Now I've Discovered Whittling

I mean, if one of my ladies is weaving baskets out of grass, and another is building a fence out of sticks with her bare hands while at the same time canning all of her own food, what am I offering to this Future Utopian Compound?? Not much, that's for sure.

I love knives, and my yard is full of sticks because we are super shitty at lawn maintenance. So I decided that I was going to whittle!! I did some poking around and was pleasantly surprised to discover how many whittling enthusiasts there are swapping info online. I figured they would be too busy whittlin' and choppin' and growin' beards to learn about the innerwebs. Luckily for me, they were not.

The Practical Old Dude Consensus on whittlin' knives led me to Opinel. I got this beauty for $12.49:

But they offer personalized engraving for 5 bucks!

SQUEEEEE!! Elsewhere I acquired a couple of Practical Old Dude whittling books, a sharpening stone and oil, a strop, and bless the Youtube denizens for instructional sharpening videos. My Opinel sharpened and ready, I dove right in.

Perfection. Time to gloat.

After mastering the spreader, I moved on to Santa pencils. I don't have any red pencils, so mine are more just dudes with long beards.

Hands of a seasoned lumberjack.

Next up was the "Five Minute Owl" that in my expert hands took a mere two hours to complete:

I painted him black and then dry brushed red on top of that. Now it is impossible to tell the difference between my Two Hour Owl and an ancient artifact. Absolutely stunning.

I now feel that I may proudly hold my head up at the Future Utopian Compound. But first I have to whittle a pile of wizard pencils for the demanding husband. A whittler's work is never done...

"I'm Your Density"

What's my login again? Five months? Is that an improvement? At least xmas is over, but I'll get to that later.

Yesterday I had one of my incapacitating headaches. Today I am riding out the last of the heavy meds. I'm kind of numb, kind of jittery, and maintenance keeps setting the fire alarm off so I'm kind of homicidal. It's gonna be a long day. But this post is about a major life step, so Ima sack up and keep typing.

Last November I attended a week of artist workshops in Santa Fe called ArtFusion. One of these workshops was on encaustics, taught by Angel Wynn.

The first time I saw an encaustic wax painting I didn't know what the technique was called, but I knew I was going to do it. But I held off because it's an expensive hobby, sort of maybe toxic (at this point I'm sure I have E6000 and Sparkle Mod-Podge Cancer, so what's one more?), and also it seemed really difficult. So I jumped at the chance to take this workshop and learn what encaustics are all about. It didn't hurt that I love the shit out of New Mexico, bonus, so off I went.

The day of the workshop we all headed to the Encaustic Art Institute to meet Angel Wynn. We arrived before she did, so we had time to walk around and look at her art, which is amazing.

When Angel arrived, we found out that not only is she talented, but also beautiful and a snappy dresser:

That giant grin is because she gets to live in Santa Fe, and it puts me one day closer to buying an Airstream and burning down my house. I'M COMING FOR YOU, NEW MEXICO.

Speaking of fire, guess what?

Ohhhh yeahhhh. I didn't even know that part. GUESS WHO LOVES TORCHES? (Also, get you some of that Gloves in a Bottle because it is rad. When your days are as water-heavy as mine are, you need all the help you can get. My hands should be splitting open right now. Bless you Gloves in a Bottle, and thanks Angel for the recommendation.)

Over the course of the day we slung wax all over the Institute and ourselves and each other, learned about Angel's setup, supply houses, do's and don'ts, and got some frank talk regarding selling your art. We each left with four completed encaustic paintings, but two are a future birthday gift for the BFF so right now I can only show these:

They came out okay, right? I was encouraged by this. So as soon as my plane touched down at Hartsfield, I pulled out the Amex and bit the bullet. It was finally time to meet my destiny.

Here's what I've cooked up at home, and I'll try to list them in order:

I'm having a blast. And I have been so busy cranking these out that I have not bothered to take a photo of my setup. I will do that the next time I fire it up. Which will be soon.

Thank you Angel Wynn, thank you New Mexico, thank you Amex. The prophecy has been fulfilled.

More Budget-Friendly Sharts

One more exciting piece has just been added to the Exclusive Budget Collection: "Second Question"

And who likes metal? I do! I do! Need some hooks?

Wait, that's not metal enough!

AAAaaahhhh... that's better. These metal hooks are only five dollars each -- what did you say??? I said FIVE DOLLARS EACH. Hurry up or I'm keeping them for myself.

drcraftenstein.com

GO. NOW.

Shartwork Update

I know, two posts in one day. Sorry. But I've managed to wrestle Flickr into submission and I'm gonna keep pounding it as long as I can.

I bring you EXCITING NEWS: Dr. Craftenstein is proud to announce the launch of our new Exclusive Budget Collection! It's so NEW and so EXCLUSIVE that there are only two pieces in the shop right now!

Bummer

and L'il Squirt

These Exclusive Budget Collection pieces bring you all the shartyness you've come to expect from the other masterpieces, at the Exclusive Budget price of only $29.99! Other views and close-ups of these pieces can be found at drcraftenstein.com

But worry not: if you can't stand those, check back soon because there are several others in the pipeline. We'll have plenty more in time for Xmas!! SQUEEE!!!

And now I'm off to Dragon*Con. See you on the other side!

Embroidered Horror

Lest you think I now spend all my time juicing (not true -- half my time is at the farmer's market buying more carrots), I have managed to squeeze in a few birthday gifts. One I can't show because it hasn't been delivered yet, but this one was finally delivered, I think only a month or two late!

