I like this picture.

My only wish is that I could find my black ribbon. I've been looking for it all week in every box, bag, shelf, it's not there. I guess I have to go get another roll. :(

Oh yeah, shop update is tomorrow!

I learned a valuable lesson

Don't iron the surface of a screen print after washing because it will burn. lol

Anyways, my test batch is done they look pretty :)



P.S. I kinda like the back side better than the front because it's so simple.

I was reading my old blog entries

on Xanga and I found this post dated Dec 11, 2006 haha all still true.

5 random facts about me:

1. i cant eat fruit.
2. i dont wear make up because..... i dont know how to. haha
3. when i was about 3 years old.. my mom took me to the supermarket and some random kid came up to me at the checkout, grabbed me and decided to sink his teeth into my cheek. haha
4. i suffer from post traumatic stress. and lots of it apparently. -__-
5. ive never weighed over 100 pounds.. not sure if this is good or bad.

TAG YOU'RE IT!

Restocking!

I find that at the end of every week I am always out of stock on something. I need to find a way to stay on top of it so I have more time to be creative rather than spending it constantly restocking the shop!

A part of my supply order that came yesterday included these magnets. I had previously ordered pins but I wanted the option of offering magnets too. When I get around to photographing I will add them to my shop :)

I spent yesterday learning to make these ribbon necklaces. It was a little frustrating at first because I tried to tackle multi-strand ribbon necklaces before I tried the single lol in the end I got it. They're for the pendants I am working on in my previous post. I can't find my spool of black ribbon! It's driving me crazy!

Charms that I have restocked. I sealed them in resin. I don't think I'll be doing that again it's a real pain because the resin fills up the hole I punched for the jump ring and flows over the edges and doesn't cover other edges... and in the end a lot of charms go in the garbage. But they do look pretty all glossy and domed. I hope my customers don't mind if I don't re-do all my shop photos. I only have a few pairs of resin sealed ones.

The bread charms. When I was sick at the beginning of the month I couldn't eat anything but apple sauce and drink fluids so I saved all the little plastic containers and am now using them to store my larger size charms.

My supplies are here!

Whoo! So, if you're wondering yes I did decide to stop buying supplies until I used up some of what I had but this is the last order of supplies from before I made that decision. I had run out ear hooks and jump rings so they are the bare necessities. :)

Here's a shot of those pendants I am working on that I mentioned in a previous post.

It's going rather slowly since I am glazing all 6 sides of the pendants but I'm almost done! I should have a few ready in time for the next shop update on March 1st!

Btw, anyone know if I was on the front page yesterday? I read in the forums something about a kawaii front page done by admin and I had quite a few sales and hearts yesterday but I was away from the computer screen printing so I have no idea if I was included?

This is how Suki eats

She insists on having her food poured out of it's dish onto a mat on the floor where she lies down and eats it. If you don't pour it out for her and she's hungry she sits in front of you and growls. Spoiled!

If you're wondering what the background sounds are I was watching the Vancouver vs Toronto hockey game.

Milo the sea otter

So, my sis went to the aquarium the other day for a field trip and shot this cutie on my camera. His name is Milo. He's been at the aquarium for quite a few years now. I use to volunteer there in 11th grade for a work experience program and he was there. There use to be two of them and they would sleep holding hands it was the most adorable thing ever but I guess his buddy died :( He was rescued by fisherman, he eats surf clams and sea urchins and as he gets older his fur gets more blonde!

Success at last!

Okay, so today was round 2 of screen printing. I finally got my screen to burn and wash out properly. I just finished doing the test print and it looks good except there are a few pinholes that are still filled where the emulsion was suppose to wash out. Any ideas on how to get rid of that? I'll have to google it later. I need to work on my "off contact" and maybe linen wasn't the best choice for a sample print but it still looks pretty good.

My incredibly ghetto exposure lamp set up LOL yeah it's my broom stick propped up on 2 chairs and tissue boxes in my VERY small washroom. I plan to build a stand soon.

Shot right after I finished exposing my screen

This is what it looked like after I peeled the transparency away. Ignore the line going across it's an ink stain from a previous print session.

Drying after washing out the emulsion.

Close up after washing!

All dry and ready to print! I took the tape off after I washed it because well, I used painters tape and it was holding water in between the tape and wouldn't dry.


The first print! I should have used retarder base on the ink it was kind of thick and hard to work with. In case you haven't figured it out yet this is a coaster design.

Close up shot. I was worried the letters wouldn't come out nicely but they did!

And if you're wondering why I said that linen probably wasn't the best choice for a test print is because this is what it looks like when you hold it up to the light lol. Kinda hard to see where the pinholes are in your screen.

Screen printing!

