Madness! I have Madness!

My brains are hurting, and my blog has suffered for it. I'm sorry, blog!
But the blogmind is having its revenge through One World One Heart. Have you heard of it? If not, then I am sorry, for lo, I am passing the curse on to you.

OWOH is a massive, massive blog giveaway carnival. I mean 911 blogs massive.

It wasn't that big when I started following it. I saw it linked from some friend-blogs, and thought, oh fun, a giveaway trail! New blogs to read! Shinies to win!

And then the voice at the back of my head, the stupid one, the one that I think must have been a competitve athlete in another game session (a MALE competitive athlete) said: Hey, let's go to every blog on the list!

Have I mentioned lately I have dialup?

Did I point out that there over 900 blogs in this caravan?

Whimper.

But I'm not giving up! I may pass out and forget when I am on a regular basis, but I never give up! I just break down, it's different. And more annoying. Giving up would make more sense. But I'm halfway through, so hopefully I can quit being stubborn soon, and get back to being productive.

Anyway!
I'm posting stuff up on my Etsy site, at least--like for instance the unfinished version of this Cephalady:



to explain why I love the Precious aka my Cintiq 12WX.

See that picture? It's a neat idea, on sketch paper. With cruddy inking. It's the sort of picture that says "look, I had a neat idea!". And with most of my ideas, that's as far as I would ever get, because transferring them to a real media meant either tracing with carbon (at which I am fail) or copying, cleaning up the concept art by hand, laying down a clear medium on a good work surface, and then painting it, and hoping it all came out ok. Just prepping took hours, and I have very few ideas that are THAT good.

But now? Scan, retrace, color, all in one go. Takes..well, embarassingly less time. And there it is, all ready to print and listed up! Go look and see how cool it is now!

Check back later this week, when I explain how to wear a corset! Or something. Now, back to the OWOH...

Blogger o' the month: Roseworks!

Too often, I miss writing up the featured Etsy Blogger. This is a shame, but it generally stems from my not having the slightest idea what to say about them. Many blogs are just beyond my poor frail dial-up capacity to follow regularly, and many crafts are just beyond my comprehension, and so I end up with posts like "Yay, soaps good!" This does no one any favors.

But this month? This month is Roseworks. Roseworks makes jewelry. Sparkly, sparkly jewelry:






Did you catch those last two?
Yes, that's the Heroes symbol, and Link, video game icon of the dawning of the geek age.

Better yet, those first two very pretty in no way geeky necklaces? Are in honor of Firefly, the Best D--- Show to ever get destroyed by Fox network execs. That is some heavy competition, believe you me.

That's right, Roseworks is a geek! Geeeeek! She reads books with mermaids on the cover and watches cancelled science fiction shows and openly admits it!
Since I do these things too, this is obviously the sign of a great, if occasionally melty, mind.

But she does me one better by turning her geekery into shinies. I have not yet found a way to do this. So I stalk her blog, and wait for inspiration. Roseworks is a chatty beast, perhaps less verbose than me on any specific day, but also more reliable. Get some happy geeky bloggage here:
http://ajedismusings.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-journey-to-dark-side.html

And more Etsy-specific bloggery over hyar:
http://www.roseworksjewelry.blogspot.com/

Go read!

New Year's Bloggy Resolution Time

*sidles back in, catlike, hoping no one has noticed the absence*

I like New Year resolutions. They’re so innocent and hopeful, trotting out there into the wide world all rosy cheeked and soft skinned and ---oh, NO! Look out, resolutions! Real Life has a Gatling that shoots chainsaws! Nooooooo!

Still, it’s early enough in the year that some of my resolutions have not been culled by rapacious reality. Especially since this year, I’m resolving to keep things realistic. All I want for my blog is a couple of posts a week-- that’s all! Well, and I’d like to get a few widgets going. I look at other blogs, they have all these shiny friendly links, and I am bereft. The problem here isn’t so much my own productivity as--
--wait--
*insert modem noise here*
My connection. I look with envy at people who blithely embed images and video; even my old daily sketches aren’t currently practical for me, though I don’t intend to let them disappear entirely.

