Ain't Dead Yet

Good Grief! It's been two weeks since I've had an interesting thought that wasn't art related. I have however, been drawing and painting up a storm. I've been keeping a paper journal of my mundane life with a daily sketch. The pages are posted on my sketch blog if you are rillyrilly interested in reading all that.

If not, here are highlights of some of the artwork:



Cleaning the fridge coils:


Sketch of a cool old building with strange white capstones on top:


And a painting of that same building, but just the corner detail:


Big boys on big toys Thanksgiving day at the farm:




And a colored pencil study of the same apple:


And that's what I've been up to lately.

Still working on the farmhouse rehab. We're now ready to start the painting and that's always the fun part for me. Yay!

Arty Stuff

I've been obsessing this week on arty stuff. I figured blogging endlessly about arty stuff would run off the few intrepid readers, so I saved it all up for one big summary post.

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I was looking at some other people's arty stuff on-line and I saw a painting this lady had done of aspen leaves. It had lots of bright colors and she used bright blue and bright orange for the bark of the tree. I've been trying to draw things too realistically lately and wouldn't have given myself permission to use bright blue for a tree. I decided I would draw and paint me some blue trees dammit.

When I sit on my front porch, the view of my neighbor's house is framed beautifully by the two little live oaks in our front yard. It's a scene I've been meaning to sketch, so I thought I would draw it and make the trees blue. When I got the rough sketch down I decided the little house was too boring if the trees were blue. It needed some whimsy. So I made it into a little hobbit house with curved walls, round windows, and a thatched roof...and a Hobbit Accord in the driveway.

I got it all inked and was very proud of the result.



But I'm not a painter. I didn't want to mess up this perfectly charming drawing with a lot of messy paint. And it would be messy if I painted it, trust. So I scanned the drawing then printed it on watercolor paper using my laser printer. I painted on the copy instead of the original then re-inked the whole thing. It came out a little coloring book looking, but I think it's OK for my second watercolor ever.

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The challenge this week for the sketch group was "Extreme Close-up." Folks were supposed to guess what the drawing was. Here's my entry, can you guess what it is?

I was originally planning on doing this drawing with colored pencils. My heart wasn't in it so I abandoned it and started a fresh sketch using a ballpoint pen. I *love* doing pen and ink drawings. I guess technically ballpoint isn't pen and ink, but I don't know what else to call it.

Anyway, I retrieved the first sketch (I was going to throw it away) and decided to use it for watercolor pencil practice. I scribbled on the colors and swooshed them with water and it was kind of meh. Added more pencil, swished some more water, and it was still meh.

Finally broke out the liquid watercolors and went after it with a brush. I finally got enough color on it and it came to life. Not half bad for my third attempt at watercolor.


Me no likey watercolors. They do things I don't understand. The color doesn't stay put and the paper crinkles up and wah, wah, wah. I didn't like watercolors as a kid, and I still don't like them much now. But, I'm trying to expand my horizons. So I keep practicing.

One of the guys in the sketch group kept insisting the extreme close-up was a hook for airships. LOL! I thought that was an imaginative guess if nothing else. So I drew him a hook for airships. Painted it with watercolors for the practice. This would be watercolor #4.

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I purchased a cheap little journal for $3.00 two weeks ago and have been writing all my deepest, darkest secrets in it. For such a cheap journal it has amazingly nice paper in it. It seemed a shame to just write words and only words in there. I thought I would give a go to the "illustrated journal" concept that a lot of the folks in the sketch group do. My entry for today:


I *hate* doing laundry. I got the whites washed, but they're still in there wet. Sigh. It's now 2:20 a.m. and I won't have clean, dry drawers for tomorrow. Sigh.

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This evening at dusk I was standing out on my front porch and the neighborhood church chimes began to ring. It was a magical moment. You could almost hear the world stop for just a moment to listen. How cool.

I pondered if there was a way to adequately capture the sound and magic of the chimes in some arty way. If there is, I'm too dull to figure it out. I decided to try to capture the chilly lavender sunset framed by the blackness of the neighbor's house and trees. Maybe with that painting I could remember the magic of the chimes. Watercolor #5.

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All of these drawings have been uploaded to my Flickr account that I had to open when I joined the "Everyday Matters" sketch group. On Flickr you can click to embiggen each drawing in a really, really big way to see details. You can also see the comments made by the sketch group members on each of my doodles. If you wanna go look at all that, here is a link to my photostream (aka home page) on Flickr:

Specklin on Flickr

I had to use the nickname Specklin 'cuz Speck was already taken. Phooey.

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And that was my week - chock full o' arty goodness.

Yours?

Touch the Money

I joined an on-line sketching group called "Everyday Matters." They have a weekly challenge to draw ordinary objects around the house. Since I'm such a hermit I thought that would be right up my alley.

This week's challenge was to draw paper money. The moderator said it would be interesting to see all the different kinds of money from around the world. Hubby has a small collection of international coins and paper money so I got him to dig it out. I picked a dozen of the prettiest and most interesting bills and laid them out to start the sketch.

My brain apparently was a bit Type-A with this challenge and decided a quick sketch wasn't going to be good enough. It turned out to be a full-blown art project.

I seriously underestimated the time it would take to draw 12 monies. I could only get about two done per day before my eyeballs exploded. I have a whole new appreciation for counterfeiters.

