Collage sheet – Loteria Cards Part 1

Published on February 17, 2010 in Collage sheets and lists. 0 Comments Tags: .

Simon has recently returned from a two-week holiday in the States, mostly spent snowboarding at Lake Tahoe. I did not accompany him because a) snowboarding NO NO NO and b) house to myself for two weeks OH YES PLEASE THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Here is a list of things I’ve done in his absence:

1) Survived for nearly a week solely on ramen noodles, frozen pizza, processed cheese slices and SMASH! (If loving Smash is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. I especially love the name – as in: “Wot’s that then?” “S’mash, innit?”) Apparently when left on my own I revert to a collegiate diet.
2) Created an unholy mess, just because I could. We’re talking dinner plates left on the floor near the sofa, a trail of dirty clothes leading from bathroom to bedroom, the whole shmessy shebang. There’s something comforting about wallowing in your own filth, isn’t there?
3) Got bored of unholy mess and cleaned the living fuck out of the house. I did a full Clean Sweep on my studio: pulled everything out of every drawer, spread it all out on the floor, then sorted, labelled, filed, rearranged, recycled, reframed and repurposed to my little heart’s content. I even went so far as to cover shoe boxes in decorative paper to make prettier storage for my shelves. Like Martha Stewart on Methedrine, I was. I went at it for a solid eight hours at least.
4) Developed a painful crick in my neck due to manic eight-hour cleaning frenzy.
5) Made some new paintings! Since Adobe came along and blew my mind, I’ve worked pretty much exclusively in digital. Painting is just way too slow, TOO SLOW! and not editable enough. When I do paint, it’s mostly just to make passably look-at-able things to fill gaps on the walls. But last week I got an itchy paintbrush finger, so I hauled all my paints and jars and brushes and canvases down to the lounge and sat in front of the telly til the wee hours painting painting painting and now I have THREE new pieces to hang up. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to pick bits of gesso out of my hair.
6) Watched procedural dramas non-stop until my eyes bled.

The list of things I did NOT do during Simon’s absence includes working, blogging (natch), and running around the house in my pants like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, which I totally wanted to do but was stopped by a lack of hardwood flooring and Y-fronts.

Here’s a new collage sheet. I’m really excited about this one – ever since the lovely and talented Emily turned me on to Loteria cards, I’ve been trying to think of a way to incorporate them into my artwork. This is the first in a series of collage sheets based on the classic Don Clemente set of cards – I’ve taken the traditional images and made them into original collages using genuine vintage illustrations. See my Etsy shop for details…


Loteria Cards – Part 1

I give you…the Meta-List!

Published on January 22, 2010 in Collage sheets, etsy and lists. 1 Comment

This is a lazy, lazy post: a list made up of other lists. These are some of my favourite McSweeney’s lists. (I have a big website crush on McSweeney’s. McSweeney’s is cool.)

1. Things Not Overheard at a Conceptual-Art Gallery Opening (“Well, that’s obvious, but what do the other three midgets represent?”)
2. Actual Superheroes From the Pages of International and Obscure Comic Books Who Are Unlikely to See Their Origin Stories Developed Into Movies (“Canadian Ninja”)
3. My Attempt to Further Depress a Particularly Unfunny List, Sent to Me by Someone at Work, by Making Random Remarks (“Your hairdresser is straight, your plumber is gay, the woman who delivers your mail is into S&M, and your Mary Kay rep is a guy in drag. This would make an interesting TV sitcom.“)
4. YouTube Comment or e.e. cummings? (“stunned. i. am. stunned. every question speaks to us”)
5. Things Koala Bears Would Say (“No, you’re the cutest ever.”)
6. Terrible Poetry Jokes (“POUND (to Whitman): Shut the fuck up.”)

…and some of my favourite Book of Ratings lists. (O Lorre! Whither have you departed? Come back and carry on rating my world!)
1. The A-Team (“If you’re going to name yourself after a body part, make it one you can hit people with.”)
2. Artificial People (“Remove their heads so we can see what we’d look like in an Old Navy jacket after the revolution comes and we’re beheaded for wearing an Old Navy jacket.”)
3. Hobo Signs: part 1, part 2, part 3 (“You’d think the symbol for ‘man with gun’ would have something at least vaguely resembling a man or a gun. This looks more like the symbol for ‘moose in a tent.’”)
4. Canadian Snack Foods (“It’s like really gross food, only made by Jesus.”)
5. Apes and Monkeys (“Excuse me, Mr. Rampaging Killer? Why don’t you put down the gun and take a look at this hand-held monkey?”)

