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Showing posts from September, 2008

Working hard or hardly working?

I work on some type of art or craft every day. The problem is that all the stuff looks the same. It's not as though all of my work is one-of-a-kind. It gets a bit boring when it comes to pictures. One set of Word Nerd earrings looks much like the next set, you know? I've been sitting here at the computer for several minutes now, not typing, just staring at the screen. It's awful having time but being too tired to use it well.

Jewelry!

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Today I worked on jewelry. I've had everything set up at my work office and I use my breaks and lunch to get things made. Here's a sample of today's work...

Library lolcat picture

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I made a lolcat today that is funny to me. Does this count as a craft?

Folded Books - trying out new ideas

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For a while now, I've had these folded books laying around the house. There were several weeks during the summer when you could always find me with a book in hand, folding away. The problem came when I realized that they weren't very sturdy - my preference being for paperbacks. It's taken me quite a while to figure out how best to improve them. I had several folded books not work. Most of these were hardcover books that looked neat, but the pages were too brittle, there weren't enough pages to hold the book open pretty, etc. The covers of these books still looked great, so I cannibalized a few of them and hoped to use them to provide foundations for the paperbacks. Here are the results! I've learned a bit now after doing these three that I think I can improve on my next go-around. In the meantime, I think I might list these in my Etsy shop and see what happens.

Political Thoughts

I want to be like Sarah Palin. Man, oh, man.

Frustration

Sometimes there are just so many things I want to do that I get frustrated. There is only so much time in the day and the majority of it is taken up with work. I think it's because the past two days have been spent interviewing librarians for two positions we have here in our system (including one at my branch). Work piles up at my branch and I get met practically at the door with every problem that's occurred during my absence. Sometimes walking through the door is like passing through the gauntlet. Or drinking from a fire hydrant. Either one is death. The things I would rather be doing don't include anything to do with the library, but they are inspired by my working in a library. Several months (maybe even a couple of years) ago, I came up with an idea to pursue with my painting. I love orthogons - the divisions of space that bring balance and order to the composition of a painting. I came up with an idea to paint pictures of books - lining up on shelves or laying in p

Putting My Time to Good Use

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I had the last three days off and I've put the time to good use. For several years now, I've been accumulating paper - maps, old books, foreign currency, handmade paper, etc. I love the little birds of cottonbirddesigns on Etsy and thought maybe I could do something similar, but more "me". I figured I liked the idea of a bookmouse - in keeping with my love affair with words, books and libraries.I even made a prototype out of computer paper, staples and bent paper clips at work and this weekend, I finally tried it here at home. Well, guess what. It didn't work. It stunk. I will let cottonbirddesigns be the queen of the sewn paper animal. Still, I wanted to do something with the paper. So I sewed hearts. I like the idea of little Christmas ornaments with my paper beads on them. I took a picture of the sewn hearts with the wires inset in them to hang beads on. I have to give that a bit of thought to figure out what would work best. Another wonderful thing was