Gloomy Saturday

It's a gloomy, rainy Saturday. There's not much to do, and that makes me melancholy. I listed some new stickers, chat a bit with fellow Etsians, and did some laundry so far.

What are you doing this Saturday afternoon?

These are 2 new sticker sets in the shop:

Felt Owl Stickers

Aha! More stickers! This is my favourite set out of all the different sticker sets I'll be posting as I go. I love the subtle stripey brown cardstock backing with the trees (which I drew on by hand). The owl stickers turned out so bright and perfect that I'm really quite pleased.

They're flying around happily in the shop.

Starting today, 10% of all purchases from Blue Pandemonium will go towards feeding those in need. There's a shortage at the local foodbank because the usual donors are cutting back. Unfortunately, the number of hungry people is going up!

I encourage everyone to take some time and effort out to drop off an unperishable food item at their local foodbank. It doesn't have to be a lot, but every little bit helps. (As a perpetual-scrounger-of-foodstuff, the idea of truly hungry people hits a chord.) Please give.

Wait

Three decades ago,
I waited for you.
In the womb, you were late,
And I waited.

Three decades have passed,
And you're impatient
And you
Can't wait,
And I
Can't bear it.

--Marie Tai

Stickers for the Masses (Okay, maybe just for me and a few others)

I've been collecting stickers for a long time now. First it was just for the heck of it, now it's for scrapbooking (and just for the heck of it). You can imagine my delight then to create my very own stickers from my artwork. Eeeeeee! I'm actually QUITE excited.

I have a few more sets a-coming, but here is the first one - Mrs. McRooney's Mice!

Ah, so cute! I'm so happy with how they turned out. These stickers are high-quality laser prints, hand-cut by me! Just peel and stick!

All ready for gift-giving in the shop!

New Life

"The fish is giving birth!"

My sister's excited exclamations woke me from my morning zombie mode and I hurried over to have a look. "Nooo, I don't see any baby fish..."

"I saw one! I saw one!" She ran over with a little flashlight and pointed randomly all over the tank, trying to find the elusive newborn.

"Nooo, it was probably just the littlest guy in the... Wait! What's that laying low by the bushes? Oh, gee! It's a baby!!!" And then we saw another one, and another one. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to wake up to - new life in the fish tank. The new mother fish was still clearly pregnant though, so I guess these were the early ones. We could see the dark spots in her belly that indicated eyeballs of little newbies, but some of the eyeballs were clearly closer to the back end than normal. It was so exciting!

I can't wait to go home tonight and find out how many little weirdos now run amuck in the old "family tank". It's a wonderful Thursday.

Murder in the Fish Tank

In a tragic case of misplaced faith, my family created a new "family tank". Mom and Dad fish lived upstairs, and baby fish lived downstairs. Grates in the parent tank allowed the baby fish to come up and visit the parents whenever they liked. It should have been one big, happy family, but this was not to last.

We returned one fateful night to find a grisly murder had taken place. Dad fish hung perpendicular by his tail from the filter. His scales were all askew and his fins were stripped bare to the bone.

The baby fish kept a wide berth from the parent tank, having witnessed far too much violence for their young fish eyes to bear. We were all shocked and hoped in vain that he was still alive. My mother poked him with a stick, and having been separated momentarily from the pull of the filter, he gently glided to the bottom of the tank and lay motionless on his side.

It was a low moment even for our frequently dramatic fish community. We scooped out the Dad fish and, after a short deliberation, the mother fish was scooped out too. Dad fish was shipped off for a one-bite burial in my sister's turtle tank, and the mother fish was taken to the pet store and exchanged for a new, less aggressive fish.

Lo and behold, the new arrival, a pretty silver and teal Platy fish appears to be pregnant. So one mother was replaced with another.

One Calling

Walk the path that lights up for you.
Remember the days for which you live.
Speak the words that help others,
and lend the hand that can change.