More than once I thought I would just give up and call it done. I pulled a Herculean drawing session last night and finally finished. I'll get to that in a minute but first I want to tell you a story.

I'm still a little kid at heart and when I draw I crave instant gratification of praise and encouragement. When I finish a drawing I squeal at Hubby, "Wanna see?" He, of course, has the patience of Job so he always say yes.

After each bill was finished I would trot over with the sketchbook and lay the real dollar next to the drawing for comparison. He would coo appropriately and pat me on the fanny and say, "Very nice" because, ya know, he has the patience of Job and knows with appropriate pacification I'll cook him dinner.

So, I finish the third bill in the series (the red and yellow Philippines one) and trot it over to him.


Instead of the usually nonchalant, "Very nice", he sits up, puts on his glasses, intently studies the drawing for a minute, then runs his finger across it.

"Why did you touch it like that???"

"I thought you had glued a color photocopy to the page and I was feeling for the edge."

Wheeeee! That's some high praise there. If someone thinks you faked it, you're doing a good job. It made my day. He got chicken fried steak for dinner that night.

Here is the finished drawing with all its warts and glory. (Click to embiggen)



Some of my favorite bits are these two portraits. They are the size of a thumbprint to give you some idea of the scale. This is some eyeball-killin' work with a ballpoint pen, lemme tell ya what.





And I really liked how this temple came out. It's about the size of a thumbprint too.



For the next EDM drawing challenge I don't think I will be so ambitious. My old eyeballs just can't take it.

Tap Shoes

Out on the porch the other night, I hear the strains of a lively tune from some old musical on TV. My foot automatically moves on its own...ta-tick, ta-tick, ta-tick, muscle memory of the tap shuffle from eons ago. I look down at the plastic crocs on my feet and long for my old tap shoes.

I loved, loved, loved my tap shoes. They were black, patent leather Mary Janes with a grosgrain ribbon tie.

They were flat "little girl" tap shoes. Only the girls who had been tapping for years got to wear tap shoes with heels.

I would wear them around the house because I liked the sound of the clickity-click they made on the hardwood floors. It drove my mother nuts. She would yell at me to take them off so they wouldn't scratch the floors.

What she didn't know was in the afternoons before she got home I would roll back the living room rug and tap my little heart out.

I tapped with the grace and coordination of a wounded walrus. I probably looked a lot like the bee girl in the Blind Melon video, but I didn't care. I was tap dancing!!!

Just for that brief moment in time I was Gene Kelley, singing in the rain and tapping away through the rain puddles. I was graceful and talented and the movie producers were knocking on my door, begging me to be in their next big musical. I was the toast of Hollywood AND Broadway.

Then at 5:00 pm I would take off my tap shoes and roll the living room rug over my dreams for another day.

I didn't learn much in the few months I took lessons but shuffle-hop-step and "shuffle off to Buffalo." At least that's all I remember. But every now and then I hear a song that calls for a tapdancer to do it justice, and my right foot begins the ta-tick, ta-tick, ta-tick involuntarily.

Sigh.

I still dream of being Gene Kelley and I still miss my Mary Jane tap shoes.

And I still look a lot like the Bee Girl.

The Waiter Brought A Tray

I had a kitchen pass this past weekend because Hubby went off to play with his brothers. I love these weekends alone because I can stay up all night and do whatever I want with all the lights on and the music up loud. Somewhere around 3:00 a.m. I end up surfing through my YouTube collection of songs from the sixties.

I eventually hit upon Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale." The lyrics have always made my brain twitch in an I-can't-quit-reconcile-it kind of way. I can imagine a bunch of hippies stoned out on acid in some swank gentleman's club. Slouched in deep leather club chairs, they trip away with little mushrooms and flowers floating above their musty, uncombed hair.

After the ceiling flies away to reveal a sky filled with stars, Jeeves the waiter, immaculately turned out in tux and tails, calmly brings them a martini as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. With a snobby British, "Sir, your drink" he proffers the glass.

The dichotomy of the hippie versus the waiter has always held a fascination for me. Would the waiter think it odd that there was a skanky hippie in his club? Would he chaff at having to serve him? Would he sneer? Was he the one who decided that the drink should be a martini? Is that all they serve at this club?

Would the hippie think it strange to be offered a martini by a waiter in a tux? Would he flip out thinking he had gotten some bad acid? Would he be paranoid that he was high in a fancy gentleman's club? Wouldn't red wine go better with acid?

I wonder about the secret lives of my imaginary characters. What do they think? What makes them tick? Are they stuck in an endless loop of my imaginary fantasies while I sleep at night?

Who stole my Xanax?

Anyway, as I was listening to the song I was inspired to draw this scribble of the waiter. It has swirled around in my brain every time I've heard the song over the last four decades.

Now that he's been drawn (read: pooped out of my head), perhaps the immaculate Jeeves will be excused from any further Procol Harum fantasies and can finally get out of that tux and get comfortable.

He would probably appreciate that after 40 years of service.

White Bread

OK all you folks who would classify McCain as white bread, this is for you.



I'm sure this is about 44 kinds of politically incorrect, but there it is.

I've had an Oreo fixation on the brain for a few days now, and Hubby gave me Oreos for lunch today along with a PB&J. He's so sweet. So I had to draw me some Oreos. They have a very interesting pattern to them by the way. I've never studied an Oreo in depth before.