Favourite pressies 2009

Published on January 12, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

…aaaand by “later this week”, I of course meant “next week”. Bad, bad blogger! Anyway, here are my Top Three Favourite Pressies for Christmas 2009:

1. Satchel satchel satchel! I am never without a messenger-style bag, and my trusty Hello Kitty bag was starting to look a bit Goodbye Kitty after nearly four years of faithful service. Simon got me this handmade leather satchel, which brings me to OCD orgasm with its myriad compartments and pockets and pen holders. Pen holders hooray! Also it is gorgeous. I feel bad for the cow and all but…GORGEOUS.

2. Butterfly bookmark. My stepdaughter picked this out – isn’t it so pretty?? A bookmark is one thing guaranteed to get a lot of use in my vicinity, and I lurrrrve this one. Although I’ve developed a bad habit of storing it down the front of my top. (Classy.)

3. Decoupage tulip necklace. This one’s from me mum. Lord bless her, she sends me a necklace I LOVE every single Christmas. I don’t usually wear gold, but I really, really like the buttery yellow colour of this necklace, and the tiny delicate decoupage tulips. I’ve been wearing it nearly every day.

But I have to admit to being Most Envious of one of Simon’s pressies: a pair of warm fuzzy slippers from John Lewis. We have a stone floor in our very large kitchen, and despite the best efforts of the Aga, during the winter it radiates cold like an iceberg. Man, you know you’re over thirty when you think a warm pair of slippers is the best present EVER.

Here are a couple of new collage sheets…


Beware the dog-golem

Published on January 5, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Christmas was…Christmas. It happened. We spent the day itself in Wales, lounging next to the fire on my father-in-law’s UNBELIEVABLY enormous and comfortable sofa, occasionally rousing ourselves to fuss the two matted mudballs with eyes that I think may have been collies, or else possibly some species of dog-golem. Well. I say ‘we’ – I relaxed, and Simon cooked all sorts of food. As usual. He likes it, OK? At least I think he does. Anyway, it was all fine and festive; at about four o’clock the FIL started playing his punk records, and we had a real Christmas moment when we realised we both know all the words to ‘Jet Boy Jet Girl’. Magic, baby.

On Boxing Day, Simon and FIL were both stricken down with some sort of horrible intestinal bug. But I was fine! And so I laughed! I laughed until the next day, when fate wreaked its hideous revenge. I will spare you the extremely gory details, except to say that it was the least fun I’ve ever had lying down. There was a bucket beside the bed. I used it. It wasn’t pretty.

So I spent a fun couple of days trying to keep solids down, and was mostly recovered in time for New Year’s Eve; not that you could tell, as I spent the holiday horizontal on the sofa looking like shite, much as I’d spent the previous week. (Much as I’d spend my entire life if I wasn’t forced to go to work now and then.) We tried to watch It’s A Wonderful Life, but the copy we’d downloaded purchased didn’t work properly: boooo! So we watched The Big Lebowski. I’m happy to watch TBL anywhere, anytime. It has become part of the wallpaper in my brain. (“‘Fuck the tournament?’ OK, I can see you don’t want to be cheered up. C’mon Donnie, let’s go get us a lane.”)

Simon did manage to get It’s a Wonderful Life working the next day, which was ace as he’d never seen it before and I really wanted to see the film work its magic on a newcomer. NOBODY can resist the evil heartwarming mojo of Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. In fact, I think the word ‘heartwarming’ should be redefined to apply ONLY to It’s a Wonderful Life, because Frank Capra owns the de facto copyright on heartwarming, and also because the word in any other context makes me want to sick up.

I did get some fairly awesome pressies, which I will try to take some pictures of this week. In the meantime, here’s a new collage sheet of one-inch circles, available now in my Etsy shop…


Reasons I Love Britain Nos. 16,354 & 16,355

Published on December 18, 2009 in Collage sheets and General. 0 Comments Tags: .

