Filed under: Holiday, Photography, Silliness, nutella, taste by ramune

Tom Waits – Chocolate Jesus

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It’s that time of year again . . . it’s World Nutella Day! It’s been snowing here most of the day, but I was determined to hunt down the illusive Nutella jar and get its photo (then eat its contents). I found this one attempting to hide in a tree. Busted. Here is last year’s Nutella Day post.

Ms Adventures in Italy
Bleeding Espresso

Filed under: Holiday, Photography, Travel by ramune

Gorillaz – O Green World

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Hello again . . . I hope you had a fantastic end to 2009 and are ready for 2010 (whatever that means). In reality I just see it as a continuation of time, but I do like to think of it as a “new beginning” of sorts. I didn’t do so well with last year’s “hopes” so I will skip on writing any down this year and just say I hope 2010 is even better than 2009. It would be really nice if I could post on a weekly basis like I claim I do.

Since I am a bit behind again, I will post at least one extra post this week and another the following week. I was in Chicago for Christmas and although I didn’t take too many photos of the actual Christmas festivities, I did get some photos from wandering around Chicago and the surrounding areas. A few of my cousins and I went to the Garfield Park Conservatory on a particularly chilly icy day before Christmas. If you’re ever in the area I recommend checking it out, it is quite refreshing to walk around in Amazonian and desert climates when it is cold and snowing outside (that that I mind that, I love snow).

This is what it looked like outside . . . cold and snowy and there were white caps on Lake Michigan.

Filed under: Card, Commission, Design, Favorites, Holiday by ramune

Ultrafox – Ice Skating

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Ultrafox – Ice Skating (Glacier Mix)

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Firstly, I posted two versions of the same song because I still can’t decide which version I like better, so why not share them both . . . Secondly, I present to you this week’s project. I wish I could say these are the cards I am mailing out this year, but they are not. They are actually an office holiday card I was asked to design. They were pretty specific about what they wanted (lone tree in a snowy field with the company logo as an ornament hanging off the tree), and I was pretty excited to do it since this is something I’ve had in my mind for a a few years. They chose the top version (all white) over the version with the black trees. Normally I don’t post “work” stuff, but I like how this came out, and it’s a look I want to continue to develop. Enjoy!

Filed under: Family, Friends, Holiday, Photography, Sewing, Silliness by ramune

Kasabian – Secret Alphabets

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I hope your Thanksgiving weekend was as delicious and fun as mine was. It’s taken me a while to go through all of my photos from Thanksgiving weekend (and actually I am still not completely done) . . . but here are some of my favorites from the silliness I was up to with the family. When in doubt, go to Carderock.

Sidenote: No one was hurt in the making of these photos . . . except for a few missing limbs by the cleaver (that my great uncle made).

Filed under: Events, Holiday by ramune

Greetings! If you are in/around the DC area, join me Saturday, December 5th, for delicious wine tasting and a chance to pick up unique handmade items (made by yours truly) for the holidays. I will be selling my enameled pendants and earrings, gauntlets for men and women, greeting cards and select photos at Best Cellars in Clarendon, VA. You can see some of the items for sale at my etsy shop. Please pass on the info and I hope to see you there.

P.S. I do not accept credit cards in person at the moment, so please be sure to bring cash (there is also an ATM nearby).

Filed under: Holiday, Music, Photography by ramune

Well, it’s Halloween and as usual I carved a pumpkin. I am not one for happy smiling pumpkins, I am all about the scary ones. I think this year’s is the best yet and I am quite happy with how the mouth came out. Last year I did a similar mouth, but it was all one piece and got kind of saggy. The new model comes fully equipped with structural support teeth. I also made sure to get a sickly swine flu infected child to sneeze all over it. He’s a killer swine.

Since it’s Halloween and I couldn’t pick one song, I decided to post a few. My friend has a nice playlist on her blog, District of Chic, that has a few other songs I would add.

The Gothic Archies – Crows

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David Fair & Jad Fair – Nosferatu (Thanks to the RA Fever Ray Podcast for introducing me to this one)

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Tom Waits – Everything Goes to Hell

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Ministry – Halloween

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Danny Elfman – This is Halloween (Nightmare Before Christmas)

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Filed under: Collaboration, Holiday, taste by ramune

This past Saturday I spent almost the entire day (nine hours) making margu?iai (Lithuanian Easter eggs). Some of my friends came by to learn how to decorate the eggs and I was pleasantly surprised to see them pick up on it so quickly and develop their own styles. I find the whole process very meditative and wish I could decorate eggs more than just once a year. If only I could start a career in decorating Lithuanian eggs . . .

For more photos from Easter, you can see my Flickr set here.