Anycookie, when folks started dubbing McCain as white bread, I had to ponder on what easily recognizable food product (that is easy to draw) Obama would be. The only thing I could come up with was a burrito (hot & spicy) but that didn't seem to fit and wouldn't be instantly recognizable. I think my brain is tired.

SAT question for the day:
McCain is to white bread as Obama is to ________________.

So Obama got to be the Oreo 'cuz I already had it drawn. Now that I've drawn it out of my system, I'll take wittier suggestions from the audience. Phone lines are open.

I've been trying some file jiggling techniques where I can get my drawings to come out sharper, cleaner and less pixelated. I think I've got something, but man is it a pain. I liked how the Oreo and bread came out. They're a touch fuzzy here because I saved them as jpegs for quicker downloads, but the bitmap images are FABulous. (Click cartoon to embiggen to see fab details)

Digital Doodle, Part 2

I figured out my problem drawing McCain. I was trying too hard.

Tried a simpler approach and was pleased with the result.

Whaddaya think? Better? More recognizable?

Digital Doodles

I've been trying out my hand at political cartooning using a nifty new digital drawing tablet thingy. (More about that later.)

What do you think???







I really struggled with McCain. I'm not sure if this looks like him or not.

Would you readily identify this guy as McCain???



I think the guy I drew looks like the corrupt, drunken mayor of some small town in Mississippi. All he needs is a white suit, Panama hat, and an idiot nephew.

I'm unhappy that the two sketches don't look as if they were drawn by the same person. How could my style change so radically in just under an hour???? I wanted the heads to be a matched set for future use.

Obama was easy-breezy to draw and just climbed right on to the page. I'm tickled how his caricature came out.

I redrew McCain three times and I'm still not happy. Besides his jowls and nearly bald head, the guy is just plain looking.

Clown Costume

Wheeeee! Genitalia and hotdogs all in one!

I couldn't help myself; had to go there.

Inspired by Hubby's snide comment made during a raging case of PMS. You can guess the rest of *that* conversation.





Ribbed clown pants - For her safe clowning pleasure.

Uvulan Violets

No, I have no idea where this stuff comes from. It just pops in my head and won't go away.

Yes, I'm weird.

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That was going to be the entirety of the post for today until this conversation with Hubby:

I saw your sexual flower drawing...

It's not sexual.

I don't get it.

Get what?

The joke.

(sigh) It's not sexual and there is no joke. It's just a weird flower thingy I drew. A *uvula* (waggly finger pointing at mouth) is that little hangy down thing in the back of your throat. You're thinking of a *vulva*. I'm not sure what a vulva is but I think I've got one somewhere in my panties.

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Well, obviously I need to tell the backstory of this drawing.

This flower thingy is something that's been stuck in my head and I needed to draw it out so it would go away. The crux of it is the balloony "E" shape. The shape itself was what got stuck in my head.

I saw it as a sci-fi futuristic flower that was red with a darker maroon interior. The whole drawing was supposed to be bright, bold colors with thick black lines. I tried drawing it digitally, but it just wasn't satisfying.




For my soul to be happy I need to feel the swooping motion of pen against paper. There is something timeless about old-fashioned drawing that digital just doesn't satisfy for me, so I dragged out my paper and crayons.

After drawing and outlining my sketch, I had the option to color it with Sharpies or colored pencils. While Sharpies would get me the rich color I wanted, the palette is rather limited and I can't blend the colors. The pencils are more forgiving of mistakes and I can blend the colors for life and depth. So pencils won.

When I draw I start out with an image in my head and try to capture it on paper. I know what the finished product should look like, but somewhere in the process the drawing takes on a life of its own and decides to be something else entirely. I end up being just a poor sap with a pencil who is along for the ride. Such was the case with these flowers.

After the drawing demanded the colors and shading it wanted, the flowers ended up looking like that little hangy down thing in the back of your throat with a tongue behind it. The heart-shaped leaves looked like the leaves of the wild violets that grow around here. So I titled it Uvulan Violets and called it done.

I tried to explain all this to Hubby. I even did a quick sketch with Sharpies to show him the flowers were actually supposed to be sci-fi looking, not sexual. I hold up this sketch to Hubby.



See???? Now does that look sexual???

He starts in with that husband-caught-with-his-ass-in-a-crack patter where his voice goes up a couple of octaves and is accompanied by much arm flinging.

I didn't know what it was supposed to be I thought you had drawn some girly parts flower picture with ovaries and vulvularies and I didn't get the joke I don't know what all those vulvulary things are or why you drew them as flowers......

Vulvularies. (grin) Yep, Hubby makes up words as he goes along too. As he is flinging around and ranting, I look up vulva on Wikipedia and read him what is says.

A vulva is, "the region of the external genital organs of the female, including the labia majora, mons pubis, labia minora, clitoris, bulb of the vestibule, vestibule of the vagina, greater and lesser vestibular glands, and vaginal orifice."

I stand up, circle my hands in my crotch area, give a little Michael Jackson hip thrust in Hubby's direction and say in a cutesy, squealy little girl voice:

A vulva is a *chootchie*!

His face brightens considerably thinking he has been proven correct.

Yeah, a chootchie! You drew a chootchie flower!

(sigh)

Uvula. It's that little hangy down thing in the back of your throat....

The Scribbler and Artpad

I stumbled across a cool on-line doodler program thingie called The Scribbler.

You draw a quick line drawing then the program scribbles it in. You can vary the line weight and colors. Here's my first scribble.

