Simply Curious

Finally got to see Williamsburg - our anniversarymoon AND graduation celebration trip.  We managed to hit the perfect time - lovely weather, flowers all out, and hardly any crowds.  I still need to work on my photography skills, but for now must be content in trying to 'rescue' what photos I did get.

Other than a weird blurryness in the bottom left of many of my photos, my biggest problem was I didn't want tourists in the picture.  So . . . I took 'em out.

Before editing - I mostly just wanted the carriage.

After - cropping and the rubber stamp tool removed what I didn't want.

Yes, it's somewhat blurry, I had to be quick, plus he was moving.  I figure from here I can add some sort of watercolor effect to make the blurryness seem intentional.  I was lucky with this image in that the details behind the tourists were easy to figure out and fake.  I can't do it with all of the photos!

In our kitchen we have a large print of the Governor's Palace, nicely balanced in the center of one wall, framed by wrought iron candleholders.  I was hoping to find some smaller prints to go with it while we were down there, but nothing really appealed to me.  So I've decided I would take some of my pictures, play with them to match the watercolor/impressionistic effect of the big print, and hang them on either side.  I was thinking of stringing three small framed photos on a large ribbon on each side.

It wasn't until we got back and I looked at the print again that I learned for the first time that it's of the BACK of the palace.  Now I'm annoyed - I never bothered to take more than a blurry photo of the front because I thought I had it already!

That's right.  Everything has been turned in, and my only final exam was yesterday.  (I got a 94 on it, and you should have seen all the study guides I created.)  I will find out all of this semester's final grades hopefully by this weekend.  It's kind of weird to realize I don't have to go to school tomorrow, or today, or ever.

One of my classes was so much fun I'm going to continue it for a bit.  It was a course on the history of animation, and just as awesome as you think it would be.  Every week we had to write a 500 word blog post on something, anything, related to animation.  I did this over in Wordpress because professors hate Blogger for some odd reason.  They claim it's due to spam commenting but I've never seen any here.  *knocks on wood*   I have TWO blogs at the moment.  I don't really like Wordpress, so I may move the content from it to here and incorporate it into this blog.  I'll have to think about it.  In the meantime, here's a link if you're curious.

Animusings - thoughts on storytelling and animation.

This post is partly a test to see if I fixed my problem on my oneluckybug home site.  I'm trying to get it to show previews of the blog over there, but it crashed randomly the other day and wouldn't work.  We shall see.

This being my 1,000th post, I knew I would have to have something special to write about.  It was only timing that would determine whether it would be about finishing college or the arrival of my niece.  The niece got here first!

Lauren Louiese* Bell
Born May 6 at 7:44 am
7 lbs, 10 oz, 19 inches long

Mom and daughter are doing fine.

So glad you finally joined us, Lauren!

(*Louiese is a family middle name passed down several generations, odd spelling and all.  My great-grandmother had a lot of brothers who liked to call her Louis, and she felt an extra 'e' would improve the femininity.)

Acquire ninja cookie cutters from ThinkGeek.

 Acquire sugar cookie recipe.

Combine and bake.  (careful, they burn easy.  must be why Ninjas wear black and lurk in the dark.)

Acquire gel icing set in whatever colors you want.


Take cookies and icing to college.  Show them to your friends.  Sit back and prepare to laugh.

Be surprised by their excitement and enthusiasm and slightly pleased that they want to do something more than squirt icing on a cookie and eat.

Be very amazed at their awesome, awesome results.

In between school assignments I have been planning out my vacation, and working once more on my travel emergency kit.  Or rather, my disaster-prevention travel kit.  If you've ever been on a cruise ship and discovered you needed one of these things, you are either out $10 for one item or SOL.


I should probably use generic terms for some of the items, but sometimes it's easier to use a brand instead of trying to remember whether Diphenhydramine is for your stomach or your allergies.  (I'm not always good with big words.)  Bonine is a motion sickness pill favored by crew members of a rather lurchy voyage my husband went on a few years ago.  The stabilizers on the cruise ship were broken! Bonine does not make me sleepy the way Dramamine does.  Tums may be replaced  by Titralac, depending on how I end up packing things.  I tried to organize my list so gels and pills were together, in the hopes that I could neatly condense the packing, in, say, a pill organizer, rather than a bunch of little bottles.

The bold letters are things I shouldn't have to replace or check to see if they need replacing.  I did not include things like makeup as I was trying to not to be gender specific.  I have condensed all my makeup to one little travel bag, so I can just grab THAT and go.  (Let me tell you, it's hard to throw out $75 worth of makeup, even if it is 3 years old and you've only used it twice.  But you feel so much better after you do.)

