Etsy Store Sale!

I'm having a Canada Day Week sale! Come by and check it out.

Zombie Mouse

Meet Zombie Mouse!

Zombie Mouse is one of a rare breed of mythological creatures once persecuted for their association with bad dreams. It's name is derived from its zombie-like appearance. It was later discovered that Zombie Mice actually feed on bad dreams, thus getting rid of them rather than causing them.

Hold him close in your hard times to keep those bad dreams away.

Zombie Mouse is now available in the shop!

Simple Photoshop Tutorial

Have product photos that could use a little pick-me-up? Here are some simple tutorials on how to fix some minor lighting and background problems using Photoshop.

Auto Levels

The easiest way to fix dark images is to use "Auto Levels". Auto Levels automatically fixes the colour and contrast based on what Photoshop thinks is right.

Auto Contrast

If Auto Levels makes the colour look wrong, undo Auto Levels and try using "Auto Contrast" only.

Auto Colour

If "Auto Contrast" makes the contrast look wrong, undo and try using "Auto Colour"instead.

Dodge Tool

Once your photo is correctly lit, you can remove the dark edges using the Dodge Tool.

Just select the Dodge tool, choose a soft edged brush, set the range to shadows, and put the exposure to 13%. Then brush the dodge tool carefully over the darkened edges until they are light enough. If you want to work faster, put the exposure higher to 50%








Hope this helps! Happy selling!

Fat Grub

Meet Fat Grub.

Fat Grub wants to grow up to become a beautiful butterfly. To be truthful, he's not sure if he's really going to become a butterfly. He's short, he's fat, and he might just be a maggot. But, for now, he eats his vegetables everyday and he thinks big butterfly thoughts.

I hope Fat Grub will get what he wants one day.

Fat Grub is about 5.5 inches long and 3 inches wide. He's crocheted from acrylic yarn, and stuffed with polyfil. His eyes are glass beads.

I have just added him to the store.

Playing Favourites

I know playing favourites is supposed to be a bad thing, but I'm loving it! I checked out my favourites page today and all these folks tagged me as one of their favourites! Awwww, I'm flattered :)

Thanks, everyone!

Happy Weekend and new tags

Hello, Everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend.

Mine was pretty fantastic. I spent the beginning of it making some changes to my store. The great folks on Etsy gave me some feedback on my store (thank you!) and I set away to start making the changes immediately. I added more shipping locations, updated the categories, updated store policies, and added some more photos. There's still more to do, so I'll be busy for a while.


I also tried out the Etsy Chat rooms, and boy is it fun! It's been ages since I've been in a chatroom, and I met so many nice people! It love the feature where you can post ID numbers of items on the side so you can showcase the work of other users or your own. I personally found it more fun to post other people's work, because other users were posting mine anyways. Very sweet gestures :)


Other than that, it was a pretty relaxing weekend. I did a little shopping, a little dining out, and worked on some tags for Unloved and Can't Dance.
I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. They are drawn on patterned cardstock and tied with raffia ribbon. I scallopped the edges with my handy-dandy Fiskar edger scissor. I have discovered that those edgers don't work well on flimsy paper, but that they work extremely well on cardstock.

I'm in a treasury!

Waaaah! I made it into someone's treasury! I'm so flattered and delighted! This is the best thing ever!

Check it out!

It's up! Official store launch day begins!

Okay, I have activated all of the postings, and day one of my store has begun.

Please feel free to stop by and have a look.

Also, this is my first run at this, and some of you are much more experienced. If there is something I should be doing differently to make my store better, please do let me know. All feedback (good or bad) is welcome!

Thank you!

Store Launches Tomorrow!

Okay, it's finally here. Tomorrow is STORE LAUNCH DAY! Hurray!

I'm so excited!

The Unloved Monsters, felt dolls, and brooches will be up!

See you there!

A Bridesmaid Dress

My friend is getting married this summer and I'll be a bridesmaid for the very first time. It's a funny feeling to have friends all around you getting married or announcing their first child... you feel like you missed a boat somewhere. You look left, you look right, and all around you are married people.

The odd thing is that I don't wish that I was getting married or having my first child. I like not being married and just dating and being happy with that. I find it far more romantic, for some odd reason. Marriage seems so confining and final. It's like the bridge between being young and free, and being tied down with kids. I feel guilty to be thinking this way. I think I should be like all the other girls, wishing for their own wedding day and dreaming of what I will wear or look like. Unfortunately, I seem to have missed that boat too.

Now, being a bridesmaid though, that seems to have fulfilled some fancy of mine. I get to wear a pretty dress, help the bride with all her happy wedding day needs and then, at the end of the day, I get to go home and still keep my last name intact. It seems almost sinful to be enjoying a wedding and getting away with exchanging no vows of my own.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am very happy for my friends. They really wanted to get married and to have their dream weddings, so I am happy that they are fulfilling their dreams. They really wanted to have kids too, so announcing their first child is pure bliss. But, as for me, I have no desire for these things yet.

Perhaps I'm just a late-bloomer.

Maybe, one day, I will gleefully announce my own wedding and you'll all shake your heads knowingly. But until that day, I am content being me. One person, one love, and happy.

The Boathouse in Port Moody

I had the most fabulous dinner tonight. It was absolutely one of the best I have ever had.

First of all, the view on the patio deck was spectacular. Roses lined the garden in front of me, and it looked out onto the waters of beautiful Rocky Point Park. We made our menu choices based on the recommendations of our waitress, Brittany, and enjoyed a refreshing Boathouse Bellini. The Sweet Chili Chicken drenched in sweet and spicy sauce soon arrived along with some dill seasoned Classic Calamari. The accompanying tzatziki sauce and (mystery?) sauce were perfectly paired with the calamari and I was surprised to feel almost full after eating just the appetizers alone. This is rather unusual for fine dining as I'm used to the appetizers being beautiful, but tiny.

