motives. Since this opera isn't a tragedy all of the characters are still alive in the end and most of them actually end up happy... except of course for the pervy old doctor of course, because lets face it, who wants a story that ends with 'and the oppressive old man got exactly what he wanted'?

Right, even if I haven't convinced you to immediately run out and buy tickets to the longest, weirdest most over the top opera you can find, I at least hope that the next time someone tells you that they're going to the opera you'll say something a little more encouraging than 'err.....'

Of Bert, Ernie and Pornography

2008-05-20T21:12:00.005+10:00

It seems that I've piqued everybody's curiosity by mentioning my honours research project. Since I've already made all possible attempts to reassure everybody that nothing unethical will be occurring I won't be able to use my extremely lame and also quite tasteless 'we're replicating and extending the Japanese whaler's research on humans' joke. Which is probably a good thing. My research topic is theory of mind in preschool aged children. Which tells anybody who hasn't sat through a million (maybe a slight exaggeration, but it was at least three) lectures on child development almost absolutely nothing. Basically theory of mind refers to the ability to take the view point of another person, which develops between 3 and 5 years of age. The way this is tested in children usually involves acting out little stories with dolls like... well, Ernie and Bert, in which Ernie might put something away in one box before he goes off to do something else. While Ernie is gone, Bert (that terrible terrible Bert) takes Ernie's something and puts it in another box, before he too, wanders off to do something else. Ernie then comes back looking for his something. The kids are then asked where Ernie thinks his something or other is. In order to pass the test the kids have to realise that Ernie doesn't know that Bert moved his whatever and thus will say that it's in the box that Ernie put it in, not where Bert put it. I hope that makes some sort of sense. In case it didn't, here's something that definitely doesn't make sense...

This bracelet is called 'Quadrate', which dictionary.com tells me means square. It's listed here.

It started out a lot smaller, then got a bit bigger, then I got really carried away and it turned out huge. It is, in fact, so long that it falls straight off my hand which meant that I had to invent somewhere else to wear it, and thus the upper arm bracelet was born. Well, it was either that or turn it into the ultimate hippie headband.

Yes, that's my arm. Apparently this photo is pornographic, or at any rate the fine people of the flickr group Bead Porn thought it was good enough to invite me to add to their pool.

And just in case anybody wanted to know, I've been typing this with the new Cure single on continuous repeat. Given that it's only two songs long, that's about 12 listens so far.

And one final 'by the way' - if my supplies ever arrive, I do plan to endeavour to make a partner for that single earring. One day.

Of Bert, Ernie and a prophecy come true...

2008-05-19T15:29:00.006+10:00

There are some things you shouldn't make jokes about, my grandmother says, because they might just come true. Well I don't know if joking about making single earrings falls into that category, however after my last blog post about making earrings for people one ear, I actually accidentally went and did just that. Due to a miscalculation regarding the abundance of ruby druk beads residing in the wilds of tackle box B, I present to you The Earring For The Person With One Ear. It does not have a partner.

I'm still not really sure exactly what I'm going to do with it.

I have some more new items which are definitely blog worthy as they're actually fit to be sold (well, that's debatable... but we'll leave that for discussion next blog entry), but for some reason I think that what we all really need at this point in time is a bit of Bert and Ernie, don't you?

These guys are the end result of an afternoon spent scouring toy shops for the perfect Bert and Ernie dolls. Erm, why? You might ask. Well, all in the name of research of course, my dear friend. No, really, I'm serious. These guys are an integral part of my honours research project. In the event that you're about to reach the conclusion that I've finally cracked let me take this opportunity to reassure you that there are also children involved in this research project. And no, nobody gets dissected, electrocuted or injected at any point.... or at any rate if any of those things should occur it will most likely be due to the fact that I've grossly underestimated the sadistic capabilities of four year olds.
And if anybody is thinking 'those are either really big dolls or that's not a very big computer' the answer is that it's not a very big computer.

For the person with one of everything

2008-05-09T21:39:00.006+10:00

The sudden realisation that I do, in fact, have a blog that needs updating is the reason for this post. Which only makes me not quite as bad as the person I met in the Etsy chat room last week who disclosed that yes, they started a blog once, but they lost it. Literally.

I've just listed this in my Etsy shop (well, actually, there's two of them, I promise! Although there is possibly a lucrative untapped market out there somewhere selling single earrings to people with only one ear):

And I managed to take a better picture of the blue bracelet (featured in a treasury of, you guessed it, blue things this week!), showing here:

Still not actually the colour of the blue beads, unfortunately. You'll have to go and check out the listing if you're curious. And yay! I managed to think up a pretentious name for it! It's called 'Deception', which is kind of a safety net against someone buying it and then saying 'but it's not the same colour as the picture!'

And that's all, really.

A premonition of things to come

2008-05-02T20:27:00.006+10:00

My pliers and I have been busy of late concocting some new things to replace all the ones that have expired in my Etsy shop... because lets face it, both you and I have been looking at those same items for four months now, I want to see something new dammit! (And if you haven't been looking at them... well just nod your head knowledgeably anyway as if you know what I'm talking about)

little telephone earrings

Being such a generation Y 'child of the modern age' that I am I must admit that I honestly wouldn't know how to go about using an old fashioned telephone. Talk about missing out on important life skills!

And the blue bracelet. I'm still trying to think up an adequately pretentious name for it.

Unfortunately it is nigh on impossible to actually photograph cobalt blue Czech beads in a way that shows they're actual colour (and believe me, I've tried!). It's really a much deeper blue than shown.

I anticipate that I should get these two items listed within the next 48 hours, unless of course something terrible on the scale of an apocalyptic event should occur, or I just don't get around to it. I've got some more things as well, including the 'oh my god, what on earth is this thing going to BE?!' bracelet I've been raving like a madwoman about the place for awhile about. Yeah, that last sentence probably won't be winning any awards for excellent grammar usage in the near future.

Warning! Contains Politics!

2008-04-28T21:21:00.003+10:00

For anybody who failed to think that the Howard government was the greatest thing since sliced bread... Keating! Is the show for you. Following the rise and fall of former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, Keating! Is a satirical political musical that will have you leaving thinking that Paul Keating was actually a competent politician. While Keating comes out seven feet tall and shooting lightening bolts out of his arse, the same cannot be said for... well any other politician that in any way stood against him. Alexander Downer ... well, let's just say that you'll really have to see this one for yourself to believe it... but lets just say that women's underwear is involved and members of the audience get molested at one point. Howard is portrayed as a bumbling out of touch power hungry old man (well more so than he is in reality, anyway). The saga ends quite historically incorrectly with the outcome of the 1996 election being portrayed slightly more in Keating's favour than most people would remember. See this and you'll drawing an extra little box on your next ballot paper for Paul Keating.

Keating runs at the QPAC Playhouse until the 10th of May. Dates for other cities can be found here

And for those of you who don't know (or that matter care) at all about Australian politics, fear not, I'm going to see Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' next month, so don't worry, you'll all get your chance to act all theatrically, and that matter, operatically, knowledgeable at some point!

Sale? Did you say sale? You did say sale, didn't you?

2008-04-22T20:32:00.004+10:00

Right, before we get started, has everybody got their good undies on? Yes? Good... let's go then!

Well, it turns out that it's been almost four months since I listed the first item in my Etsy shop. No, don't worry, I'm not about to start out on one of those fantastically improbable success stories about how I opened my Etsy shop while living in a wheelie bin to sell my handmade soup tin sculptures and now four months later I'm living in a mansion made out of soup tins... mainly because I haven't actually got a fantastic success story, but also because I've never really had a thing for soup tins. Where this is all going is here: those things I listed nearly four months ago are about to expire... and I'd like you (or someone.. anyone really) to buy them before they do. Let's be brutally honest... these are the items that have the crap photographs I never got around to fixing... these are the boring items that never got any hearts or enough interest to warrant renewing... these are, in fact, the items that have been hanging out at the bottom of the second page of my store inventory filling up space and making the others look good. These are the items that if nobody buys in the next couple of days, I'm either going to give away as gifts to family, start wearing myself or chop up to turn into something else. Now doesn't that make you all just want to go over and buy them? No? Well how about if I tell you that I've reduced the prices on them all? Yes! Now she's talking, you all scream out at once! Things are ON SALE?! Where?! Why right over here, my friend...

