Indigo Luna

Forest Flower Mandala

I posted another mandala to my Etsy store.  I could only find one of my boxes of watercolor pencils even though I tore the house apart so I had a limited color palette.  I think it turned out pretty well. 

Here's a pic before color:

And here's one after it was colored, glazed, and matted:

Another Etsy artist asked me to put one of my mandalas on hold for her.  She was wonderfully gushy about it which was quite nice.  Feels good to be appreciated.  Sales would be nice, too but appreciation ain't half bad.

How much do you love this?:

I heart it VERY much but, alas, someone else already snapped it up!  But Secret Lentil has lots of other very cool de/re-constructed clothes in her etsy shop.

I also am madly in love with this goddess bead:

An Oregon artist made it and you can see more of her fabulous work at Dragynsfyre, her etsy shop.  I love lampwork beads!  It's something I think would be really cool to make if only because you get to play with fire, but I need a new artistic medium like I need an extra hole in my head - especially one with a steep learning curve and expensive tools.

I survived grocery shopping and errands with the kids today...barely.  I almost left Maddy at Toys R Us she made me so mad.  She has suddenly started channeling this spoiled, nasty, evil princess monster and I am about at my wit's end with it.  She's too young to turn into a meanager.  Right?  Right?!  Sigh. And now I am trying to get through bedtime without totally losing it.  They have both become utterly impossible at bedtime lately.  It can literally drag on for hours.  I just want to go to my room and take a break from parenting now.  Benadryl is looking better and better.

My Life Needs a Rewind

So, we are not moving.  We are staying.  This is a good thing and I feel a mixture of relief and grief.  Grief because I really do want to move back home and be closer to my friends and family and relief because I know this is the right thing for us to do right now.  We still have work that needs to be finished here.

Staying here will allow us to get out of debt which is HUGE (the debt and the happy thought of getting out of it).  Gabe can finish up his degree and I can finish my AAOT and hopefully get certified as an interpreter so I will actually be qualified to get a job when we do move.  I can work towards developing an energy work practice and possibly getting my massage license.  We will have some breathing room.

It was not an easy decision.  I feel like I'm being pulled in many different directions and that no matter what I do, I am going to disappoint someone.  But, in the end, I have to do what is best for my family and there are just too many good reasons to stay put.

The plans we are able to make now are exciting.  I look forward to putting time and energy into my art and my Etsy shop.  I was invited to do a big art show in March that I made a lot of money at a few years ago and I'm itching to make new work.  I'm thrilled that I will have the time and money available to take workshops in art and energy work.  I'm really happy that we will be able to spend more time with the kids and not be constantly worrying about having enough work or money.

Thanks to everyone who wrote encouraging words about the impending move.  It's nice to know that people believe in me.  It means a lot.

Oh. My. God.

I am completely freaking out.  I think I might soon be reduced to sitting in a corner gibbering and drooling.  Really.

This morning Gabe got offered a full-time job in Eugene!  After we had finally accepted the fact that we would be staying here for a while, wham!  Did I mention that school starts IN A WEEK??!!  He accepted the job.  I mean, it seemed silly not to.  If the Universe is waving opportunities in your face, you should probably try to pay attention. But....holy crap!!! 

It seems utterly surreal at this point.  I have no clue what to do next.  Pack?  Find a place to live?  Jump off of something really high?  No, I think I'll just see here feeling panicky and slightly lightheaded.

I will have to commute to my job in Salem for at least a couple of weeks and maybe longer.  That's an hour drive each way.  But we really don't have enough savings for me to go without work for any period of time and I have the good insurance.  Did I mention our car's in the shop?

I have to keep reminding myself to breathe.

These things happen for a reason, right?  This is some kind of a sign? I hope so because we are taking the leap. Send good thoughts.  Or a big net.

A Little Color

I've totally gotten off schedule with the colors but I just took some cool photos that all happen to feature red so I thought I would share them.

This little guy hung out in the "pond" on top of our pool cover for a couple of days.  I think he thought he'd found his own private little swamp.  I've never seen a bright red drangonfly before and I really didn't expect him to be there when I got back with the camera but he very obligingly posed for me.

These apples are growing on a tree that was a stump when we moved here ten years ago.  Goes to show nature is one tenacious wench.

My mother-in-law poisoned all the blackberry bushes at the beginning of the summer.  They didn't seem to notice.  One of my ex-boyfriends had this theory that blackberries were actually vampiric creatures that lured you in with fruit and then scratched you and drank your blood.