--Marie Tai

Raisin Eyes (or, The Cookie Speaks)

You cannot match my raisin eyes,
those glistening lumps of prune.
They seem to smile with secret clues
of how an oven bakes.
They're dried, they're hard,
with chewy hearts.
But bite them and you'll see,
my raisin eyes aren't just good looks.
They'll land in more than your good books.
My raisin eyes are great to eat!
But then I'll have to kill you.

--Marie Tai

Happy Friday

Hello! I hope you are having a great Friday (last day of the week! Yeah~!)

My sweetie took me out for a surprise yesterday. I was cautious as to what to expect, but guess where he took me? To the Circle Craft Christmas Fair! Talk about a guy that really knows me, lol. I saw so many great artists there.

My favourites were a shop that sold soft rag dolls made from organic cotton for babies, a shop that sold funny-looking stuffed monsters with giant soft hearts sewn to their chests and skinny limbs (but the seller was no where to be seen so I couldn't buy one!), a fellow that sold clay friendly-looking gnomes surrounded with real, fluffy moss (I asked him how he got into this business and he chuckled and said, "I guess the gnomes just took over!", and a beautiful shop full of lampwork glass beads of the most wonderful, drool-worthy variety. It was a very fun experience.

To celebrate the end to a good week, here's a funny link for you. It's about a man that tries to submit a drawing of a spider to pay off his bill. Read the whole thing. It's hilarious :)

Oh, and here's a link to a Pixar short called Burn-E.

Up and Down

A car drives by
The leaves go up
They tumble in the air

A man walks by
He glances down
Leaves crush underfoot

--Marie Tai

Fat Eating

Stuffing my face with chocolate eclairs,
Regard! Another pie arises!
I reach out and take it,
and open my mouth.
The hot steam burns my tongue.
I open the fridge and I take out some cream,
whipped, cool, refreshing and sweet.
I envelope the hot pie and resume my sweet path.
The pie is now one with eclairs.

--Marie Tai

Skipping down the ACEO road

Today, I finished my first ACEO's. I'm really quite delighted! I've been thinking about making some ACEOs for a while now ever since I discovered that there are collectors for the specific canvas size of 2.5 by 3.5 inches (trading card size). I figured I should experiment with ACEOs too.

I had finished some paintings of Lemon Sherr Birds to be made into stickers, and I found that I could just cut 3 of the originals into the correct size for ACEOs. I glued the paintings to pretty paper backings, trimmed them down to size, and drew some lovely swirls, dots, and stitch lines around the borders (I do adore stitch lines!) Then I coloured the borders with a blue pencil crayon. For the back, I designed and printed out some "official" looking labels so that I could write the title and date in a neat format. I've also signed each one.

I'm not sure if these ACEOs will sell well or not in the store, but it's a fun experiment. In any case, I like the idea of making these ACEOs because they let the paintings stay as collectable art, rather than something more practical like bookmarks. I like art for art's sake sometimes.

I hope you had a good Remembrance Day holiday. I went to the local Legion. Every year they fire a canon 21 times as young folks from cadets and other related groups line the streets in salute. Of course there is also the traditional trumpet song and some songs by bag pipes.

A small boy in front of us cheerfully cried, "Mommy! Daddy! Mommy! Daddy!" repeatedly as he high fived them back and forth. I found it ironic as I thought of how many children lost their mothers and fathers in the wars. He also freaked out every time the canon went off.

Mytutorlist.com Update

It's been a while since I've written an update on Mytutorlist.com so I thought I'd let you know how things are going. I ran some statistics on Mytutorlist.com and we are now up to 8125 unique visitors per month. That's over 1000 more users than 3 months ago! Yay! We're growing!

On top of that, I'd like to welcome a new business sponsor to our site, Paper2Play.com We're proud to have them on board as they have some great paper products, including some beautiful decoupage paper and supplies. They have a tutorial here, if you're interested in seeing how decoupage, or decopatch, is done. Of course, the decorative papers can also be used for greeting cards, wrapping, book binding, and more. Please check their website for details.

Paper2Play also has a great blog with lots of fun decorating ideas. Check it out!

