"H2W2" FREE eBook (How to complete your own creative projects) + Organize your life from any device with the simple interconnected world of Evernote

Starting things off on a refreshing note this week. Ever since I started reading H2W2: HOW TO DO AN ARTS PROJECT, WHERE TO GET HELP on my boyfriend's tablet (for free, might I add) I've been very productive with my time regarding my artistic projects. This is exactly what I needed! Something that gathers together every step I should take under consideration. This book has helped me understand that there is so much more I can be doing with my time than I thought, and makes me feel equiped to take on bigger things.

Contents

• Introduction (or advice to the first-timer)
• Part One: Planning and delivering your project idea (step by step)
• Part Two: Common project issues
• Part Three: Specific information for specific kinds or projects
• Part Four: More legal issues in creative projects
• Part Five: Case studies of young people who have done it
• Part Six: Where to go for help, advice, resources and opportunities.

For now I am starting by gathering a bunch of keywords & images + jotting down many many notes and sketches if all kinds and colors of things. This is where Evernote comes in handy.


It helps to organize all my ideas, which seems to be exactly the point. I know that Evernote as an app has been very popular on app stores for some time now but I haven't started using it until now. What seems so worth it with Evernote is that it is so mobile. I have the program, (it was already installed on my HP computer but you can download it from their website) I have the app in my phone and tablet, and worst case scenario, there is always the actual website. They are all synced together, your ideas follow you everywhere.

Comparing Onenote to Evernote
The only issue I have with Evernote is that it isn't enough like Microsoft's OneNote, in the sense that notebook customizations such as colors or categories/subcategories doesn't seem to be Evernote's forte, in my opinion, limiting your ability to properly organize your thoughts. I'm not going to be picky about that though. I do have a tendancy to exagerate with the way I organize any aspect of my life, wasting my time or "stalling" without fully realizing it by getting carried away with the details of the organisation itself (like those customisations I was talking about). In that sense, I guess evernote is perfect for me because it's simpler than OneNote.

Lazy Sunday night chit chat

Spent the day reorganizing cupboards and drawing for my art portfolio. I am hoping to put together a portfolio impressive enough to convince a tattoo parlor to take me as an apprentice. Marathoning Harry Potters with Oli... probably going to bed soon.

My blue hair is long gone. I "quit" temporarily by letting it fade to blonde & decided to just bleach my roots monthly because it is so much less hard on me money-wise right now. Not sure if I will be bringing blue hair back, I am enjoying being pale blonde more than I would have thought. (helps to bleach the eyebrows) Feels right for a first.

Listening to BEACH HOUSE for the most part these days.
So relaxing...


It's been raining all day, preventing me from spending time outside. It's a shame it's already night. Hope to get some fresh air tomorrow.

Henna tattoo art

Realized lately that I am much better at certain types of art than others when it comes to making henna tattoos. This is a picture of a tattoo I did on my sister yesterday morning. It took 5 minutes and I was very comfortable doing it. I think I will make an album of designs to have people choose from if I am going to take this on seriously.

My difficulty with straight lines is going to be something to take under consideration when I will finally have my REAL tattoo machine. (should be in a few months from now) GOING TO PRACTICE MY ARSE OFF before even thinking of touching someone's skin...

Bannanas Bannanas Bannanas.

Tattoo artist aspirations + practice art

Over the course of the past week I have been taking someone's suggestion that I be a tattoo artist pretty seriously. I can either order my own tattooing kitt complete with machines, practice tools, a dvd, a guide, etc, and do the tattooing at my place along with henna tattoos, or I could do an apprrenticeship at a tattoo parlor. I have a few months to decide either way.

Till then, I will be practicing and improving my art. After all, people might want to see a portfolio of some sort. Not to mention I want to be 100% sure of my ability to design and replicate before I begin practicing actual tattooing on bananas and pig ears/skin. I've got a few potential clients already. (People I know) I don't want to let them down.

This (in the picture) is something I started as a lazy scribble and it ended up a challenge. Blue hair, of course. Gotta get this fascination with long blue hair out of my system.