I posted four more mandalas in my Etsy shop yesterday.  You can click on the sidebar link to see.  Then I ran out of the glaze that I was using to cover them and I cannot find it anywhere locally.  Even Michaels didn't have it.  So, I had to order it online and now I am waiting rather impatiently for it to arrive so I can get the others glazed and matted.  I'm quite pleased with the way they are turning out.  I also have more in the pen and ink stage waiting to be colored.

Today is a date day!  Last time we went to see Superbad which was....juvenile but kind of funny.  Not as good as I had hoped it would be.  What we really need to do is go grocery shopping.  How romantic is that?  Trust me, without the children, it's a lot more romantic.

Lazy Sunday

My shoulder is killing me so I am trying to use the mouse left handed.  It is amazingly difficult.  It's always funny to me how stupid my non-dominant hand can be.    I have to figure out a way to get the mouse down lower if I want to spend much time on the computer.  My shoulder is seriously unhappy.

We were up much too late last night.  Maddy was totally melting down over some mostly imaginary thing and refused to go to bed until 1:30.  Fun.  At least Rowan slept through all the uproar.  It's nice how they seem to take turns losing it.  Life would get really hairy if they decided to gang up on us.  We have got to get them back on some sort of normal sleeping schedule!  School starts in a week and two days!!!  Ugh.

Yesterday we went into town to check out a new ice cream place.  The ice cream wasn't particularly spectacular.  I prefer Ben and Jerrys.  But the place was cute and the owner was very nice.  The shop is in this renovated old gas station and it's right next to the covered bridge that goes over the creek.  We took our ice cream down to the bridge and sat on the bench watching the ducks.  They were very cute munching on blackberries and surfing the little rapids.  The creek is extremely low right now and they would float along for a while and then have to waddle over the rocks when they came to a shallow spot.  Maddy is positive now that we need a duck for a pet.  She wants to name it (the hypothetical pet duck) "Duck".  For some reason, this idea greatly amuses her.

Here's a new little obsession of mine: amigurumi.  They are these super cute Japanese crocheted critters.  It's all made from very simple circular crochet and the possibilities are endless.  Some of them are just too funny.  Like this woman just does cephalopods but these amigurumi are more typical.  Look at this cute ferret!

You can buy the pattern here.

We also discovered a new bookstore in town yesterday.  I didn't have much hope as Silverton has had a couple of bookstores before and they were pretty pathetic but it was exactly the bookstore I would have wanted!  It was filled with alternative magazines (Utne Reader, Yes!, Adbusters, etc.) and eco-friendly books, great bumperstickers with very liberal politics, and fantastic kids books.  Woo-hoo!  I will definitely be supporting them.  I was totally psyched and suprised to find it in our small, rural and fairly conservative town.

I'm going to go take a pain pill for my shoulder and try to talk my husband into helping me build a lightbox so I can take better pictures for my shop.  And drink more coffee.  A lot more coffee.

More Fun Than a Barrel Full of...Well, You Know

Still making monkeys. Still wanting to throw my computer off of something very, very high and listen to the satisifying crash as it smashes into a million tiny little pieces.

I am enjoying the monkey making (still sounds dirty) but my fingers are really sore from sewing through felt. I took all my monkey supplies upstairs to work on while I hung out where the girls were playing Viva Pinata on the Xbox 360 yesterday.  They always want one of us to hang out and watch them play video games.

Viva Pinata is a very odd game.  You build this garden, plant seeds, put up houses, fill ponds, etc. to get these different kinds of animals to come live in your garden.  But the animals are all pinatas.  Yep.  I don't get it either.  When you have two animals of the same kind you can get them to do the "romance dance" where they go in their house and do this little dance and then they have a new baby.  Hmmmm.  And if you whack one of the pinata animals with your shovel, it explodes candy everywhere and the other pinatas come over and eat it.  Weird.  Before we got Viva Pinata, they were constantly playing Dead Rising for the sheer amusement of wandering around in a mall killing zombies.

Speaking of zombies, I am SO sending these as my Christmas cards this year!

She has great stuff in her Etsy shop including baby onesies that say "I worry about zombies".  Gotta love it!

I gotta get off of here before I suffer a stroke.  I am now literally pleading and bargaining with the computer.  Please load that page...Puh-leeeeeeeeeeze??  C'mon!  Please?  I know you can do it.  I have faith.  Dammit, load that freaking page NOW!!!!  Arghhhhhhhhh!!!! And then my brain starts leaking out my ears.  It's not pretty.

I leave you with some monkeys.  Click on my Etsy store link in the sidebar if you find you just can't live without owning one.

