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.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

I usually don't post pictures of LTCs that I still have available, but this one is applicable to what I did this past weekend.

Evan and I went to go see Cinematic Titanic on Saturday night. It's several of the people who were involved with Mystery Science Theater 3000 basically doing the same thing with really bad horror movies. Saturday's selection was Blood of the Vampires. It was an absolutely ridiculous movie. Apparently, the Phillipino actors that they got to play the servants didn't have "hispanic" enough skin, so they put them in black face. Really really bad and offensive black face. Needless to say, the Cinematic Titanic guys had a field day with this.

If you ever get a chance to see Cinematic Titanic, I would highly recommend it. They are hilarious!

About the LTC: The stamp was originally carved for the Great Lakes 2008 gathering that celebrated all things Minnesota. I never really got a lot of the MST3K jokes until I moved to Minnesota since they reference a lot of local places and people. Now it just adds another level, so I had to carve an MST3K stamp. I'll probably end up hiding the stamp somewhere near Hopkins, MN. The stamp image is embossed on movie posters of some of the films they skewered on the show. The posters are: "The Brain Who Wouldn't Die" (my personal favorite-I love the woman's face on the card), "The Sidehackers" (Hard riders! Mounted on BURNING STEEL! With only their leathers between THEM and HELL!") and "Teenagers From Outer Space" (Thrill-crazed space kids blasting flesh off humans!).

I only have "Teenagers From Outer Space" and "The Sidehackers" available if anyone would like one.

A Permanent Souvenir

It was five years ago today that I got my first (and so far only) tattoo. I was studying in Bangor, Wales and thought it would be the perfect time to get a tattoo. A friend and I took the train to Llandudno and we both got inked.

I've never regretted getting it and probably never will. The term I spent in Wales changed me and I fell in love with the rugged beauty of northern Wales. (If you ever get a chance to go to Wales, you have to go-it's amazing!) This tattoo is like a little piece of Wales that I get to carry around with me for the rest of my life.

The tattoo is a celtic knot-type design with three cats. My mom still swears that all she sees is fish, but trust me, they're cats. If you can't see them, their tails are the outer circle and their eyes, ears and a paw are towards the center. The stamp is about the same size as my tattoo and was originally carved for a postal ring. I'll probably turn it into a traveler at some point. The LTC is just a print out of a road map around Bangor (the red star is Bangor) and then I embossed the imprint of the stamp. This was my first attempt at embossing and it looks a little spotty, but I think it adds to the "tattoo-ness" of the image since it looks like a tattoo that has been freshly inked. I love this card because of it's meaning and the fact that you can see three of my favorite cities-Bangor, Conwy and Beaumaris.

Oh, and where is this tattoo? You'll never know. :P

Ok, maybe not. It's on my lower left back and you can sometimes see it when I bend over. Which is how my parents found at that I got a tattoo.

Where Have I Been?

Wow...this hasn't been updated since May!

Where have I been?

Short answer: Around

Slightly longer answer: Let's just say it wasn't a very fun summer.

Nothing particularly bad happened. It was just a difficult summer.

There were a few good things:

Spent the 4th of July in Marquette, MI with my parents, brother and aunt & uncle and their families. The last time I was in Marquette was about 10 years ago. That trip really made me realize that Marquette and my aunt & uncles' house on Lake Superior had a huge impact on me and my childhood memories. I can stand in the middle of their lake house and tell you the view from the windows and where things are in the house.

Finally hit 300 finds! Find 100 was in the Outer Banks, find 200 was on Mercer Island in Washington and find 300 was in Chanhassen, MN. About time I have a milestone in the state I actually live in.

School has started again. I'm taking two classes: Management of Libraries and Information Centers (yuck!) and Preservation and Conservation (yay!). The Preservation and Conservation class is the first of the archiving classes and is absolutely fascinating. That class makes me excited about school again. The Management class is the last of the "required" classes that I have to take, so I can't wait until it's over!

The LTC at the top of the page is "Lotus Blossom". It's one of my stress relieving cards, meaning just use materials that I have on hand when I'm feeling frustrated and just need to do something fun (which happened a few times this summer). It didn't scan very well, but I like it. I used three different patterns of origami paper for the background.

Cycles Perfecta

In honor of "Ride Your Bike To Work Week", here's a bicycle-themed LTC. The stamp was originally carved for the first Mucha ring last year (which was absolutely amazing!) and, yes, the stamp is actually 2.5 x 3.5 (well, it's actually a little smaller since there's a little border on the cards). My favorite part was carving the hair. I love carving flowing hair-it's so fun!

It's colored with my trusty set of colored pencils. I honestly don't know why I like to use colored pencils on so many of my cards. It takes forever to color them, yet I do it over and over. It just looks so pretty.

I'll probably end up planting this stamp eventually. I kind of want to put it near a bike path (for obvious reasons), but this is one of those stamps where if it goes missing, I am not carving it again. I nearly went cross-eyed carving it the first time! Maybe I'll think about putting it in a bike shop. Less chance of it going missing. Hmm...