And another one. I couldn't help myself:
OK, I'm addicted.

Moving on....

The other cool program thingie is Artpad. It works a lot like MS Paint, but for some reason is much smoother and easier to control when using a mouse. You can also set the opacity of the color which you can't do in Paint.

Here's my quickie doodle from Artpad:

One cool feature with Artpad is that you can replay your entire painting process. It's kinda cool watching the paintbrush move on its own.

You can also click through the gallery of paintings other people have done and watch the paintbrush repaint them too.

Both programs are a fun way to kill time when you should be doing something productive.

Alligator Shoes

It's 108° outside and we're out of toilet paper.

Dancing alligators seemed appropriate.

Disorganization Station

Normally I'm an organized person. There is a place for everything and everything in its place. I'm not Sleeping-with-the-Enemy obsessive about it, but I do have to be organized living in a tiny house or else I would go crazy.

Since Hubby has been home all day, every day, for months, my organization has gone to pot trying to keep him busy and entertained. I try to keep a list of honey-dos on the fridge at all times so he can occupy himself without bothering me. He washes the dishes every morning before I get up. Good boy.

He also likes to clean things. For today he was supposed to scrub the microwave, stove, vent hood, and toaster oven. Then he was supposed to crawl in the attic and fix the hot water tank exhaust pipe. He got all that accomplished before noon. Crap. He scrubbed all the paint off the underside of the vent hood. On tomorrow's list: replace vent hood.

Anyway, when he can find nothing else to do, he tidies up and organizes things. Not that I'm complaining, but he has rearranged the office closet three times in the last six weeks. The house is looking great. The problem is when he doesn't know immediately what to do with something he puts it on my desk. That would include:

1) This isn't mine, it must be hers;
2) I don't know what this is and if I throw it away she will yell at me;
3) I don't know where this is supposed to go and if I put it in the wrong place she will yell at me;
4) Any piece of paper.

So, today I sat down in my computer nest to draw. I couldn't even see my desktop there was so much junk on it. I didn't know where to start making it better. It stressed me out just thinking about the task, so I played a few games of spider solitaire, paced outside, drank a Pepsi, paced a little more, a few more games of solitaire, and more pacing. I finally decided I would go back inside, face the monster, and put one thing in its rightful place. Just one. Ya gotta start with one.

It gets more complicated if you understand I actually have two desks, a file cabinet, and four open shelves in my computer nest. I started picking out three-dimensional objects and leaving the paper to sift to the bottom to be dealt with last. I pulled everything out of the shelves that didn't belong. I was amazed at the crap that had accumulated that really lived somewhere else.

Some of the junk:

- old Rx sunglasses
- empty glasses case
- 5 bottles of fingernail polish
- fingernail polish remover
- container of cotton balls and Q-tips
- tube of hand lotion
- 2 tubes of hydrocortisone cream (one dead, one good)
- hairbrush
- pliers
- 2 screwdrivers (one flat, one Phillips)
- 2 half rolls of toilet paper
- bottle of 409
- 2 gardening magazines
- 2 big manila envelopes that came in the mail at least three weeks ago (unopened)
- 3 old car tag forms
- a glow-in-the-dark keychain fob with my name on it
- a ream of cardstock
- about 50 drawings in various stages of completion
- a bucketload of art supplies (this took up 1/4th of the surface space)
- 3 piles of paperwork for research projects
- 4 old hometown newspapers
- Sunday comics section from about a month ago
- the cats' flea comb
- a string of Christmas lights
- an acrylic serving tray
- an American history book
- a book of poetry
- my recipe book and a pile of loose recipes
- 3 small spiral notebooks all marked "blog fodder"
- a stack of freebie notecards received in the mail
- 3 freebie newspapers from over a month ago
- paperwork on the new hot water heater
- paperwork on the printer purchased two months ago
- warranty information on his truck
- 25 bits of paper that have phone numbers, addresses or passwords I need to record in the Rolodex
- my dead iPod, and
- 4 karaoke CDs (where the hell did *those* come from???)

That was all in addition to what should be there like the computer, printer, lamp, phone, file organizer, and office supplies organizer; bills, address books, phone books, dictionary, and thesaurus.

Yep, I was up to my eyeballs in the flotsam and jetsam of life. It took the better part of eight hours to get the computer nest and surrounds tidy and livable. I still have a stack of paperwork that needs to be dealt with but my brain was too tired to care. That's on the list for tomorrow.

Then I starting cleaning. It's been too long since Pledge was swiped across my desk for there was a wad of furry dust behind my computer monitor that looked suspiciously like a dead cat. I dusted up about two more by the time all was said and done. Sheesh!

So finally I had a clean space to draw. My brain wasn't up to pithy comic generation, so I decided to just sketch whatever. I tried drawing my normally comatose cat, but she figured out I was looking at her too intently and kept warily shifting positions. I switched my gaze over to Hubby's office nest, very tidy of course, and drew that instead. Here's the daily view from my computer chair:


I probably should say something interesting about this drawing, but my brain is dead.

44 Hotdogs

Ever had a snippet of something stuck in your brain that just wouldn't go away? I've had one for the past week or so.

I was standing out on the porch, minding my own business, and this idea came flying up outta nowhere and stung me in the brain like a pesky skeeter:

44 hotdogs all in a row....