No. 16,354: Is this getting press anywhere outside the UK? Every year in Britain there is a publicised battle for the number one Christmas hit single, as judged by sales. For the past several years, the battle has been easily won by the winner of the X Factor. This year, one couple got so sick of Simon ‘Twat’ Cowell’s merchandising machine that they started a Facebook campaign encouraging people to go out and buy ‘Killing In The Name’ by Rage Against The Machine instead of whatever dreck the X Factor happens to churn out. You remember ‘Killing In The Name’ – it’s the one with the repeated refrain “Fuck you! I won’t do what you tell me!” Awesome. And as of right now, Rage Against The Machine are beating [X Factor schlock-monger whose name I can’t be bothered to look up] by 60,000 singles. OH YEAH. I am SO buying a copy. Fight the good fight!

No. 16,355: When the credit crunch hit, Radio 4’s flagship Serious News programme introduced a daily segment about the current financial situation. They invited listeners to suggest names for the new feature, and the winner, awesomely, was ‘Upshares, Downshares’. They even started playing a bit of the ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ theme song to introduce the segment.

At some point, some listener sent in the original version of the theme song, which was played on that evening’s programme. Then someone sent in another version, or their own version, or something – this was also played on the air, with a comment from Eddie ‘Sexy Voice’ Mair saying thanks very much, but please stop sending in new versions of the theme now.

Being the contrary sort (see above), this lit a fire under the British public, and the homemade versions started pouring in in their thousands. The BBC conceded defeat, and now every day they feature a new listener-contributed interpretation of the theme (keep in mind this is the Straight-Faced News Programme, during which Eddie Mair REGULARLY causes experienced politicians to stutter in desperation during interviews). Recent styles have included retro-futuristic disco synth-pop, mariachi, traditional hand bells, and a lovely rendition tonight on an Irish bouzouki (different from the Greek bouzouki in having a flat instead of a rounded back. Apparently). This coming Monday the programme is featuring an interview with the composer of the ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ theme, in which they will play him several of the versions sent in by the listeners.

How utterly, delightfully bonkers. THIS COUNTRY.

More gift tags…see my Etsy shop for details…

Print-your-own gift tags

Published on December 15, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Today’s list: Four Things I’d Like To Do Before I Die…
1. Walk down the street in slow motion wearing sunglasses and biker boots to a soundtrack of ‘Kashmir’ by Led Zeppelin. (Or ‘Cashmere’, as I prefer to think of it: a hard rock ode to the comforts of soft wooly jumpers.)
2. Meet someone walking a ferret on a lead, so I can say “Nice marmot.”
3. Throw a good left hook.
4. Touch Jon Spencer. (Preferably while he’s sweaty.) I mean, HELLO.

Now available in my shop: a set of print-your-own holiday gift tags! Click for details…

Nacho suicide

Published on December 2, 2009 in Cafepress and General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Yesterday I FINALLY got round to getting myself a library card. I don’t know how I’ve survived this long without one. Oh wait – yes I do: by buying the shit out of used books on Amazon. You’re welcome, Amazon sellers. But now I have a library card, which brings me much joy! I can get through a 400-page book in a day quite easily, and often do, so libraries are almost sacred places to me. You can take home any book you want and read it for free! I love browsing for books, and just picking out anything that looks like it might be good, without feeling like it has to be something momentous that I really want to read or else I will be wasting my money. I can pick something out just because it looks vaguely interesting without feeling any pressure to enjoy it! Free books for free!

I walked out of the library with a big ol’ comforting stack of books, then stopped in at a pub to read for an hour or so and wait out the rush hour before going home. I ordered some nachos, because I hate myself. There are a few seemingly simple North American dishes that the British simply can’t get their heads round, and nachos is one of them. (Caesar salads are another.) Ordering nachos in a British pub is always a fresh adventure in disappointment. Here is how to make nachos, British-stylee:

1. Place stale tortilla chips in a bowl. The bowl is crucial in order to allow the maximum number of chips to avoid contact with any sort of topping.
2. Place the tiniest, most meagre sprinkling of cheese on the top layer of chips ONLY.
3. Microwave.
4. Allow nachos to cool. This ensures that the thin film of melted cheese will solidify into a plasticky shell, holding the top layer of chips together as a solid mass – akin to roof tiles – and ensuring that not so much as a drop of any other foodstuff will penetrate to the layers below.
5. Spoon some cold salsa out of a jar over the top of your nachos. If you don’t have salsa, or have never heard of salsa, tomato relish will do just as well.
6. If you’re feeling generous, include a tiny paper cup of sour cream.
7. Enjoy picking apart the tepid, rigid crust! As an added bonus, the stale, microwaved tortilla chips will crumble liberally on your clothing and rip the hell out of the inside of your mouth.

