Soap from my Sofa to Etsy

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:37:51 -0700

My Etsy

I listed some soap today on Etsy finally. I have a ton of other stuff to get done but I’m so tired that I thought I’d go home, have a nice lunch and see if I could get some work done while lounging on the sofa. Not bad work if you can stay awake… which I have managed to do so far. Anyway back to the soap… I don’t have all the other kinds photographed yet, so some will have to wait until another day. I’m happy with how it looks for now though. I hope it’s all sold by morning! LOL!

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Weaving Rainbows into Glass Again

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:54:56 -0700

Rainbow Weaver

My work has been juried into Oasis Gallery in Harrisonburg. I started out at Oasis back in 2004 and worked in the media of Art Glass at the time. It was quickly profitable enough that I left my cush job as an Art Consultant to go do the art glass thing full time. I’ve worked professionally in 15 different art media since then and I migrated away from the Art Glass into/through other things. Recently I pulled out my glazes and glass supplies and made up some things for one of our adoption fund raisers, trying to use up supplies I had on hand. When I was in the middle of the work, I remembered how much I liked the process and how beautifully the work came together. I found it very rewarding and decided I wanted more of that in my life again. So here I am again. I’ve recently left another job and in some ways I feel like I’m repeating myself by going back to the glass. But on the other hand, there are few things more important to me than being able to do the work that I love… (without an EXTERNAL Boss! - My own internal drive is enough, thank you!) and that work is anything that has to do with color and creativity. It doesn’t matter to me what the art media is, just so it involves color and creativity.

This image is one I created ages ago that shows me weaving a rainbow into my glass. I’m happy with how it turned out. That was long before I chopped off the hair. It is watercolor on paper layered with marker and metalics. And it actually looks like me. Complete with my pixie ear. Though I don't have any cool star tats. Tsk!

The first time I was into art glass, I did coorportate gifts for GE one year and ended up mailing my glass all over the country and to some foreign countries as well. France, China, Japan, Italy, United Arab Emirates, etc. That was so cool! So I have art in collections around the world. Ha ha! Sounds cooler than it is since my work wasn’t actually collected by those folks, it was given to them as gifts. But it’s fun to think that there are bits of my work in some really far away places. I'd like to get that GE gig again but they give a different coorporate gift each year and I was able to do it for two years because of the different media I work in. Still, I'd love to do that again!

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Amazed and Dazed... and more than a little tired

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:53:48 -0700

Quilt 1

Whew, it has been a busy week. I’m working on putting together a silent auction to raise money for our adoption process. And I really didn’t do much on the project until this week. But this week has been a real flurry. The event is Saturday night, 7:00 – 9:00. Hubby was gone all week until early this morning. It’s so good to have him back, now I have some moral support and a pack mule.

I've got scarves, art glass, jewelry, soap, beads, purses, sachets, hand made quilts and maybe some other stuff in this silent auction. All stuff that I have made from my gallery days or since. And that's not counting the edibles.

Monday, Tues and Wed I spent making product and going through my studio pulling out supplies to sell. I did pretty good at organizing things for the most part. The dogs were getting clingy. I would leave at 8:30 in the morning, drop by briefly to grab a hot dog every now and then and then I’d drag in around 10 most evenings and both of them really needed some TLC by that point. They had food and water, they just wanted me. Sweet really. My girls need me.

Vase

We’ve had some big donations of stuff to sell. A bunch of gardening stuff from a closed garden center was interesting. He took us into the old store, showed us around and said “Take everything you can sell.” Then he left and we loaded the Civic. That was good. Quite a few other things and I don’t know what all we’ll get Saturday morning when church people bring out more stuff. Some of my friends from hither and yon have mailed us packages. That kind of thing always amazes me. It’s the sort of thing I’d think of doing but wouldn’t actually get around to doing.