44 hotdogs???? What kind of a goofball kernel of an idea is that? Where did *that* come from? I don't want to be thinking about hotdogs, I want to be pondering on black holes and red dwarfs and cosmic catastrophes and suchlike. You know, intellectual high falutin' stuff.

Nope, I got hotdogs instead.

Well, the danged ol' hotdog idea has given me an itch I just can't seem to scratch.

I worked on it a while trying to make it congeal into something, but it just wasn't happening. I've been doodling little caricatures on scraps of paper hoping it would finally bloom into fruition. Nope, still not happening.

Since I can't make it into a whole, I've got to poop out the part I've got and let it be just a part, dangit. I *hate* when that happens. But I can't seem to get rid of this critter any other way and I've got to move on.

Here's the image of my hotdog farmer wearing a straw hat (yes, that's what the fuzzy yellow thing is at the top), scratching his head in puzzlement. Imagine 44 of them all in a row doing a little bouncy, bendy hotdog dance in time to the music.


And here's the verse that's been swarming around with it. I think this should be sung to some long ago childhood nursery rhyme or the college frat beer chugging tune, or some bizarre combination of both.

Forty-four hotdogs all in a row,
Scratchin' their heads cuz nuthin would grow.
White buns toasting in the noonday sun,
Forty-four hotdogs not having fun.

Pertaters planted with the butterbeans,
Cabbage, okry and turnip greens.
They finally decided "What's the use?"
And watered their crops with hot dog juice.

And I have the overwhelming urge to end it with the frat song finale:
Sung by the whorehouse - quartet.
Have ya got a hard-on? Not yet.
Are ya gonna get one? You bet!

I must be:
a) sleep deprived;
b) huffing too much fingernail polish remover;
c) watching too many old Sesame Street cartoons; or
d) all of the above.

Brought to you by the letter "H" and the number 4.

If I Were President

I'm probably the most apolitical person on the face of the U.S. Fact is, I don't much care who is President. One candidate is just about as bad as the other. I have two requirements for a "good" President:

a) (S)he prevents my home from being bombed, by adversaries either foreign or domestic.
b) (S)he keeps the monetary/banking system in this country stable. Long live the FDIC and the NYSE.

Other than that, I figure they will allow crappy laws to be made that benefit someone other than me. That's always been the case, I don't see it changing in my lifetime. Campaign promises seem to be quickly forgotten as soon as the newly elected sets foot in the Oval Office.

However, if I were running for President, this would be my platform.

1) Legalize abortion in all states for all ages upon request without any b.s. prerequisites aimed to coerce a woman out of said abortion. I don't think the gubmint should be mucking around in anyone's uterus for any reason. I think the decision to have an abortion should be the woman's alone after a consultation with a qualified physician. Nobody gets to dictate their morality on another person, especially not on another person's uterus. PERIOD.

2) Legalize marijuana; all amounts, either for sale or personal use. In fact, the vegatative matter should be inspected by the USDA and taxed and regulated like liquor and tobacco. One plus: anyone driving under the influence of marijuana would be going too slow to inflict injury on either persons or property. One drawback to legalization would be a nationwide munchies crisis and we already have a problem with obesity. Maybe we should just outlaw Twinkies and Doritos.

3) Legalize prostitution. This is just common sense. Quit hounding the hookers and let 'em be. Prohibition didn't work, why does anyone think making prostitution illegal would? Once again, the service should be inspected, taxed and regulated.

4) Express Lane Death Penalty (ELDeP). If a mope walks into a shopping mall and mows down a dozen shoppers, and his actions are witnessed by a dozen people plus a couple of video cameras, he just bought himself a ticket to the express lane. He should draw his last breath no more than 48 hours later. I see no reason to feed, house, entertain, and provide medical care for this cat for the rest of his life. Why should he take up my oxygen? I think ELDeP should also be provided for any prisoner who kills another prisoner, or who injures or kills a prison guard. Why should those folks be taking up anybody's oxygen?

5) Illegal Aliens. Illegal aliens should have no rights, and their U.S. born children should not be allowed an education in our public schools. They should all be deported as quickly as possible. I have no problem whatsoever with a citizen from another country coming to the U.S. to better their standard of living. However, they should come here legally and become a legal citizen and pay all the wonderful taxes we get to pay. Once again, tax and regulate.

6) Legalize Bloodsport a la gladiatorial combat. If gangs want to have gang wars, let them. The contests would be held in an arena with hand-to-hand combat weapons, not firearms. Innocent citizens would be safely in the stands and wouldn't be caught in the crossfire as it is now when the wars occur on the streets. Let the thugs fight to the death since this seems to be their prime directive anyway. Participation in the contests would be voluntary and legal betting would be allowed; taxed and regulated of course. In my opinion, violent people will always be violent. They will always be a threat even when locked away in prison. I don't think any rehabilitation will change that. They only cease to be violent when they are too aged to cause any more harm. Let these folks work their violence out on each other as well as raise a little tax revenue. This would be a nifty way to reduce gang populations in the prisons by the way.

I have a whole list of platforms on education reform, but those should be listed under the "If I Were Governor of Arkansas" rant. I'll get writing on that right away.

In the meantime I'll make my prediction on the presidential election: McCain will win. I don't think this country is really ready for anything other than a white guy. I think we will have four more years of decreasing personal freedoms and sucky foreign policies and invasions. Life in the U.S. will just be sucky. With McCain in the White House, the 2012 Mayan Doomsday Prophecy doesn't seem so farfetched anymore. McCain seems Red Button happy and we all may end up in a nuclear poof on Dec. 21, 2012.