If you'd like to become a business sponsor too, please visit our Business Sponsor page.

Playing around with product photos

I asked V. and some fellow Etsians for advice on how to improve my product photos. One big comment was that my photos were too busy - they didn't know what was for sale in the image. Also, they didn't like the red background. So, I set to work trying to take better photos.

As you can see from the picture below, I removed the red background with all the distracting raffia and rice, and replaced it with an open book. You see the bookmark, and you can understand that it's on top of a book. It's not confusing anymore. I also tried to reduce the reflection I was getting from the lighting and the laminate plastic by angling my camera differently.

I think the new photos are much better, so thank you V. and fellow Etsians for your help!

It will take some time before I can swap out all the old photos, but eventually, they'll all be updated.

I'm late! But here's your cake!

I'm a terrible real cook, but I can sew you a cake :)

Happy 25th birthday, Karen!

Chubby Fat Squirrels and Crazy Crows

There was an odd crow this morning that insisted on cawing after every action.

Dig beak into dirt, caw-caw! Throw a leaf aside, caw-caw! Get beak stuck in the dirt, caw-caw! Wriggle beak back out, caw-caw!

A chubby, fat squirrel noticed the commotion and snuck up on the crow to investigate. After a stealthy creep and stop to behind the crow, he realized that the crow was simply a nut-case, so he turned sideways and pretended to be simply passing by. The crow turned to look at him, caw-caw! And then he turned back to his digging.

He wasn't very successful in finding any hidden worms. I guess he's just too noisy of a fisherman.

I hope all of you have had a good week. Mine was a whirlwind of work and crazy deadlines. However, I did have some good news in a bookmark sale that came with a sweet note. Apparently the customer was so pleased with the quality and packaging of the first bookmark that she purchased from me that she instantly bought another one! She said that the bookmark was better in person than in the picture. Hehehe... I guess that means I need to take better pictures!

I also came across some wonderful Etsy shops! Here are some felt towers from Intres, nesting owls from Savage Artworks, a rabbit among ferns ACEO from Carmen Keys Art, and some beautiful fabrics from Cicada Studio.

Working Too Much

I'm dreaming of my daytimes-
Of work, and mundane things.
I'm tired from working all night long
inside my head and before long,
I'm sure I'll work in day dreams too.

--Marie Tai

Flowery Caterpillar and Love Letters

I hope you all had a delightful Halloween! I sure did! My workplace had an infestation and we became zombies on Halloween. The costumes were over the top, and some of them were hilarious. I tried to be a zombie too, but I didn't pass as one successfully. Instead, passerbys were concerned for me, asking if my cat had scratched me, or taking a wide berth because I looked like I came from the wrong side of town. Tsk, tsk! See, I didn't dress any differently than usual; I only put numerous scratches, bruises, a split lip, and blood dripping from the bottom of my mouth. I didn't really take it over the top, so I guess it looked a bit too realistic - like I'd been beat up badly or something, oops!

After work, I drew some stitches around my neck and a cut from the neck to the mouth, but bus passengers on the other side of my new additions, still leaned over after some scrutiny to ask, "Is that real?" with concern on their faces. Lol!

Halloween night was great. V. and I stuffed our pockets full of candy and took a stroll around the neighborhood. We were lucky to stumble across a grand fireworks display. An entire townhouse complex had chipped in to buy a motherload of fireworks! Free entertainment is always a plus! We stopped to watch them light their boxes of fireworks off one at a time, until the entire area was enveloped in smoke.

On our way home, we came upon another elaborate fireworks display. I guess some families had gathered for a Halloween party and the dads wanted to give the kids a really good show. These 3 dads lined up 3-4 of the biggest firework tubes I'd ever seen and would set them off all at once. The kids inside the house would squeal and cheer and yell, "More!" and the dads would file out again to repeat the expensive treat. These dads did an amazing job. Their fireworks were so fancy that it was like a mini version of a public fireworks event.

On the weekend, I took it easy and worked on some projects I had started.

Here are some of the new updates to the store.