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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