Now I have to figure out how to pack everything.  I found a nice little plastic container at the Dollar Tree that's technically meant for food, but since you can't use it in the microwave or dishwasher it seemed rather wasted.  The Dollar Tree is awesome for some of this stuff, particularly the bandaids and topical ointments.  I even found an interesting little strip of cloth filled with polymer beads that supposedly keep cool when thoroughly moistened, which you tied around your neck. I figured it was worth trying at least once.  They also have little tiny roller brushes about the size of your hand which function perfectly well and are easy to pack.

Yes, this is the way my mind works these days.  I think I have control issues.  But I do like saving the day.

I would not have shaped the room this way.

Our unused guest room (well, except by me as a study) is a small, awkward, WEIRD little room.  It's got cathedral ceilings, a weird angled wall that was obviously put that way because otherwise the wall would run into the window, and a big open space above the closet.

This was the inspiration for the colors (no horizontal lines, though).

I've managed to fit a lot in it, naturally.  I found some awesome tall bookshelves that are roughly a foot square and have extra shelves - perfect for holding all the paperbacks.  They fit nicely into odd places that a full sized shelf wouldn't go.  We have a twin bed in there, Cargo style, with a matching chest of drawers and a half bookshelf.  There's also my vintage record player cabinet, and a nightstand and media rack made by Grandpa Leitner.  We painted the walls a sage green, and the curtains at the two windows are tan.

For some reason, the room's theme just screamed 'adventure' to me.  I'm not even sure if that's the right word, but I'm trying very hard to meet those needs.  I'm still trying to figure that out. I want it to be unlike the rest of the house (or maybe the rest of the house more like it).  It's a place to go to escape, to imagine, to relax and think about all the awesome books and National Geographic Magazines you ever read, and the exotic and wonderful places you want to someday visit.  It's a place to dream your best dreams that have nothing to do with your everyday life.  It doesn't matter if you do them or not, it's enough to just think about them.

This is actually the 'after' photo, added to this post later.

We turned the bed against the wall and I'm forcing it into a daybed.  Eventually there will be lots of pillows, hopefully with rich, exotic looking fabrics.  I have a pretty Moroccan lantern sitting on top of one of the shelves.  I pulled my most adventurous books out, and put them on top of the chest of drawers between two bookends that form a tall ship.  I have a collage picture frame that I filled with our most exciting pictures, flamingos and giraffes, me at the helm, Brian next to a Pyramid, etc.  On the wall over the bed I have a tapestry map of Middle Earth, and plan to hang on either side of that the framed map of Hogwarts and an antique map of the northern Virginia area where we live.  The stuffed animals, clownfish, tigers, polar bears, etc, have congregated in here.  Also floating in here is the ottoman Brian and I made.  I still need to draw the map on the cover for it.

Today I bought some beautifully rich upholstery fabric in a greenish/brownish tone (called Flagship Sage) and simply tucked it in around the comforter.  I love it.  I gasp every time I see it.  And it was half off!  I've been grabbing cheap pillows whenever I find them, and have a similar fabric to this one, only in red, that I will use to recover them.

But what else?  It needs an elephant, somehow, somewhere.  I need to do SOMETHING to the curtains to make them look more exciting.  I'd love to be able to put stuff up in the spot above the closet, but since that requires a full size ladder to reach, I'd have to plan carefully.  A parasol would be awesome, and maybe a travel trunk.  I'll likely display my Steampunk library in here if I ever get it done.  I do need a clock in here still, and maybe a small lantern.  Maybe I can find something at Novica?  Or World Market?


Adventure is just around the corner, and to the front of the house.

I love this crochet pattern, I can finish it in two evenings, or maybe 6 hours.

This one is for intended for my pending niece, so I thought I'd get all decorative on it.  I tried to include decorations that were soft and (hopefully) won't pull off easily.  I suppose I should test that beforehand . . .

My mother told me about a recipe she tried using just a box of cake mix and a 12 oz can of soda. Creativity sparked, and I decided to try it out with my microwave cake recipe and see what happened. Turned out exactly like the previous recipe! Here it is:

Microwave Soda Cake

2 TBSP flour
1.5 TBSP sugar
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
2 TBSP soda or diet soda of your choice.

Mix together and microwave for 1 minute. Surprise! Cake!



I used Fanta Strawberry soda, which explains the pinkness. If I get strawberries I might try cutting one up and adding it to the mix. I saw suggestions of using cream soda and am all about trying that next. Don't forget to sprinkle chocolate chips as frosting as soon as you take it out!

Update: If you want a moister cake, add 3 tbsps instead of 2, and microwave for 1 minute and 15-20 seconds.

Here's a link to my Steampunk Clockwork doll stop-motion animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60tx1S9631w

I finished!  I'm sure I'll be doing lots of tweaking to the bits I didn't like before the due date rolls around, but otherwise, it's done!  Since I had done so much prep work, when the time came to do the camera work, it only took about an hour.  I ended up with a 45 second video, which includes opening and  closing credits.

The program I ended up using is called Frames.  It didn't crash on me every step of the way, like Windows Movie Maker or MonkeyJam, and it didn't force me to lay every single picture on a different track, like Wax.  Plus I had options to control exactly how long every frame was, and could easily apply them to each frame.  The only thing this program was missing was a fade-to-black option for the transitions and an option for fading audio.  They had a large range of options for exporting to video, which got me all kinds of varying results.  I finally just kept playing with the expert mode until I produced a clear video with decent audio.  Fortunately they offer a full feature 30 day trial, and my project is due April 10.

I think this is the most exciting thing I've ever done in college.

I think I've got everything on her that I wanted, except maybe the key.  It's really not that important.

I need to get lots of lighting lighting, find the tripod, and make a checklist of things I need to look at before taking a photo, like the tendency of her skirt to poof up on the one side, or of her corset to slide down.  Overall I'm pleased with how she looks.  It was not at ALL what I envisioned when I bought my Obitsu, but she definitely has charm.

Here is the latest update.

It will take me hours to fiddle with the gathers on the overskirt, so I'm leaving that til last.

I made a slight change to the corset, namely the fastening in the back.  I gave up on the corset lacing as I found it too frustrating to adjust and readjust.  Instead, I scavenged the velcro from a Barbie dress, and sewed them on the corset.  One half I put facing out, half on the  fabric, half sticking out.  The other I put facing in, totally underneath the fabric with a slight fabric overhang.  it fits together cleanly so that the corset edges meet, although I have to do some fussing at the top still.  I could fake corset lacing on ribbon or a piece of the corset fabric and then glue that over top if I change my mind.  Because it's a plastic, articulated doll, I really want to be sure the clothing is removable.

I also made her slippers.  I used a pinkish doll skin cut in a thick U shape and some lace pieces. I cut out a piece of paper to the size of her foot and glued the fabric to that.  I didn't put a sole on as I was concerned too many layers of fabric would interfere with the magnet strength.

I learned some time ago that unless you're a REALLY good dancer, you shouldn't wear brightly colored shoes, as it will attract attention to the feet.  I did not want this particular doll to have any foot attention.  She has small, bland feet whose only worth is the awesomely strong magnets that hold her upright.  She also can't really stand on her toes or bend her foot anywhere but at the ankle, something I don't want people to notice in the animation.  I'll have to wait for daylight to try to get a good photo - the flash keeps washing them out.

Following a bizarre chain of events, I find myself completely remaking my 1/6 scale Obitsu doll into a clockwork dancer for a stop-motion animation project for school.

Corset in progress

I explored a few ideas today in regards to making fake mini books.  Well, faker than the mini books I've been making.  I guess I'm making mini spines?


I have a big box of wooden coffee stirrers that I bought some time back to use as flooring.  The width is about right for books, at least bigger books, and easy to cut with my hand-held strip wood chopper.  Then I conducted a few experiments.  Above are pictures of the mini books I've been making.  Below that, I have the mini spines, covered in paper, paper leather, painted, or shaped.

The shaping appears to be a must, which is easy enough to do with a nail file.  Painting them looks ok, although I need to look up how make a fake leather look.  They definitely need a coat of gesso or something else to make them shiny.  It turned out to be very frustrating to attempt to glue the paper to the rounded strip, but it IS possible.

I can get 8 book spines from a single coffee stirrer.  This saves me a ton of money because I think I paid maybe $10 for that box of stirrers ages ago, and it seems to be neverending.  It would certainly save space.  However, I'm not so sure it would save me any time, especially if I have to fuss over getting paper around the curves.  I can't seem to find any half rounds narrow enough for the project, so I'll have to round off each stirrer.  I may also try gluing a narrower strip of cardstock or some other thick substance - string, maybe? - to the center of the stirrer to force the paper to curve without having to sand.  I suppose if I do the painting and shellacking before cutting it would be, if not quicker, at least less messy.

I'm not actually sure if I've accomplished anything yet.  I haven't figured out if I want to glue the spines to a block to make them booklike, or just glue them to a flat panel made to look like a bookcase.  I suppose it depends on how consistently I can cut them to size.