Thursday I started sugar cookies to sell. A friend helped me, I cut them out and she baked them. She did a beautiful job, never touched a timer but they were always perfect. And we had the most interesting conversation. We are both extremely private in person (not so much in writing for me) and we talked about the most interesting things. By Thursday evening the week was starting to catch up with me. I had two helpers for decorating the cookies and they came at around 8:00 pm. It wasn’t long before I pretty much hit the wall and started fading. They weren’t very task oriented helpers but seemed to have fun and I was extremely grateful for their help. The cookies look great. Hubby and I packaged them this evening and I hope they really bring in some funds. We packaged a dozen chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with six colorful decorated sugar cookies on top. All that was on a plate wrapped up carefully. Hubby is really good at making those chocolate chip cookies, and I’m good at making the sugar cookies. So that plate is kind of symbolic of us and our uniqueness and the way we compliment each other.

Quilt 2

Today hubby and I both played pack mule and we hauled boxes and such. Another friend showed up to help unpack and display the stuff. We have a few more things to pick up. Hubby is headed out right now to go pick up a Fender Telecaster electric guitar that a friend donated.

After we’ve had dinner and I’ve had a nice pain killer, we’ll go back in and see if we can make some chocolate. I’m not going to do the twelve kinds that I did for “Art and Chocolate” only about five kinds plus some really easy chocolate and nut combos. I hope that goes rather quickly as the ol bod has really had it. I’m tired and the back has started to feel like a holiday weekend at the bakery.

I know that I don’t look like it right this minute, but I’m glad to do these kinds of events. It’s something I know how to do and I feel as though I’m investing in my children. Clearly I literally invest, because adoption is really expensive. But this is a personal investment as well. That is how I see it. And this way our friends (and people we don’t know because this was fairly broadly advertised) and strangers can enjoy an evening and the blessing can go both ways. They get a fun entertaining event and we get their hard earned money, and then they get a tax deduction. All the way around it works.

Bubble bowl

I need to go make some phone calls and sort out a few more details. Tomorrow two or three friends are coming and we will make silent auction sheets for every item. They are bringing a laptop and a laser printer. I’m bringing paper. I hope that goes rather quickly. And then it will be just the finishing touches and the food and the event will be upon us. I’m really tired at the moment, this was a lot of work. Especially with hubby away. But I know it will be good and I’ll probably cry at the end of the night with the generosity of friends and family. We’re blessed. Completely ostentatiously blessed.

Oh, and I’m going to tag this one thing on the end. Hubby’s grandma decided that she didn’t really need her “economic stimulus check” and thought she’d donate it to our adoption fund. When Hubby’s other grandma found out, she wanted to do the same thing. So these two darling little old ladies who could certainly could have found uses for that money have made their investment in us and our children. I am mostly amazed, completely blessed!

Can’t wait to meet my kiddies. A friend told me she thinks I’m getting three.

PS... all photos are of things I've made that are in this silent auction.

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Grumpy Cake Decorator turned Happy Soap Maker

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:54:09 -0700

What a lovely morning! I am NOT going to work at the bakery today, which just tickles me PINK! Yesterday my hubby and our friend Ed moved the rest of my gallery display pieces to my studio. A desk, some pedestals and two jewelry display cases. I discovered that these old jewelry display cases are an excellent addition to my work area here in the studio and I’ve already loaded them down with supplies. They were given to me by the man who owns the American Motorcar Company next door – they work on antique cars. And one of them has become my soap formulation center. On the top shelf is my collection of essential oils, the blends I’ve created and some fragrance oils as well. The second shelf is full of all my natural colorants of every description that go in soap. The bottom shelf has all my herbs and exfoliating ingredients that go in the soap. And after the Fed Ex guy comes and delivers the rest of my supplies – I’m going to be in high clover! I’m really excited about getting back in the studio again and into some new adventures. I’ll be posting photos soon of some of the things I’ve already made. I started out making soap at home, but after the collision of soap and food prep, I knew I wanted to move that work to the studio. So what can I say, I think this is going to be fun! I am a Happy Happy Camper!

Soap on the rocks (3)

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The Red Velvet Wedding (and the saga of the loser cupcakes)

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:54:05 -0700

The second wedding cake of the weekend was much bigger and was at a semi posh local hotel. There were only 250 guests planned, but we made a total of 600 servings of cake for them. The bride’s cake served 255 people, the groom’s cake another 100 or so and then they ordered 250 cupcakes on top of all that. They packaged the cupcakes in delightful little boxes for the guests to take home with them. What a lovely idea. (Unless you are the poor schlep making 250 identical cupcakes!)