Also still working on all my other projects, here and there. The moleskines, the iphone cases, the jewelry...Though I am thinking of putting up a sign somewhere that says I offer my services as an intermediate level henna tattoo artist, that I believe I can handle most demands that come my way perfectly fine as I have in the past, and that I am dedicated to being honest with my clients about my abilities concerning the tattoo project. Sounds a bit scary, but like I said, I think I can handle it. I'm doing fine with my henna tattoo jobs so far.

Those are all things I will need to either think about doing or get done. No excuse to vedge out.

Designing my First Kraft Moleskine Diary

Hot summer day today. Bijou's relaxing and I'm drawing on the cover of my first kraft moleskine (got them yesterday at Staples). It's stressful and really requires I take my time to make it look as professional as I possibly can. I hope the end result will look good enough for the prices I've decide on...

Pocket Diary: 12$

Medium Diary: 20$ 

(the one I'm working on)

Large diary: 30$

( - What do you think? - )

• The background will be a swarm of little berries coming from the top back, pouring toward the bottom in a curved motion. A bit like this drawing I made a few years ago: 

• On the bottom will be a nicely shaped box reserved for the buyer to write their name, and if there's space, the year.
• The coloring will probably be partial... my best bet for professionalism is to properly mix the drawing with the gorgeous Kraft textured background. Still not sure how I am going to do that without a pattern, otherwise it might start to look more like a colored drawing... Maybe I'll make one.

Moleskins project

I have been having a tendency to write my posts very spaced out date-wise. I would like to try and blog more often for the next while and see where that brings me. Nothing much to catch up for, except I finally have blue hair now! (after previous trials and errors)

I have a new idea! I know ideas keep coming and projects aren't being completed but I know that finding the right project to fully devote myself to is very important and that once I get things going this will all be a thing of the past.

This new idea involved purchasing MOLESKINES and hand illustrating their covers to sell on Etsy. For publicity, I could record the illustration being made every time (or most times) from beginning to finish and post it sped up on YouTube with some of my favourite music playing in the background. These types of videos tend to get allot of views.

ALSO I would like to set up my scanner today to be ready to scan at all times (or close enough). I used to have a blogspot blog when I was a teenager, PSYCHEDELIC RAISINS, and I had hand drawn (then scanned & edited) all the images in my blog. I would like to get back to personalising my posts that way.

This is not to say I am giving up on my jewellery creations and so on. The way I see it, a bit of diversity can't hurt.

new Etsy seller frustrations.

This is not an article complaining about Etsy. On the contrary, I would just like to express how frustrating it can be for a new seller to get started on Etsy. I've been working at this Etsy shop project for almost a year now and I know the day will come when I get my first sale, but I feel like I'm really stuck where I am at the moment and have a hard time catching the eye of buyers.

   MY SHOP'S PROS:

• My prices are affordable
• My tags are precise and trendy
• My photos look good & make my products look good
• I am polite in everything I say
• My descriptions are inviting
• I am in the process of translating my shop in French (as an option Etsy provides) to reach French speaking Etsians across the world
• My shop appearance (banner, icon) is personalized to look modern & professional
  
  
  MY SHOP'S CONS:
  
  
• I don't have enough item (haven't filled out my first page yet)
• Shipping is high (don't have much of a choice, it really is what it costs...)
• The attention my shop is getting is coming from other sellers only
• Jewelry is a highly over saturated product on Etsy with lots of competition. There is way TOO MUCH choice. Despite my tags, buyers do not find my products at all.
• I only have 2 sales. To the same person. And that would be my mom.

All I can really do now, if I got this seller thing right, is add more items, keep advertising my items in Teams (which can at least bump my items up a notch in searches... though barely.) and continue translating my pages to French to gain a French audience that may or may not see me. I am constantly doing these things, because I am just chalk full of hope & won't give up. But that doesn't mean this isn't extremely stressful for me as time passes by and my efforts seem to be going unnoticed and result-less.

As for advertising via social networking, the issue is I have never gotten any luck with that. The problem has never been that my content is uninteresting, but rather that no one sees it in the first place. I do however have Twitter, Instagram and (obviously) a Blogger blog. Planing on a Facebook page as well.

The most frustrating thing in all this is that people around me (my adolescent sister and her friends) seem to have blooming businesses on Etsy the very second they open their shops without even trying. Their shops aren't very full at barely 2 pages and they don't have to bother with extensive daily advertisements like I do considering they already have enormous audiences on Facebook, instagram, and that sort of thing. I wish it were as easy for myself, and I wish I didn't look like such an idiot trying so hard with nothing to show for in comparison with their instant effortless success.

I have high hopes for the iPod case project. Looking forward to getting those cases in the mail. Maybe that'll help. Crossing my fingers and not giving up.

@GabrielleCaramelle on Instagram

Recently joined Instagram in the hopes of gaining traffic to my Etsy account. I also include Polyvore sets daily (clothing ensembles) and photos relating to me and my life. I have to say, this is kind of my new Twitter.

 

@GabrielleCaramelle

3D Glittery rocky iPhone Cases

This is my first finished product from a new line of products I am planning to set out. This is decidedly the project I will be sticking to for my shop from now on.

I've always loved the idea of gloop. Thick slime or oil spills, something about it feels so bold and intense. And I often like to stare at some of the beads in my enormous bead collection and find them so yummy, like real eye candy. I like to play with them and combine them with one another. But in all honesty I've never been much of a jewelry kind of person. Well, actually, I love simplistic jewelry like tiny pendants on tiny chains, things like that. But beaded jewelry, as much as I love to see it on others, has never really been my personal thing, despite my love for beads themselves.

Anyway. So one night I got the idea of making an art piece: I poured acrylic paint on a thick sheet of black paper, covered it in my favorite shimmer powders and stuck my favorite beads in it in a way that I thought would complement a room if hung in a frame on a wall (to give it a 3D crafty artsy look.)

When I woke up the next day I tested the page's resistance to movement by making waves and bends in the sheey (I like to test my products for any potential damage before thinking of selling them) and the dry paint puddle cracked and opened up to a sub-layer of still wet paint. Had to put it in the garbage in the end.

Then my boyfriend suggested I do it on solid iPod cases, and I got the idea of not only using beads but nature as well. Rocks, twigs, this sort of thing. Made this iPhone case and 24 hours after it being listed, I was able to gather 10 admirers and 6 views from my usual team thread games. May not seem like much to an advanced Etsy seller but it's a start... Not to mention my case seems to be featured in the first page of a number of popular searches I've made to test it out, so the keywords really help. I have a good feeling about this.

Ordered these two cases on eBay yesterday. This may sound ridiculous but I don't have enough money to buy more than that. My mother is planning on buying another bracelet from me though, so I will be using the money from that sale to get another iPhone case or two. When I have enough iPhone 4 cases in my shop I will get iPOD cases, then dip into the 5th generations of both. I have many ideas for this project and I am very excited!

BAT FOR LASHES ( Haunted Man : Marylin ) + musical impression evolution with time

Can not / refuse to get this album out of my head.

I can't believe how much my impressions of an album change from the first listen to multiple listens later. For some odd reason I always misjudge an album when hear it the first few times, to the point that it almost gets annoying  I guess it all turns into the same noise eventually. And then suddenly, as I'm listening one day, it just switches completely. Suddenly I am getting those songs in my head and understanding them completely and wondering how I didn't get addicted earlier. Next thing I know I love it. All this to say I've learned not to trust my instincts on music, and to keep a list of potential likes in memory to try again later when re-stumbling on them instead of ruling them out completely. It helps me keep an open mind. As a result, I have widely diversified the music on my iPod in a way that really suits me.

Blue hair dye disaster

So after 10 bleaches in less than 1 week (you read correctly) and one very refreshing blonde toner, several clumps in my hair brush later (which I didn't really mind), my hair didn't exactly turn out the way I was expecting it to.

EXPECTATIONS

 REALITY

 ... So I applied the manic panic SHOCKING BLUE, and my hair went from blonde to a mix of black, navy, purple, blue, greenish brown... it doesn't seem to show on the picture, but in reality it's just allover the place, and transforming for the worse with every wash since. What I have wasted is a total of 100$, and as much as that is a mother load of allot for me in my circumstances (let alone a miracle that I was able to save up that much in the first place), looking on the bright side, it would have cost triple that at a salon. So yeah. That's the bright side, I guess.

I'll be honest. I got depressed for a few days. Really depressed. Might still be on the inside. But I'm making the effort to distract myself with yet another new idea I got for my Etsy shop that I truly believe will this time finally get my shop noticed & running. And I'm telling myself over and over that it's JUST hair. It's just that. And I don't even have a job out in public, so I can hide inside till I think of what the next step will be for my supersonic video game character troll-hair. (sigh...) Yeah, I know, I'm exaggerating. I think I deserve a bit of that. But again, on the bright side, my boyfriend and mom and sisters seem to enjoy the new look, and I guess that's a little comforting while it will still have to stay on my head.

Pomplamoose memories + Actually getting my blue hair!

Wow. I used to listen to this band allot a few years ago. I felt as if I'd found a real gem, really loved the sound of their music. Ever get one of those moments when you remember something is really good to the point that you stop everything you're doing and go find it?

If you like Feist, you'll love this Youtube born band and their covers / singles.

Well... in other news, I did something crazy 3 days ago! I went out and got 3 bottles of peroxide, 10 packs of bleaching powder and a few other things and started burning the dark brown right out of my hair in a long journey to platinum blonde, which is the base I will need to die my hair Shocking Blue by manic panic. I was supposed to keep my money for something else but... I thought, to hell with it. I'm just gonna finally do it.

I am currently a very pale ginger, not quite at the blonde yet, but I still have 3 more packs of bleach and a blonde hair color to go through before I expect I will be ready for the blue dye. My hair is very very angry at me, not friends with my brush much anymore but I calm it down with massive amounts of conditioner between bleaches. Yes, I've bleached my hair 7 times in the past 3 days. OUCH! I'm aware of what I'm doing, and as I expected, because I am not leaving the bleaching solution anywhere near my roots till the last 4-5 minutes of the treatment, I am not losing any hair. The damage is obvious but my hair recovers very easily with the right touch of love. (conditioning love)

So yeah! Hoping to get rid of this ginger tint tomorrow & finally get it all over with! 7 showers in just 3 days... and it's giving me some kind of a cold & wet scalp headache, not to mention a few bleach rashes resulting from my ears, neck & shoulders having been too exposed to the bleach. Once this is all done, I look forward to relaxing and enjoying the new almost witchy night blue look.

Bath Bombs by ZENfulworld (featuring Caramel Latte)

Caramel Latte Bath Bomb Bath Fizzy Made with by ZENfulworld

Oh my god! Look at this thing! Caramel Latte Bath Bomb. I am an absolute adorer of bath time, and with my collection of bubble bath soap and bath salt and whatnot, I had no idea this sorta thing existed.

"Drop one in the bath tub and watch it fizz. Great aroma! Also moisturizing and great for your skin!"

ZENfulworld on Etsy sells many of these pretty little bath bombs with a diversity of interesting scents. Putting a few of these on my Christmas list. (yes, I am aware of the current month)

Blue hair.

I don't know why, but ever since a few years now, I've been stuck on this insane idea of dying my hair completely blue. I don't mean Lolita blue hair or scene blue hair or any of that. Just blue hair. Just like that. If anything, I epxpect it will make me feel like I can tone down on everything else. Relax my wardrobe worries and stick to comfor and simplicity. I'm 20 years old and usually don't give into these kind of things but geez, I really gotta have that blue hair soon. Maybe not forever, but at least for a little while.

I kinda got up and got out of bed like the obsessive thinker that I am to look up pictures and pictures and pictures of blue hair. I found this image that I kind of like because the hair cut is a bit like the one I have now (And have had almost my entire life). The piercing thing is a... sudden innexplicable urge. I don't know, maybe the sudden interest will dissipate in a few days. Regardless, the plans for blue stay. I'll have it one day! That's a promise to myself.

Image source: [ link ]

Shop fiiinaly back in business.

We finally got internet at the new home. (when am I just going to start calling it home..?) The second the setup was completed, I reopened my shop and posted a new item! Not only that, I redesigned everything... E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. like a maniac. From my Gabrielle Caramelle logo, to this blog's entire layout, to the thumbnails in my shop, and so on. Refreshing.

(Bracelet link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/125626627/water-forest-minimalist-woodland-zen? )

I've also been doing allot of publicity on Etsy team forums, which has earned me 11 favorites in the last 24 hours. Made a list of threads to keep posting my items on daily. Let's get this all finally going...