And for those of you who still aren't convinced... here's a look at some of the things I'm looking to flog off... (er, I mean... no, actually I do mean flog off)

Right, now you all have absolutely no excuse... OFF YOU GO!

Tidbits and whatnots

2008-04-18T21:31:00.005+10:00

Firstly a big thank you to AreYouAnArtist of Etsy who has been ever so kind enough to feature my earrings on her blog, The Art of Color. You should go and have a look, if there's one word that doesn't describe her blog at all, it'd be 'dull'!

Secondly, and I've been meaning to mention this for quite a while... but I'm collecting data on you. Yes, you. That's right, thanks to Google Analytics I happen to know everything one could possibly ever desire to know about the people who have visited this blog - how long they were here for, what browser they were using, how fast their internet was, whether they came back, where they came from, what colour underpants they were wearing, Google knows everything. Possibly even a little too much. I probably didn't need to know that someone out there managed to find my blog by typing "man wearing bobby pins" into a search engine.

Finally, and you're probably sick of seeing them by now, I've relisted the cutlery earrings in my Etsy shop. There's a good chance that this will be the final pair since I'm all out of miniature utensils. Someone did mention in the comments form that they'd like to see a pair made out of real cutlery, which I'm sure while being quite practical in some ways would also be quite unpractical in other ways that would really overshadow the positive aspects of always having a full set of utensils on hand (or ear, as it were). And now I'm sort of having visions of myself subjecting the entire contents of my kitchen drawers and cupboards to the effects of a shrink-ray to turn them into jewellery... hmm... if only I had a shrink-ray...

Introducing... CraftySteph

2008-04-15T19:49:00.009+10:00

No, it's not a hairball coughed up by some bizarre yarn eating creature - they're my new hair scrunchies! Thanks to CraftySteph of Etsy (who, by the way, gets my vote for wonderful Etsian of the Week, were, of course such a title to exist) for these wonderful freebies which I won in a game of not-much-skill-at-all, namely "I'm thinking of a number...". Steph sells all sorts of things on Etsy, including scrunchies, tea stir sticks, incense, candles and jewellery. The thing about her shop which most impresses me however is that she's willing to share her promotion secrets, and in her shop announcement no less! Here's one of my favourite items from her shop (because lets face it, I'm a closet goth), a death-themed altered journa l:

You can find CraftySteph's shop at http://craftysteph.etsy.com.
Thanks again for the scrunchies, Steph!

Hooray for buyers!

2008-04-12T17:10:00.004+10:00

w00t! I gots a sell!!!!11. That's right folks, those cutlery earrings which everybody has consistently been liking quite a fair bit are in fact on their way out of here! (But fret not too much - a replication is in the works)

I'd like to think at some point in the future sales will actually become almost a normal occurence not requiring any sort of special jumping-up-and-down-yay-look-what-finally-happened! type activities, but it sure won't be happening any time soon! (the cessation of the bizarre jumpings up and down... another sale can come along whenever it wants to!)

Cynicism, secret projects and blogging for the hell of it

2008-04-05T21:33:00.006+10:00

Once again I find myself in the familiar position of feeling obliged to write a blog entry and having absolutely nothing of substance to write about. Usually I'm saved from this predicament by having a vaguely interesting photo of a something-or-other to distract readers from the complete and utter lack of content present in the post in question. Unfortunately my last batch of photos only really served to demonstrate the point that I really need to clean the lens of my camera, and this isn't a point which particularly needs to be demonstrated to the entire world. Strangely enough, on this occasion of taking these extremely dusty looking photos I was mistaken for a professional photographer, a misperception which I corrected by stating that no, I was not a photographer, merely someone who happens to own a camera. Immediately following this I was mistaken for someone whose name was Amanda, which I failed to correct that no, my name was not Amanda, I just happened to be wearing a name tag that said 'Amanda'. I guess none of the readers of this fascinating document actually know what my first name is, but at least now you all know it isn't Amanda.

I was reading an earlier entry I posted on this blog where I alluded to some sort of secret project I had in the works. I'd love to be able to update you on the status of this project, or at least tell you something about it... but unfortunately I can't remember what it actually was. I guess this is the price of being excessively cryptic.

The Devil's Dictionary is a brilliant source of cynicism and wit. No, it isn't an indoctrination tool for the Church of Satan (or that other cult that calls itself a church also starting with 'S' which we won't name here since it isn't worth getting sued over), it's a collection of definitions which were printed regularly in a weekly paper (the preface to the book isn't kind enough to give us the name of the paper) between 1881 and 1906, written by Ambrose Bierce, who later went to revolution torn Mexico and was never seen again. It is safe to assume that (a) unless he is immortal and (b) even better at playing hide-and-seek than Richey Edwards, that he is in fact dead by now.
Some examples:

MAD, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that themselves are sane.

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

The Devil's Dictionary can be found online in its entirety here

The Baking Soda Edition

2008-04-01T19:54:00.007+10:00

By popular request... the Sound&Fury/spherikus guide to 'Really Fantastic Things You Can Do With Baking Soda'.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will tell you that a towel is the most useful object in existance, the savings-savvy blogging housewives out there will tell you that the Guide is wrong and in fact the most useful object in the universe is a box of baking soda. Short of actually being able to power a vehicle (although as I type this I am scheming about inventing the baking-soda-and-vinegar-science-fair-volcano car) baking soda does pretty much everything. Honestly, there's no point in listing off the thousands of things (some of them really quite bizarre) that people use it for because it just does everything. Clean X out of Y - done, remove bad smells - done, put out a fire - done, babysit the kids - done, disarm a nuclear weapon - done. Basically, armed with only a box of baking soda, you're pretty much prepared to take on the world. Although I'd still want to make sure I knew where my towel was... you know, just in case.

Turns out that pink flower hadn't quite finished getting pretty the other day when I took my photos...

I love the macro setting on my camera to the extent that I almost can't see the point of taking pictures of anything bigger than my hand. There is just something really awesome about making little things big. And it's probably around about this time that people start thinking 'God, she needs to get out more...'

Rain makes things wet.... for real.

2008-03-29T22:17:00.008+10:00

Having had just removed all of the soaking wet clothes from the line which another family member had ever so diligently gone and hung out in the rain (and by that I do mean that it was in fact raining WHILE they were hanging the washing on the line) and popped them back in the machine for another spin cycle, I found myself with a spare ten minutes to fill in... so I grabbed my camera and took some pics of the various things to be found growing around the place...

Blogging about housework and gardening - it's all downhill from here, I'm afraid... with any luck my next entry will probably be on the miraculous cleaning properties of baking soda.

For those who are all eager to know how the PIF saga ended... it went on to become the most viewed item in my shop, getting over a hundred views in the space of four days... then was snapped up by someone who knew that they wanted free blue leafy earrings when they saw them. This was fun, and, I think, definitely worthwhile, both in terms of shop exposure and good karma.

Experimenting on the other side...

2008-03-26T22:48:00.006+10:00

Ok, people seem to have taken some interest in the great PIF experiment on Etsy, so I thought I'd better do another quick report on how the venture is going. Approximately 48 hours in, the earrings in question are still in my shop and are now the second most viewed item I have. There was a brief period this afternoon when I quickly checked in on my shop at uni (naturally I was, of course, meant to be somewhere else at the time) and saw that they were in fact the most viewed item. It's basically taken about two days to get the same number of views I've had on my most popular item in the space of a month. Conclusion: people like looking at free things. It would also seem, just by eyeballing the numbers, that views in general seem to have increased a fair bit in the last two days. Very interesting.

I'm listing more bobby pins too...

Also, I've 'gone over to the otherside' so to speak. This is Ebay terminology for someone who lists on Oztion.com.au and seems to imply that such individuals seem to have somehow managed to ascend from the hell that is Feebay... either that or it implies that by going there they've effectively killed their business. Oztion is an Australian online auction site, similar to Ebay, and seems to be their major competitor in Australia at this point. And by major competitor I actually mean only competitor. Oztion has no listing fees, so it's quite affordable for me to list a bit of stuff over there just to see what will happen, and their final value fee of 3.9% is quite reasonable. Free listings include gallery picture, 3 photos and a subtitle - all things Ebay makes you pay extra for on top of their listing fees! Currently only sellers from Australia and New Zealand are able to list on Oztion, but buyers from all countries are welcome. Admittedly, I have heard that a lot of the time people don't sell too much over there... but one can only try, right? You can take a look at my listings thus far here. It's nowhere near as neat or fun as Etsy, but the listing process is a fair bit easier than Ebay. Honestly, I'd say something nice about Ebay if I could think of something nice to say... but I can't... so I won't.

