Finally! A Decision!

Some of you probably know that I'm working on a Masters in Library and Information Science. It's a field that interests and excites me and I love it!

However, long story short, some issues have come up with the program I'm currently in. I'm not going to go into all the frustrating details, but it's something that's been stressing me out since February. It's been a lot of "wait-and-see-what-happens" and worrying. A month or two ago, I started to seriously look at transferring schools and UW-Milwaukee topped my list. Turns out that the school I'm currently at decided to partner with UWM and make it easy for those interested students to transfer to UWM's online program while still keeping a lot of credits. I went to an informational meeting on Wednesday about the deal the two schools came up with and finally came to a decision-I'm transferring.

I filled out the applications this weekend and just have to drop off one of them at my current school so they can forward all my application information and transcripts to UWM. I'll be giving up the face-to-face interaction and since I have 21 credits and they'll only take up to 18, I'll lose a class, but I think it will be a better fit with me personally and I won't run the risk of not receiving an ALA accredited degree and won't have to wait years until I'm finished.

It's amazing how much better I feel now that a decision has finally been made and I've taken action. Granted, I'm still stressed since I'm not technically accepted as a UWM student and it'll be hard turning in the application at my current school and saying "I don't want to go here anymore", but at least something is being done.

My Favorites, Card 2

"The Raven" was made for one of my Quickie swaps, in which the participants have a week to make a card and send it in the mail. You can only use stamps that are already carved and materials that you have lying around the house.

This stamp is kind of a spoiler. I originally carved the image for a box in North Carolina (it's missing last I heard), but I loved the image so much that I carved a smaller version and made it into a hidden in plain sight box. My cat broke the "in plain sight" part, so it might be retired unless I can fix it.

The background is just black cardstock with handpainted swirls in a metallic green paint. Each card is (obviously) a little different. I love that paint. I can't use it often because I'll start looking around for things to paint. Very dangerous.

Blah

I've been feeling very uninspired and, well, blah lately. I haven't been happy with most of the cards I've been making and I've been feeling that they aren't "good enough" (for lack of a better phrase).

So I'm going to go through cards that I've made and point out a few of my favorites. Maybe that'll get me going again.

The one in this entry is my favorite of my cards. It's "Eilwynn" from an Amy Brown swap. I love carving fairies and I absolutely adore carving Amy Brown fairies (I have one of hers sitting in my "Images I really want to carve" file that I really want to do this summer. It's kind of dark, but it fits my mood right now).

Anyway, this is Eilwynn. The scan doesn't do her justice. I saw this image and just fell in love and I'm very glad that my stamp is pretty close to the original. The colors are gorgeous-shades of brown and a beautiful light blue. It took forever to color all of the cards, but it was worth it. The ribbon is a sheer, irridescent blue held on with brass brads. The main part of the card is just cardstock (I think the name of the color is "mink"). This card is different than what I usually do in that it actually has some embellishment. It's still simple. I usually don't have the patience to deal with fiddly-bits, but sometimes I suck it up.

Speaking of Letterpress...

I love carving letterpress images. They're usually elegant and look fantastic as stamps (as well they should, since they start out as a kind of stamp). This card, "By the Light of the Moon", was made last September in preparation for Halloween (my favorite holiday). It's a layered stamp. The first layer is the blue/teal color, then the yellow moon and the black outline is last. It was my first three layer stamp (up until then, I had only done two layers) and I like the way it turned out. The design is also very forgiving if you don't line up the pieces exactly right, which I always like. The stamps are on white copy paper and then just attached to a piece of grey cardstock. Simple, like all my cards.

The stamps were hidden in Bloomington, MN for my annual Fall/Halloween gathering. Unfortunately, it might be missing. *sigh* I haven't had a chance to go and check on it and don't know when I will between the crazy overtime at work and school. Ah well.

Letterpress!

As frustrated as I am right now with my MLIS program, it has given me some fabulous opportunities and taken me to fantastic places. The latest is The Nomadic Press, a letterpress business that's in St. Paul. It's a one-man outfit in an old storefront just across the river from downtown. The first floor is the printing business and the second is his wife's graphic design office. My professor for the class I'm in right now is friends with the owner, so he arranged for us to get a peek at how presses work.

The Nomadic Press has three presses-one from the 1800's, one from the 1920's and the "newest" one is from the 1950's. The oldest one is a hulking beast that actually seems alive. It can feed its own paper and will "breathe" when it grabs a new piece. We saw the one from the 1920's in action. You have to manually feed in the paper and it's very easy to see how dangerous presses are. Too slow and you can get your fingers snapped off!

We actually got to print something using the one from the 1950's. The owner had a collection of old print blocks that date back to the early 1900s and later and we each got to pick one. I, of course, gravitated towards one of his oldest blocks. It's a little fairy (she didn't scan very well) that's about an inch high. Since it was so old and worn, there was a lot of adjustment that had to be done with the bed of the press, which I got to do (with supervision, of course)!

The entire shop was littered with fonts and frames and ink and gouge carving tools and I couldn't help but think of letterboxing. There is a lot of overlap, from the setting of type so that it prints correctly to the creation of new printing blocks/stamps and selecting the right ink, etc, etc. Maybe this summer I'll ask the owner if he would be open to having a letterbox in his shop...

If you ever have the chance to get a tour of a letterpress business, I would highly recommend it. And if you're in the Twin Cities area (or even outside Minnesota), definitely check out the Nomadic Press if you need invitations, business cards, etc printed. He does fantastic work!

Persephone

This card was created for Esmerelda's "It's All Greek to Me" swap, which was Greek gods and goddesses themed. I had to do Persephone. I love myths and legends and the story of Persephone has been a favorite of mine since I was little. She was a fertility goddess and at the same time, the goddess/queen of the Underworld. This dual nature has always intrigued me and over the years, she's become one of my favorite goddesses. For more information about Persephone, check this site out.

For the card, I wanted to bring out her two sides, but I couldn't figure out a "cool" way to do so. I ended up using some spring wrapping paper that I ripped and then taped to a dark colored cardstock. Persephone is heading towards the dark side of the card (representing the Underworld) and looking back towards the earth (the wrapping paper). I don't know if anyone caught that, but it was the best I could come up with. I wasn't terribly happy with it when I first made it, but now that a few months have passed, I really like it. The wrapping paper is so vibrant and I think it contrasts nicely with the dark cardstock.

Ugh, How Ugly!

Once upon a time, there were two LTC swaps in which the participants were to use the ugliest paper in their collections and to just cut it up and stamp it. No embellishments. Participants in each swap would vote on the ugliest card in each swap and the winners would receive a special, one of a kind LTC as a prize.

Group 1 winner: Pink and Green Psychedelic Vomit by The Red Cat
Group 2 winner: Hey, Who You Callin' Ugly? by FreezyCat of Bikercats

We decided to have a little friendly competition and see which paper the LTC community thinks is the ugliest. We both think our respective cards are eye-searing, but here's a chance to let your opinions be known!

Here they are in no particular order:

Hey, Who You Callin' Ugly


Pink and Green Psychedelic Vomit


So, which one is uglier?

Seriously, does it need to be this cold?

As I'm sure most of you have heard, the Midwest is under a severe cold snap right now. It's a brisk -6 with a -26 windchill right now. It's supposed to get down to -20 tonight with a -35 windchill. It does not need to be this cold. Seriously.

One of my favorite things to do when it gets this cold is to bury myself under a blanket with a cup of tea and a good book. I'm currently working on Stardust by Neil Gaiman and The World Without End by Ken Follett. A nice fantasy book and a huge historical epic-perfect for forgetting how cold it is outside.

The LTC featured in this post is called "Reading Pixie" and was made for a Fairy swap. The little pixie is so cute-I love his antennae. It's stamped in brown on tea-stained paper that I printed part of Mr Simonelli, or The Fairy Widower, a short story by Susanna Clarke, one of my favorite authors. I figured using a story about fairies would be appropriate, even though most people would have no idea what the story is. There's also a little rhinestone under the pixie. I wasn't quite sure about the orange paper and the burgundy background, but I think it works in a weird kind of way.

Studio Ghibli

I'm a huge Miyazaki fan. Howl's Moving Castle is one of my all time favorite movies.

This card is called Studio Ghibli Logo (very creative title, eh?) and was made for a Studio Ghibli postal ring. It was a little bonus present for members of the ring. The stamp was originally carved for another Miyazaki postal ring. It was my first time carving Japanese and I think it turned out pretty well. Also some of the smallest letters I have ever carved.

Another thing that I've noticed by looking through my cards is that I love using origami paper. And, yes, this one uses origami paper. :) I used a pack of blue-themed paper and each card has a different blue paper background. I love the texture of this paper-it feels like very thick rice paper. Usually when I use origami paper, I'll mount it on cardstock since the origami paper is very, very thin.

I have another Miyazaki LTC available, Lupin III: Lupin and His Gang if there are any Miyazaki fans out there who would like one. And yes, that one has origami paper as well. :)

I have a ton of Miyazaki stamps lying around (mostly of Howl's Moving Castle and Lupin III), so expect more Miyazaki/Ghibli cards from me.

The Snow Queen

Wow...I'm really bad at this whole blogging thing. :P I've been kept busy between finishing up the term, being sick and the whole holiday thing. So here's an LTC that fits the season. We're in the midst of a winter storm here in Minnesota (there's "freezing drizzle" right now according to weather.com-I'm not venturing outside to check).

The Snow Queen was made for a regular bi-monthly swap. This was the first card that I made for that group. The theme was winter, so I turned to the Hans Christian Anderson tale. I love old illustrations for fairy tales and I love how this stamp turned out. It's just stamped on plain white paper that I mounted on a metallic white card stock and a stripe of metallic icy blue cardstock. The colors are really pale, so they don't show up too well in the scan, but I love the sheen of the papers. The faint little dots are course glitter that I sprinkled on the blue paper. I wanted it a little more glittery, but the glitter looks a lot like the heavy snow that we sometimes get, so I traded glittery for snowy. This was the third LTC that I made and I've found that I like using the whole "stripe of contrasting paper" thing on a lot of my cards. My cards are usually about the stamp, so it's a good way to showcase the stamp image.