Our main course took some time before arriving so we had plenty of time to chat and watch boaters launch their crafts. It was nice to be viewing the docks from a different perspective as I frequently stroll there watching the diners at The Boathouse.

My friend's Westcoast Seafood Paella arrived in a cast iron skillet and it looked delicious. There were chorizo sausages mixed in with clams, mussels, halibut, salmon, shrimp, onions, and long green beans. Underneath, saffron rice was waiting, quietly absorbing the aromatic juices from the seafood above. It was really good.

My Miso Crusted Halibut was a sight to behold with it's golden exterior contrasted by the black pepper teriyaki sauce. The texture of the rice worked perfectly with the halibut, and the zucchini was flavourful.

Well-satiated by our delicious main course, we moved onto the final, most important part of our meal - dessert. It was a no-brainer to choose the mocha almond ice cream pie, and there was no turning back afterwards. I have never had a more delicious dessert in my life. Honey roasted almond slivers generously crowned a mocha ice cream pie on a chocolate cookie crust, drizzled with fudge. It was heavenly.

I will definitely be back again at The Boathouse in Port Moody.

Au Travail

After a much needed vacation, and some time catching up on missed work, I'm now back to my original plan - starting up an Etsy shop!

I spent last evening starting listings, uploading photos, and trying to figure out how much shipping costs. I still need some more accurate quotes for shipping, but I have a queue of listings ready for whenever I launch the store update. I am going to tentatively set it for this Friday, but I'll confirm this shortly.

I've noticed that I can "unlist" items by hitting "edit" and then doing nothing. Is this how many Etsy sellers manage their store updates? (You know, setting a date and then posting all their items at a specific date and time?) Does the expiry date start from when you wrote the listing or from when you activate it?

Well, I'm off to full day of regular work, but I know what I'll be working on when I get home tonight!

Have a great day!

Friends make the world a better place

I had a lovely conversation today with the sweetest lady. She was just so understanding and caring that I was really touched. Really and truly, people like her make the world a better place.

She had lots of great advice for me and I was blown away by her honesty and her life stories. I hope that I'll be able to help someone like how she's helped me. That would be a good use of my life, and it can make the world of a difference to the one you help.

I also had a great chat with my best friend last night. It was nice to just talk about all the things that I've been thinking and worrying about and to have someone to listen. She's always been a great friend and I regret not spending more time with her. She's such a wonderful gal!

Happy Friday, everyone. Be nice to someone today.

Busy as a Dented Bee

Hello!

Sorry for my absence. I've been so busy with work, and I've had so many things on my mind. It's been a constant lost-in-thought week for me.

Sometimes, my thoughts have lead me down sad paths where I wonder why the world is such a dark place. It seems that right and wrong grow progressively more blurred as I grow up, and I begin to long for the days when it was easy to know what was right and I could feel confident in my values and opinions. Now I am constantly thrown into flux. I might feel strongly that something is wrong, but society has come to accept it as normal. I begin to feel lost, as though I'd missed some very important turn off in a road and I'll never be able to go back to make the decisions again.

Sometimes, my thoughts have lead me to question my place in the world. Where do I fit in? What have I contributed so far? One thought that has swirled around in my mind is, "What can one girl do to change the world?" Alas, many times the answer is, "not much, but she can save herself". But what kind of answer is that!?! And deep inside, I wonder if she's just deluding herself and she can't save anyone, including herself.

Sometimes, I am happy. I lean against V and I feel perfectly content. I walk down a sunny path and life is good. I peer down into a pot of soil and I see little growing things, little walking things, and lots of oddly shaped speckles. There is lots to see and lots to discover; I can feel like a new thing exploring a big, friendly world.

Growing up is a very big task. No matter how old you are, there seems to be something else that you never knew about. Some things you are glad to learn about, but some things hurt you inside.

Happy Friday

Happy Friday, everyone! It's been a whirlwind of a week with so much to get done at work so I haven't had much time to write here. I've had a fun week, though, training a new employee, teaching a class, and doing lots of prep work for some upcoming projects. I like keeping busy :)



I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend. KungFu Panda is out and it looks like a riot. I think it's about time I had some good sushi dinner too. Mmm...


























Update: I finally watched this movie! It's AWESOME! Super cute, with great animations. I really liked Po the panda bear voiced by Jack Black, and the kung fu master, Shi fu, voiced by Dustin Hoffman. It was an all-round entertaining movie, and I highly recommend it.

There is a little clip at the end if you care to stay after the credits. Nothing huge, but I thought it was nice. I love all the animations that they have during credits nowadays and the great opening sequences.

Biggest drawing in the world

This fellow drew a picture by tracking the gps location of a briefcase. Pretty cool, huh?

I thought so.

Unfortunately, it's just a hoax. What a downer.

Lovely birds, gardens, and ants

With the lovely warm weather lately, my garden has been growing. I see the beginning of strawberries, and my snow pea plants have been peeping out of the soil.

We've also had some visitors to the garden. A lovely bird that kindly took care of the ant problem.






... and the neighbor's cat.




I tended to my section of the mostly overgrown communal garden. And enjoyed sorting marigold seeds.







I found the rusted look of one of my garden ornaments to be quite pleasing to the eye.





And I was delighted to see my carrot (remember the carrot from my room?) growing very well indeed!





I wouldn't say my avocado plant, which I grew from an avocado seed last year is an eye-sore, but it might be time to save another avocado seed...





I hope you had a great weekend!