And as I hit the publish button, I've just noticed that the PIF earrings have overtaken the cutlery earrings in the view counts again...

of hairpins and earrings with ambitions for bigger and better things...

2008-03-25T20:21:00.008+10:00

Hmm... so we've got these beads, right... not enough to really make anything too involved, and damn it all to hell if I'm going to make another pair of earrings... oh, and here's that wire I never found a use for... and... and... oh yes! An entire bag of bobby pins I bought in some sudden bizarre enthusiasm to wear bobby pins which lasted about ten minutes... Right, here we go!

Ta dah! Pretty bobby pins!

Honestly, there's no point in making inquiry into my creative processes... more often than not it's a matter of threading bits of stuff onto fishing line or wire until it looks pleasing enough to tie, twist or crimp and declare it to be a masterpiece... either that or give up in digust at the complete and utter piece of crap I've created before attacking it with a pair of scissors or wire cutters. I've also got quite a few bits of unfinished work, mostly weaving, that never worked out quite what they wanted to be, including the great 'oh my god it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger!' pink and black bugle bead contraption that lurks in the bottom of the 'oh well... maybe we'll put it in here and forget about it' shoebox that started out as an earring, then became a bracelet and which I gave up on around about the time it began expressing ambitions to become a king-sized bedsheet.

At the moment over in my Etsy shop I'm experimenting with a PIF listing. For those who can't stand people who drop random acronyms into everyday conversation and then expect you to know exactly what they're talking about ("yeah TIMTTMY is really great, but IMHO EMG is much better, but truely the greatest MSP album of all time is definitely THB, although I liked JDB's solo album, TGW, as well"), PIF is short for 'pay it forward' with the basic concept being that the item is a free gift with a minimal postage cost and maybe the cost of the listing fee attached. 'Buying' a PIF sort of comes with the expectation that the person who receives it will put up a similar listing in their shop or else do something else nice for someone. Basically what I've discovered with this experiment is that everybody likes to look at free things - 48 views in less than 24 hours is pretty impressive (they even have a heart!) - the last two, non-free, items I listed only have about 15 views apiece and they've been up for at least a week. Strangely enough, nobody actually seems to WANT free things. Anyhow, Etsy sellers take note - free things = views!

Earrings. No, really.

2008-03-18T21:05:00.006+10:00

Soon to be listed in my Etsy shop:

I have to say, I like the way the bottom bit turned out more than the top. That said, I'm in the final stages of making a matching bracelet which consists of the top part repeating - it's ok, but I'm not crazy about it. I still have to come up with a name for these before I list them (and a more flattering name than 'extreme pain in the bum' for the bracelet).

Lessons learnt: beads on the bed usually leads to beads in the bed. Don't use your pillow as a pin cushion.

"Oh, Lady Esmerelda patronises everything!"

2008-03-13T20:06:00.007+10:00

As promised, today we are blogging only about nice, happy, pleasant, non-murderous thoughts, feelings and events.

The above image demonstrates a number of things, for example, it demonstrates why I have no money. It also demonstrates my oddly slightly pink stained fingernails which are the result of wearing nothing but bright purple nailpolish for a month or more, but I digress, for what I'm actually attempting to to demonstrate here is that I have lots of theatre tickets and quite frankly if I keep going at this rate the Queensland Performing Arts Centre is going to have to erect a rather large plaque in my honour at some point in the near future since I'm probably matching the government dollar for dollar in funding their operations... or at any rate I've probably funded at least a week's supply of toilet paper. So here's the quick run-down on what we're seeing, with, of course, the promise to update on exactly how good they all were at some point after the event.
Keating!, presented by Company B - a political musical which according to the glossy promotional leaflet QPAC sent me about a month after I bought the tickets is 'the musical we had to have' which will apparently 'tear through the reign and tragic fall of the 'Placido Domingo of Australian politics' while 'transporting you back to a time less politically grey'. For those not in the know, Paul Keating is a former Australian Prime Minister who won what was considered an 'unwinnable' election in 1993, before being most fantastically defeated by John Howard in the 1996 election. He also has the irrefutably brilliant achievement of having had referred to John Howard as a 'desiccated coconut'.
Next up presented by Opera Queensland we have Rossini's The Barber of Seville, a "real" opera, by the standards of the kinds of people who care enough to get upset by people who think that by having had been to see Phantom of the Opera that they have in fact been to the opera. It fits my criteria for a "real" opera as well - extremely long with probably quite a ridiculous plot and in a language I don't understand. I'd love to try and explain what it's about from the synopses I've read, but I'm not really sure that I understand it myself... in any case, I expect that there shall be a barber of some description in there somewhere.
Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands is up next. For those not in the know, Matthew Bourne is most probably best known for casting male dancers in the role of the swans in Swan Lake, which has been praised, criticised and probably not cared greatly about most likely in equal amounts. Edward Scissorhands, is, of course, based on the film by Tim Burton, about the inventor's unfinished creation, Edward, who has only sharp shears of metal for hands who is one day visited by the Avon lady who takes him home to suburbia where he finds a wild and wonderful world of gardening and dog grooming awaits.
Finally, (well, at least until I flip out and buy another couple of hundred dollars worth of tickets) we have Queensland Theatre Company's production of the The Importance of Being Earnest, which we are going to basically on the principle of (a) since I'm under 25 the tickets were really cheap, and (b) Queensland Theatre Company aren't putting on any Shakespeare this year, so we may as well go and see this since it is of a general classic nature.

Right, and if you read all of the way through that, I applaud you! (As the extremely lame one man comedy act on a horse at the exhibition one year said as people left the stadium following the conclusion of the interesting entertainment, 'could you all please clap on the way out so I can say I received a standing ovation?') For further information, including summaries which may in fact somewhat actually reflect what will be carried out upon the stage, I direct you to the qtix website.

By the way, the title quote is an in-joke for Discworld readers... Maskerade being the book you should be referring to if you absolutely have to know.

... on pain of liquidation

2008-03-12T21:48:00.006+10:00

If I were to list all of the things that had annoyed me today... well, it would be tomorrow by the time I finished, and then I'd be annoyed that I'd wasted so much time making such a pointless list. Basically what the day needs is an extra hour, somewhere between 10:00am and 11:00am which should be dedicated to getting all of the things done that you were supposed to do yesterday and need desperately to have done by the afternoon. It could be kind of like a no-hour that doesn't technically exist so nobody can ever schedule things to occur during it and everybody would just leave everybody else the hell alone so they can get on with the things they need to be doing instead of attending pointless meetings or the like. Right, well that's my brilliant idea for today, well, actually it's my second, but the one that came to mind after watching one of Brisbane's fabulous bus drivers going about the business of customer service (hah!) this morning would probably be considered generally socially unacceptable. Yes, it was to do with rounding up and shooting particular types of people... or perhaps subjecting them to intense behaviour modification... or something. I don't know, there should be a minimum level of interpersonal skill required before one should actually be allowed out to deal with the general public.*

Now, lets try to think of something positive that doesn't involve rounding up and shooting anybody.

Actually, I'm too tired. I'll do positive things tomorrow, I promise. In the meantime, here's a flower:

*I assure you, I am merely attempting to be humourous and am IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER suggesting a mass killing of bus drivers, rude or otherwise.

Good Grief!

2008-03-10T20:55:00.006+10:00

After spending a terribly dull half hour earlier watching a current affairs program I was thinking of writing a list of all the things in the world that I don't care about. But I didn't really care enough to get around to it. However, if thinking for yourself really isn't your thing, then I recommend watching Today Tonight (or similar program) on a daily basis to get a good idea of what you're currently supposed to be outraged at, sad for, worried about or possibly even which dishwashing liquid you're supposed to buy. Really, with programs like this, who needs independent thought?!

Ahem, ranting finished. I promise.

