edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Today was very slow at work (even the packages were manageable, despite getting a full UPS delivery on Saturday), so Miss California decided to do some holiday decorating. She made a Christmas tree, and then I suggested making some snow-people. She then suggested a row of snow-people in the front windows, which sounded excellent to me.

So I found some line art and printed 21 snow-people (just three lumps of snow, no internal details or extras), which I cut out and Miss California decorated with buttons and individual faces.

Then we gave them all funny hats. :D

Five top hats, four knitted wool hats with a pompom on top, four straw garden hats with a flower on the brim, four cowboy-style hats, and four baseball caps. The top hats are all black because the best hat design I found came pre-colored, and the baseball caps are all red with various Cornell references, but the others are in an assortment of bright colors because dammit, snow-people deserve interesting hats and winter is dreary enough.

We didn't get our gaggle of snow-people taped into the window today (actual work ate some of our time, shockingly enough), but I will figure out a good way to give them little twig arms on Monday, and Miss California will arrange them in the window on Tuesday.

I'll try to take some photos, because they are ABSURDLY cute.

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ETA 12/9: Photos on Tumblr!
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
I've been trying to work through the tail end of a Great Lectures series on the Vikings, but I didn't feel like rummaging through my art supplies basket to find my coloring pages, so I opened MS Paint instead and have been making little finger "paintings" loosely in the style of Bob Ross as my latest concentration aid.

They're actually pretty fun. :)


cut for three large-ish images )


I feel like I am slowly getting the hang of Bob Ross's techniques, insofar as that's possible when making finger-doodles with a notoriously shoddy digital art program. *wry*


[[original Tumblr posts one and two, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
edenfalling: golden flaming chalice in a double circle (gold chalice)
I never know what to write in holiday cards, so I resort to tiny doodles instead. (This goes for birthday cards as well, but birthday cakes, flowers, and butterflies do not really say winter, let alone solstice or Christmas. Alas!)

Anyway, this year I wrote and drew my cards at work instead of at home, which meant I had a bunch of ultra-fine-point Sharpies to work with in addition to my usual black ink pen. So I figured I would share the joy of color with the internet. :)


cut for image )


The sleigh and the string of lights are new to my repertoire this year. Next year I think I might try learning how to doodle a cardinal...

(Before anyone asks, yes, I have tried drawing snowflakes. They never work out right. I can cut paper snowflakes like nobody's business, but adding a pen into the equation somehow always results in disaster. *sigh*)


[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
1. Wrote a tiny story (742 words) as an entry in the 2017 John Mosedale creative writing contest, which is run by the Loon (the annual newsletter/directory of the Star Island Protective League). I then ran it past Vicky for approval, since although the starting inspiration was my recent obsession with maybe purchasing a tiny fruit tree for my kitchen, it then veered into some stuff drawn from conversations I've had with her this past year, and I didn't want to just throw that out for anyone to read if she'd be uncomfortable with that. But she said it was cool, so I submitted it.

2. Shoveled my front steps and sidewalk AGAIN, because when I got home from work on Friday they were buried under a foot and a half of snow and ice, which had taken advantage of the lovely sunny afternoon to depart the roof en masse.

3. Baked brownies!

4. Helped Miss Cactus decorate the rental office counter for spring:


paper flowers and leaves on a black background . paper flowers and leaves on a black background



The leaves are leftover shamrocks from our St. Patrick's Day display, which I did not bother to photograph since it was not terribly exciting. Miss Cactus and I reused them rather than cut out entirely new leaves to go with the flowers. Most of the flowers are colored paper with a bit of Sharpie marker in the centers to make them look a bit livelier and less monochrome, but a few were printed on white paper and given unique coloring jobs, because we could and because arts and crafts are fun. :)

[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]

more items under the cut )

And now I think I will go to bed, because I am kind of brain-fried for no identifiable reason, and I figure sleep is more likely to help than staying up for another hour and trying to force myself into being productive.
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
One thing Miss Cactus likes to do is decorate the rental office's package counter (and sometimes our cupboard doors) with seasonally appropriate displays. This autumn, we put up a swirl of colored leaves. Currently we have a gentle fall of snowflakes. (We also had strings of paper Christmas lights on the cupboards in December.) Next week we're going to put up a Valentine's display, but her plans for the arrangement are kind of elaborate so we actually made the hearts today.

(Saturdays are very slow, which is how we get away with this much extraneous labor.)

About two thirds of the hearts are either plain red or pink, but for the remaining third, we got a little fancy. Miss Cactus adopted a strategy of drawing patterns over an entire sheet of paper and then cutting hearts out afterwards. I got a little more artisanal and decorated a full sheet individually. (We also added some individual touches to some of the hearts cut from full-sheet designs, since one pattern came out a little plain and needed some jazzing up, but I didn't photograph those.)

I find this sort of artsy-craftsy work very soothing. It's nice because you don't have to decide on any grand artistic vision -- you know exactly what you are doing, and what you are doing is decorating paper hearts -- but you can still have a lot of fun within those constraints. :)

The photos below are my initial designs, and then the final versions after I decided some of them were a little plain and added more colors.


images under the cut )


Our tentative plan for March, incidentally, is raindrops and rainbows over crocus and snowdrops. We will add more flowers as the weeks go by, which should keep us going strong through May. We may need a new theme in June, assuming we're both still working there by then.


[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
three pictures in gold frames hanging on a slightly off-white wall . two pictures in gold frames, hanging on a slightly off-white wall


I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was stripping and repainting some picture frames as a birthday present to my mom. In the event, I was able to finish five of them before I headed down to NJ for New Year's. The sixth is kind of broken, in the sense that its support wire both snapped and tore out of the frame, so we agreed I'd do that one last; Mom will pick it up in February.

Today Mom sent me photos of the pictures rehung on the walls of the upstairs hallway. I think they look pretty good. :)

(The pictures themselves are various scenic parts of Rome, which my grandparents purchased on a trip around 1950. I am not entirely sure of the medium, but I think it may be a combination of colored pencil and some kind of paint -- watercolor, perhaps.)


[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
1. Paid my November rent.

2. Bought groceries, including another batch of Halloween candy. I still don't think I have enough.

3. Boiled fourteen eggs. (I have added a hard boiled egg to my standard breakfast of toaster waffles, applesauce, and black tea -- the meal now contains fruit, carbs, protein, and caffeine, which I think is a pretty solid start to a day.)

more items under the cut )

12. Prepped for Halloween. I don't know if I'll be able to leave the office early tomorrow, so I have arranged with Downstairs Neighbor S that I will leave some stuff in the foyer of the house, which she will place out on the porch around 5pm and/or when the first trick-or-treaters arrive. I mixed all my candy into a big wicker basket (which I usually use for collecting empty bottles to return for the bottle deposit) and made a little 'TAKE 1' sign with a picture of a jack-o-lantern on it, which I have taped to the back of a folding chair; the candy basket will sit on the chair seat.


hand-drawn sign saying 'TAKE 1' with pumpkin illustration underneath . candy basket on folding chair, with sign taped to chair back



more items under the cut )

16. Repaired a mug whose handle broke when I dropped it about two weeks ago, and the lid to my casserole dish (which also broke when I dropped it two weeks ago; I was having a very clumsy couple days). The mug is perfectly functional again. The lid is... less so. The ceramic was very crumbly where it didn't have glaze to hold it together, so there's a noticeable missing wedge, and the pieces have very sharp edges.

If anybody knows a material I could use as filler, that would be awesome. It doesn't need to be oven-safe -- I only use the lid as a cover after I've baked stuff, either to keep it warm for serving or to protect the contents in the fridge -- but it does need to be waterproof and preferably mold-proof as well.


ceramic casserole lid, mostly glued back together . closeup of missing pieces with human hand for scale



[[link to Tumblr post A, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]

[[link to Tumblr post B, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (sun on the water)
When I went to NJ to dognap Dottie in September, I dropped by the pottery studio where my friend Susan works and made two rather awkward pinch pots for an event/project the studio was doing. My latest dognapping venture (this past weekend) happened to overlap the sale days for those pots (proceeds to benefit two local charities), so I figured I'd buy them if they were still available, which they were. And now here I am with two new pots and no clear idea what to do with them.

I'm toying with the idea of trying to propagate new jade plants from my big tentacle-y jade plant, and then maybe giving them to people as gifts next year...?

But anyway, two pots! Susan picked the glazes; the designs, however, are all me. The first is just a geometric thing that looked nice to me, with no deeper significance. The second is a simplified variant of one of the infinitely extendable border designs I used to doodle around my notebooks in high school and college. I have included an example (sketched really quick in MS Paint) of the full design for comparison purposes -- as you can see, I didn't try to put the bubbles or the indication of sand/seafloor onto the pot.


blue bowl, side view . blue bowl, top view



verdigris bowl, side view . verdigris bowl, top view . verdigris bowl, slightly different side view



stylized fish and seaweed sketch



[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
blue construction paper flag with haphazardly glued red and white stripes and a single white star in the corner


As part of my ongoing decluttering project, I have been sorting through the massive file folders of childhood documents Mom dumped on me several years back, and which have been living, untouched, underneath my coffee table ever since.

It turns out that about 85% of the contents are art projects. I am sure you can imagine what kind of art projects a toddler makes.

If you can't imagine, please refer to the above example, made when I was two and a half years old, back in July of 1984. :)

(Happy 4th of July!)

[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
The pit of voles is being its usual link-eating self, so I am posting these here for reference and so I can make a single link pointing at this post instead of trying to make this whole damn list appear on my ff.net profile. :/

(Note: I am not sure all of these links are still live. I'll check them some other day.)

-----

Stuff various wonderful people have drawn for my stories! (Plus two of my own doodles.)

from "The Way of the Apartment Manager" and "The Guardian in Spite of Herself"
--mug shot of Ayakawa Yukiko, by me
--mug shot of Tonoike Naga, by me

--Yukiko as a chuunin, by gabriel_chaos
--Naga as a chuunin, by gabriel_chaos
--Uchiha Tsukihime, by gabriel_chaos
--Fuuma Seichi, by gabriel_chaos

--Naga with kimono, before the celebratory dinner in "Apartment Manager," by iponly (ETA 3/6/11 - I am told that this link may download viruses onto your computer. I can't reproduce the problem, but it seems polite to provide warning.)

--Yukiko, Iruka, and Naga, by toki_usagi

--Naga and Nagoyaka Kafunnokaze, by kazeko

--Yukiko and Naruto, by ellenlome
--Naga as a chuunin, by ellenlome

loosely related crack
--Uchiha Crystal Power, Make-up! i.e., Tsukihime cosplaying as her namesake, by gabriel_chaos
--Moon Scroll no Jutsu, Activate! i.e., Tsukihime summons a unicorn, by gabriel_chaos
--Sasuke the magical ninja, from "Lemonade," by gabriel_chaos

from "Secrets"
--Sir Vladislav, by iponly

from "Fixation, and Other Stories"
--the princess and the dragon, from 'Fairy Tales' in chapter VI: Something Completely Different, by iponly

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edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Elizabeth Culmer

May 2025

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