BEHOLD NYARLATHOTEP OOPS I MEAN AVERT YOUR EYES

Of course out of all the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones my buddy has to pick the one that's "faceless and indescribable." Thanks, Champ! Luckily google image search coughed up some ideas, so I chose the most evil looking one and transferred him to the fabric. Unfortunately the image stopped around mid-calf and I had to BS the feet, which I did by sort of taking a consensus of the other representative feet in the search. They seemed to agree that giant claws were the way to go, and who am I to argue? Finally I added the homespun border around the edge because I thought it just looked naked.

Thank you to all the internet nerds that made this gift possible. Without you, I am nothing. XOXO

Now I've Discovered Juicing

Because I didn't have enough shit to do already.

Yeah so I've been watching a lot of netflix documentary/expose type deals lately, such as "Fed Up" which I highly recommend, and "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead" along with the sequel. And then I bought this:

And this:

And now my kitchen looks like this:

basically all the time. I renamed that one Luminol Juice, as any fan of Forensic Files will be familiar with "...and the Luminol revealed a GRISLY SCENE." Did you hear his voice in your head just then? I did!

That's a really good recipe book. The author is literally a Norwegian model, and I was all "YES PLEASE TELL ME MORE ABOUT HOW JUICING CAN MAKE ME A 6 FOOT TALL GODDESS" which I'm sure will happen over time. But the recipes are easy to understand, easy to adapt (moooore jalapeno) and delicious.

We still had mason jars left over from candle making, so I absorbed them into my kitchen for juice storage. I spray painted the lids with black primer and chalkboard paint so that I can label them over and over again. But sometimes the full name won't fit on the lid using chalk, so I made some new names.

"'Beet' the Afternoon Slump" became "Slumpy." With "All Greens," obviously there was no way to cram that second L on the lid, so that's "Al Green" juice now. And I can almost still read "Grapefruit & Greens," so that one was okay.

The left juice was called "Winter Harvest" or something, so the decision there was obvious. The middle one was called "Seeds of Change," so that became a Scorpions tribute juice. I gave up on "Greenest..." whatever that says, but "Sunny Citrus Beets" fit okay. (Look at the other food trying to stay relevant. "Pick me, pick me!" That's so cute.) Today's juices:

There's no way I'm writing "Green Kiss" on a jar and bringing it to work. The rust colored juice was a recipe I found online somewhere called "Thyroid Friendly Tomato Juice" or something. (It also needed jalapeno.)

Some of the recipes require the juicer, and some use the blender. I go back and forth between both. But all of this was just too much for our poor old blender.

That dinosaur had to be put out to pasture. RIP little buddy!

BEHOLD: THE NINJA

GO NINJA GO NINJA GO! GO NINJA GO NINJA GO!

This thing is a beast! And the delightful skidmark down the side of the pitcher is raw honey, in case you were wondering. Raw honey goes in the breakfast shake and sometimes into my mouth but I try to keep that to a minimum because of the gut I'm still lugging around which will no longer be a problem once I am six feet tall.

THE JUICE IS LOOSE.

Now I've Discovered Resin Pouring AKA R.I.P. My Bank Account

The truth is I've known about resin pouring for a while. And I've been avoiding it like the plague because I'm pretty sure resin pouring is a chasm I am never going to be able to climb out of, and plus, it's a relatively pricey chasm. For years I've been the live-action character slo-mo running from cartoon Resin Demons as they swoop down on me trying to steal my soul. I put up a really good fight...

...Which ended when I signed up for classes offered at a craft store which shall remain nameless in order to protect the innocent. (And myself.) Said classes were allegedly for Metal Stamping and Wire Wrapping. However it quickly became apparent that this was a clownboat production: nothing was as it seemed, connections to reality were tenuous at best, and the whole event was fluid and ever-changing. Luckily I had dressed for just such an occasion:

It ended up that I was the only attendee for this particular set of classes (and therefore alone in my cat leggings, THANKS BECCA). I showed the instructor the tools that I had brought with me and some examples of what I have done in the past. She asked, "So you've done all of this already. Why on Earth are you in this class?" I pointed to a couple things on the syllabus, and she cleared up those topics in one sentence. Then she announced, "Want to pour resin??"

Through a swirling cloud of cartoon Resin Demons I glimpsed the face of the sweet elderly woman across the table from me, stringing beads onto a bracelet for her granddaughter. Her presence is the only thing that prevented me from shouting "FUCK YES I WANT TO POUR RESIN." TIE ME OFF AND HAND ME THE NEEDLE. I AM READY.

The instructor scampered out into the store to grab a resin kit and I knew my fate was sealed. I am doomed, friends. It's all over for me! Save yourselves!

The kit contains a small mold with three sections. Luckily I had brought along my trusty sack of coyote teeth (thanks again, ebay hillbillies!) which I used in two of the molds. They were not set by the time I got home, so I was able to find some things to fill the last mold. Here's what I ended up with:

(Please ignore the snap on my notebook that totally looks like a nipple.) The kit came with a really nifty teeny drill bit that cuts right into the resin, allowing me to wire on a bale, and also the word ART.

Gee, I wish I could tell you the exact resin kit I purchased, but Clownboat Craft Store claims they do not carry it. Despite the fact that I bought it from them. Ahoy!! [Edit: I found the packaging. It's Clownboat Craft Store's personal store brand. So....yeah.]

Friends, I have long fed my desire to pour resin by suspending things in soap. I have no more need for that crutch as I have already purchased more resin and more molds...and now watch helplessly as the cartoon Resin Demons lower me into their boiling cauldron. It is done. Amen.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN.