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Just wanted to share this real quick before I get the urge to rip down anything Xmassy. I made a lot of decorations for Christmas and since this was our first Christmas together in our new home, I wanted to make one as a little gift for Jed. He used to work as a freelance 3D model maker for Day of Defeat (WWII Half-Life mod), and so I made this Christmas tree bauble with a DoD theme. It looks great in the tree and I’m looking forward to unpacking it and hanging it up for years to come!
In Sweden it’s pretty common to decorate the Christmas tree the day before Christmas eve. That’s what we’ve always done in our family at least. But then Jed said that they do it much earlier in the UK. And I really like Christmas. It’s sentimental, I know. But I really like it. So who am I to say we have to wait? I really need Christmas this year, I need some cheering up. And Jed got us this tree, which I decorated last night. The cat loves it too (he chews on it from time to time when he feels peckish). Also, I made a Halo bauble. And a Day of Defeat bauble (I’ll try and put up a picture later). That’s the upside of being a crafty geek! So, pretty cool tree, all in all, I think. Okay folks, this is not a drill. It’s just a few hours until midnight, until November, and with it NaNoWriMo.
I gotta say; I’ve tried this thing for many years now in any way possible, it feels like I’ve been trying to cure a severe case of the hiccups (“No, you should try and write it upside down, that should do it!”). I’ve written in Swedish, I’ve written in English, I’ve mixed the two up completely. I’ve tried planning everything to the nail, and I’ve gone all Lord of the Flies on my arse and not planned anything at all. I’ve written by hand, I’ve written in Notepad, and I’ve used some sort of software. Night time, daytime, chocolate, wine, electrical shortage, network outage, theme music from action movies and dramas, instrumental, opera, utter silence. Many tries and only one “win”, and even then it wasn’t all that great, mostly just poop on a page (or many pages, although, I’ve never actually printed any of it out, so it’s digital… oh, never mind). The word count has varied a great deal every year. 10k, 25, 37… and that one time I actually finished. One unusually grim November I wrote three pages (but when I look back at them I sort of like them, so I don’t mind). For me it’s always been a lot about just starting, just writing, and if I make it I make it. But anything I produce is most probably more than I usually write in a month nowadays, if you only count creative writing and storytelling. This year I have my notebook full of almost unreadable scribbles of about 7-8 different stories and characters. As I flipped through them today I felt a bit downhearted. Use one of them? Come up with something new? No plot, no problem, right? Also, I realised I could basically base all the characters loosely on an aspect of myself. Slightly unnerving (“Write what you know!” screams my inner editor in the voice of Joey’s agent in “Friends”… why is that?!). Then I had that completely wonderful moment when I saw a very specific theme in all of them and suddenly I saw no problem using ALL of them all at once. Go me. So that’s what I’ll do. All my little characters can come play. Nobody have to feel left out. Although at least one of them will get killed off, of course. Hey, this is 414 words already, can I use them?
This was the end result, that I posted on Flickr:
Collected: Best Friend
This is what you need to take this picture:
It really wasn’t an easy shoot for a happy amateur like me. The rain was pouring outside, there was little natural light, getting any sort of focus through the glass was hard, and so on. But we had a lot of fun, and that’s the best thing about all this! I have so many funny shots of Sara, she makes the best facial expressions! Here is a another shot I really like:
Other themes for Photo Sunday:
So this is the final shot, after some editing. I wanted it to have a similar vibe to my Horror shot from February, a sort of follow up if you will. My life is certainly filled with more hope than horror these days!
Click for bigger picture
This is my third entry for Photo Sunday since February, so, I have a slow pace to say the least! I guess it all comes down to time in the end. Hey, have we had time as a theme yet? Oh, probably… Anyway, here are links to the previous two themes I did: Also I would like to share a couple of other shots from that day I really loved.
This week the theme was “Contact”, and I had some fun ideas, but I felt I’d rather get it done with something uncomplicated than stress out and try some crazy stunt. So, in all simplicity, this is my version of Contact:
And of course, you can also see it on my tiny Flickr account. I created a set just for Photo Sundays, hopefully it’ll grow!
Some shots of a ring my friend Ylva Holmén made. We met at my job a couple of years ago, but she’s a full time glass artist now days, completely awesome! Very talented, and, no surprise there, very creative. You can find more pics of her work here.
I was looking through a few sketches to work with for a photo layout. They’re of course mainly drawn in black and white, so I thought I’s make the entire layout in black and white, including the photographs. So, I thought it would be a fun thing to take a self-portrait. I really only did this for a laugh, because all I could think of when I thought of black and white were those mime artists. I don’t particularly like being in photographs, but this was kind of fun.
There is one material I’ve been desperate to try, and that is silver clay. I spent a lot of time last year googling and ogling over projects and trying to figure out how it works, what you need to burn it properly. With the prices on PMC (precious metal clay) it’s not something one experiment with without a little research. So Jed went and got me a basic class in silver clay jewellery for my birthday (!), and I finally got to try it out a few weeks ago. It was nothing less than totally awesome; I want to do it AGAIN. Can’t believe I thought it’d be complicated, it was easy and fun and the result felt very rewarding. At the risk of completely ruining myself I think I added another hobby to my list. Well, what can you do? It’s shiny. With the 9 grams of clay that was included in the course I made two pendants, same shape and applications on both:
And as a reference to size, this is me wearing the larger one of the two:
If you ever thought of trying making something with silver clay, I can really recommend it. The uses of that material seem endless, as the ideas you get when you start working with it. Google silver clay. Do it.
I have grand ideas for this project, the 100 themes, but I realised that if I just don’t start straight away I might not get started at all. So, I picked the easiest theme of them all, #23: Cat. Well, until I realised I mixed up the lists… I had a list open on my android with the backup themes. Well, so, I’ve obviously re-written this post. I can’t decide if I should just add it to the list or just retract it. Bah, screw it! I have one, see, a fussy cat. And he loves staying close when something is happening, so he’s a fairly easy motif. I just made two of him! Thank you Jed for giving me some pointers about masks in Photoshop.
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