After a long break, my interest cycle has revolved back to miniatures.  I'm STILL pondering the making of mini books and the steampunk library.  It dawned on me that I had a perfect vessel already - a jewelry box I got at Bombay Company that I no longer use.  I'm not sure that it would be big enough for what I'm envisioning, and it's still at my parent's house, so I need to go get it and measure. 

I'm also feeling a bit overwhelmed by the number of books I need to make.  Today I cut up two strips of balsa wood, and estimated that from each 1/8" thickness strip, 24" long, I can get about 3" worth of bookshelf space filled, roughly 38 books.  If shelves are 1" tall, and maybe 6" wide, that's 56 books per shelf.  If the bookshelf is about 10" tall, that's 560 books.  and there's two bookshelves on each end, and a much wider one on the back wall.  Maybe 2,000 books total.  And that's just for one project!

There are kits I can buy that usually have about 50 or 60 books in them, about $13 apiece.  The Kendall leather book kit is around $19, but only has 20 books in that kit, but the leather paper is so awesome it's almost worth it.  And then there's the plain pre-made books that are 12 books for around $2.50.  Wanna in El Paso is also planning a new printable book kit soon, by the page rather than by the title. 

I suppose my best bet is to just do spine blocks, but that sounds just as complex as making each book individually.  I know nothing about wood carving, and yet in order to obtain the right amount of realism I think I'd have to learn.  I can always tell the fake books, and I'd be easily disappointed.

I'm sure I could cut it down to 1000 books by just doing a corner of shelves rather than the entire roombox.  Maybe less if I incorporate architectural details.  I need to start thinking about the rest of the room and how to make it Victorian steampunk without going overboard.  I'm the snooty type who thinks if there's going to be gears in it, it had better be functional.

I started off the New Year by attacking the kitchen. I packed away glassware we never used, extracted pots and pans that SHOULDN'T be used, and added some wire shelving to increase storage in random places. I keep hoping that one day I'll magically create enough room for a crock pot, bread machine, and a super-fancy mixer.

One of the things I had the most problems finding room for was the rolling pin. It was too big for any of the drawers, and is such an odd shape that it just got in the way anywhere I stuck it. We kept it in the narrow cabinet with the pans and cutting boards, but it took up a lot of room.

So I decided I should hang it. It took a while to figure out how. I was excited when I realized that it had a hole for hanging in one handle, but the length of string required to make it hang evenly against the wall made it too long to hang in any of the cabinets, or even on the outside of any of the cabinets. We had tiled the entire wall between the countertop and the cabinets, and there was no way I was going to attempt drilling through them. (I doubt they're stuck on very well as it is.) The only answer appeared to be UNDER the cabinets, horizontally. It's out of the way, not taking up any useable space.



I ended up using basic small screw eyes and ribbon, into the narrow strip of wood under the cabinet against the wall. They were small enough that I could have gone through the bottom of the cabinet, but opted for the wall, just in case. The ribbon is just long enough that I can slide the rolling pin in and out of it, but short enough that it shouldn't slide out on its own.  I wandered through Sears Hardware contemplating every possibility, including bike rack hooks and PVC pipe, but in the end, I feel this was the simplest and best option.  I use my rolling pin for breads, pizza crusts, and tortillas a fair bit due to Brian's soy allergies, so having it close at hand without having to dig it out from under cutting boards and causing avalanches will be nice. 

Now that I have a full size house to decorate, I've spent a lot of time climbing up and down ladders, stools and chairs, hanging things. My workout is tripled by the fact that I frequently need to retrieve a different tool, which, of course, is in the tool box. On the floor. Over there.

I finally decided I should invest in a tool belt and just carry everything up with me at once. I would need something that would hold a small level, my B&D power drill, a tape measure, a pencil, nails/screws/drill bits and other hanging accessories, regular screwdrivers, possibly drywall filler, and a possibly a hammer.

And then I ran into a new problem. Tool belts are big, heavy, leather monstrosities designed to take a lot of abuse and be worn by men twice my size. They even come with attachments for certain types of tools, which delighted me, but I didn't feel I could justify the cost. None of them seemed to be quite right for what I needed to carry up. So I looked at women's tool belts and immediately began my WHY DOES EVERYTHING DESIGNED FOR WOMEN HAVE TO BE PINK????! rant. It's not just the oh-they're-so-cute patronization. It's the realization that the designer obviously puts form before function, and if so, then while the belt looks 'pretty', in as much as poorly dyed pink leather can look, it's probably not as well made as the ones designed for men. I REALLY don't want my hammer to fall on my foot!

Obviously my next option is to make my own. I do have some heavy duty canvas that would work, I just need to figure out a design. Maybe invest in a riveter. Hmm.