I find I'm saying 'Good grief!' a lot of late. This is Charlie Brown's fault, and for some reason I feel obliged to show the world some of what is probably the most tatty looking collection of Peanuts books out there:

The earliest copyright date appears to be about 1955, but I think they were mostly printed in the 60's and 70's. And yes, I know, some of them do look as though they have perhaps been chewed by what one can only hope was at least a vaguely domesticated animal. I picked them all up from the Lifeline Bookfest at the beginning of the year for about $5, and I'll be going back midyear for more! I also have collection of Wizard of Id books in similar format (and condition). You can probably tell that I'm not really the sort of person who is into flashy giant hardcover collector's editions.

At the moment I'm discovering all sorts of interesting things about the wonderful world of handsewing. For example, did you know that if you mange to punch a hole in the pencil bump of your finger with the blunt end of a thick needle despite the fact you will have a rather alarmingly large hole in your finger there won't be a lot of blood, but you probably won't be able to write very well for a couple of days. It's important to learn something new everyday and the best way to learn is by doing! Maybe tomorrow I'll endeavour to learn something about chainsaws... ok, maybe not, but I do have a two hour advanced statistics lecture in the afternoon which should be AT LEAST as painful as the whole 'needle-finger-hole-ouch' incident. Oh, and please, nobody ask me to explain how I managed to jab myself hard enough with the blunt end of a needle to penetrate the skin... I don't quite understand how I achieved it myself.

Vader conquers Shakespeare!

2008-03-08T17:58:00.009+10:00

For no reason other than his sheer awesomeness... here's Darth Vader conquering a great big pile of all the things I need to put away:

Before you ask, no I have no intention of ever actually reading The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (bottom book) - but somehow my life is enriched by merely owning it (although lets not start on the whole 'if children who have more than 20 books in their house are smarter... maybe we should send every kid 20 books and thus make them all smarter!' problem of being enriched by merely owning things of a bookish nature). I find reading plays to be quite pointless - they weren't designed to be experienced that way, it's kind of like sitting down to read a sheet of music. Music is meant to be played, and plays are meant to be acted.

I must endeavour to make something of a new and interesting nature at some point for my Etsy shop. I'm starting to suspect that this blog possibly gets more hits than the shop it claims to be promoting (although not doing a terribly good job of, one must admit). If you're not interested in my shop, you should definitely check out fridays child, whose art is absolutely adorable and has just started listing some funky t-shirts! (plus they're a fellow Aussie!).

In other extremely mundane news, I earlier spent a frustrating ten minutes or so looking for my camera, only to discover that somehow it had ended up inside the book/box contraption I made a couple of weeks ago:

So there you have it, it does function as an effective hiding place.

Leafy Earrings

2008-03-05T21:19:00.005+10:00

I recently found a number of leafy-looking beads that came from only god-knows-where and spent a happy hour or so with my pliers assembling them into earrings. For example:

and,

(it should be noted that these aren't exactly an identical pair... perfect for the person whose attention to detail is less than maximal, or perhaps someone who is colourblind... See, you can put an advertising spin on just about anything!)

These should be listed in my Etsy shop sometime within the next 24 hours, provided that my image editing program decides to behave itself instead of acting as a self-appointed critic of my photo editing skills and stops crashing every time I try to save something.

Evidence Exhibit 2.A

2008-02-29T20:46:00.004+10:00

Ta-da!

(I'm extremely unimpressed with this picture... it looks a fair bit better than that.. for starters the vaguely grey looking bits are actually silver and are quite sparkly).

I should probably explain what I've done here. First I glued along the pages, making sure to keep two pages at the back and front free. Then I cut out the pages with a Stanley knife, leaving the unglued ones intact. More glue was applied to the inside of the cutout part to really get the pages well and truely stuck down. Then I painted the inside and outside of the cutout bit silver and the top black. The front cover and inside loose pages I covered with fabric and then glued the loose pages to the cover to conceal all of the daggy looking bits.
So what we have here is basically a book that's been turned into a box, but really looks a little too flash to ever quite pass for a secret hidey hole (the toggle probably gives it away, but my brother pointed out that there was absolutely no way he could endorse this project if there wasn't some way of keeping the lid shut - a box that can't be kept shut being impractical and all, and hell, it looks pretty).

In other news I assembled a couple of pairs of earrings this afternoon, which I dutifully zip-lock bagged up before realising that I'll be needing to take them out to photograph them tomorrow. I've been interested in developing my own unique photography style for a while now, but somehow I don't think that photographing everything in plastic bags is really going to do the trick in getting people's attention... or at any rate, the right kind of attention. I don't want to make a name for myself as 'that person whose jewellery photos all look like crime scene evidence shots'.

Start of university semester is looming, and I suspect that that's probably going to be the end of random creative projects for a while (big sad face). It also means that I'll probably have to get back into the spirit of Proper Academic Writing, which is, I'm told, where you don't suddenly digress on random, completely untrue tangents for the sake of being entertaining.

Whatever happened to that poor book, anyway?

2008-02-28T17:11:00.004+10:00

Ok, so by now you've probably noticed that I haven't come good on my promise to post pics of the book-into-a-box project. Fear not, the reason for this is not because it drove me so crazy that I decided to destroy it once and for all by sticking it in a blender... it's simply that I haven't finished it yet (although it's getting dangerously close to the point where I may just lose the plot and glue down the front and back covers in a sudden glue-fumes induced frenzy). Maybe tomorrow. It's quite interesting how your current projects tend to colour your vision - at the moment I can't look at a thick hardcover book without thinking how great it would be to glue all of the pages together and cut a hole through the middle of them.

Right, I have more gluing to do.

On the advantages of mediocrity

2008-02-26T20:27:00.002+10:00

Undead, undead, undead!

2008-02-25T18:23:00.003+10:00

A warning before we start - this is one of those "I haven't really got anything of substance to blog about but I'm blogging because I've feel I've got some vague sort of obligation to do so" post, and thus may contain random raving about... well about almost anything, really.

I recently watched the movie 'Ed Wood', which is a Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp (after all, what would be a Tim Burton film without Johnny Depp? Well it would be Planet of the Apes, wouldn't it?) as the title character. Now if you've never heard of Ed Wood, well you're probably a very lucky individual. He's famous for having had been declared 'The Worst Director of All Time' and his movie 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' is often cited as being the worst film ever made (on the case of the DVD, no less... which is an indication of just how bad it is, usually even if they have to scour every mental institution in town they can usually find at least one person to write a raving review to quote, although they do follow it up with the claim that it's 'so bad it's good!'). A quick plot synopsis (from memory): aliens who have been trying unsuccessfully to destroy (or was it enslave? I forget) planet Earth decide to enact 'Plan 9' (plans 1 through to 8 having had failed) which involves reanimating the dead and detonating sunlight (well, it doesn't claim to be hard science fiction). Of course the aliens are somehow foiled in the end and the reanimated dead get unanimated, but it's not really the shockingly bad plot that this movie gets remembered for, but more for the complete lack of any sort of quality control whatsoever. For starters there's the cardboard tombstones which randomly fall over, the sudden changes from day to night, visible boom mics and the flying saucers which are (a) probably hubcaps and (b) definitely on string. But wait! It gets better! The film uses a very small amount of footage of Bela Lugosi filmed just before he died with Ed Wood's wife's chiropractor playing Lugosi's body double (always with his cape held over half his face), which would have been fine if only the chiropractor had've (a) had similar facial features to Lugosi, (b) been of similar build to Lugosi (c) been of similar height to Lugosi (d) had a similar haircut to Lugosi or (e) borne even the slightest resemblance whatsoever to Bela Lugosi.
Plan 9 is something that really needs to be watched to be believed, but if you don't think you're the kind of person who can stomach watching this kind of complete and utter crap, I recommend watching 'Ed Wood' - it's quite good, and Martin Landau's Oscar-winning portrayal of Bela Lugosi (and I'm going to resist the temptation to wander off into raving about how brilliant Bela Lugosi was... we'll save that for another day) is fantastic.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to finish the Edward Scissorhands-esque book mutilation project and even take some pics of it, so stay tuned (if you're interested in that sort of thing)

I hate books.