 

Monkeying Around

OK, first off, I just have to say that my computer is driving me out of my freaking mind!!!!  It is old.  The hard drive is full.  We have less than half a gig left.  Altogether, I have almost twice as much memory on my iPod as we have on our entire hard drive.  How pathetic is that??  So, saying that it is a little slow would be the understatment of the millenium.  What is the point of having broadband internet if everything refuses to load?!!!

Rant over.

Last night I suddenly got the urge to draw some monkeys.  I thought it would be fun to make some monkey themed items for my Etsy store.  Once I started, I couldn't stop!

How do you like Frankenmonkey?

Yay!  Pirate monkey.

You have no idea what I just went through to get those damned pictures to load!!!  Sorry, I did say the rant was over, didn't I?  Sigh.

So, stay tuned to see what the monkeys look like made from felt.  Too much fun!  I am thinking pins, backpack danglies, applique, maybe screenprints.... We shall see.  I cut a bunch out while watching Buffy with the kids last night.

I added new stuff to my Etsy page yesterday - scarves, hat and bag.  Click on the link it the sidebar to check it out.  Still haven't made a sale but everyone says it's slow right now.  Hopefully it will pick up soon.

Oh, and all you knitters, check out these awesome shirts!

I like this one and the Buddha knitter one!  Too cute!

Off to make monkeys!  Hmmm...that sounds dirty.

A Pain in My Brain

I'm am on day..three? four? of a nasty headache so I'm a little cranky.  I start back to work in two weeks and that makes me even more cranky.  However, I did just buy this totally awesome bracelet from a fellow Etsy artist so that makes me feel a little better.  Ah, shopping therapy...

I have been buying WAY too much stuff recently.  I have been to Michaels, Target and Staples about four times in the last week.  Bad news.  Hubby is getting annoyed.  If he only knew how many things I RESIST buying!  I am actually saving us SO MUCH money.  Stop laughing.

Michaels has the COOLEST Halloween villages!  I want them all SOOOOO badly.  I already have a huge X-mas village collection.  They are crazy expensive but super nifty - all animatronic and spooky.  I love Halloween.  I wish we actually got trick-or-treaters at our house so I would have a good excuse for going all out with the decorations.  Guess I'll just have to settle for making Halloween themed goodies for my Etsy store.

Check out this fellow Etsy artist's awesome store:

Mandalas Mounted

I finally got around to doing something with the hand drawn mandalas I did last year.  I decided to cut them out and mount them on black matboard.  They look really cool if I do say so myself.  The black really makes the colors pop.  I also coated them with Diamond glaze which protects them and gives them shine and depth.  I also embellished them with tiny little rhinestones!  Sparkles are good!  It was a little labor intensive all in all but I like how it turned out.  I put the first one up for sale on my Etsy shop today.

Etsy is still eating my brain.  I can feel myself in the throws of obsession, for sure.  I have spent absolutely ungodly amounts of time on the internet lately.  I joined We Love Etsy which is a very cool social networking site for Etsy artists and also Indiepublic which is an awesome site for indie artists and designers.  Because apparently I needed serveral million more things to keep track of....and two more blogs to post to...and oodles of new friends...and a LOT of totally awesome things I want to buy.

I mean, how is this woman's stuff not the cutest things you have EVER seen??  Awwww!

OK, off to try and wrap my brain around a little Deepak Chopra before I go to bed.  Gotta get up early in the morning - well, early for me in the summer anyway - to go school supply shopping with my mama and the girls.  I loves me some office supply stores!

Etsy has Eaten My Brain!

 

Wow!  I finally signed up for an Etsy shop this weekend.  Not sure why I resisted for so long.  Maybe because I felt guilty about my languishing website that I never seem to get up. Check me out!!

It couldn't be more simple to get a storefront set up and list items.  I'm having lots of fun!  I even joined a Street Team of pagan Etsy artists that is really awesome.  Street Teams help promote each other and network.  I'm also going to join the Etsy Bloggers Team.  There are so many amazing artists and crafters out there!  I have spent more time than I actually care to admit perusing shops and blogs and websites in the last few days.  There are oodles of Oregon artists on there.

Just a few cool shops to check out: Kool Kooky Kreatures has wonderfully quirky critters. Baby O' Really is a Salem artist with really sweet baby things and I LOVE the washable breastfeeding pads! Lights Out Design has very cool prints - look, pirates! Charmed by Skye has gorgeous charm bracelets!

I just warn you, once you get started, it's hard to stop.