No Cleverness Left for a Title
As of right now, I'm feeling pretty good about my recent accomplishments and excited for new projects.
Remember how a few months ago I talked about brainstorming lists for cd mixes? A couple weekends ago I camped out at my computer with stacks of cds and compiled one of those mix cds. And ripped the tracks and burned them to a blank cd and now it's like I have a new cd to listen to because I'm old school like that. Sexy Female Vocals Volume 2 opens with a dialogue exchange from the movie Yellowbeard between Madeline Kahn's character and Graham Chapman as Yellowbeard the pirate:
MK: Hello, sugar drawers.
GC: What, you again?
MK: Again?! I haven't seen you for fifteen years!
And then I had a giggle and amused myself when I set Evanescence's song, Going Under, to come next that starts like:
Now I will tell you what I've done for you.
Fifty thousand tears I've cried . . .
In that sultry, emo voice of hers. I thought it was funny and clever anyway. So, if you care to Spotify the tracks or are just curious, here's the full track order:
1. "You again" intro
2. Evanescence - Going Under
3. Rihanna - Diamonds
4. Florence + the Machine - Girl with One Eye
5. Dragonette - Right Woman
6. Lady Gaga - Teeth
7. Flyleaf - Set Me on Fire
8. kidneythieves - Arsenal
9. Goldfrapp - Ooh La La
10. KT Tunstall - Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
11. Sia - Don't Bring Me Down
12. Adele - One and Only
13. Portishead - Glory Box (Edit)
14. TLC - No Scrubs
15. Morcheeba - Blindfold
16. Jem - I Always Knew
17. Little Boots - Remedy
18. Katy Perry - Dark Horse
19. Madonna - Take a Bow
I am definitely hooked on the D&D stuff right now. Started working and planning the next adventure for my two groups. Some overwhelm and had trouble focusing, but that's okay. Progress was made and I'm finding that I like spending time and fleshing out backstory, motives, and NPCs' significance to the adventure. I wanted to make brief notes, take less time to write everything out, rely on myself to make stuff up on the fly. I'm not succeeding as much as I'd hoped, but, like I said, I'm finding I like to put thought into the story. I'm Better at writing than improv. My brain works more smoothly while quietly writing than being verbally creative in an intense group setting, so if I can plan out the scenarios, the locations, and the encounters that could happen, it's easier to making stuff up as I'm running it that will work with the game. I can spend less time writing out physical descriptions, though. That's something a quick note will suffice to poke my memory and allow reasonable words to spill out at the players.
On top of creating an adventure, I'm also creating a character to play in a game run by a friend in my Friday game group. The rest of the bunch are players. My character is Speck, a human paladin. Backstory and equipment and goods purchasing are about all I have left, then I'll be free to help others with theirs because, as I've said before, I love helping people with their characters. And our group has a theme song: Feel Good Inc by Gorillaz. Because that's going to be the name of our adventuring party, Feel Good Inc. Expect a future geek out about all this, whenever we start playing.
This week, yesterday in fact, I officially completed my last angel for Kelly Rae Robert's Spirit Wings course.
And now I have closure to a small part of my life and already moving forward with new adventures that I'll talk about shortly. Overall, I enjoyed the course but I kind of lost momentum after the fourth angel. I like the fifth one, but it took a while to get through and this one I put off for a couple months. But she is done, Angel of Trust, or Embracing the Journey. And it's cool to me how I've grown since the start. My mixed media skills leveled up, confidence in the right words coming to me and trusting those words, and also my faces and hair painting became much easier. No stress at all sketching out simple faces that look like faces.
Now that I have six of these angels, I'm thinking of selling or giving away some of them. I'm keeping my favorites, for sure, but going to think a little on whether I could part with a couple.
You want to know what else I did this week? I DESTROYED that mulch pile. It is no more. Except the pile of sweepings that wouldn't fit in the overfull yard debris bin.
But after next Wednesday's garbage day, I'll dump that little pile in and that will be the end of that. The other half of the driveway will be open again after more than a year. Husband will no longer be relegated to park on the side street. This also means that I can start planning the next step of the process, which is having a craft studio sale. I'm not thinking too much on it just yet because that possibility has not sunken in yet and might not until everything is cleared away for real and when it's not 100 degrees out like it is today in early June in Western Oregon. (Humph!)
The newest thing I'm doing right now is a fifteen-minute art practice every day for the month of June. It's organized by someone I follow on Instagram who I think also participated in the Spirit Wings course. If you're on Instagram and curious to see what others are doing, search #15for30 or #15MinutePractice. If you'd just like to see my work, you can follow me on Instagram as @CraftAdventuresStudio or check out my Tumblr page. I'm doing mixed media, art journal stuff and that's likely what I'll stick to for the duration of the month. Already I'm feeling more energized and excited about my arting. Here is my practice from today, Saturday, June 4th:
Just a warning, if you haven't noticed, it's getting to be summertime. Little Man is almost out of school for a few months, and I don't do well with heat, so I don't know how often I'll do blog posts in the near future. I haven't been doing them that regularly lately anyway, but just want to say, I am still making stuff and will share when I can. It might just be more sporadic for a while. Instagram and Tumblr are most likely to be used regularly to share quick, single snapshots of projects and activities and whatever things I see that have deep and significant meanings. There might not be any change, though. I don't know! We will just have to see.
Thank you for taking the time to read these words and gawk at the few photos this time.
It would mean a lot to me if you checked out my Patreon page, if you haven't yet, and considered becoming a supporting patron of my arts.