jeliza

It’s a half hour past dawn and I haven’t slept yet even though I’ve been in bed since 10. My brain is a yappy chihuahua on uppers for no apparent reason. It isn’t even anxiety, it just won’t stop chattering.


The soft light and birdsong are lovely, though.

An astonishing number of things have already gone wrong this morning, and I desperately want to curl up in bed and drink gin and eat brownies and nap.

And grapefruit. I want to eat ALL the grapefruit. Because they put me back on the med you aren't supposed to combine with grapefruit.

Instead I will drink tea and do dishes and send invoices and photograph products. 

When I pulled from stock to put together my Norwescon art show items, I also pulled a bunch to go online, because I am just so much more pissed at Etsy right now that I really want to populate my artfire shop. Perhaps spite will accomplish what planning has not been sufficiently motivating for.
 

I got imminently due album #2 90% done today and then the client stuck 5 more images into the source folder, but without a note as to what she wants done with them. Gah. I really, really, want all my album designs out the door by Friday morning, so they aren't on my mind when I go into art mode. 

I know I also did other things today, but other than driving O to and from Japanese I can't remember what they were. Bookkeeping? That there is still too much to do, and not enough brain to do it with.

Meetings with the school have been set up about getting O better set up with , so that's moving forward yay.

A set of weight "bars" that are between 1 and 5 pounds have arrived , which means I can properly start the kids on some strength training they both desperately need. Even unloaded, overhead pressing my (not full-size) barbell turned out to be just not something they can safely do yet, and it's too heavy to be useful, even if technically possible, for starting the other major lifts.

I have a sketchbook full of new statement piece designs but no time/place to even crank out more of the basics at the moment, though I have plenty enough stock that no one else could look at my table and think there are gaps. I am still hopeful I will have some done in time for GeekCraftExpo, though. Definitely I should have at least one spectacular thing to send to Arisia, in the worst case

This weekend is the first of my 5 holiday shows, with 4 being in a row and then there is one "off" weekend before the last:

• November 11: Artisans Harvest Fair, Snohomish (Thomas Family Farm)
• November 18: Pancakes & Booze, Seattle (El Corazon)
• November 24-35: GeekCraftExpo, Seattle (Magnuson Park Hanger 30)
• December 2: Cascade K-8 Winterfest, Shoreline (which includes a Scholastic Book Fair!)
  (pause for breath)
• December 16-17: Punk Rock Flea Market, Seattle

I'm probably not, given especially the last minute addition of PRFM, going to be getting stuff listed on artfire/etsy, so if you want to ask about what I have, just e-mail me. I have pulled all the earrings that are nickel-free alloys off the table now that I have enough stainless steel ones made, so they will go up online for sale in some form... sooner than the rest? Perhaps another instagram sale...

Lulu is starting to show her age a lot more; jumping up on/down from the bed has become a much more careful, multi-step process, and we are not convinced she still actually has much in the way of hearing. She is 18, so this isn't unexpected, but is also sad. She'll go in for her "super senior" checkup soon. In silver lining department, this does mean that I could actually get an aquarium now if I can just figure out a good place for it, since her jumping up on top to try and catch fishies clearly isn't going to be a thing anymore. (Scare them by sitting next to it, staring, and tapping on the glass is still well within her capabilities, though. Maybe the aquarium should wait some more .... )

I keep getting the urge to throw up my hands and just close the album business to new customers, but I know that's just fall overwhelm talking. And I did just order a new sample album last night, so yeah, not really going there. I've had a sick kid at home 3 out of the last 6 school days, and it makes it harder to get stuff done than it should.

I think maybe cutting options down would be good; my stuff is so relentlessly custom that it makes figuring stuff out and the number of discussions needed to get started take too long, and that's the part that most drags on me. (I can have introvert issues even over e-mail! Go me!)

And it still doesn't help that the jewelry/art biz is more fun, though more of the business realities of it are hitting so it's not as extreme. I finally got a lightswitch done I'm kind of happy with. Self-leveling gel medium is MAGIC.



I didn't mean to make it University of Washington colors, it just happened. Next one should have a proper composition since this is still 50% a media mixing experiment.
Also, that is embedded loose glitter. I brought loose glitter into my house for this.

Making my own alcohol ink (which is this fabulous ink that is vivid and works on surfaces like glass and plastic without needing special prep) from acrylic paints (becuase the stuff costs a ridiculous amount per ounce, and you have to work with their colors) was a solid failure, and when I actually read the comments on the tutorial I discovered that someone had asked if it worked on non-porous surfaces, and she hadn't tested it. Like. Um. The major reason to use alcohol ink is becuase it works on non-porous surfaces, otherwise just use regular ink or watercolors or fluid acrylic.

And if any of you care, the best actual acrylic you can buy to play well with alcohol ink is full on "high flow" acrylics -- the kind designed to work in airbrushes. Still needs a little help to stick to a non-porous surface, but at least it doesn't build up texture like regular acrylics. (Fluid acrylics are better than regular, but still not all the way there.)

I've been hearing all these raves about ASMR, so I watched a bunch of the recommended videos and oh, oh lordy.

I wanted to reach through the screen and punch. I got full flesh-crawl on my neck and shoulders and my anxiety level heightened super fast.

This makes me so very sad.

I committed to exactly one non-family holiday event this year, because I am a hermit with no energy (all year, really, but especially in December). And I was really really looking forward to it. It was going to basically be my social life for the month, maybe even the quarter.

And I wrote the wrong fucking day down on my calendar and missed it.

I hate my brain so much right now.

Next weekend, I am taking a workshop on Encaustic and Photography from Nichole DeMent at my alma mater. Yes, I have done multiple workshops on this topic (Encausticamp and other), but practice-with-expert-guidance is a way I learn well and also I like her work and can't figure out how she made it.

But we have to bring to class several prints to use, made on washi or with laser. Which I already have all the materials to do for once , yay .... but now I have to plow through my archives (because I have been shooting less and less over the past few years) and try to find photos that are:

• interesting to me to work with in a mixed-media context


• that I don't think suck

This turns out to be really difficult, and the longer it takes to find something the more I get to the familiar-imposter-syndrome place of "Ohmigod I suck I have no business calling myself an artist blah blah blah."

Maybe I should just start with 2003, I always end up back there anyway --- which is to say, the photos that were the foundation of my thesis show when I graduated. But going back to PCNW to work with the photos I made there ten years ago? Ow.