2008-02-22T18:48:00.006+10:00

And so it came about that I was taken by a sudden burning desire to turn a book into a box. Why? Well I don't really know why, it just seemed like a really good thing to do at the time. Here's a 'before' shot of the book in question - published in 1972 and still using terms like 'Mongolian idiocy' to refer to Downs Syndrome, I don't think the world is going to overly miss its wisdom.

At the moment we're at the point where it's just gotten past looking like a disaster but doesn't look good enough yet to show to your parents so they can tell you just how clever you are. Which is unfortunate, given that my mother wandered in a little while ago to see this sitting on the desk:

She now thinks that instead of self-mutilating like all the cool kids are doing I'm sitting in here chopping up books to express my frustration at being born in a cruel and heartless unfair world.

I forgot to post a great big 'Happy Birthday to Me' entry yesterday. Now, according to my grandmother and my employer (well, if I had one (an employer, that is, not a grandmother)) I'm a 'real' adult and now get to enjoy the privilege of being paid the same as all the other real adults as well as being constantly hounded about when I'm going to find a nice man who makes lots of money to marry and start popping out the great grand kids, along with the other privileges I've been able to enjoy in the past two years of 'pretend adulthood' such as electing the nation's leaders and being allowed inside the bottleshop. Yes, that's right, I'm 21!

Can we get some more ominous organ sounds over here please?

2008-02-18T21:49:00.004+10:00

First off, I should mention that I had the opportunity to go and see the Phantom of the Opera in Brisbane last week. Privileged audience that we were, we ended up seeing Anthony Warlow's understudy in the role of the Phantom. This was fine by me, as we figured that should he turn out to be any worse in the role than Gerard Butler (watch the movie, his first line where he's got Christine in the underground passage and you'll see what I mean) that we could always heckle for the original ending where the Phantom gets thrown in the river by the mob. It turned out that this in fact was not necessary as he was absolutely brilliant, if not somewhat a little on the short side. I've been wondering if the Phantom would still have been such an object of intense fear if people had've known that his name is in fact Eric. Somehow "Eric is here!" sounds just a tad bit less menacing than "The Phantom of the Opera is here!"

At the moment I'm working my way through my collection of extremely difficult to find out-of-print '80's cds in an effort to listen to all of them at least once. No, just because I've gone to all the effort to track them down and buy them doesn't mean I actually want to listen to them (face it, there's a reason most of them are out of print - they're absolutely shite, and that's putting it nicely). There's just something about having every cd ever released by every member of a particular band* that really sucks me in, regardless of the fact that I've realised that collectively none of them have released anything worth listening to since about 1989 (and not for lack of trying - I'm at over 20 cds and there's still quite a few out there yet to be collected - no, I haven't got high hopes for the rest of them). Next time I go completely insanely fangirl-ish over a band I'm going to pick one that has been around for a grand total of two years and has released one album and two singles and that's it.

Finally, I should probably mention that I will be supporting the Ebay boycott this week. Sure, it's been over a month since I bought or listed anything on Ebay, but this week I'm doing it INTENTIONALLY, which makes all the difference, really. It's to demonstrate a lack of support for Ebay's proposed changes to feedback and a number of other things which are in the works. The proposed changes to feedback mean that while buyers can still leave positive, neutral or negative feedback for sellers, sellers will only be able to leave either positive feedback or no feedback at all. Sure there's been a lot of people saying that a boycott will mean nothing and effect nothing, but if nobody tries then we'll never find out, and isn't it better to take some action, no matter how small or insignificant against the things you don't like rather than complaining but never actually doing anything to bring about change?

*Due to the extremely un-nice nature of the comments I've made here, I shall elect not to mention which band my current collect-a-thon is for, I don't want to get blacklisted for life by some random ultra-fan of the original drummer who left in 1978 before the band recorded their first album who believes that his 1993 solo album consisting solely of 79 minutes of satanic incantations recorded over a backing track which sounds suspiciously like it may sample the squeals of a cat in a blender is the greatest musical masterpiece ever produced.

New Things

2008-02-17T11:49:00.005+10:00

New things in my etsy shop!

Firstly, cutlery earrings.

and the black and silver bracelet is finished and listed as well. It's called "Never"

And that's the obligatory once-in-a-while actually related to crafting post out of the way for at least another week or so.

I'm currently half-heartedly working on a secret project that will probably never see the light of day. Honestly, it's highly likely that that sentence will be all the world ever hears of it. But now at least it has heard of it.

This one's for the freaks...

2008-02-14T20:05:00.004+10:00

Big thank you to all of the regular readers and commenters who have actually managed to convince me (well, maybe just a little) that writing this blog is somewhat a worthwhile pursuit.

Today was a strangely productive day. Not only did I manage to read and colour-in (it doesn't count as highlighting if the entire page ends up yellow) a number of journal articles, almost finalised my honours supervisor and shift a few things from the extremely cluttered desk to the extremely cluttered dresser to give the illusion of tidying up, I also started, in defiance of yesterday's apathy, a new bracelet.

I'll be the first to admit that there really isn't anything new and revolutionary about this bracelet, it's basically the same as the Revol and Dark Entries bracelets, but... well, who knows... maybe there's a huge market for them in black and silver. I can't really explain why there's a plastic bag in the photo but I'll venture that it's possible that I have more small round objects in little plastic bags than your average drug dealer.

Bet you all thought I'd died...

2008-02-13T20:26:00.005+10:00

Suddenly struck by fear that my blog was dying, I've sat down (ok, actually I'm lying on my stomach, but lets not get too picky about the details, yeah?) to compose something which resembles a sensical (but probably not sensible) blog entry. It so happens that I have returned from New Zealand, despite various forces conspiring to keep me there (e.g. mad woman terrorists with knives and bombs, Christchurch bus drivers, gravity... the list is nigh on endless). Beads and I at the moment really need to get reacquainted - I can see them all sitting over there on the table (Hi guys!), but really don't have much motivation to start making anything. Forcast for new creations isn't looking great either, with general apathy being predicted for the next few days and the long-term forcast showing the beginning of university semester looming on the horizon. Meanwhile there's another part of me going, 'well yes, those are wonderful excuses and all, but how long does it really take to thread up a couple of beads?' We'll see what happens.

I've been taking lots of macro shots of flowers, for example:

Actually, judging by my holiday snap shots of New Zealand you might come to be of the impression that there are exactly two people there (both Australian tourists), that it's absolutely full of giant flowers and that there's exactly one building - the Christchurch cathedral, showing here...

...no, I have no plans to become a documentary maker.

New Zealand - Part Two

2008-02-04T08:59:00.000+10:00

I'm sitting in an internet cafe that is, in fact, a bus. I might take a picture of it on the way out... it's a bit surreal sitting in the front passenger seat with a PC in front of me.

Here's a few pics. The roads in New Zealand are an experience and a half -speed limits are either 100 or 50 kms an hour, one lane bridges that go for miles, which at the same time have a train track running down the middle of it, train tracks that cross the roads countless times with no boom gates, just a sign that says 'look for trains', and a round-about that has a train track that runs directly through the middle of it. I'm under the impression that whoever was in charge of this illustrious rail project had some sort of delusion that trains can only travel in dead straight lines and that anything that gets in the way basically should just get train-tracked over. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw the tracks running directly through someone's front door because nothing, NOTHING gets in the way of the train!

(this isn't that bridge, by the way... which should be obvious on account of the fact that it's not dead straight)

and a mountain...

New Zealand - Part One: Of Christchurch, Garbage Disposal and Golden Key

2008-01-31T06:57:00.000+10:00

Right, so here we are in New Zealand, typing away desperately fast as the clock ticks down on how much internet I have left in this, well, pretty crappy to tell you the truth, internet cafe. Christchurch is a very quaint sort of place, provincial, as they say in all the guide books. But they say 'provincial' like their proud of it. It's a lot like Australia, except in Australia we're more civilised and have wheelie bins. Another thing that hasn't really caught on here seems to be kebabs. Now for someone who was sort of hoping to spend most of her time here living on kebabs, this has come as a great shock. I'm starting to suspect that New Zealand people don't even know what kebabs are, given that I asked a friend of my brother's where I could find a kebab shop and he directed to me a Greek place. Let it be understood - not just any meat, salad and sauce wrapped in a bit of bread-like wrapping will qualify as a kebab.
So this afternoon I must embark off to the University of Cantebury to attend the conference which is the primary reason I'm here (the man at customs had a hard time believing it, but trust me, there IS a conference) as well as being the primary reason I was given so much money by various people to come here. The conference is the (ahem... about to sound pretentious...) Golden Key International Honour Society Asia Pacific Annual Conference. Golden Key is... well to be bluntly honest, an elitist organisation of smart people who have the money to pay the membership fee. All that money from membership fees is then funnelled into projects to ensure that the elite intelligent people remain elite intelligent people, funding events such as corporate wine and cheese nights, conferences, social events and community service type things... but truly, the most money is probably spent on shouting everybody free grog at these events (except the community events, because it would be difficult to explain how shouting a group of 12 year old disadvantaged kids a round at the bar would be deemed community service).

