crafts – Page 9 – A Talemaker’s Confession

I did it today. I took the plunge. I went to my work website, http://ebookcovers4u.wordpress.com, and I put myself on (mostly) unavailable status. Now before anyone goes and gets their panties in a wad because we’re at a stage where we’re begging for help (thank you, Uncle Sam) and have had to ignore the car and house payment for almost two months now, this isn’t as chancy as it sounds. For a while now, I’ve been doing ebook covers, formatting ebooks, AND I’ve been working on The Heavenly Bride while flatting for others in the comic industry. The flatting work has picked up. I had to step back from something.

I had been looking for someone to literally give my business to for about two years now, but most everyone I found proved to be people who just didn’t want to work or couldn’t take working at home seriously enough to realize it’s not a vacation in disguise…. or that yes, if you have a busy schedule doing a bunch of other stuff you’re gonna have to figure out how to work now and again. Right now I have two people on my team that are doing ebook covers. I couldn’t find someone to take over formatting. I tried. I really tried. Fortunately the market has a lot of other ebook formatters out there, some with meaner skills than mine, so for the world it’s not a complete loss.

I just won’t be taking my name down from Smashwords just yet. And I’ll still baby my website, put things up, that sort of things. And I most definitely will take the odd job here and there because the truth is I really *like* working in ebooks. It’s just working in ebooks has been stopping me from writing my own books. And that’s bad.

A supply shipment came today. I was so excited! Until I opened the box. Then I was moderately excited. What I had ordered was miniature bottles with eye pins for the corks. Part of my intended stock involves these little buggers… but the eye pins are huge compared to the cork, and that just looks like the corks are trying to overcompensate for something. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the eye pins… but it was a damper on my supplier relationship that I had to go online to try to find the right size eye pins. I found some for not much, free shipping. I have no idea if they’re the right size at this time.

On an upwards note, though, my first upcycled resin piece is complete. I’m not completely happy with it, though… there are tutorials all over the web about getting the resin to dry clear – sans bubbles. If you’re not careful the resin will be filled with tiny bubbles and kind of looks like fizzy soda. Now on some pieces that will look great and I fully intend to do it on purpose. But I also want to create pieces without them. I followed them and researched and even came up with a twist of my own to get those pesky bubbles out. And with this piece, I thought I had done just that.

Well, further research and a day later I find lots of people who feel my frustration. One person said, “Well, it doesn’t matter what I do. There are going to be tiny bubbles in there. So I’ve decided to just use them as a design element.”

Well, this new piece that I proudly put for sale up on etsy.com a few minutes ago looks good with the bubbles, so it’s not a total loss. And I can see using them as a design element… the truth is I think they kind of look neat while not wanting them there at the same time. I used to really like it when I came across a marble that had a bubble in it. It’s just… neat.

But I’m still going to fight the bubble monster because, well… it’s a challenge. One I’ll probably lose.

So here is my latest masterpiece. It’s going to be only one of a short series. It was created from a broken watch I bought at a yard sale last weekend. I was going to fix the watch, but I soon realized I was missing some parts so couldn’t. And upcycling is a wonderful art, I feel. You can do some amazing things with upcycling.

Why, yes, that is the Third Commandment. Neat, huh?

Today is my father’s birthday. I was going to send him a card and maybe a little something, but I’ve been so sick in the past month I think he’s lucky to get a glance his way. This makes me a terrible human being and the worst daughter in the history of time.

Today has also been a very busy day. Like I said, I’ve been sick. We didn’t know what it was at first; just a mysterious tooth ache in teeth that otherwise are happy to be my teeth. It ebbed on and on, sometimes so badly I barely noticed the sniffles and sneezes that had come with it. “Go to the dentist,” my husband kept saying to me. Oh yeah, because we can afford the co-pay… not. Not to mention we haven’t found a local dentist that isn’t a total dickwad yet. I’ve had very bad experiences at the dentist – including spending some time nearly choking on a bit of bone while the dentist snapped at me that there was nothing wrong. So.