I'm not a registered voter. If I were to vote, I'd probably vote for Hillary. I don't think Obama has a clue how cut-throat the office of president will be. I don't think he is ready; I don't think he has the 'nads. I think Hillary does. Plus I think she is crazy enough to scare the peedoodle out of other heads of state. We need that now.

I actually considered registering to vote in this election. The one and only time I have ever voted in my life I voted for Bill Clinton for governor when he defeated Frank White. I voted because my employer made me. He toted me to the polls and pointed a finger inside and said, "Go vote for Bill". There were 15 other races on the ballot that day. I voted for Bill and left the others blank.

I looked myself up on the on-line Arkansas Voters Registration website and, to my amazement, discovered I was registered to vote in the neighboring county. Considering that was not the county in which I registered to vote for Bill, I was a little shocked. I'm smelling voter registration fraud. But that's politikin' in the Gret Stet of Arkansaw.

Now ya know.

Speck in '08
The Sick-n-Tired of BS Candidate

Yet Another Weird Dream

Monday night was dream-free and I actually awoke this morning feeling rested. Hooray! A big dose of milk products before bedtime might have had something to do with that.

Sunday night, however, I had another weird dream. I want to record this dream (and all my other dreams for that matter) because I experience déjà vu fairly often. When I tell folks I'm déjà vuing, they look at me as if I've lost my mind. I thought the déjà vuing thing was common since somebody created a name for it and all, but apparently not. Once again I seem to be the odd duck. However, if I have my dreams recorded, I can go back and say, "See! Here it is! Told ya so!!!"

Back to the dream. I was getting married...again. The wedding was at my hometown church, but the room in the dream was unfamiliar. The wedding was to be a small, formal affair. Only family was invited, but with my family that would be about 100 people or so. All my cousins were there looking fabulous as always.

The dream started as the bridal shower was ending. The day's events were a bridal shower in the morning followed by a luncheon, then the ceremony and reception was later that afternoon. When the cousins come in from all over the state, we make a day of it.

Anyway, folks were milling around visiting before lunch and I was picking up all the cards and gifts. I was thinking to myself that my bridesmaids should be gathering this stuff up, not me, I'm the bride. I need to go start getting dressed. There were just a handful of gifts (third wedding, no gifts expected), but folks had brought tons of cards. Funny thing was I had opened all the cards but none of the gifts at the shower.

I was bustling around the room picking up all the cards and gifts trying to get them all in one place so none would get lost. There were about 7-8 small 2" boxes and one big shirt box. The big box was wrapped in a hideous dark rust-colored metallic paper with a huge matching net/wire bow and flowers. It was really ugly wrapping for a wedding gift. It looked more like a birthday present for a grandma.

Among the little boxes there were two round gold foil boxes; they looked kinda like little cheese wheels with rounded edges. One had a big glass stone on one edge, the other did not. They were supposed to represent an engagement and wedding ring. The boxes pulled apart to open 'around the equator' so to speak. I looked at them a moment and thought, "What a clever idea for a box for a wedding gift. I wonder what could possibly be inside this tiny box????"

Then I woke up. Hummm.....

Could this be a sign from the Magic Entrepreneur Fairy telling me the hottest new idea in wedding gift boxes? I love building boxes so that would be right up my alley. They would fly off the shelves if I could just figure out a clever wedding gift that would fit in a box that small. I need a marketing person post haste. Figger out what goes in the box Pris, would ya?

I can smell the money.

Disembodied Yule Hand Card

My first attempt at making pop-up Christmas cards this year was a complete failure. I ended up with an odd looking disembodied yule hand instead of the elegant card I had originally envisioned.

The boo-boo card seemed to strike a chord, so I set about redesigning the thing. Hallmark probably won't be beating a path to my door, but I thought it came out pretty cool.



This is the straight-on view as the recipient opens the card. The inside greeting and signature are, "The Disembodied Yule Hand wishes you a very surreal holiday season. Very oddly yours, Speck"

It's simple, yet odd, but the photo doesn't show the cool disembodiedness of the hand floating in mid-air.





A little different angle with shadows shows how much the hand pops off the surface of the card.





This effect was created using 3/4" risers in the middle and on each end of the hand. As the card is opened the risers will move to become perpendicular to the hand and to the surface of the card.

The critical part of this card is gluing the risers ABSOLUTELY parallel to each other and to the fold of the card. If they are slightly askew the card won't fold flat (either open or closed) or the hand will tear away from the card. This photo shows the little risers and the multiple facets of the snowflake.





Here you can see (using a little time/action forward imagination) how the whole thing will fold completely flat in the card. The risers push the hand up and away from the main fold of the card as it closes.



I was tooooo pleased with the result. I was doing the Pink Bunny Slipper Happy Dance in my computer nest, waving the card around and making little squeally noises. Hubby was giving me the wary bonkers eye, as in "she's really gone bonkers this time."

I get that a lot.

How To Design a Christmas Card in 4000 Easy Steps, Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

OK, there is a part of me that likes the Disembodied Yule Hand card...the same part of me that appreciates The Far Side. I have a few truly disturbed friends who would get the humor and appreciate the card, but Great Aunt Mildred, not so much.