Off to the land of mountains and sheep!

2008-01-28T20:55:00.000+10:00

It's amazing the things you find in suitcases left over from your last holiday. I wouldn't be surprised if someone hasn't dragged their battered old suitcase out of the cupboard to set off on their summer trip only to find their entire last winters wardrobe in there. It seems that there's a point in the unpacking stage where most people just go 'bugger all this for a lark!' and shove the suitcase back in the cupboard or under the bed with whatever tacky souvenirs may still be rattling around in the bottom of it.
Anyway, that really has nothing to do with anything much, except that this morning I finally found out what happened to all those gigantic safety pins I had at one point.

This time tomorrow I shall be in New Zealand. Hopefully by this time tomorrow I will have found my way out of Christchurch International Airport without having had endured any sort of incident which is likely to get oneself on one of those 'Don't people act strangely when customs riffles through their underwear in front of a television camera crew?' shows. Hopefully a lot of things actually - the philosopher Senecca said that everybody should spend a bit of time at the beginning of each day thinking about all of the things that could possibly go wrong so you'd be prepared for them when they happen. Cheery fellow. I think my biggest risk for tomorrow is forgetting the 'no jokes about bombs on aeroplanes' rule.

Tally-ho! I hope to bore you all at some point with pictures of mountains and cathedrals. If you're feeling lonely with me gone, go and read my new shop announcement, there's potential there to be amused.

Bracelets, lots of bracelets

2008-01-27T11:37:00.000+10:00

As promised, my left arm:

Not exactly the world's greatest picture, but I'm not in the mood for doing anything well today. Or doing anything, for that matter. From left to right - wide right angle weave bracelet made using black size 8 seed beads on fishing line, tigertail random beads bracelet made from glass beads on tigertail wire, Fossil brand watch, black and red Czech druk bead bracelet (very similar to Dark Entries, except Dark Entries uses faceted beads instead of black druk beads) and silver and black 8mm round beaded bracelet interspaced with 4mm Czech druk beads.

Here's the jewellery off my arm:

Yes, I do typically wear all of this every day. This wrist has a wide white untanned patch as well.

And here's this one in close-up, because everybody wants to look at this one:

It was a bit of a 'make it up as you go along' affair.

Something wonderful - these earrings are currently featured on Laundry.

Finally, for about the past week or so every update I've written has included something about my impending trip to New Zealand, which I've deleted before posting for various reasons. Today I'm making a good solid effort to get the news out there - I'm going to New Zealand the day after tomorrow and will be back on the 9th of February. I'm just about to dress my shop up in its special 'I'm not here, so naturally sales are going to go through the roof after a month of selling almost nothing' banner and avatar set as well as writing a large, screaming shop message featuring copious amounts of superfluous punctuation to really get across this pertinent piece of information.

Right, I have A LOT to do, especially since letter writing day (now demoted to mere lowercase letters) appears to have well and truly gone belly-up and I feel like I'm up effluent creek without a paddle as far as my honours project is concerned. Even just thinking about it is making me feel slightly nauseated. I'm planning on updating at least once or even twice before I leave and really hope to bore you all with 'holiday in progress' snap shots of probably half my face (self portraits obviously not being my strong point when it comes to photography) in front of whatever the landmark tourist attractions in Christchurch are at some point while I'm away.

Look! She has an arm as well!

2008-01-25T18:40:00.000+10:00

It's time to introduce yet another one of my body parts:

This is a part of my personal collection (we're talking about the bracelet now, although I do consider my arm to be somewhat personal as well), designed by me, for me, never to be repeated for anybody else (although I may be talked around on that last point, talk backed up with money, that is). It wasn't particularly difficult to make, but I won't tell you how I made it - not because I'm protecting my trade secrets or whatnot... but because I am the worst person in the world at giving directions. Sure, during my days as a check-out chick at the local supermarket nobody actually came back to tell me off for giving them dodgy directions to where ever it was that they thought that I looked like I'd know how to get to, but I strongly suspect that this is because after following my advice they were too hopelessly lost to ever find their way back to the supermarket.
Anyway, yes, the bracelet. It does up with two toggle clasps, if anybody's interested in the nitty gritty details. I wear it everywhere and have the white untanned patch on my arm to prove it. Maybe tomorrow I'll have a go at photographing the jewellery I wear on my other arm. This whole photographing only one arm at a time thing has nothing to do with the photographing only one side of my face at a time thing... it's just I need the other arm to hold the camera.

And finally, this has got to be quote of the day:
Puss Daddy on the Etsy Etc. forum: "I am surprised no one has crocheted or knitted up a toilet plunger cozy yet. Usually if an item will stand still long enough someone will cozy it up."

edit to add: I've edited some font and colour type things, please let me know if there's anything that's particularly garish or painful to the eye. I understand that not everybody thinks that black, purple and green is the greatest colour scheme of all time.

See! I told you I was normal!

2008-01-24T12:24:00.000+10:00

Nothing new to show. Yesterday I was thinking of sitting down and firing off a blog entry on existentialism and death, but I went and had lunch instead and spared the world from exposure to my Very Depressing Views.

Last post I promised visual evidence that I am in fact more than just neck with some beads wrapped around it. What I have discovered in the photo-taking and editing process is that only half of my face appears to be capable of looking good in a picture at any one time. I have included pictures of both the left and right halves of my face to demonstrate that the reason for this phenomenon is not because I am in fact the Phantom of the Opera:

The other halves of these pictures would probably look ok if not for the fact that my other eye is pointing in entirely the opposite direction, giving a sort of 'wild demon possessed' aesthetic.

My only other achievement for the day thus far has been telling the automated Optus voice-recognition telephone customer service recording exactly what I thought of her only to have her tell me "I'm. Sorry. I don't understand. You. Please try. Again." I hope my call was monitored for 'quality control' purposes, I'd hate to think of all that foul language going to waste.

Finally, here's two excellent Etsy shops I've come across this week.
Friday's Child - selling adorable artwork and cards
Spiderbite - makes these fantastic nightmare journals. I want one.

Another one for the vampires

2008-01-22T17:08:00.000+10:00

Have added a couple more things to my Etsy shop. Firstly, this bracelet which I made because (a) I seem to have an overabundance of these turquoise miracle beads and (b) because a lot of people seemed to quite like the necklace I made for my grandmother (but that may have just been a case of people being people and choosing to take a most intense liking to the one item I've posted here that they can't have purely for the reason that they can't have it).

"The Dream"

I also seem to be answering a lot of questions with regards to the miracle beads. Whoever named them (in my opinion anyway) probably got a little carried away with themselves when they proclaimed them 'miracle beads', unless of course they have some sort of secret walking on water, restoring the dead to life or turning water into wine (or better yet turning kids toys into party drugs) -like properties that I am yet to discover. If my grandmother starts curing lepers and exorcising demons, I'll let you know.

Next up, some more disembodied neck pictures.

"Assassinated Beauty"

(this is the backwards picture... my skin came out a funny colour in the picture demonstrating what would probably be the most 'normal' manner in which a person would wear this piece and I don't really feel like spreading the image any further than is strictly necessary, it's in the shop listing, if you want to have a look (but please don't just go to gawk at all the fantastic colours which my skin is decidedly not)).

Which is a pretty dramatic name for a few beads threaded on a bit of fishing line, but over-the-top names for things seem to be all the rage lately... War on Inflation, anybody? (Treasurer: We need a snappy name for our new decreasing inflation policy so people think we're really getting in there and doing something about it. Prime Minister: hmm... why don't we call it The Very Serious Attempt To Decrease Inflation? Treasurer: no, I don't think that's quite catchy enough...)