Okay, so I started off my day super excited to be screen printing the traditional way for the first time! I washed my screen and let it dry while I went out to lunch and to staples to pick up some paper. I came home and I realized that my inkjet printer does not print transparencies because the transparency is too thin and gets jammed :( So, I coat my screen with photo emulsion and off I go to Staples AGAIN to have my transparencies printed. I'm not sure really but I don't think the transparencies are dark enough? They printed it on the darkest setting but when you hold it up to the light it's not completely opaque which might be the cause of one of my problems. Anyways, after a quick stop at Tim Horton's for cookies and an ice capp, I came home and tried to expose my screen. LOL I knew I was going to screw up when I started but I just didn't know how. Well, I forgot to put the black cardboard underneath the screen while it was exposing so it didn't expose properly and my screen would not wash out. SAD :(

So, I really have no idea what went wrong maybe it was a lot of things?

- the emulsion changed colors from green to kind of a light blue...? I'm thinking it should have been a darker color maybe? I got kind of confused because the stencil part had turned a greenish yellow color when I peeled it away.
- another problem was probably because I didn't put the black cardboard underneath
- my transparency might not have been dark enough
- maybe I didn't let the emulsion sit long enough before exposing?
- maybe I didn't mix the emulsion right?

I don't know... I washed out my screen with the remover and after running around and doing this all day I am exhausted! I will try again tomorrow. I might have to go to Staples again to get 2 transparencies to tape together. Why didn't I think of that in the first place?! I wish I had more than one frame to work with but I don't want to spend more until I have the technique down.

No more buying.

I have decided that I will not be buying anymore supplies for a while. I restocked all the things I was out of last week but other than that I am done. I have about 40 bricks of polymer clay, yards and yards of fabric, tons of beads, wire, earring findings, screen printing equiptment, fabric inks, carving blocks, tons of acrylic felt and embroidery floss, zippers, spools of thread, photo paper, transfer paper, 30 sheets of shrink plastic, blank moleskine notebooks, huge stacks of cardstock, mylar, a gazillion bottles of paint, etc... enough to last me for months! I don't even know how I accumulated all of this stuff over the last year! For the next few weeks, I am going to create only with what I have!

In fact, I've started already! I have made a huge batch of polymer clay photo tile pendants which are being glazed with resin, I have fabric pre-washing as I write this and I have designed stencils for burning my screen which I hope to be doing later today or tomorrow.

Yay to not buying supplies!

SHOP UPDATE!

As mentioned in my monthly email I will try my best to update the shop more regularly with new items. So, my goal is to update on the 1st and 15th of every month. Here are the newest arrivals over at the webshop!

Cupcake Love Giveaway at Sweet Irie!

The giveaway I mentioned in my last post has begun! Stop at the Sweet Irie Blog to enter for your chance to win these goodies!

The rare double post!

In case you haven't stopped by the new site yet here are the latest arrivals!



Also, I'm participating in a giveaway on the Sweet Irie Originals blog. It's not up yet but there's an extra entry teaser going on. Check it out. http://sweetirieoriginals.blogspot.com/

ARrrrrrrrghh!!

I did something last night and all the photos on my website don't work. -__- now I have to wait for it to SLOWLY re-upload all the images.

Yesterday I decided to try my hand at stamp carving. I've done it before in elementary school but that was a long time ago! I bought supplies a while back and never really got around to doing it because the holidays were so busy but anyways, it was a fun experience even though it didn't really work out that well haha I wanted to make a giant stamp so I could stamp some post cards but the text was too fine and I suck at cutting so it didn't work out.

the design reversed. i tried to use carbon paper to transfer it to the rubber block but that didn't work so I did it the old fashioned way.

I took a pencil and colored over everything.

Taped it to the rubber block and then used my handy dandy bone folder to burnish the image. Worked like a charm!

Okay, I kinda stopped taking photos after this because the rubber stuff makes my hands all icky and I didn't want to get my camera all dirty. I give props to people who carve stamps for a living! I mean, it's fun but it's time consuming and hard when you have lots of little lines! I think I'll just order a stamp lol... I've been looking at the ones from http://simonstamp.com and they have pretty good prices and free shipping for orders over $40! Just not really sure it would be worth it to buy a post card stamp?

Instead of hiding under a pile of blankets yesterday...

I did something productive! I printed, cut and stuck all of my new labels on a fresh case of 100 gift boxes. I was a little bit worried about how they would look once on the box but they look awesome and I am very pleased with the outcome :D It's too bad I ran out of sticker labels... I ended up only getting half of the care labels stuck in place.

Freshly printed! I had some room on the side of the page so I made address labels :D don't waste!

All cut and ready to stick! These were NOT fun to peel! That's what I get for buying cheep label paper!

Close up shot :)

All lined up in the case!

I don't seem to be getting better.

It's been a week now and I am still in bed everyday and feeling crappy... I can't eat anything because it upsets my stomach so I'm on a liquid diet which is horrible considering I probably lost 5 pounds. I highly recommend this diet if you want to lose weight fast lol.. only problem is I'm trying to gain weight not lose it. Anyways, I have temporarily closed my Etsy shop so I can re-cooperate and am totally bored to the max! What do you do when you're sick?

I've been SO sick the last four days...

and I'm still not 100% better but the orders are shipped, convos are answered, non-paying customers have been emailed, there is a note on my other blog saying I am away and gosh... I feel like there are a gazillion things that I still haven't done yet.

I designed a new label for my boxes to match the shop's new look before I got sick so here it is.. yay or nay?