Red Velvet Wedding

The Bride’s cake was a lovely red velvet cake, iced with butter cream and decorated in black colored chocolate swirls. (Red velvet is a pain to ice, it keeps wanting to "bleed" crumbs into the icing!) It was a striking look, the contrast of the colors was very pleasing. I think it would have been a lovely presentation once they started cutting all that red cake! I don’t like red velvet myself, I just feel like I’m doing something horrible to my body by eating that much food color (and it really takes a lot!) but there is no doubt that it is a pretty and delicious cake!

Pretty dining room

I got all five tiers set in place and all the details finished and then looked around for the flowers for the top of the cake. The florist had cut all the little orchids off the stem and my heart sank. What a stupid move that was, but they clearly didn’t know any better. So I started scouting the centerpieces on the tables to find stems of stuff that I could borrow for the top of the cake. I snipped a few twigs here and there and combined with the orchid blossoms, it turned out very pretty.

Side by side

The Groom’s cake was his frat emblem on a full sheet cake that was marble white/chocolate inside. It turned out nicely I thought.

Groom's Cake

And then there were the cupcakes. The Loser cupcakes. At every turn we screwed up this order!

The first screw up happened when the elves took the order. The client wanted an “L” on each cupcake, and the order said they needed to be made out of fondant. BL told me to use a cookie cutter to make them and it wouldn’t be a big deal. I took a look at that cookie cutter and I wondered to myself… it would look better for a child’s event than for a ritzy wedding, but I knew it was the only way to do 250 fondant “L’s” without wanting to jump from the nearest bridge. (Doing a bunch of “L’s” out of Icing would have been quicker and easier but someone up-sold the client fondant – so that’s what I was stuck making.) And with the amount of cake orders I had in addition to the weddings, I was about to pull out my hair anyway. So I started in making these infernal “L’s.” The bride’s mother happened by and BL picked up one of the “L’s” to go show her. I was about half way through making them and I stopped BL by simply saying… “Don’t ask a question I don’t want the answer to!” She looked a little surprised, looked at the fondant “L” in her hand and looked at me, realizing what I was saying. She laughed, put down the “L” and went back to work laughing. I made about 275 of those stupid things the first time around and had to come back and make more because they were fragile and I broke quite a few of them.

A bunch of fondant L's

Boss Lady is the baker and she just couldn’t keep up this week. (For good reason – because the bread elf is gone and the brownie/cookie elf was on vacation.) So I didn’t start seeing those cup cakes until it had already become crunch time. They were red velvet cake in silver cupcake liners. I had decorated the first batch and as I moved them some went flying off the board, like penguins into the ocean. Those little silver liners are slippery! I lost quite a few with that stupid human trick but it turned out that only one was beyond fixing. So I used some non-slip stuff (the same stuff that they use under rugs to keep them from sliding around) and worked late into the night finishing up the first round of cupcakes. But that was the beginning.

There they are

When one of the elves came in the next morning and looked at the cupcakes with all those little “L’s” on them… she dubbed them “the loser cupcakes” complete with full tilt New Yorker attitude and sign language. The name stuck. BL passed an edict that the client must NOT know that we named them thus, so the name really stuck.

Gourmet hockey pucks

I was stressing because the rest of the cupcakes weren’t even baked and they are time consuming. So she started the first batch but forgot to add in the rising agent and she didn’t figure it out until they were in the oven so the next batch of cupcakes didn’t rise. They tasted a little strange and they were very short and dense. She didn’t have much time to bake replacement cupcakes but she finally decided that she would at least try. It turned out that we still had to use some of the red hocky puck cupcakes to finish out the 250, but at least they were finished.