So at this point the Yule Hand card is in the scrap pile. And the scrap pile is beginning to resemble a huge snowdrift bordering on avalanche. The desk has piles of trials and errors, the floor is littered with paper scraps and little snowflakes, and the trashcan is overflowing. And I've got nothing to show for it. Nuthin'.

Is there any way I can salvage any of this? Well, I could revert back to the paper ornament in a nice card. I like the little snowflake punch thingy. I'll make the ornament out of those. It would be on the small side, but with a little bit of string maybe it will work.

Up to this point I've been making the 3D snowflakes using the slice and jam method. There's probably a proper term for this but I don't know it. Slice halfway through the middle of two flakes, flip one, then slide them together. That was enough for the card, but the ornament would need to be meatier. To add two more sides I would have to glue three flakes together. This would entail scoring these little teensy flakes.

Sidenote: In paper engineering, folds must be scored to make them sharp and precise. If the paper is bent in half then mashed down, the fold gets all higgledy-piggledy. You have to use a tool that is thin and sturdy enough to indent the paper fibers without cutting into them. I use an old letter opener. Scoring is especially critical when using cardstock since it is thick and stiff; it doesn't fold well at all.

I managed to get the flakes scored and glued together. Then I spent ten minutes picking out the little fronds with a needle to make it pretty. It was tedious because they kept getting tangled. Here is the result:



Two problems with this. One, it is teensy, only 1/2". It might fall out of the card flattened and the recipient might never see it. Two, NOBODY is going to spend the time to pick it apart and fluff it up. They would just toss it.

Sigh. I got nuthin'

I like the idea of a snowflake ornament, but I don't want to hand-cut a bazillion them then glue 'em together. There is a small school/teacher supply store here that I've never visited. I know by word-of-mouth they don't carry traditional scrapbooking crap, but it was worth a try. I haul myself downtown.

The school supply place has no punches whatsoever. The closest thing to die-cuts they carry are bulletin board making kits. The choices were a package of (24) 6" metallic sparkle snowflakes that were pretty gaudy, or a winter scene bulletin board kit that included some small snowflakes. I ended up buying both. Now I have to find somewhere to ditch a 3-foot polar bear and a penguin on ice skates.

Back home I start with the metallic snowflake die-cuts. Using three, I score them down the middle, then glue them back to back to back making a three-pronged ornament.



Three problems with this guy. One, it is too large to go in the card. I should have checked that first thing. Two, it is...well...gaudy. It would be great on a Grade 3 bulletin board, but not here. I tried punching holes in it with a paper punch thinking it would make it lacier looking or something, but it turned out neither lacy nor something. Third, the die-cut is not symmetrical. When the flakes were glued together, the white edges peeped out all over. I tried cutting them off and ran into another problem. Where I twisted the scissors around a curve, it pulled off the metallic stuff and left a big chunk of the supporting white cardstock base showing. This option was not working for me at all. Auf! says Heidi.

On to the polar bear snowflakes. There are two sizes, 2.5" and 3.5". I score and fold three big ones to make a mock-up. I don't glue them because I might need to use them again later. There aren't very many of the big ones. Result:



I can tell right away I'll have the same problem with these as I did with the metallic ones. The die-cut is not symmetrical. You can see the white backing peeking out on the lower left edge.

Not a problem. I can scan these, print, rough cut, score, fold, crease, glue, then cut around them so everything is even. (Yes, there is a reason I repeat all the steps every time.)

I like the big ones so I put six on the copy machine. Crap, managed to cut one of 'em off. That's OK, there are three I can use for a prototype. Cut, score, fold, crease, and glue together.

Problem: The graphic is not symmetrical. One arm is a little higher or lower than the opposing arm. If I cut perfectly around the graphic on one side, the graphic on the other side has parts lopped off and looks tacky.



I ponder on this awhile and decide to search the Internet for a nice, clean GIF. I found only one I liked. Pulled it into Paint and fidgeted around with it a while, added some color, printed it and decided I didn't like it. I'm now stuck again. I really liked the polar bear snowflakes, but how to make them work? They were a freehand looking design; it would be tough to work with.

I had a flash of inspiration. I would scan in one flake, erase one side, then duplicate the remaining side, flip it, then marry the two back together using Paint. The flake wouldn't be symmetrical for all six arms, but it would be symmetrical right and left. As long as I paid attention to the "top" and "bottom" of the flake I could make it work.

I scanned in the little flake this time. I think the larger one is too big. Tried my idea and it worked like a charm. I pulled the image into Word, sized it and duplicated it six times on a page. Printed, rough cut, scored, folded, creased, glued. Then I had to cut around all three sections to get the edges perfect. It looked great! Success!



But there's a problem. It's just laying there like a dead fish on its side. Even though these paper googahs are ornaments, nobody ever puts them on the tree. They are usually lined up on the mantle with the past years' models out there too. It won't look pretty laying up there like chum. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

Since my snowflake was pointy on the bottom, I was perplexed for a while as to what to do. Hummm...if I rotated it a quarter turn, the pointy ends would be facing east and west and two arms would be down as legs. That would work. I thought more sides would look better too, so I tried that as well. Print flakes, rough cut, score, fold, crease, glue. Cut around the four sides. The result:



Well, first off the four sides idea is "Auf". That looks horrible. It needs to be six-sided if anything, and I am NOT going to do all the work that requires. The second yuck is my once charming and delicate snowflake now looks short, squatty and ugly. Big sigh. Back to the original pointy ones. Will have to ponder on that some more.