I'm thinking I might get some more beads and make myself one of these. So far I've come up with four different ways you can wear it - clasp to the front or back as a necklace or a bracelet (yes, I know that technically you can wear anything you want backwards or on the wrong body part, but the charm of this piece is that you can do both of those things and people won't stop to point at the weirdo whose wearing his underpants on his head and has his trousers on backwards).

Greatest fear at this point? Blog getting inundated by thousands of vampiric throat fetishists.
Next post aims to include a picture of me which demonstrates that I am in fact more than just a neck with a freckle on it.

Attack of the disembodied neck!

2008-01-21T11:28:00.000+10:00

First off, I've finally finished the Great Necklace of '08 project, it's since been renamed "If Only..." which is a reference to the Cure song If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, on account of the fact that I made most of this monstrosity while watching the Festival 2005 DVD (which is the kind of thing you put on, and then two and half hours later start thinking 'hmm... this seems to have been going for rather a long time..."). So here's a picture of a disembodied neck to demonstrate the finished product:

And here's the link to the listing on Etsy where there's more pics, as well as the all important option to purchase said necklace should you be taken by the desire to do so

In other news, Letter Writing Day has thus far spawned one reply which led to the arrangement of one interview, as well as laying the groundwork for the development of a later anxiety condition related to the checking of emails. (And to think that one of my proposed projects is on anxiety as well...). And all the postpaks are still here, because I know you're probably all thinking about them.

"Do not listen to a word I say..."

2008-01-19T18:59:00.000+10:00

So now that the Letters have been Written and emailed and the bubble envelopes rounded up and contained all that remains to do is wait in anticipation of (a) return emails and (b) someone buying something.

A great and wonderful thread has emerged on the Etsy forums showcasing some of the most fantastic things I have ever seen. It appears as though there is absolutely no limit to the creativity of the human mind. Some of my newfound favourites from this thread include molecularmuse's shop, which is full of silver jewellery in the shape of molecules, for example there's the endorphin necklace, and the seretonin earrings. Another newfound favourite is this helmet made by megaplow, which can only make one wonder what exactly brings a person to the point where they wake up one morning and think 'today I'm going to make a helmet... yes... a helmet... and, hmm... let me think a moment... ah yes! I have it now... a helmet with real flames that shoot out the top!'

Finally, some pictures of my latest creation (which was a request from a relative and thus is not for sale, but I suspect that I could make another similar one if anybody was interested). I didn't give it a name because my grandmother doesn't need to hear about how her necklace is named after a song about the utter futility of human life as demonstrated by the Holocaust, the evils of capitalism (not to be confused with the evils of Capitalisation), or in fact any other topic which is covered on the cd I was listening to while making it.

That's the full view, and here's a close up:

and finally here's a demonstration of why these beads are called 'miracle beads', because once you shine bright light on them they tend to do this:

this isn't a flash effect (mostly because I didn't use the flash), the beads really do show this kind of three-dimensional ... well let's be succint and call it a 'thingy' shall we? It sort of feels like you're looking into the bead... very hard to describe and definately a lot prettier 'in the flesh' (so to speak) than can be captured by a camera. To be completely clear, ALL of these photos are accurate representations of the colours of the beads, depending of what kind of light they're under.

of Letter Writing Day and the destiny of postpaks

2008-01-17T20:08:00.000+10:00

I have officially declared tomorrow to be Letter Writing Day... ok, so technically it will being email writing, but I don't think email writing day carries the same sense of gravity as Letter Writing Day. Letter Writing Day implies that things like grammar and spelling and punctuation will all be of the Utmost Importance and that documents written on this most important of days will in fact not be signed off with "Cheers! S&F" (honestly, I'm starting to forget what my real first name is) and most importantly letters written on this day WILL NOT INCLUDE SMILIES! Because tomorrow is the day on which I going to write (and, hell, even send if I get around to it) to the potential supervisors of my Honours project, begging them to find me a worthy student to be allowed to demonstrate my complete ignorance of their life-long area of specialisation. Tomorrow is the day on which I will not write sentences beginning with 'because'.

In other news, my desk has been taken over by bubble envelopes, all of whom are eagerly awaiting their chance to fulfill their purpose in life. You can help them to reach their full potential, to find their way on the path to self actualisation, to, in fact, do what it is that bubble bags were put on this earth to do... How you ask, how can I contribute to this worthy cause?! How can I make my pathetic life worth something in the grand scheme of things, how can I make this world a better place?!?! Well let me tell you it is as easy to release these little critters in their intended habitat (i.e. the Postal System) as it is to part with your money (so the difficulty varies between people, obviously) because all you have to do to donate to this ever so worthy cause is to make just one small purchase from my Etsy shop.
What are you waiting for...? a free steak knife offer? Go on, off you go.

(In anybody else glad I don't work in advertising?)
(No, letter writing day... ahem, I mean Letter Writing Day, is not, I repeat NOT going to reflect in any way shape or form any of the sort of thing you're reading here at the moment. I hope)

And finally (because every post needs a photo of something), and I do promise that this is the last time I'm going to torture this poor flower (actually I should go down tomorrow and see if it's still alive... no I'll leave the camera behind, I promise), I've been tweaking with this again and made even better than before...

I fear if I keep going it's going to end up completely unrecognisable as a flower.

Raus raus!

2008-01-16T20:29:00.000+10:00

Latest creation:

Made from 4mm Czech pressed glass beads, size 8 seed beads and size 11 seed beads, with a pewter clasp. I'm calling it 'Revol' and shall be listing it on Etsy tomorrow morning after I take pictures of it which actually demonstrate what it looks like.

And here's something that will not be being listed on account of the fact that I gave them away, pink Swarovski crystal pearl (isn't that just the fanciest way of saying 'fake' you've ever heard?) clip on earrings. The criteria for these (they were a request) was that they (a) had to be pink (and not fluro) and (b) could not have any black in them. Which should explain why they look like none of my other jewellery.

I have a few more pairs in this sort of style in the works, all of whom are patiently awaiting the application of a little more glue. I'm not sure what the market for clip on earrings is like, but if all else fails I'm sure that something that clips on to things is sure to useful for something. Annoying the cat, probably.

Oh yes, and I've just created an indiepublic account. Because, hey, one can never belong to too many sites.

View my page on Indiepublic

Flower V2.0 or 'I wonder what this button does?'

2008-01-14T17:08:00.000+10:00

Here's the same picture of the flower that I posted yesterday, enhanced to about 1000% of its natural glory...

It's amazing what you can achieve when you just fiddle with anything and everything. I'm very much a 'trial and error' type of person who gets a lot out of working out how to do things for myself (although I won't shun a good set of instructions when it comes to assembling furniture... but then 'good set of instructions' and 'flat pack furniture' are rarely congruent concepts in the modern world).

Just established - my deviant art profile at spherikus.deviantart.com Is jewellery really art? My answer is 'probably not', but there seem to be a lot of people out there who think differently. Plus, I like deviant art, it's a great site, full of talented people.

Ta-dah!

2008-01-13T21:03:00.000+10:00

For everybody who wants to know what I've been doing the last few days with 8 metres of fishing line and all those little black beads that people have been finding in all sorts of strange places around the house... here is a glimpse of The Great Necklace of '08 ...

Constructed mostly to the sounds of The Cure, its definitely got its gothic credentials. Speaking of The Cure...

This is them at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre in August last year, blurry grainy photography courtesy of yours truly. Best concert I've ever been to. More photos on my Flickr, if you're interested, link in the sidebar, they're on the last page.

And this is a flower. Because there's only so many photos of beads on string and wire one can take before it starts getting boring.

Warning! Construction under way!

2008-01-11T22:22:00.000+10:00

Well, the new bead supplies arrived this morning, and work on The Great Necklace of '08 has begun. There'd be a work in progress picture here, but Blogger is doing a whole range of interesting and exciting things at the moment... none of which include uploading my picture. So you'll just have imagine something that looks like complete and utter chaos. Think about 8-10 metres of fishing line, just for starters.