Just some of them

The bride’s Mom and Dad came in to package up the cupcakes. Each cupcake got the royal treatment in a red box with tissue paper and a ribbon with the bride and groom’s names on it. Only the Bride’s Mom wasn’t crazy about my little cookie cutter “L’s.” I didn’t blame her, I didn’t think much of them by that point myself. But it was the morning of the wedding and there they were, all 250 of them. BL scoured the order to see if anyone had written “cursive L” anywhere but there was nothing. It was sad because making cursive “L’s” out of icing would have been so much easier for me. The Bride’s dad just shook his head and told his wife “It is what it is” and everyone decided to be happy about it. (He was a freakin genius!)

They wanted to move the cart that I had put all the cupcakes on. But then they realized that there was no way to get the cart through that part of the bakery, it would just be easier to move them tray by tray. So the Bride’s mom picked up the one tray with the extras on it (that didn’t have the non-slip plastic on it) and I had to catch cupcakes like I was Michael Jordan. Loser cupcakes just kept trying to jump.

Mr and Mrs L

It is done and over. I imagine that most of the cupcakes in their pretty boxes have been devoured. It was a beautiful wedding and I’m certain that the new Mr. and Mrs. “L” are enjoying a lovely honeymoon somewhere marvelous. On the other hand, I don’t want to see another red velvet cake for a very long time. And 250 cupcakes? Never again!

And just for the record, it's the cupcakes that were losers, not the people. The people were great. And if you happen to know the lovely couple, remember that I was sworn to secrecy. :) (for all the good that did!) LOL!

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Little Bitty One

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:30:38 -0700

Little bitty cake

This little bitty wedding cake that turned out so cute. This wedding party had about 15 guests and was in a local restaurant. The cake icing was tinted a ginger color to match a paint chip (yes a paint chip from the paint department) that the bride gave us. Then swirls of ivory butter cream finished off the look. It was a cute little thing, it almost looked like it hadn’t quite grown up yet. There was a medallion with a monogram on it that also went on the cake but I forgot to take it with me on the delivery, and then when I went back to deliver that element I forgot to take the camera. Oh well, it was cute without it. The whole cake wasn't much taller than 12 inches, plus the topper. It's an 8 inch, 6 inch and a 4 inch. I'm pleased with it. I think the folks at the restaurant were going to move it, so I hope they didn't destroy it doing that. Oh well, I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't my problem if something happens after I leave.

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Artzy Potpourri

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:53:56 -0700

We’ll, time for a little update I suppose.

Tonight we enjoyed watching a stage production of Peter Pan. A friend of ours played “Mr. Darling” and it was very cute. This is not a story I grew up with and I knew it only in a peripheral sort of way. I was surprised with how chauvinistic the roles were, the girl being a mom to all the boys, making the meal, and doing the annual Spring cleaning. Peter Pan pretending to be the father with his chair and pipe. And I was also surprised with how the Indian characters were coreographed in the most stereotypical way possible. I know I’m an uncommon woman, but as I child I never pretended I was a mother or that I was cooking or spring cleaning for anyone – ever! It wouldn’t have occurred to me. Now I did pretend I was on stage singing or playing piano for thousands, hosting a cooking show or designing doll clothing or designing the interior of a shoe box with blocks for furniture. You know, all the normal stuff. J (for an artist.)

I’ve started making my own mineral makeup. It’s an interesting process and I’m learning a lot as I go along. I managed to get a really good match to my own skin tone, that was surprisingly easy. Most mineral makeup is far too yellow for my skin but I was able to work it out by adding pigments and then using the back of my hand to match the color. I’ve got a good eye for color so it wasn’t that hard to get it right. It seems to me that I should be able to get pretty close for other people’s coloring as well. And now that I’ve got all the stuff, I might as well make it available to my friends. I’ve worn the product a couple days and it covers more than any other mineral makeup I’ve worn and that’s kind of interesting. I guess this formula is a bit more like a concealor than a foundation. So I’ll keep messing around with the formula for the light coverage and good for your skin qualities that are so cool about mineral makeup. I refuse to use that Bismuth stuff that is in cheap mineral makeup that is actually an “inorganic” (not a mineral at all) that is just cheap filler and actually known to cause issues for some people. So I’m fascinated by this for the moment. We’ll see where it takes me.

