Positively Charming Things

http://www.positivelycharming.com/eeblog/ I am toying with another blog platform. It is actually called a "CMS" - "content management system", but in a nutshell, that is what all blog platforms are. Some are just more robust and can do more than others. Anyway, I used this one, called Expression Engine, as my main blogging platform for several years at another domain, but stopped shortly after that domain got hacked (via another even older and neglected blog platform - Movable Type), because I…

It seems I have crafting ADD - there are so many things I want to work on or try, that I work for so long on something, lose focus, and move on to something else. I've moved from polymer clay, to making hairbows, to picking up some new watercolor paper blocks and even some nice tubes of artist paints so that I can revisit painting with watercolors, all in the last two months.  I blame the latest on receiving my new how-to book in the Dreamscapes series, Myth and Magic: Every time I look at her…

Last week after reading how artificial sweeteners like Splenda and Aspartame could potentially goof around with one's triglyceride and blood sugar levels, I decided to give up diet sodas. The week before, my gynecologist ordered cholesterol and other similar blood tests for me as I'd never had them done before, and while everything else was within normal ranges, my triglycerides were slightly elevated at 185.   All I'd had to drink that morning - because I did not know I was going to even have…

So today was "bring your child to work day" at work, and I brought my four year old daughter with me. We had fun, and she got to play with one of her friends that she met at a coworker's daughter's birthday party. Anyway, after the morning's events, everyone went to a pizza place down the street that has lots of games and stuff. I ordered our food and stood in line to get our drink cups filled. When it was my turn, I set my car keys down on the metal countertop. I filled my daughter's cup first,…

I have to give huge kudos to a handful of my coworkers.  When we started our project I think we had well over 2300 tasks to tackle.  As of when I logged out of my work computer this evening, there were less than 1000 tasks left. I will be glad when this is over, I've had ideas brewing in my head for things to work on, and I signed up for a membership at beadsandbeading.com so that I can learn a few techniques with polymer clay that I don't know how to do yet, and I'd really like to get started…

Relatively speaking. Kind of. This pertains to my full time day job. Short story, we're salaried. As thus, if our company wanted to make us work 16 hour days with no compensation other than our regular pay and a clap on the back, they could. The edict is to do "this task" by "this date". On paper, it is probably doable, IF everyone does a little every day, including weekends (so, I'm talking maybe 1-3 hrs a day, seven days a week, five weeks straight - on our own personal time). And most likely…

So I baked the Santa, Snowmen and Angel beads I made over the past week, yesterday. Here they are all together: I forgot to put halos on the angels, and I'm debating whether to add them since their flesh color already seems to have darkened just from the 30 minutes they spent in the oven already, compared to the Santas where I used the same type and color of clay. I'm a little disappointed with the green Pardo that I used to make the holly leaves on the Snowmen's hats, it turned out very dark.…

I tend to flit back and forth between projects.  So I started painting the picture of my daughter, got as far as getting a little of the undertones of her skin in place, and then set it aside in favor of working with my polymer clays again. Hobby Lobby is opening stores in town, and I came across one very near my day job, so I went to check them out one day at lunch, 40% off coupon in hand.  I walked out with a few packages of this new polymer clay made with beeswax, Pardo - in red (ruby),…

Based on one of my previous posts where I said I was going to start back into drawing and watercolors.. well, here is my first project: [caption id="attachment_75" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="my daughter"][/caption] On an artists' forum I recently joined, it was suggested in a class that was done back in 2006, to try overlaying a the reference photograph and the sketch to get an idea of where any tweaks or fixes may be needed.  I did that and there are a few spots that I will need to…

Just a test post more or less.