I have been served many variations on this theme since I moved to England, but never, not once, have I ever been pleasantly surprised and served a PROPER PLATE OF NACHOS. They simply don’t exist in this country.

I remember fondly the nachos at Morgan’s Pub in Calgary, on 17th Avenue. Man, those were some good nachos. For $7.50 you got a basket of tortilla chips about two feet across, smothered, and I mean smothered, in melted cheese, green onions and tomatoes. For a dollar extra you could get spicy chicken or beef on top. It came with sour cream and freshly made salsa, with lots of coriander.

Sadly, I didn’t get to enjoy the nacho experience at Morgan’s quite as often as I’d have liked due to the live music in the bar every night, which always consisted of a covers band who would crank out the Latest Jukebox Hits at maximum eardrum-imploding volume for a crowd of Chipsters in backwards baseball caps and No Fear T-shirts who would “WHOOOOOOO!” at the top of their lungs and fling themselves against the speakers in furious Bacchanalian abandon at the opening strains of Blur’s ‘Song 2’. Christ it was depressing. At least you don’t get that sort of thing in England. The nachos are a small sacrifice.

I’ve been tarting up my Cafepress shop a bit – and I’ve got a few new Christmas card designs on offer…

Literary Spiders Necklace by geelizzie

Published on October 29, 2009 in Collage sheets and General. 0 Comments

I was chuffed to bits to spot this wicked cool pendant created by geelizzie using one of my collage sheets. I love feeling like I’m part of a collaborative artistic process – it’s one of my favourite things about Etsy.

I’ve done a whole whack of new collage sheets recently – luckily my husband has been VERY PATIENT with my endless, endless, endless clickity-clicking on my laptop every evening. I swear I’m starting to dream in Photoshop. Here are a couple of my favourites – check out my Etsy shop for details.


Vintage Ladies in Corsets


Vintage Alphabet


Moons and Stars

Law & Order Roundup

Published on October 21, 2009 in General and Latest offerings. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Law & Order: Original Flavour
I do love me some Classic L&O. I love the reassuring CHUN-CHUNNN! of procedural justice. I love the eternally cresting wave of Jerry Orbach’s hair. I love S. Epatha Merkerson’s pursed-lips, arms-folded Get Shit Done look and Sam Waterston’s nearly sentient eyebrows. The plots can be formulaic, but I find that strangely soothing (uh oh – the DA’s case has broken down over legal minutiae! Guess the detectives will have to go back and re-examine the evidence from a different angle! And…commercial break). I like the accessible way the storylines explore the ambiguities of the legal system. I can watch L&O:OF for hours on end and not get bored. Long may it reign.

However…

Law & Order: Special Ratings Unit
Otherwise known as Law & Order: Extra Rapey. In a word: sigh. I will admit that I do often watch it. But…SIGH. This show is such an obvious attempt to cash in on the success of L&O:OF by boosting the sensationalism (Rapists and Incest and Paedos – oh my!) and focusing more on the personal lives of the detectives. On paper this sounds fine: I’m always up for a storyline involving bigamist cult leaders, boo-yeah! BUT. The series falls down on three points: 1) Mariska Hargitay, 2) Christopher Meloni, and 3) Ice T.

1) Mariska Hargitay. I’ve read good reviews of Hargitay’s performance as Olivia Benson, but to be honest, I find her a great big meh. She has her Hard-Ass Detective Voice, and her Breathy Sympathy Voice (for use on Victims of Trauma), and that’s it. And judging by her range of facial expressions, I think she may have fallen head-first into a vat of Botox. (Mee-YOW! It’s like I’m channelling a drag queen!)

