weeeeeee! or better yet, wiiiiiiii!

We Won, We Won, We Won!!!!!!!!!!!!

http;//www.welcomewaggincontest.com

I'm soo excited today, I can't handle it.

it's been a while

I've been busy making stuff in ceramics, and hopefully have some cool pieces for gifts, cause I know everyone wants a goofy mug for Christmas, right??

We also entered Bella into Nintendo's animal crossing "welcome waggin" contest, which entails dressing your pets up like one of the animal crossing characters in hopes of winning a wii system and a copy of the game. I already have a system, but this contest was right up my alley, so I couldn't resist. I painted the background and made her little outfit, which she actually didn't mind wearing. Whats awesome is that her picture was featured on their website, so we are keeping our fingers crossed! We should know the results by this weekend, hopefully . She could be a member of the animal crossing welcoming committee! hahaha We also learned that Bella (our cat) is such a ham!.. well if you give her many treats she will pose like crazy for you. Oh and you can see the pic we submitted at http://welcomewaggincontest.com, and scroll through "furry faves".

I think I have video games on my mind...

I'm published! (well kind of)

Sometimes it pays off to take pictures of my estate sale finds - like being asked to use your picture in a magazine! A couple months ago I was contacted by the Director/Publisher of CA Modern magazine. It seems they were putting together an article on aluminum Christmas trees for their fall issue and liked my photo of the colortone wheel I took a while back. I was very flattered by all this, and they even sent me a printed issue of the magazine. You can check out the online version of the article here (oh and look for my name in the photo credits)!

Keep Out

Today I made these "wood" boards for our front windows. They are made from styrofoam, which I cut (with my new and awesome styro-cutter) then painted to resemble wood and they turned out a lil cooler than I thought!
I hope they stay up... I used command strips for garage sale signs to hold them in place, and I've usually had luck with those.. we'll see.

drying... Giuseppe kept wanting to walk over them

and After! sooo creeeepy! I'm a dork

and some other styrofoam creations, along with cheese cloth
the dark stain look is created with diluted Speedball black India Ink... it gives the perfect dirty look

It has begun

The time for Halloween Decor is now official. I claim September 30th official OK to put up Halloween decor day, so pull out those Halloween boxes! I've been crafting out all kinds of neat new things this year, and I've already made use of the cheesecloth I scored last month at an estate sale. One of my favorite creations this year are these spooky floral arrangements. There are 2 of them, but this one is the second one I made is better :P (practice makes perfect?)
The vases used are from the spring collection at Michael's... weird, but awesome since they were a clearance item. I guess the trick is to buy non-halloween items to make things, it will be a lot cheaper. More posts to come.

our new bar

Yesterday's estate sale finds come from across the street. It makes our house feel good...Thanks.

I'd rather see a banana split?

Estate sales were pretty darn good this past weekend, besides the nasty humidity and rain.. yucks! Liz joined us again as we hit up 2 sales in Spring Valley.
The first one looked creepy from the outside, since the house was in an industrial area. I thought we had the wrong address- we were a lil creeped out to go inside, but good thing we did! (junk city).
Keith scored a super pong tele-games system, which he then spent the rest of the weekend trying to get to work (we got it to work for like 1 minute, then it went dead). I got this super cool bowler-monkey picture- I'd like to think its an omen to how awesome I will be at bowling.
The second sale had all the cool vintage clothing. Liz got some cool sunglasses and this gold metallic jumpsuit, which fits her perfectly! I got a turquoise rhinestone polyester dress, which I can't stop staring at, oh yeah and a beaded cardigan in perfect shape! I was a good Saturday!

we WILL get this to work!

Liz, modeling her new look

This dress needs a beehive and a hot toddyp.s. each item was $1

I have the secret

I have the bowling secrets book... and started bowling classes. I'm gonna kick ass. Watch out.

Santa Empire

I'm building a Santa Empire, Christmas will never be the same. I scored not one, but three Empire plastics Santas this weekend, for under $10! It could have been four, but I'm not crazy...ha. I've seriously wanted a plastic light up Santa for who knows how long, - theres just something about that creepy glowing Santa face that makes my heart melt.

So yeah, estate sale hunting was good this weekend, even though it was only 2 houses.. and the first one sucked (waaaay overpriced). The second one was awesome! They claimed to have 4000 records, and I believe it! This house had a room dedicated to just records. This is very good conditions for record searching, since most people glanced into the room and went "oh records", then went on their way. Most of the time you have to search through a box while you have a dude leaning over you to look at something else.. very annoying.
I also obtained some craft supplies, (yesssss) as well as 6 packages of cheese cloth - which will be used for Halloween decorations.

Santa Empire

a couple of the many records we got, can't pass up an Elvis Christmas album...

cheesecloth! I love this stuff

some crafty supplies, they will be used, somehow

look what I didn't find

I didn't find anything cool at the estate sales this weekend, but one sale was kinda neat... only if you were looking for World War 2 memorabilia, telephones or pipes. Oh, and I did find this cute bunny on the way to the crafts center.

One cool thing of the weekend though was getting the space mountain piece back! I'm really pleased with how the glazing worked out. This one lady in the crafts center saw my piece and told me it looked like a spaceship ( I was like yesssssssss)
The "red" color on it is produced by using a green glaze (the green as seen on my last couple pieces), then overlapping it with a white glaze... weird and awesome.


I also recently started to work with porcelain, which is alot harder than I thought it would be, yet I managed to make these guys.... anyone want a little vase?

hello friday

I threw this piece a few weeks ago and thought it was incredibly ugly, so I had it sit around in a bag for awhile. It originally looked like a bad attempt at a nice vase... this was before I finally got around to carving it last night and realized I can turn it into this masterpiece, for me at least.

Keith thinks it looks alive, and might start to walk away.

complete

taa daaaa! These three are finally finished, but the space mountain piece is still awaiting its trip to the kiln. I love the way the 3-footed thing turned out, especially the glaze, (the specks in it are from the minerals in the clay).
I'm not too crazy about the bottle though. The glaze I used on it turns darker with each coat applied, so thats what the weird ring around it is .. whoops

kitsch level : high

Yesterday I scored some cute kitschy Christmas items from a good estate sale in La Mesa, and awed at the amazing bathrooms in a just-ok estate sale in Point Loma. I'd have to say that these two neighborhoods are my fav stops for estate sales. I've had the best luck at finding cool stuff in both and have been able to tour some neat houses, which is the BEST part of estate sales. It's kind like Disneyland for nosey people.
I was able to get a few pics of the bathrooms in the Point Loma house without looking like a complete weirdo. Keith and I both agree that these bathrooms would be perfect in our dream home, one for him and one for me, as you will sort of see in the pictures.

Satin ornaments, but not just your typical round ones

6 little elf guys

bathroom 1 check out the cute tile detail
bathroom 1 - super cool floor and cabinets

and bathroom 2 - Pink for girls!! I just stood in there and stared at the wallpaper

longest weekend ever

Comic-Con was crazy fun, and made the weekend feel like the a looong vacation, so would this be considered a stay-cation? After comic con is over you kinda get a sensory overload hangover and need a day to recover, seriously. Some of the highlights of the weekend:
- getting way too much free stuff, I actually enjoy seeing people push and shove to get a free key chain or eye patch.
- Lego booth with cool things to look at.
- Keith meeting Dave Hill, whom he kinda has a man-crush on (shhhh), I took a picture of them together and Dave's film crew happened to get footage of it, you can see Keith's 1/2 second of non fame here (link! click) you see a split second of Keith at about 30 seconds into it! woooo
- neat costumes (and some not so neat costumes) oh, and making Keith take picture with them... well the costumes he approved of.
- buying lots of cool comics, I especially like the new cat comics I bought, my new fav "cat nation"

Keith with Dave Hill (how cute!)

nasty blob monster thingy

Keith and a Storm Trooper guy (one of the many)

wtf

Cat Nation!

comic-con day zero

Yesterday was preview night for the comic-con and it was crazy! The line to get in was the long, loopy, and confusing - but we managed to get in eventually. The best part about standing in line forever is the conversations you overhear. I heard this one dude in front of us brag about how much laserdisc anime he owned, it was awesome. There was also this lady in front of us who loved to mention (as much as she can) how she has been attending comic-con for the past 20 years, and she even had to let security know this when they tried to direct her in line on where to go, she snapped "I've been going to this for 20 years lady, I know where to go!"... comic-con snobs.
Once we got inside, I wanted to head over to dark horse comics in order to enter the raffle for a yellow domo kun, and Keith wanted to check out the octagon global recruiting booth - which was packed.
I didn't win the raffle :( but at least I was able to get my badge early, which is pretty much the main reason why we went to preview night. .... this will be a fun (long) weekend.

check it out

Just some new pieces I've been working on.
check out those feet, I spent Friday night carving them... exciting.





This is one of my new favs - I originally was going for a flying saucer style, like the kind from a good 50s sci-fi film ... but I think it looks more like space mountain now.... and I looooove space mountain! It will look even better once I get to glazing it, ceramics is a sloow process.