Positively Charming Things

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…

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),…

I worked on my initial sketch of my daughter tonight, and after two tries and then some clean up to lighten the pencil marks for painting, here it is: [caption id="attachment_79" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Final sketch of my daughter"][/caption] I can hardly wait to start painting it, though I may not get to that until tomorrow night after a family outing, due to the late time tonight. 😊  Then again I may try starting with some skin tone mixing on scrap paper to get an…

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…

Sorry folks, I hadn't realized that my comments were set to close after 14 days. I opened it up so there is not currently a limit. I may set it again later though but for something like maybe 90 days instead.

I was at the craft store the other day during my lunch break, just looking around mostly to see if there was anything I could use my 40% off coupon on. I came across a book from my favorite watercolor artist, Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.  (Also, see her blog at this address). I haven't done watercolor in a very long time, probably not in earnest since high school.  There's a story behind that, but for another day.  Anyway, occassionally I'll check out her site, and something deep down will stir and…

Here are two pins that I'll be putting in the mail on Tuesday for my grandmother's 80th birthday, which was in August.  Yep, quite late, for various reasons. [singlepic id=1 w=320 h=240 mode=watermark float=center] [singlepic id=2 w=320 h=240 mode=watermark float=center] I hope she likes them.

I figured I'd reorganize the blog space a bit, I moved one of the columns over to the left side, and then added a "handmade holiday" badge over on the right.  I would like to try to buy handmade stuff again this year, as I tried to do two years ago.  Not quite sure what I'll find to buy for people yet.  I guess I better get to looking!

I joined Plurk not too long ago, and so far it's great.  Just the other day, I discovered a place where you can find a Plurk profile template, click a button, and it installs the code to your profiel for you. The only problem is, on a few of them, the color of the "respond" text is darn near invisible, and makes it nearly impossible to read what you're typing when you reply to someone's Plurk. I figured out, at least in the template that I have, where to make the change to darken the text. My…