So I print, rough cut, score, fold, crease, glue and cut out the first two flakes. I need to write "Merry Christmas", "from Speck", and "2007" on the three sides. It needs to be written in blue since the flake is blue. And the pen needs to be superfine point to write in the little circular middle.

Problem: The only thing I own that fine in blue is a Sharpie. Sharpies bleed over time and will ruin a project. (Know your materials!) Since folks tend to drag these googahs out year after year, they need to look nice for a few years anyway. The only other alternative I can think of is a blue ink pen. I hate blue ink pens and so does Hubby. He does end up coming home with one every now and again and they get thrown in the pen drawer. I dig through the pen drawer and find one, and it happens to be ultra fine. Excellent! Problem: I write my little words on the first two flakes and the pen ink somehow cheapens them. They don't look as nice as I had imagined.

Hummm...what to do. Oh! What if I could paste a digital photo in the center instead of the writing? That would be cool. I spent the next 30 minutes going through all my photos and couldn't find one of me that didn't suck. I settled on a so-so one and pulled it into Paint with the snowflake. By the time I reduced it enough to fit in the circle, it had pixelated so badly I was hardly recognizable. That might not have been such a bad thing after all. Anyway, I tried for a while to figure out how to make a circular crop in Paint. I know there is a way, I just haven't been able to find it. I finally abandoned this idea after an hour. Back to the handwriting idea.

Wait a minute! I wrote on the 2005 trees with gels pens. Lemme see if I can find those. Maybe they haven't dried up yet. Woo Hoo! Found them in the bottom of the drawer and there is a blue one with a micro tip. YES! Wrote on the next two with the gel pen and they looked splendiferous.

Problem: (isn't there always???) It was extremely difficult to write on the flake after it had been assembled. Note to self: Write on them before rough cutting. Better yet, write on them before scoring. It's hard to write with a big groove down the center of the surface.

Better yet, score before rough cutting so I can make one big score down the center of the printed page rather than handling six little pieces individually. Hey, I learn as I go along. Process engineering.

I'm humming along making the flakes and my hand starts to cramp from all the outline cutting. (All the rough cuts are done using a paper cutter.) It's not easy to cut through two thickness of cardstock, plus I'm cutting around intricate shapes.

I have an idea! Big round punch! Instead of cutting around the graphic I'll just punch it out in a big circle. There will be lots of white border, but the time savings and hand cramp savings would be phenomenal. I punched out three flakes and glued them together. (Even I am tired of repeating all the steps now. It's exhausting me to type them.) The result:



Two problems with this method. First the punch isn't quite large enough to get all the graphic in the circle. The tips of all six arms got lopped off. I could go back and resize the graphic, but then it would be too small. Second, the plain circle is just plain. The snowflake lost the charm of time-intensive, labor-of-love, handmade craftsmanship. If it loses that, what's the point of doing it? I want my googahs to be special.

Ohhhh. But then I had an ADD moment. I could use the big circle punch and make some neat, but plain, ornaments rather quickly. I drug out the crappy cards again. Since I had purchased three boxes, I had three of every design. I had already designated the Santa ones as photo mailers because they were ugly. But they would be fine for this experiment. Worked like a charm. The result:



The paper clips are just there to make them stand up for the photo. I wanted to show that with precision folding, the ornament would look exactly the same from any viewing angle, even if you were looking straight down one wing. Will remember this technique for future projects.

Back to the snowflakes... I finally figured out a way to get them to stand up. Make a stand. Duh! A little triangular strip of cardstock would work. Problem: It looks like an afterthought and takes away from the finished look of the snowflake. I thought maybe punching a snowflake out on all three sides would work. Nope. To use the snowflake punch I would have to increase the length of the three sides or the punchout would cut the strip in half lengthwise. It would also make the stand too tall and would be out of proportion. I tried using a small punch with a similar shape, but that looked stupid. My stand prototypes:



The problem with all of these is that they are stark white and contrasted too greatly with the soft blue of the snowflake. I'll have to design a strip of some kind that matches the blue of the flake. Off to Paint. I copied five design elements in the flake, cleaned them up a little and set them on a field of soft blue also copied from the flake.

Pulled the image into Word, copy pasted 10-12 times, and printed out a page of strips. Scored the strips, cut them out, folded, creased and glued. Beautiful. Problem: (again???)The little triangles could be easily separated and lost from the snowflake. Easy solution. I'll punch a hole in the top of the flake and run a length of silver cord through it. I'll string the little triangle on the cord and make the cord long enough so that it will reach to the base. Then folks will have the option of hanging it or sitting it on their mantle, and the little stand will never go missing. Great idea!

Problem: If the cord is run through the triangle base, the base will be sitting on the cord making it unstable. Hummm...I think I have this one figured out, but I don't know yet. I haven't gone shopping for the cord. But in the meantime, here is my (semi)finished product.



Yes, I suppose it does look like a schoolchild's holiday project. It looks like it took ten minutes to make, and I guess it actually did. No one will understand when I say it took three days to complete. That's why I included all the detailed steps ad nauseum, in the design process. It might not have been 4,000 steps exactly, but it sure felt close to it.

"Three days????" folks will ask in disbelief. "It took three days to make a paper snowflake???"

"Um, well, first there was this big pink, uh, thing which turned into a Disembodied Yule Hand...then a 3-foot polar bear...and a penguin on ice skates...."

"What...????"

"Uh, nevermind."