But my Etsy shop is the focus of my real work this year. If I have my way--and I often don’t-- I’ll be listing five NEW items every week, and relisting if I can’t do that. Will this help at all, or just give me an annoying number of items to edit for every sale? I do not know. I admit to curiosity-- I’ve never tried advertising! Or really working on the shop! What will happen? I’m all a-tingle with anticipation!

I also admit that this is a selfish and ill-motivated resolution. Right now, despite my low sales and all, I have no way of knowing how well I could actually be doing with the shop; a sale a month seems pretty awesome for how much work I haven’t put into it. I intend to earn the right to say “I’m not a loser! I tried! I’m a FAILURE!”*

And hey, should I prove unable to keep my resolutions right away, there's always lunar new year next month...

*Sure, wild success is also an option, but with much less entertainment potential.

Cornhusk Dolly

Yeah, I'm sort of on a kick here. This cornhusk dolly is very much on my tree. I picked her up at the Gonzales pioneer village one year, where they have popcorn over a fire and tell stories of pioneer Christmases and make the best ginger cookies I've ever eaten.



The Dolly didn't stop spinning to talk to the Pony. She wasn't rude, she just didn't stop spinning, her cornhusk skirts catching the slightest breezes that came up from the base of the tree.

"I don't know what a Pony is", she said, twirling, "or I've forgotten. But you have a very nice voice."

The Pony thought she was being polite, and said so. She laughed.
"I'm too dizzy to be polite! But you're dizzy too, or you wouldn't say silly things."

Golden Impossible

I hate missing a day! But I could not get Blogger to cooperate yesterday before Christmasness took me away from the computer. Alack.

Anyway!

I seem to have a storybook happening. I'm getting all these scenes, but not in order.

The Unicorn is a real ornament on my tree, by the way. But it has never said anything in my hearing, even after a whooooole lot of eggnog.



"Of course I cannot be real all the time," said the Unicorn "but this is a Christmas tree, and things are different here."

The rocking horse was a rocking horse anywhere, even if it was more of a Pony, and thought it must be very fine to be real only sometimes.

Epic Battles

I was just going to draw one of the ornaments on my tree. But I do not like still life, apparently on a molecular level, because this happened:



The mighty wooden soldier does battle with the ancient dragon-fly for the life of the Christmas Tree! Huzzah!

My favorite thing about this picture is the way the background turned out. I wanted to get some of the speckled effect that actual Christmas ornaments get from the lights and branches and all, and it was just luck that the background showed through pretty much along those lines.

Also, I love the heck out of Christmas. Expect blather along those lines for at least the next 12 days.

Tiger Stealing

Sorry to fall off the face of the world, folks-- I work at a college testing center, and the last two weeks of the semester meant finals, which means no energy for Carapace outside of work. But I survived! And now I'm free! So expect sketchery to return for the rest of the month. Like so!



This tiger is blatantly taken from a photo in National Geographic. This sort of photo inspiration always makes me uneasy, because I don't want to be accused of image theft. On the the other hand, the photo-tiger was rather less....swirly. So I don't know, maybe I've changed it enough?

Another thing about this tiger, and the issue with a lot of my pictures, is that it is not anywhere near as cool as it could be. If I really had any artistic talent, I'd make it out of cut paper. Wouldn't it look awesome in purple and orange paper? Or cast iron, or anything with a bit of dimension? Yes it would. Heck, even a good textured acrylic painting would be better than this. At least that last one might be in my capacity. I don't know when it'll get done, because paintings take a looooong time. But sad experience has taught me it's better to get the idea down and save it for later than wait until I can do things right and lose the whole concept. So, tiger!

I have gallons of sketches- and chattery -- saved up from the last couple of weeks, too, so start coming back now, y'hear? Hope everyone else is having a great month!