I’m laptop computer shopping. Yeah, it’s time to purchase a computer that will be able to handle the next round of software I’m going to try to get for my business. I’d love Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver, we’ll see if I can pull together that kind of cash. It’s a big investment and I’m not a professional designer (well, I used to draw logos for a marketing firm but I haven’t done that for a while) so it’s a bit difficult to justify. However, buying Dreamweaver is certainly cheaper than hiring a web designer who knows dhtml so as long as I can continue to put together all my own websites, then that’s good for me. I wish I could figure out a way to learn how to code dynamic html websites without having to put out the big bucks! I’ll keep researching it, it is still possible that some of the features I need are already in the Frontpage software that I already have. I don’t think Frontpage uses CSS though, so I’ll keep researching that. I’ve also put in some time researching shopping carts and setting up a website to sell products using PayPal.com. I’ve giving some thought to a commerce website and exploring some of the other options with that as well. The wheels, they are a-turning! If you've been there, done that - pass along any pointers! (I had a yahoo store for a while and that just isn't what I want.)

I’ve made lots of different kinds of soap lately. Some of it really turned out beautifully. (And some of it had to be completely melted down and rebatched.) I’ve got about ten different kinds now and I’m especially happy with the colors and fragrances and my favorite of the moment is a Milk and Honey bar that I think is especially cute. I’ll try to take photos and post them one of these days. I’m really happy with how that adventure is going. And my soap has been accepted in a local gallery, so that’s kind of cool. I have tentative word that my alphabet photography has also been accepted there. So I just need to pack up a bunch of stuff and take it to them and see what happens.

I need to spend a little time with the jewelry again. I have a wholesale order waiting on enough money to be able to click the “checkout” button. But I think I’m going to give that some serious thought and maybe go in a different direction altogether. There are just so many different options with jewelry design that keeping it fresh is really not that hard to do – it’s just a matter of deciding what to explore. So many ideas, so little time.

The good folks at the Library have invited me to come and do a cake demonstration for them. They’ve given me an hour and I’m supposed to carve, ice and decorate a cake into the shape of a book and talk to them as I do it. Then they’ll all eat the cake and that will be that. It sounds like it could be fun. Boss Lady told me to think about jokes to tell and ways to make it fun and interesting. I’ve never really thought about cake decorating as a performance art, so this will be interesting indeed. Anything for a change of pace I suppose. Who knows, I may decide that I really like pretending to host a cake decorating show. J

Well, it’s getting late and the morning has a way of coming round on a regular basis. So I shall curl up next to my snoring hubby and see where the Dream Giver takes me.

Goodnight foxy voxers

And sweet dreams

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all in a day's work

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:14:02 -0700

Funky Floral Cake

For a bridal shower where the bride hates pastel colors. They asked for fun, funky and bright.

Antzy cake

I was finishing up the order and Boss Lady was standing there looking at the cake. And I said "Yah know, I'd just like to do a row of ants all the way around the border of the cake." She squeeled and laughed and told me to do it. And she promised to take the heat if the client complained. :D So those little black dashes...

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Chocolate Choo Choo

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:57:42 -0700

Choo Choo Cake

This was an interesting project. A woman brought in her cake pan from Williams and Sonoma. They make beautiful things, but nothing a bakery would ever touch just because of the impractical nature of the equipment. This was a case in point. The client wanted the end product to look like the photo on the cake pan. Well, it was naked cake with a few candies glued to it. Cute, but hardly practical. Let that baby sit out for an hour and it would be hard and stale and nasty to eat. Cute but nasty. Hardly the reputation a bakery really needs. So we finally settled upon the idea of making them from Chocolate cake and putting on a very thin coat of chocolate ganache to coat them so that they would not dry out. Some of the detail from the pan was lost but not too bad. So I went back in with the icing to bring out the details and the client was very happy with how it turned out. And who wouldn’t love a chocolate cake frosted in chocolate ganache? Yummmmm!

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Baby Shower Cake

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:46:04 -0700

Baby Shower Cake

I made this cute little baby shower cake for a lovely Momma who was tall and blonde and really beautiful with her little baby bump. And they loved how it turned out! I took the designs from the napkin they showed me and made the medallion based on a scrap booking quote. "Little hands and little feet make our life so very sweet."

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