Update: Presenting my new Sculpting Project! + Painting & Glossing FAILURE...

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a new project for my Etsy shop. Instead of making jewelry, I designed a bunch of different minimal looking sculptures in gold, black and white, like the ones in the image above. Those are the first two finished results so far. I can say I've gotten around to creating the shape. This is not a problem for me anymore. A few other things however turned out to have been a failure in this first batch.

The gloss I used, for instance, is some kind of semi-shiny polyurethane meant for wood. I guess that serves me right for asking advice on sculpting in a small shop that provides supplies for construction and home renovations. When I opened the can, the gloop inside was... some kind of peachy-salmony-orange. When I spread it on the sculpture, the color of the gloss didn't make a difference on the black and gold, but it did make the white allot less white, almost like bad teeth. Ouch.

...Not to mention that the white paint I used was old, with little crumblies in it, which made for a lumpy texture. It's not that I decided to use this bad paint despite it's condition, I kind of just found out along the way. I wouldn't have used it if I'd have known!! Too late, the lumpies have invaded. My paintbrushes are also getting old and crummy, too.  Yikes... I am in desperate need of new supplies! But all I have left is 10$.

I guess I'll go buy a good gloss at my local art store, and a pack of new paintbrushes to apply it without spreading dust around (goodbye old paint brushes). It's all I can really afford. The reason I'm so low on cash is I JUST DID my art groceries! (or rather, I thought they were done) : I got a can of white spray paint (ooh, fun!), an ENORMOUS roll of paper tape like I've never seen before, 3 different sized circle-sponge-brushes (round sponges on a stick) and when I realized that sponges make for awful poorly defined polka dots, a hole puncher.

The idea is to, for example, paint the entire sculpture gold, cut out my designs in the paper tape, stick it on the sculpture and spray paint my designs using the white spray paint. The hole puncher is for my polka dot patterns. I also got a skinny roll of tape for my striped sculptures. I'm hoping the spray paint will look more professional  (well, anyway, allot more professional than old lumpy white paint!) and save me allot of time.

It's okay!!! Everything's fine. This is taking forever, and I get it, new projects aren't always up and ready to run instantly, it's going to take me some trials and errors. We still don't have internet at the new home, but I'll try to keep coming to this coffee shop for the WiFi to post updates. It's a nice experience anyway, getting away from my new daily load of god awful house chores. (they're not that bad, I'm just lazy ;P) And as much as an x-small coffee with whipped cream might not be anything like a tall choco-mint iced cappuccino, it's still better than no coffee and no internet.

Presenting our 3 week old kitten! + Currently

That's my little baby!!! Bijoux! (French for jewel/jewelry/precious thing, as in a "un vrais bijoux" ("a real gem")) This is our kitten to be. Well, he is currently a kitten. Duh. But he's only a few weeks old, so we can't take him to the new house for another month or so. I got to hold him for two hours today, sitting warmly at the fire. He squirms and meows when you lift him, which worries me, but when I set him down on me, he calms down. I think he's getting used to me, because every time I pick him up he seems to be getting more comfortable, falling in deeper sleeps rather than dropping his head and lifting it up like he's surprised himself off guard like he did the first time I picked him up. Today he even rolled over on to his back and started stretching and licking himself! (or, trying to lick himself rather... it was dead CUTE!) It was brief, but it means he feels at least a little safe on me... right? I think he liked baking in the warmth near the fire, rather than being at the back of that closet, for a change...

I've been seeing people, and this is funny, everyone everywhere allover my blog reader, saying this or something similar: "Everyone has been doing this Currently thing so I'm gonna do it too!". And so, here I am, pretty much saying the same thing.

// c u r e n t l y //

Drinking : My dad's really into juicing, so... today's mix is cucumber, chicory, celery, ginger, strawberry... it's just allover the place. Can't really place the taste, but... it's healthy! Definitely healthy.

Listening : Needed to listen to Lilies (Bat for Lashes, Haunted Man) and stumbled upon one of my all time favorites, Let Go (Imogen Heap, Frou Frou), which feels... really really good. Really don't listen to music enough...

Anticipating: MOVING OUT! G'AAAH! Two days... TWO DAYS!!!

