Three Project Pile-Up

I finally got some shots of Gaby's Xmas present:

Ain't he a little minx?

Here's an old one I failed to take a picture of, before and after:

Seriously, these photos are terrible. Our house is so fucking dark, like a cave, which is how we like it usually. But it sure sucks for taking photos. Anyhoo, there's a pair of demons in the Necronomicon that I named them after and I can't remember right now who they are. Can you tell I've had like 12 hours of sleep this week? I just really want to put these up before I forget again. And there's still one more I can't post because it hasn't been delivered yet. It's March, so the Xmas present delivery is right on schedule.

This Xmas my boss gave us our gifts in blank tins that he says he got at the Container Store. I've been holding onto mine while trying to decide how to mutilate it. Pretty much the only choice for a tin is spraypaint, so I decided to make a stencil. Who's the world's greatest philosopher/mathematician/social critic, living or dead? That's right, Bertrand Russell. So I Google-imaged my favorite shot of him:

and then had my husband put it in Photoshop and blow out all the contrast. I traced it onto the clear shelf paper I use for etching, affixed it to the lid, cut it out with an X-Acto, and then did about three coats each of black spraypaint and clear varnish. I peeled off the mask and lookie what we got:

I was pretty pleased with how that turned out, so I opened up my most excellent Bertrand Russell Quote App and started searching. I quickly found one that encapsulates my entire world theory (he's good like that), sketched it out on the shelf paper with my handy template, slapped it on, cut it out, and spray painted it. This didn't work as well and a good bit of the painted letters peeled off. Also there are lines where the paint leaked under the blue painting tape I used as a mask between words. In a bid to salvage the quote, I repaired some of the letters with sharpie. "I'm a genius!" I thought to myself. "This will work perfectly!!" Unfortunately, as soon as the spray varnish hit the sharpie, it ran like a bitch and made a huge mess. It was too late to turn back, so I just let it dry and did two more coats of varnish. Here it is:

The quote reads, "The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible." Take a gander at the "u" in "Russell." Yep, that's what you get when you hit sharpie with spray varnish. As you can tell from the direction of the smear, I had the tin upside down on a stick so I could spray the whole thing at once and not have to turn it. All in all I figure it could have been worse.

And I think, were Mr. Russell alive today, this tribute would mean more to him than his Nobel Prize in Literature. In fact, I'm positive.