things I’ve learnt while on the nightshift

- Children walk to school in the late evening when I’m getting ready for bed.

- Plumbers come at 2am, stay til 6am, wander off for half an hour and don’t give a second thought that you might want to be in bed.

- Shops are never open.

- If you go to the supermarket there’ll be no-one on the roads, and you’ll share the shop with surly nightshift workers or overly helpful and apologetic staff who aren’t used to dealing with customers.

- 1pm (2am) has an eerie orange glow of light pollution, that can make it seem like just a very cloudy day...

- You’ll never get a parcel delivered into your hands again, it’ll always be waiting for you next door.

- Seven coffees a day is normal, although it’ll just prop you up and not make you feel awake.

- It'll really annoy you when people want sympathy / praise for ‘staying up really late, like until 4am’.

- You get so used to it being light when you sleep that if you do go to bed when it’s dark you’ll leave the light on on purpose.

- If someone not on the nightshift asks you to, you might go to the theatre at 5.30am.

- You'll never know what the hell time it is, when to sleep or eat, because it's dark at 1pm, and light at 3am!

- For some reason it’ll suddenly be acceptable to drink in a morning, and taboo to drink in the evening...

- People never update anything on Facebook or on forums, but then while you were sleeping suddenly everything on there has changed.

- You’ll probably eat Chinese / Pizza / Roast Dinner / Fish and Chips for breakfast sometimes.

corel painter X

I’ve today discovered the wonder that is Corel Painter X!

After using it, it’s a wonder anyone uses real paint anymore. It’s an outstanding program, which must have been written with the explicit help from real artists because all the tools I’ve tried so far are dead ringers for the real thing.

I’ve studied art for a while now, and I’ve done quite a lot of painting in my time. I love painting, but it does have it’s downsides....it’s messy, oil paints are smelly, you have to set up and put away, sometimes cleaning up takes just as long as the painting did. There’s always the possibility of dipping your brush in your coffee or drinking your paint water...

With this program you can have all the fun of painting and none of the mess. It really is the ideal substitute for real paint (and drawing etc.). I’ve tried the oil paints, watercolour and charcoal so far (plus had a mess round with some other stuff to see what it does). If you use the oil paint on Impasto setting, you can actually See the brush strokes AND they stay put no matter how much blending you do afterwards!! When I tried the watercolours, they do blend together and dry before your very eyes, and if you put too much in one place it also gives the effect of overloaded paper, amazing!

The charcoal is my next stop along the way of my experiments, I had a play and think it’s ace!! I’ve done a couple of paintings with it so far, just playing...it all started with Facebook Graffiti and Animated Graffiti.

I love FB Graffiti, although it’s really hard to do anything really good on it because of the limited tools BUT some people have created real masterpieces on there, and I have been trying (one of my efforts is there > ;))– it is quite good to be limited sometimes. But it’s given me a real desire to do some digital art.

Along with looking at some of Rachel Anderson's stuff (I’m doing a cross stitch of one of her pictures, ‘Queen of Hearts’ at the moment).

With programs like Painter, painting and drawing on the computer really is the future, because anything you can do on paper or canvas you can do on here just the same except with none of the mess and clean up, not to mention storage space for all the canvases and art materials!! All you need is a computer, a good amount of RAM and a graphics tablet and you're set for all the art your imagination can muster. You can even throw out your trusty 2Bs ;).

If you’re an artist, acquire a copy of Corel Painter X right NOW!!

art and bri

I’ve spent most of the evening re-tagging my blog, and reading over some of my old stuff (I started at the beginning and worked forwards).

It’s made me realise something – looking at the numbers next to the labels, it looks like I don’t talk about Art or Bri nearly enough. At the moment the largest number of posts has been about uni, then friends, and then randomness.

I should be talking, and thinking about art more often. It’s called Elizabeth’s Art after all. I just think that I lost it a little bit during and after uni. At college I was passionate, working hard and loving it, but then uni and the uni tutors sucked all the life out of it and Stifled me so much!! I want to get that passion back, to have a project and give it everything. I think that’s going to be my business plan, I’ll work as hard as I did on foundation and make it work and be great!

As for Bri, well I think it’s probably because we live together, plus at the moment there’s not a lot of excitement in our life together, so not a lot to talk about. I’m sure that happens in the lives of every couple. The silly night shift is a big part of it – no evenings and being tired a lot. Giving ourselves artificial S.A.D ugh.

