Craft project: painting the birds

We all have our own quirks and proclivities and personal touches. I like weird stuff. Now, everyone has different sensibilities when it comes to weird stuff, myself included. I like to decorate with what I assume people would think of as weird stuff. I like frogs and lizards and turtles and apparently my new thing is birds. I have them all over the studio / office / living room. Most of them are probably supposed to be in a garden or a child's toy box, but, well, I'm not much of a gardener. So, yeah, I have garden statuary and toys standing in as knick knacks in my living room.

Basically, I like kitsch, and I decorate with kitsch.

And since I was done coming home from work and finishing up the holiday calendar — well, I suddenly had free time again! I know, it always seems novel to come home from work and not have to work on something. Leisure, who knew?

Anyway, after catching up on the last 5 episodes of the now cancelled Leverage and probably 7-10 miscellaneous hours of tv watching, well, I had to pry myself away from the facebook and do something (besides sleeping).

As it turns out, I had a little home dec project to finish. My vcr/dvd player died in the beginning of December, so, there was some consternation over hooking up the replacement and having the correct number of cables and looking at diagrams and attaching the right cable to the right slot between the new dvd player, the cable box, and the television. Apparently, in order to watch a dvd you need to have a degree in engineering...

Anyway, one of the cords was too short, and I had to rearrange things, and it was weird looking. So, eventually I was standing there in Target while Christmas shopping and bought myself a little stand for the tv to sit on so that the tv could be in the middle of the spot for the tv again...

Before: the original configuration

 Middle (the new dvd player) (above)

After (below)

So, of course, now there's more space for knick knacks, boo-yah! And by knick knacks I mean the birds, the turtle, the frogs, and the lizards.

I like to buy bird, frog, and reptile decorations that look realistic. Occasionally, I buy things that I think just need a new coat of paint, because I'm crafty like that. So, my post holiday I-did-it-for-the-fun-of-it project was to paint a couple resin birds I had bought that I thought needed a do-over with paint.

So, with some craft paint, a knowledge of bird plumage, and some satin and matte varnish:

 So, now I have 3 yellow warblers (2 females, 1 male) and a chickadee on a pine cone in my menagerie of creatures.

Oh, and the chickadee has a home too : )

Someone needs to make sure the plastic iguanas behave themselves.

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday (and perhaps some post holiday relaxation or maybe a craft project) and have a happy new year!

Snowflakes in September

Dear blog: yes, I hope to update you more frequently.
Sincerely,
Sarah
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Okay, now that we have that out of the way, I got busy working and being exhausted last week. Part of that working was my full time job, which regularly consumes 50 hours of my week (between my actual presence there & my drive). The rest of the 'working' was spent at home in front of the imac and involved snowflakes. Yes, every September I start working on the snowflakes.

I started designing snowflakes about 5 years ago. I'm sure as a child I cut snowflakes out of paper, and in college I started decorating my dorm rooms or apartments with snowflakes (I have hundreds of those plastic snowflakes covered in glitter — every year I go out and buy new snowflake ornaments)... but it was about 5 years ago that I started to seriously design snowflakes. I decided I wanted them to have the traditional 6 arm symmetry. Thus I designed a template that I could design my snowflakes with 6-arm bilateral symmetry on. I use the same template to this day.

I began designing the snowflakes because I decided I was going to sell Christmas cards. And if I was going to sell Christmas cards — I would want them to look like something that I would want to send to people, thus snowflakes.

So, every year about this time it occurs to me that "it's time to make the snowflakes." And every year I design some new snowflakes... and they usually have some kind of general theme. The first year there were lots of peace signs in hearts. The next year there were more hearts and "words." After that it was more traditional themes — like old school Martha Stewart motifs... and last year my thing was swirls. This year may be the year of the deer, at least that what seems to be on my file so far... yeah, I'm not done with this year's crop of new snowflake quite yet. Hey, it's only September.

What I did accomplish last week was designing and consolidating the backgrounds for the snowflake prints I offer for sale on etsy. At the present moment I have 42 different background color choices available (they can be found here). I know, I know, it sounds excessive, but I aim to please. Of course, I also have 66 different snowflakes to choose from. Technically, I suppose that makes 2772 possible different prints...
although I do have at least 2 new snowflakes finished...

Anyway, this is one of the new backgrounds I calibrated this week:

This is "Julia" on seafoam pizzazz
which can be found at "sarahknight" on etsy.