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Saturday, June 13, 2009

INCLIMATE WEATHER

The weather in Denver has been pretty crazy. Sun, hail, rain, tornado warnings, more rain, then some more sun. It's fun! Sarasota is just sun or rain. Sometimes the rain comes in the form of hurricanes but it's still just rain. I like the unpredictability!

Friday, June 12, 2009

NEW SHIRT!


Danielle gave me this new shirt as a late birthday/Christmas present! It has a CUPCAKE! I love cupcakes! Threadless shirts are the freaking best!

She had three shirts for me to choose from and of course I went for the cake. That was pretty obvious no?

I'm staying with Danielle and her boyfriend Mike at their place in Denver for the week. No more Sarasota for me. I had to leave my Honeybear behind. He's gonna stay in SRQ for the next two months doing stuff and saving up so that we can get our own place in Boston come August.

After this week I'm going back to Utah to hang with my mom and 18 year old brother until August. Hopefully I can get a job, or make enough resin stuff to get me through. I'm hoping to sell some stuff around Moab. It's a neat little hippie town so I'm sure there will be people to sell to. I'll hand out business cards and talk to the local consignment shops. There are lots of funky little shops with handmade stuff. There are plenty of little girls who love pink things too. Or maybe I'll get a job at the gas station. Whatever happens I just want to be able to save some money for the big move and to put down money for a new house/appartment.

Being in Denver is making me really excited to live in a big city! Boston is going to be a great adventure. Mostly I'll be glad to be reuninted with Jon. We could be in Alaska for all I care. I just want to see my baby again!

Friday, June 5, 2009

NEW STUFF!



I just added some new items in my Etsy Shop! OOOOH I hear thunder! And it sure got dark outside! It's a good thing I took pictures of my stuff earlier when the sun was out. I hope it's not raining like mad when it's time to walk to yoga! Not having a car can be such a pain.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

PROBLEMS SOLVED

HUZZAH! That's me shouting with glee. I was having this weird problem see... A number of my resin pieces were coming out soft. By soft I mean SQUISHY soft. Totally not like resin should be at all. Resin is supposed to cure as hard as any other hard plastic. There's not supposed to be any squish to properly measured and mixed resin. I was measuring my resin properly! I was mixing it for the full four minutes, pouring from the first cup to the second in between. I was doing everything right and still some pieces were coming out soft. It didn't make any sense and I was getting really frustrated! Eventually most of my mixing cups broke so I bought a new batch of mixing cups.

The new cups came and after looking at them for two seconds I realized that the measuring markers were different on these cups. The line marking 1oz was in a different spot (higher up on the cup) on these cups than my old ones. To be honest with you Dianne, I was surprised. I had no notion that the reason my resin was coming out squishy might be because the cups THEMSELVES were wrong! Seriously, who buys a measuring cup with the thought or care that the actual measurements might be wrong?! I'm still kind of astounded. With the wrong measurements how could I ever mix resin properly? And it's not like just one cup was off. All of my cups were wrong. The only reason I ever got resin that wasn't totally sticky is because sometimes I accidentally over poured the amount of part A and didn't compensate properly for part B. Good thing I made that "mistake" otherwise every piece I ever made would have been totally squishtastic!

There weren't just any measuring cups either. They're meant specifically for resin casting. Everyone who has ever worked with resin even once knows that the measurements have to be as close to 1:1 as humanly possible. Defective cups make it a lot harder! Those cups are gone now though, so no more concerns about that. A whole batch of cups that were pretty much useless. Wow. I'm glad they started to break!

The new pieces I cast using the new mixing cups aren't even 72 hours old and they're rock hard. I'm really pleased about that. It's also really good to know that I wasn't fucking up somehow. I was actually kind of embarrassed about the whole thing. I thought I was screwing up somehow, that people would think I was an amateur. I'm really glad to know that it wasn't me, that it was something totally beyond my control that I had no hand it whatsoever. Good things to know! Now I can get back to casting without worry...

At least until I have to pack everything up and go to Utah. I have no idea how I'm gonna cast stuff in 107º heat. Resin needs to be at about 75º to work and we don't actually have any a/c in the middle of the freaking DESERT. Yeah, my mother is insane. No, I'm not looking forward to sweating my tits off and being thirsty 24/7 but I go anyway. Anyone have a blindfold and a cigarette?

Friday, May 22, 2009

PLANS

Things are coming together finally. It looks like a sure thing that Jon and I are moving to Boston some time either during or before August. I would like to move at the beginning of August so that there's lots of time to get settled before his classes start. That doesn't mean we're actually going to do that though.

I'm leaving for Utah sometime in the second week of June. I'm gonna hang out there rent free for a couple months, hopefully get a job and save up. Maybe I can get a little job experience before Boston. I'm 24 and I've never had a job before. I guess in some ways that makes me very privileged but in a lot of ways it puts me at a huge disadvantage. Everywhere that's hiring wants experience and I have absolutely none. I'm sure that most of the jobs that want experience aren't really all that hard. I'm really very smart so I can't imagine that I would struggle at something like data entry, but they want experience anyway.

What I really want to do is make resin stuff and live off that, but my internet sales suck and I have no idea how to boost them. Don't get me wrong, I've sold lots of necklaces but it's all been through school. Friends and classmates were my biggest buyers. I got a lot of interest just wearing my stuff around campus. People would come up to me and ask questions, stuff like that. Now that I have business cards I can hand them out to people but school's over, so that's a bust. Anybody know a good way to self promote? I have this blog, I have Facebook and a link to my shop on there. Same with Myspace. I have a Flickr too, and DeviantArt. I never expected sales to just come rolling in with no effort on my part but I'm kinda shy on the internet because I tend to make an ass of myself.... Not really sure what to do.

I need to make some money and getting a real job seems like it's going to be more and more impossible. The job market doesn't seem to be improving. I'm just a little freaked out and worried about this is all. I'm worried that Jon and I are gonna move in together and I won't be able to find a job anywhere. I'm worried that Jon's gonna be spending all his time going to school and working and supporting me because I can't find any place willing to hire an artist with no job experience in any field. I know how to cast things, I know how to make up to a two part mold, and I know how to sew but not well enough to do it as a job. XP

Maybe everything will be fine....