But, doesn’t mean he isn’t more important than the 21 posts he only has credit for grr that’s not enough! He should be the top of the list!! I’m going to try write some more about this stuff, I think it’s important for myself and for us together. I think I’m a bit closed off sometimes.

Anyway, I’m tagging this with both art and Bri, so at least that’ll be two more notches on them hehe!

a name for the business

As this has now become my Not Conceived Yet baby (she’s just a gleam in my eye wink wink ;)), I think I need to be doing the job of any prospective mother and making a list of baby names.

My first ‘company’ is called ‘Arts and Crafts Heaven’, a name I came up with about 5 years ago and has kind of stuck with me as a nice and to the point company name. I also have my ‘Elizabeth’s Jewellery’ business side, an obvious and to the point name for my hand made jewellery.

I don’t really want to call my jewellery making shop ‘Elizabeth’s Jewellery’, simply because it’s a bit Too obvious, and I’d like something snappy like some of the places I’ve already seen and shopped at. Some of my favourites for their snappiness are ‘Bead-a-holics’, ‘Bead Diva’, ‘Princess Jewels’ (!!! gets Very excited about that one ;)), ‘ArtClayUK’ (love the rhyming there, just flows off the tongue), ‘The Craft Pixie’, ‘Sleepy Kitten Crafts’, there are plenty of others that I just can’t think of right now...

Anyway, the type of name I want has to have the following characteristics – Snappiness above all, it has to be short and to the point, to stick in people’s minds and so I’m remembered and that people will come back again and again. Also along these lines it has to be easily searchable on the web – so it needs to be something easy to spell etc. as I want an internet base for the shop (a .co.uk) as well.

I also want Cuteness! Sleepy Kitten Crafts?! Oh come on! *faints from the cuteness*!! I’d love to have a name incorporating fairies or pixies or something, but everything I seem to search for on the net already exists (bead fairy, bead pixie, pixie jewels, stuff like that – most are taken).

The name Has to be unique, even if the name has been taken in another country, I don’t want it. Being un-unique means you can easily be mistaken and you might drive your customers straight to your competition.

I’m not too worried about the ‘Jewellery vs. Jewelry’ thing, because I doubt I’ll be selling to America (at least not the jewellery making supplies, I’m sure they have plenty of outlets already). I want to use the word Jewellery, because that is the correct English spelling, simply as.

Bri suggested ‘House of Jewels’, simply because I share many characteristics with House M.D. hehehehe mainly that I don’t suffer fools gladly and like things simple and to the point :P no Bimbling Around!! But apart from the silliness, I don’t think it’s a bad idea – it’s going on the list anyway.

The things the name has to incorporate are the jewellery making side and the jewellery side, or maybe somehow both at the same time.

So I’m just going to list some names and see if any new ideas form:

Fairy Jewels
Pixie Jewels
House of Jewels / House of Jewellery?
House of Sparkles
E Beads
E Jewels
Bead-E-Craft
Jewellery Making Heaven
Jewellery Making Paradise
Sparkly Jewels
Sparkle Heaven
Sparkly Things
Make Your Own Jewels
Make Your Own Sparkles
Bead Craft Heaven

Any Suggestions?

Confucius says “choose a job that you love and you'll never work a day in your life”. part III

My BIG idea is – I want to set up a business selling jewellery making supplies and hand-made jewellery, made by me and by other local people. I haven’t thought of a name yet, I want something snappy and memorable, something that rolls off the tongue and tells people what it’s all about. Any suggestions greatly received!

I’ve wanted to own some kind of craft business for years now, but have never had the opportunity or the gumption to do it properly.

I am at the lowest rung of the employment ladder, I haven’t really ever worked (only for a short time years ago), I’ve done courses but not in anything ‘job wise’, art is hardly a lucrative career choice, and also I’ve been idle for a long time now!! And this is quite inexplicable in job interviews without lying or embellishing. To be blunt – I’m not a safe bet for employers.

But the biggest thing is, there isn’t a job out there I’d be happy doing. I’d love to work in a craft shop (like Hobby Craft), or doing something creative – like the job in the greetings card company that I didn’t get (which makes me reluctant to even think about pursuing that again). But at the moment these options aren’t open to me. Hobby Craft is too far away, plus I just did a search and there are no jobs going.

I want to create opportunities for myself.

I have found a few wholesalers, in China and Thailand mostly, which sell jewellery supplies really cheaply in bulk. I could also stock beading magazines and books, and also have exhibitions!

There are plenty of people who bead and make jewellery, and also plenty of people who like to buy ready made jewellery to wear. There are also not many shops like that, at least not round here.