Planning: Waiting for Oli to finish super at his mom's, cause he said when he'd come back, we could go to the house so he can show me how apparently wonderful the curtains we picked yesterday look all set up, and so that we can start putting away kitchen supplies and all my little bathroom things! YAY!!!

Watching: See, that's the thing. You can't have a "Drinking" and a "Watching" in the same "Currently" post. Unless currently doesn't mean right right now, but generally as of late. I'm gonna admit that the listening part was more like... half an hour ago. I am however truthfully watching, right now, American Idol. My dad got this china device that records your PC's live TV and I'm in the room. And I can't help but turn my head around every time Niki Minaj talks because I just can't get enough of her. I mean, Niki Minaj. She's, she's just a whole hell of a lot of something.

Missing: Bijoux! He's in my sister's bedroom with his mom, who's a total cow of a cat. Attacks everyone for no reason, completely unapproachable. Motherly hormonal cat gone wild. So I avoid going in there.

Going: To scavenge for food in the fridge.

Art Schools

The two schools I am hesitating over going to are these:Lionel Groulx, a french college only two buses away with a good art program that allot of my art student friends have been through.

(Image sources: The Lionel groulx website and Journal de Montreal)

1. Lionel Groulx College

which has an apparently excellent art program that many of my art student friends have been through. My issue with this school is the fact that I am not looking for a full college experience that will look good on my CV. I feel that some of the classes might be a waste of my time as I really only want to take classes that are going to be relevant to the kind of work I am going to be doing as a lone artist. I'm not going to be working for a company, I'm going to be working for myself. And time is a factor in all of this. I'll have to check with the school if there is any way to cut the classes I don't feel I will need. I'm not excluding the informative classes verses the technical classes, like history of art for example. I'm thinking more of classes completely unrelated to art, the basic college classes like English and so on. I feel those would be a waste of time and money.

2. Visual Arts Center's Art School

This is not the official image, I took it with Google Maps. This is a school in Montreal that specifies in Art. It isn't just a school, it's also an art gallery from Tuesday to Friday on weekdays, and on Saturdays. They have many classes, from painting to drawing to photography, to sculpting, and so on. Seems allot more... to the point than going ahead with the full college program... package. Honestly this appeals to me more than the college thing, but it is much farther down town, and if I don't have a car and driver's licence by then... ahhh! It's going to be scary for me. I fear Montreal. Montreal is a bit comparative to New York safety wise... verses it's safer surrounding cities. And I have a hard time picturing myself walking around those streets alone in the evenings...

These are the two schools I have to consider. I will have a decision to make soon, so I'll be thinking it over.

Shipping a Canvas Painting

I haven't blogged here for some time because I've been spending all my free time from school boxing, because Oli and I will be moving out more or less in 9 days from now. This is both very exciting and very tiring for me, as I sort through the mess I've let accumulate, that used to be something of a bedroom.

I came across a painting of a clown girl I'd drawn a few months back and couldn't really picture this one on any of our walls. I figured I should look into how I would go about selling it, if I could manage to. How does one ship a canvas?

This video on Youtube shows how simple it is to ship a 20x16" Canvas with this company's simple shipping supplies. It's called the Canvaspak.

I looked it up on their website and it says that for this size of canvas, which is exactly the size I happen to need, it would cost £50.18 for a pack of 10. In other words, About 79 Canadian dollars, divided into ten. The packaging cost would thus be of less than 10$ for a canvas, which is better than I had expected.

Now I wonder how much it is going to cost to ship this to the US, Canada and Worldwide... It's going to be funny shipping things out considering my mom just got a job at my preferred post office! Life is getting so strange for me. All these new things in store for my near future... I hope this change in lifestyle will be refreshing. I'm actually counting on it.

Supplies restrock + Shop updates

I've really been on vacation these past few weeks. My plans for my shop were kind of all over the place and I guess I needed to clear my head to start thinking of the right directions to take. Now I feel ready to dive back in.

This weekend, Oli and I went to Omer Desserres, which is the place to get art supplies here in... what, Quebec? 