2) Christopher Meloni. Elliot Stabler is supposed to be a ‘loose cannon’ – an ex-[army something] tough guy who has a tendency to THINK WITH HIS FISTS. Rrr! He is also a troubled family man who tends to emotionally identify young victims with his own children, and….zzzzzZZZZZZZZ. Sorry, I was just lulled to sleep there for a second by the soothing drone of all those clichés flocking together. Christopher Meloni conveys the barely-contained intensity of his character by…squinting. And clenching his jaw. A lot. Ho hum.

3) Ice T. I used to sort of fancy Ice T, when he was fronting Body Count. But I fear he has expanded his repertoire beyond the limits of his talents. He delivers every single line in the exact same Pimp-Ass Mofo monotone. Whatever he’s supposed to be saying (“I’ll check his phone records and see if anything jumps out”), his tone of voice says “I’m on pop a cap in yo ass.” I’ve seen more emotive range from a waffle iron.

SIGH.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Can’t be bothered to watch it. If there’s nothing else on, I’ll sort of half pay attention to Vincent D’Onofrio doing his weird Ode to Columbo (“Oh – just one more thing…”), but the show has never really caught my attention. I might watch now that Jeff Goldblum has signed on though. I’ve always been fond of his overbite.

Here’s another new collage. This one is based on the Frog Prince fairy tale…

The frog answered, “I do not care for your clothes, your pearls and jewels, nor for your golden crown, but if you will love me and let me be your companion and play-fellow, and sit by you at your little table, and eat off your little golden plate, and drink out of your little cup, and sleep in your little bed – if you will promise me this I will go down below, and bring you your golden ball up again.” (Read the story here)

Sucker with a capital SUCK

Published on October 13, 2009 in Tutorials. 1 Comment Tags: .

I’m a big fat sucker, with a capital SUCK, for animal charities. Show me a picture of a sad-looking homeless dog sitting in the rain, or a sad-looking donkey with too many sticks loaded on his back, or a sad-looking battery chicken (insomuch as a chicken can express emotion of any sort), or a sad-looking lemur who has had a tough day at the office, or a sad-looking rat who has missed his bus, and I will immediately fall to my knees, weeping and holding out my wallet in mute supplication. At last count I regularly donate to at least five animal charities: the usual official-sounding acronym ones (RSPCA, WSPA, E-I-E-I-O, whatever), Animal Aid (whoever they are – they send me their magazine every once in a while, but I’m too afraid to open it in case there are pictures inside of suffering animals that will cause me to spontaneously hemorrhage my life’s savings), a mare and foal sanctuary in Devon, and some place called ‘The Alternative Animal Sanctuary’, which randomly started sending me appeals in the post (obviously I’m on some sort of Official Sucker List) that were so touchingly low-rent, all Comic Sans font and poor grammar and blurry off-centre mugshots of various needy animals, that I couldn’t not send them money. Which is insane, because ordinarily Comic Sans font and bad grammar make me scream and claw at my eyes and spew vitriol like Mount Etna. But when they are deployed in the name of animal welfare, my heart just wells over with pity. Those poor deprived animals, they just don’t know that Comic Sans font has NO PLACE IN THIS WORLD anywhere except children’s birthday party invitations, and even then only for ugly children whose parents don’t love them! I must send them money! Money for fonts!

My most recent sucking-in has been to sponsor a dog with Dogs Trust. (They ran an advert during a new rescue-themed episode of The Dog Whisperer, those bastards, when I was already all weepy and overflowing with dog-pity. Talk about kicking me when I’m down.) I now pay £4 a month to sponsor a rescue dog. I would have been happy just to cough up the four quid every month and know it was going to a dog rescue charity, but the whole point of the ‘sponsorship’ scheme is to make middle-class folks feel good about themselves by letting them know EXACTLY how their money is helping, right? So I got a profile and a letter ‘from’ the dog I sponsored (she likes bacon treats and riding in the car! Go figure!) and an invitation to write to her whenever I like. Yeesh. You know, just because I’m fond of animals doesn’t mean I’m a halfwit who thinks that dogs can read. I did enjoy the free fridge magnet though. So cute!

Here’s a new collage I did tonight…it makes me think of ghost stories about drowned women. Because I am such a cheerful sort.