I think it’s a viable business plan and I think I have a good enough head for business that I can pull it off and run it successfully. I just need determination and to not give up. I have a knack of making myself think that something isn’t worth doing. But I think this is a good idea.

Confucius says “choose a job that you love and you'll never work a day in your life”. part II

I’m so sick of not doing anything very meaningful, I have a lot of ideas but don’t put them into practice. I had a little panicky moment yesterday about the future – what’s going to happen, how will I manage, will I be able to have the things I want?

At the moment we both live on Bri’s income. It pays the bills and rent and keeps us in food. I get a little money from my parents for food, just a little, not anything that would keep me if I didn’t have him to look after me ;) Having just one income Does mean it’s hard to save anything though, which is very important, for the future in general and those ‘rainy days’ that might come along.

What has prompted all this thinking and taking action is that someone I used to know from school added me on Facebook. I was looking through their profile and I got to a photo of her – massively pregnant, and a little girl with her in the photo. And I thought, “there’s another one of my contemporaries onto their second child”.

Quite a number of my old school friends and acquaintances are either engaged, married, pregnant, with one child or with several children. (my God, I’m only 24!! I still feel so young for any of this hehe!) I already know that isn’t the path for me. I don’t see the point of getting married (being together is the thing, and if it’s legal issues surely a Will or something like a prenuptial agreement would take care of that?) I’d only get ‘engaged’ for the free jewellery :o :O yes I really am that shallow tee hee. ACTUALLY what I’d really love is if he got me some Art Clay and a jewel to set, and I could make my own engagement ring!!

I’ve already established that I don’t want children, but I obviously want to do Something with my life, and have a lot of fun along the way. I remember that someone on my course dropped out to have a baby (by choice not accident), and I thought that was so empowered – to take your life in your hands and do what you want with it, even if people might think you’re doing the wrong thing or even crazy.

So I want to pretend that my dreams are my ‘baby’. A baby takes 9 months to grow, a long time but also quite a short term thing in the grand scheme of things. So I’m setting myself a goal. In 3 months time it’s Christmas. By then I’m going to have everything I need to start setting my plans in motion. I’ve ordered two Learn Direct courses on Business Start up and Growth. They have others too which I might also try. THEN in January I’ll have 9 months til September (a year from now), and by that time I want to be set up in business. Not necessarily successful yet, but established and on my way. I think that’s reasonable and achievable, and I’m going to do my best!!

Confucius says “choose a job that you love and you'll never work a day in your life”. part I

This little saying popped into my head as I was doing carrot face painting at Harlow Carr Gardens this year. To cut a long story short, click here and you’ll get the idea of what we do every summer hehe! My dad’s Carrot Museum goes on tour and gets shown to the public, and because I’m arty farty I come along with my craft supplies and make various carroty things and this year I also painted at least 300 carrots on people's faces or arms!

We went for three days, and on the second day (the best one because everything is already set up, there’s no putting things out or tidying them away, so you can get straight into it) at the end of the day I felt very contented with my days work. I’d literally painted people’s faces every 5 minutes, only stopping for sips of coffee or bites of sandwich, to change the water pot, obvious other essentials tee hee, and when there were lulls in people coming in, usually because they were at lunch themselves.

So what I’m saying is doing something all day non-stop with no breaks is the definition of hard work, and yet I didn’t feel like I’d done any ‘work’ at all. I came away from that three days thinking, I wish I could do this every day.

I have since bought some face paints (all I had for that was orange, green, brown and a light blue for a background colour), now I have lotssss of colours! I have been doing some painting on Bri to practice, and on my arm too. I love it, it’s a creative thing and could lead to me painting for a living – score!

Obviously I know that it’ll probably just be kids parties and maybe special fêtes and things which isn’t a full time career, there are only so many Saturdays in a year hehe. But it’s something that I love, and it’s lead to me thinking about other things too.

What I want is to have my finger in lots of pies. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate than to be stuck in the same job day in day out forever and ever.....living to work, earning to pay bills, getting money but with no time or inclination to spend it.

What I would love is to do many things all at once. All things that give a little bit of money each, but as a whole give me enough to live on. I also have another idea, but later in part III ;)

So here are some of my other ideas:

Nails – there’s a course on nail art starting in January, which could be fun – I’ve always loved doing my own and my mum’s, might be fun to learn more and do it professionally.

Floristry – there’s a course starting next September. Again it’s creative and colourful, I think it’d be fun and I’d be good at it.

Jewellery making – I could make jewellery to sell, at craft fairs, internet, or do jewellery parties.