I got myself a bunch of supplies:

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

• 5 tubes of metallic/glittery acrylic paint. (REALLY effective!!! I tried it on my skin and it's really something.)
  =
• A pack of sculpting tools
• A very thin paintbrush
• Stretchy cord for jewellery (GOOD stretchy cord, hopefully. The last 3 bracelets I tried to do exploaded on me! Dollar store + me = over)
  
  
• Cutting tool (to make my own stamps out of foam sheets)
• 2 Coasters ready to be painted on
• Two 16"x20" canvases, which is as big as I feel safe permitting myself to use (the larger ones are still a little intimidating for me... but I'll get there eventually!)
  
  
  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
   

  Etsy shop

  Apparently, having multiple themes in your shop is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as your personal style ties them all together... So that means allot of time saved for me. Few!

  So I guess... I'm free to start any kind of project I'd like for the shop? I should make a plan!

  PROJECTS IN MIND:

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

   

  
  

  • "BunnyBoxes" (drew the idea on Paint as seen above)
  •  Sculptures shaped like Hersheys Kisses / Droplets
  • Paintings IF I can figure out how to ship them
  • Jewelery (necklaces, bracelets, earrings too, eventually)
  • Digistamps
  • Painted Kleenex boxes & Painted jewelery boxes
  • Boxes / Bags with prints on them (prints meaning stamps I design and make on my own, printed on to objects)
  • Origami decor
  • Painted Stickers

  
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   Looking forward to getting back into my shop. Oli and I are moving out in 3 weeks. Things will be easier for all of us then, and life can move on! For now, my time is going to be invested in boxing all my things... this is so exciting!!! 

This week's Polyvore sets

Set 7 ( JAN - 4TH - 2013 ) by tiffany-gabrielle featuring zucca

Set 6 ( JAN - 2nd - 2013 ) by tiffany-gabrielle featuring retro dresses

Set 6 ( JAN - 1st - 2013 ) by tiffany-gabrielle featuring slip on boots

set 5 ( DEC - 29 - 2012 ) by tiffany-gabrielle featuring white stockings

New Book: The NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern

Since I got my Kobo mini eReader, I've been loading it with books I've been meaning to read. My family rents all their books from the library, but because I like to take my time reading between other things throughout the day, a book can last a month or two in my hands. This is why I prefer to own my own books. No pressure. I can take all the time I need. And because actual books are too costly for me in their 20-40$ range, eBooks are more suited for my budget.

THIS is my first eBook! Started reading it this summer but I had to return it 1/4 through. I loved it and swore I would pick it back up one day.

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The circus arrives at night, without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within nocturnal black and white striped tents awaits a unique experience, a feast for the senses, where one can get lost in a maze of clouds, meander through a lush garden made of ice, stand awestruck as a tattooed contortionist folds herself into a small glass box, and gaze in wonderment at an illusionist performing impossible feats of magic.

Welcome to Le Cirque des Rêves. Beyond the smoke and mirrors, however, a fierce competition is underway - a contest between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood to compete in "a game," in which each must use their powers of illusion to best the other. Unbeknownst to them, this game is a duel to the death, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will.

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"The Night Circus made me happy. Playful and intensely imaginative, Erin Morgenstern has created the circus I have always longed for and she has populated it with dueling love-struck magicians, precocious kittens, hyper-elegant displays of beauty and complicated clocks. This is a marvelous book."
— Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife

"Every once in awhile you find a novel so magical that there is no escaping its spell.   The Night Circus is one of these rarities -- engrossing, beautifully written and utterly enchanting. If you choose to read just one novel this year, this is it." 
— Danielle Trussoni, author of Angelology

“A riveting debut.   The Night Circus pulls you into a world as dark as it is dazzling, fully-realized but still something out of a dream. You will not want to leave it.”
— Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife
  
"Pure pleasure...Erin Morgenstern is a gifted, classic storyteller, a tale-teller, a spinner of the charmed and mesmerizing -- I had many other things I was supposed to be doing, but the book kept drawing me back in and I tore through it. You can be certain this riveting debut will create a group of rêveurs all its own." 
— Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

 “‘Dark as soot and bright as sparks,’  The Night Circus still holds me willingly captive in a world of almost unbearable beauty. This is a love story on a grand scale: it creates, it destroys, it ultimately transcends. Take a bow, Erin Morgenstern. This is one of the best books I have ever read.” 
— Brunonia Barry, author of The Lace Reader

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