One of my favorite eggs

Cherry blossoms

Vaidila (mum’s cousin) made some really elaborate eggs

A bundle of eggs, as you can see the blue worked the best

Filed under: Favorites, Friends, Holiday, Photography, Silliness by ramune

Happy 2009! Here is my friend “Silly Bob” on New Year’s Eve. She was attempting to do the ol’ push the nose up and pull the cheeks down face. I really love how this fisheye (or as my brother calls “fishbowl”) shot came out. The sparkly shirt with a little bit of blue background all surrounded in a thick blackness just makes the shot for me . . . not to mention her silly face.

All the best to everyone in 2009. If you made resolutions I hope you can stick to them (at least for the first month or so). Other than the usual things I am always trying to improve, I would like to not mull so much. My mother claims that this is just a trait of Aquarians and that’s just the way I am . . . I guess that means I have to work a bit harder at it.

Other than resolutions, these are my hopes for 2009:

1. Get a full-time job that I love (or at least gives me the time and energy needed to work on point 2)
2. Get fig.ments going, have a place where I can house a kiln and sell my goods.
3. Move . . . somewhere, anywhere (well maybe not anywhere, but I am open)
4. Travel overseas. I have made it a point to leave the country every year and fully intend to do so this year. Last year’s destination was Canada, which is somewhat cheating but it was way the heck up there so I think that counts. I would like to visit “Silly Bob” in Shanghai before she leaves, so that might be in the cards. Maybe not this year, but Argentina, Chile and Antarctica are at the top of my list for sometime in the next . . . 5 years?
5. This is about to turn into a list of things I want to do before I die, so I will stop here.

Filed under: Favorites, Holiday, Photography by ramune

Playing with star shaped bokeh

I have been wanting to play with shaped bokeh for a while now and forgot about it until I saw Flickr’s recent blog entry on holiday bokeh. It’s really quite easy to do if you have the right kind of lens (which thankfully I do). I haven’t tried playing around with it much on my other lenses because I have had pretty good results using my 50mm F/1.4 lens.

After cutting out some of my own shapes and experimenting with them I went to Paper Source and tried out their moose hole punch (for all my fellow meese). Initially I was hoping to get a snowflake hole punch but was not too impressed with the selection. Either way, I was like a little kid taking photos with my shaped bokeh filters. I might make some other shapes and add them to my Christmas set, in the meantime here are some to keep you entertained.

The beta with some hidden moose bokeh

Star bokeh over fish bowl

Shooting star bokeh

Regular bokeh with Christmas lights

Filed under: Costumes, Favorites, Holiday, Photography by ramune

My Jack O’ Lantern
He eats children

It’s been one year since I started this blog and although I haven’t always been timely I have completed 52 projects in 52 weeks! Since my first project was a jack o’ lantern I figured it would be appropriate to post this year’s jack o’ lantern for Project #53. Since it’s the 1 year anniversary and it’s also Election Day (everyone seems to have some deal going on), I will give you two for the price of one . . . only if you voted. So go vote, and then come back to this blog and read the rest. It’s on the honor system.

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Yay! You voted! Or you are cheating (I hope you can sleep at night). Now I shall continue with the bonus project, my Halloween costume.

On Tuesday afternoon I went to a cafe to use their wifi (my usual routine before Enamels class) but it was not working. I was there for 2.5 hours without access to the interwebs and forgot to bring a book so all I had were my two Moleskines. There is something liberating about being “forced” (liberating and forced in the same thought?) to sit with your sketchbook for that length of time. Since I had a while I thought it would be a good idea to work on a Halloween costume idea since it was only days away. After a bit of sketching I came up with The Peanut Gallery. I was pretty thrilled about it because I love to see creative costumes (especially ones that depict phrases) and I usually don’t think of anything until it’s too late and then I forget about it before the next Halloween.

I started out by taking a bundle of photos of peanuts in various situations. Three of my favorites are below, the rest are on my Flickr site.

Urchin and peanuts

Bobute and Peanuts (Bobute has traveled with me since Summer 2007)

Kinder Egg snail with Peanuts (his head moves forward when you roll him across a hard surface)

After taking the photos I went out to buy all of the supplies I needed. Ideally if I had had more time (and didn’t mind spending more), I would have made gold frames that had more dimension and detail, however I chose to spray mat boards with gold webbing paint. It worked out alright and was probably the best option in terms of comfort (not sure I want the weight of 12 wooden frames on my shoulders). I connected the “framed” peanut images with a ribbon and hung them from two rods which were connected by two ribbons that went over my shoulders. Below are two images of the final product (two is the magic number).

The Peanut Gallery (front)

The Peanut Gallery (back)
It looks like my head might do a full 360 Exorcist style

Unfortunately it was pretty dark when I went out with my friends on Halloween, so my costume was not the most visible and obvious to people. The people who did take the time to figure it out really liked it (after I fed them a number of hints “Do you notice a theme in the images?” “They are framed” . . .). Now to start working on next year’s idea . . .