I finally figured out what was happening when the burning headache associated with my chronic sinus problem settled in. And it was like, oh. I see. It’s the damn infection, back again. I was very sick by that point and made my way to the doctor up the street, who demanded to know why I wasn’t at the dentist for my headache until she looked at my teeth and backed off. (Yes, I did indeed tell her “I told you so”.) She got offended when I mentioned what herbs I’ve been taking to battle this chronic problem and asked if I was willing to see a specialist.

Hell yes I’m willing to see a specialist; and not the E4 kind. I’d been wanting to see a specialist all these years that doctors have routinely told me, “Lose weight, drink more water” in response to my problem while blowing me off. I also would have liked some antibiotics (something I rarely stoop to) and maybe some other medicine that would help my life a bit. This problem is very debilitating. I’m up to 300 lbs because this problem flairs up and I have to eat 5, 6, and 10 meals a day to protect my stomach while taking painkillers constantly. And it always flairs up when I try to get active. (I just recently started doing yoga again.) I seriously considered filing for disability over this problem this last time because I literally couldn’t think beyond a certain level. Bills? Yeah, my face didn’t give a shit about paying the bills.

The doctor put in the order for a specialist, but because it was Saturday I was going to have to wait for their call. Which means I had my husband give them his number because my phone is currently out of commission. The doctor refused to let me have pain medicines but did give me a new steroid the companies sent her. And sent me on my way.

The specialist still hasn’t called to set up an appointment.

Which means, now that I knew what the problem was, it was once again up to me to treat myself. Isn’t it funny how the doctors get all offended that folks like me treat ourselves and circumvent the chemicals that Big Pharmacy love so much while at the same time refusing to, well, treat us so we don’t have to treat ourselves? Yeah, about that. I doubled down on the treatment, too, so that today just a couple of days later I returned to my normal work schedule.

Which brings me to Essence of Gelfling.

There’s this real cute idea I’d been wanting to do all this time and I finally had enough energy to do it. I just put it up in the etsy.com store today: it’s… Essence of Gelfling. (Picture to the right!) Because, I reasoned, if you ever get a Skesis neighbor you may be able to charm them with this. Just keep it on your person in case of Skesis invasion, and you’re assured a get out of death card at least once.

I’ve also been multitasking: working on this Alice in Wonderland charm bracelet idea I had while trying to catch up on commissions at the same time. (And I still have to get my entry into the Elfquest Fan Art Calendar Contest in by midnight. Oy!) The charms are being made of shrink plastic – and for those who don’t know, that is not the child art it was originally intended to be. No, when I do shrink plastic I tend to go all out. So that it has taken me literally all day just to product ten little charms.

I used the cameo to cut the shapes: this was hard and I slowly invented my own process. The process apparently worked, sort of, and may even have put a little less stress on the machine than the methods other people use. I haven’t perfected it yet so I don’t want to talk about it just now. Just know I wouldn’t recommend cutting shrinky dinks or really any shrink plastic daily with your Silhouette Cameo.

For the artwork I used some illustrations I originally did for a reprint of Alice in Wonderland. The original illustrations are all black and white, so I colored them up a little bit. You should have seen the failed attempts I ended up throwing away. It was so very sad.

Each charm took me at least four parts to make. Yes, four parts. But they’re so much prettier this way. I’m still perfecting the process, but the last batch was good enough for me to stamp it with the okay. I have decided that each of my charms will begin like this and will be ordered as acrylic laser cut charms here and there as I go. That way I still get to make my art and see them come to life while at the same time getting to see them come to life.

One answer I’ve thought up to my cutter problem is to find a source for pre-cut shrink film shapes: circles and ovals, to be exact. I haven’t found one yet, but I’ve only just started looking. If you know of one, please share.

And now, here’s a couple of photos so you can see the fruits of today’s labor:

Category: crafts

Bottles, Eye Pins… Gold!

Essence of Gelfling