Tomorrow I'm going to Lifeline Bookfest. I've heard it claimed somewhere that it's the biggest secondhand book sale in the world. I don't know if that's true, but it is pretty damn huge. It's on at the Brisbane Convention Centre until the 19th of January, books are very cheap and it all goes to a good cause.

Of magpies and fandom...

2008-01-10T22:09:00.000+10:00

Well, horrible procrastinator that I am, I didn't make a necklace today like I said I would yesterday. But I thought about it. A bit. That's got to count for something. There's a good chance that something more might have happened if my letterbox had've been stuffed full of black seed beads this morning, but it turns out that I scared those three magpies off the gate for no good reason as the letterbox was as empty as Julia Gillard's fruitbowl.

Here's a couple of other etsy sellers that I'm quite a fan of (they didn't even have to ask to be mentioned here... and they may never even know about it...), because I'm not egocentric enough to just write about myself all the time.
soundslikerain - takes beautiful pictures of flowers and other natural landscapey type stuff. This is a personal favourite. And this also, because it's hard to pick just one!
Something else extremely awesome which I've come across is this dragon, by acorngirl, which of course I'll never actually be able to afford (nor in fact, have much of a clue what I'd actually DO with something like that), but it is absolutely wonderful anyway.
Finally, this bracelet by CraeVita is something I would absolutely love to know how to make, plus the fact that I'm finding opalite extremely mesmerising at the moment also adds to its appeal.

And finally, something which I listed today (yes, it's earrings, I seem to have amassed a HUGE stockpile all of a sudden)

and because while that's a really great looking picture, it really doesn't give you much idea of what they look like, here's the aerial view:

They're called "Lucretia", which is hideously gothic sounding and would probably indicate that I've been listening to too much Sisters of Mercy again.

Something blue...

2008-01-09T22:01:00.000+10:00

Have been industriously building new earrings yesterday and today. Can't show you most of them given that it rained today (miserable bloody weather... where the hell is summer, anyway?!). Managed to photograph these, they're called 'The Purest Blue':

They're really nothing like that colour really, they're more of a deeper, darker, cobalt blue sort of colour, but it proved almost impossible to get a picture of them that actually gave that away. In desperation I stuck them under the scanner, the results of that can be seen in the listing for them in my Etsy shop. It's the correct colour, yes, but it does look a bit like a dog's breakfast... well, if dog's ate blue beads...
In case you couldn't tell from the earrings, I've developed a new found enthusiasm for Czech glass druk beads. I bought some ages ago but never knew what they were called to try to buy them again, then I stumbled across some on Etsy, and have ever since been scheming up things to do with them... as soon as I buy some more... which will occur when I get some more money in my Paypal account... which will occur when someone buys something else from my Etsy shop.
I've also decided that enough is enough - no more earring construction for at least a week, otherwise I'm going to have to retitle my shop to be something about 'original handcrafted beaded earrings' rather than jewellery to avoid having false and misleading advertising. Tomorrow I'm going to try to make a necklace of some sort. This isn't something I've really ever done before because I've never felt the urge to have a new necklace... but that doesn't mean somebody ELSE out there might not want one... oi! here that somebody else?! You want a necklace!

Out and About in Brisbane

2008-01-07T18:24:00.000+10:00

Saw 'I Am Legend' this morning. The key to enjoying this movie is clearly to attempt to leave any critical thinking skills you may possess at the door. Also, although the marketing has made absolutely no mention of it whatsoever, this is, in fact, a zombie movie. Super powerful blood lusting zombies.

Next up we popped over to the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art, where we decided that $16 a piece to look at pictures of tins of soup was a bit exxy and instead decided to head over to the Brisbane Art Gallery and the Museum. Couldn't help but feel that all the stuffed animals would be a bit more exciting if they were alive and moving. Still no stuffed human exhibit, maybe next year. These, however, were really quite awesome looking:

there's just something cute/humorous about skeletons.

then, finally, we have an excellent example of why punctuation is important

Yay! I sold something!

2008-01-06T22:25:00.001+10:00

First Etsy sale goes to visionhandbags, who tonight bought these:

Strangely enough it turns out that by advertising on a worldwide website, my first sale should go to someone who lives only about an hour away from me. That's the universe for you.

How-To: Right Angle Bead Weave

2008-01-04T13:45:00.000+10:00

This tutorial is for everybody who has said "oh my God, where did you get THAT?!", usually followed by "surely not!" when I tell them that I made it after seeing me wearing this:

The technique is called 'Right Angle Weave' by a beading book I've got, their method is completely different to mine, which I came up with on my own (although I don't claim that I'm the only person whose ever done it this way. That would be pretentious).

Materials:

Size 8 seed beads - the more homogenously sized beads the better, cheaper seed beads tend to be all different sizes and using uneven beads leads to uneven weaving.

Fishing line - the kind you use to catch fish, can also use thread, but fishing line has a number of advantages. First, you won't need a needle, and second, it makes the beadwork more rigid so it looks much neater. Fishing line is also very cheap. Try to use the lightest line you can get, I'm using Jarvis Walker 6lb, which is 0.25mm in diameter.

Scissors

Method

Cut your length of fishing line. What you're making will determine how much you need. It is easier to work with a shorter piece, and extra bits can always be added by threading them into the existing beadwork a bit before threading new beads on them. That said, I made the first bracelet above (or one like it, can't remember if it was that exact one) with just one piece of very very long line.
Thread three beads onto the fishing line and position them so they're in the middle. Best done by folding the piece of line in half. We will be threading beads on both ends of the line
Take a fourth bead. Thread both ends through this bead from opposite sides, refer to picture to see what I mean.

Pull it tight. This is the first pattern.

Add more beads putting one on each each end of the thread and then threading through the middle the same way done in picture 1. Do this until you are one pattern short of your desired length. Make sure you keep everything nice and tight.

Now, to turn around and start the next row, first thread three beads onto one end of fishing line. Doesn't really matter which end at this point. (NOTE: for the first row only does this step require three beads, for all other rows thread only two beads in this step)

Next take the other end of fishing line (the one you didn't just thread 3 beads onto) and pass it through the third bead in the opposite direction to the other piece (same as in picture 1) (Picture 5 isn't so great, if you're lost at the moment, read ahead and it will become clearer)

Pull tight. You should end up with your threads hanging out to the side of the current row rather than out the top. You've now finished the first row.

Now you're ready to start the second row. Thread three beads onto the end of thread which is pointing up (that's the thread closest to the top of the picture in Picture 6).

Now thread the other end of thread through the 3rd bead in the opposite direction (as per Picture one) and pull tight.

Now you should have a square pattern which sits alongside row one. The next step is to take the end of fishing line which sits closest to row one and thread it through the bead outer bead in row one. In Picture 8 above, this is the thread that comes down past the '8' and the bead you want to thread it through is the second one down in the third column of the first row of beads. You should thread towards the bottom of the picture. This is demonstrated in Picture 9. In Picture 9, the thread which exits to the lefthand side of the picture is the one which comes back in the top, if you know what I mean. Pull through and pull tight.

Add more beads. Each additional pattern now only requires the addition of two beads, as one bead from row 1 will form one side of each pattern. Make additional patterns by adding two beads to the end of fishing line on the outside edge (right hand side in the pictures). Ensure that the inside end (the one closest to row 1) of fishing line has been threaded through the appropriate bead on row 1, then pass the end through the second bead on the other end in the opposite direction (as per Picture 1)

Keep going!

If you're still not clear on exactly what's going on here, here's a diagram showing where all the bits of thread are meant to go...

So what was it, in the end?

New Things

2008-01-02T13:53:00.000+10:00

"Jupiter Crash" - New bracelet made from black glass speckled beads. Sort of makes me think of a technicolour meteor. Crashing into the Earth and destroying all life. Cheery thoughts.

This item is in my Etsy Shop, so why not pay it a visit?

And this is the new and improved version of the pink and green earrings which have thus far proved to be the most popular item in my etsy store. I personally think my other stuff is heaps better, but the masses have spoken, so here they are:

And here's a link to them in my Etsy Shop

First post

2008-01-01T16:59:00.000+10:00

Greetings and welcome to my new blog. Soon (i.e. if and when I get around to it) numerous very and extremely exciting things will be appearing here. For the moment, however, you will just have to content yourself with checking out my shop on Etsy where I sell my handmade jewellery. An example of what you may find there looks a bit like this: