In the Bedroom

More home improvements were completed this week, the largest of which altered the bedroom. We live in a little Berkeley bungalow that is pretty old (first half of the 20th century, to be sure) and there are only 2 closets large enough to hold clothes. One is in the bedroom but is rather small, for me anyway, so Charlie uses that one. The other is the downstairs entry closet which more than accommodated all my clothing, but it's a bit of a haul from the bedroom when you just want to throw on some clothes, so we decided to remedy that.

I use the term we lightly here, as the great and wonderful Charlie did all the work. We built clothes hangers so that my clothing could hang along one wall in the bedroom--an 'open air' closet, if you will. It's great to have quick access to everything and to see all my options at once. It does feel a bit like I'm living in a boutique though.

Home Improvements

Life has been pretty hectic since July and I feel like we never fully moved in to our new place. We've taken our past few days off to make a few improvements to our apartment. 

First, I organized our bookshelves. Including adding new sections for artists' books, zines, and comics.

The studio has been feeling pretty crowded so we moved my yellow reading chair into the living room,

right by the paper fire I created to make our walled up fire place feel nice and cozy.

Tired of the kittens constantly knocking over our piles of DVDs, we found some cheap, fun, wall mounted DVD racks at Ikea that balance the DVDs between each crossbar and the wall.

For inspiration in the mornings, and when entering my studio, I hung my newest artwork, from Courtney Cerruti, on the small wall across from the bedroom door, and right by the studio entrance.

In the studio we mounted some new shelves to help me organize. The shelves were repurposed from a kitchen cabinet our friends discarded when they renovated their kitchen. 

The overhead lighting in my art room is not very good, especially for detail work, so we installed a few new lights above the window that shine down directly on the work table. They are great! Now I feel like I can make work after dark, which is especially important since after work is my main art making time.

From the Air

I love taking pictures from the windows of aeroplanes. There's something about not knowing whether the view is from coming or going. On our trip to Colorado, we flew over the Sierras and the Rockies. From the air, these could be mountains anywhere. I love all the potential stories you can make up from the ambiguity in photos taken from above.

Colorado Ground

Christmas was spent in Colorado with the ever so amazing in-laws (yes, they really are great). My mom and dad in-law moved from Denver to Castle Rock over the summer and traded their city skyline for a great view of the foothills and Rockies. I managed to get a nasty cold the day after we arrived (isn't that always the way when you take time off?) but snuck in a trek around the property before that happened. 

Holiday Party

This here is a real live postage stamp dispenser!

No holiday season is complete without a holiday party. New Years is yet to come, but this season's party of choice for me was the Correspondence Co-op Holiday she-bang. Some of my favorite people were there and, to make things even better, there was also, food, postcard stamping, and a raffle!

My gift to the crew was typewriter wine. I'm not a wine drinker myself but how could I resist...this wine was made for the Co-op.

These photos do not do justice to the table that was positively overflowing with delicious treats!

Of course there were gifts as well, like a 'make your own stamp' and lickable artists stamps. Is is just me or does everyone think of the wall paper scene in Willy Wonka when they hear the word lickable?

We were making postcards to petition Obama to save USPS.

That awesome stamp dispenser was one of the raffle prizes. Alas, I didn't win anything despite the giant train of tickets I bought. It was still a grand night, though.

Holiday Fair Craziness

Where have I been, you ask? I bet you thought I deserted the blogosphere--NEVER! First there was Thanksgiving, which quickly flows into the December holidays and, in between those, the holiday craft fairs. This was the first holiday season where I did more than just 1 small fair and so I put a lot of extra time and effort into my made things and display.

I flexed my design muscles a little and designed a few new cards on the computer and made polymer plates for the first time in over a year. They came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. 

The first fair was Bazaar Bizarre, where I perfected my display, which was greatly enhanced by some nifty wooden card holders my partner made.

Next was the San Francisco Center for the Book's Annual Holiday Fair; my best fair of the year. After that was Renegade, which was super fun, but, unfortunately, I seem to have lost all the images I took there. 

I learned a lot from all these craft fairs and came up with about a million new ideas for projects and products. I can't wait to put them into action but for now I'm kicking back in Colorado and enjoying a little family and football.