Sculpture – keeping on with the learning and making fairies to sell every now and again, and exhibit.

Most of these things I could do at the same time, face painting at weekends, floristry and nails during the week, jewellery making and sculpture in my spare time or whenever the mood takes me. I can also tag along with Sally’s shop (our hairdresser), having jewellery displays there, and maybe doing nails too!

a little pincess :D

I’ve just been astonished to learn that the director of Children of Men, also directed A Little Princess! :o!

Now I know he did one of the Harry Potter films (and the reason for this is probably to do something ‘mainstream’ and popular in order to get the opportunity to make a film of your actual vision). But Princess is a far cry from Children!!

It reminded me of ALP though, because I used to love that film – so cute and heart wrenching at times, I think I might have to get the dvd and watch it again :D:D

i love to blog – a ha ha ha...

You know what I’m talking bout :P *

Well, just spent a lil while looking over mr J’s old blogs....I don’t really know why, I do check in on it from time to time, but he doesn’t update a lot anymore. Was a bit curious about when he started with the blog, then just carried on reading. Seems to me there’s major issues there!

Anyway. Tonight we’ve kind of been sorting out the flat, putting up blinds and other DIY type things. I put together a shelving unit lil bounce! We found out that the wall in the bathroom is un-screwable, is too thick or something (it even crapped up a drill bit – eek!) so the toothbrush holder thing and shelving unit might have to wait or need re-thinking...

We watched Children of Men last night, an amazing film that is very haunting and I think important for people to watch and take note of.



* Mary Poppins!!

part III – a conversation

I suppose what prompted me a little bit to start documenting again, me and Bri were having a big chat earlier. Yesterday we kind of had a ‘state of the union’ type conversation, mainly about the night shift and our sleep patterns are messed up – it feels like we hardly see each other sometimes and it’s getting silly. I don’t want to feel like ‘room mates’ when we’re clearly not. I do stay up all night on his time frame so that we can go to bed at the same time, and be awake at the same time, but it doesn’t always work. I get lonely and bored, yes I work on stuff and I’m doing my crafting and art etc. but there is only so much you can do within the confines of a house (it’s night so there’s nowhere else to go).

I sometimes stay round my parents’ house for some company in the evenings, which is nice but still not very practical. They still go to bed at a ‘normal’ time and I still stay up late, so I get company but only for a few hours then I’m alone again. Plus whenever I leave I feel a little bit strange and maybe even a little guilty.

Anyway, the point is that after our not so pleasant discussion about things yesterday, we got over it as we always do and today we were having a better discussion about our exs, specifically one of his, the one before me. Now I’m the jealous type, I’m the type that gets jealous of exs for some reason. The fact that they had him first isn’t appealing to me. I don’t really like hearing about it or thinking about it – but I think hearing about it is better than my brain thinking all sorts. So we had a general discussion about how they got together and why, and other general things and I looked at the end of year degree show catalogue when she was at Chichester (gner and pner she was there too, And she had my halls room before me grrrrrr just silly coincidences but still grrrr hehe).

It seems like from the outside it was better than it actually was. Now he talks with hindsight of course, and was saying they were kind of thrown together because of uni (they went to uni at the same time, she did fine art – another coincidence, and were friends first then got together). I think I like talking about this stuff, in kind of a masochistic way (being the jealous type), but not really because it kind of made our relationship seem better by comparison hehehe! (but it is better anyway ;)).

I also talked about some of mine, and some of the dates I’ve been on – the fact that I’ve not really been in a relationship like this before (and maybe that’s why I feel jealous – because he has, but in fact like I said, it seemed better from the outside that it actually was).

In the past I've tended to 'use' people for my own means, to be with people only when they can give me something, then move on to the next. That sounds horrible, but it is practical in a sense - to be associated with people who are assets and can enhance your life. When they stop with the enhancing, enhance it some other way.

part II – the art I’m working on

At the moment I’m working on getting my sculpting skills up a bit. I’m still a beginner in the sculpting stakes (I’ve studied art for 4 years in college and this last year off my own back), but I always did painting before and not 3D work. Now I’ve discovered (or rediscoved from my childhood) polymer clay, I’m addicted and love sculpting!

3D is so much harder than 2D, because you have so many other planes to worry about. In a painting you can make a picture of anything and get it right as long as you know about perspective and shadow. In sculpture, you can spend hours working on the front of it, make it look perfect, then turn it to the side and it looks ridiculous and you have to start tweaking it so both sides look good at the same time AND individually.

It’s a tricky art!

I love fairy sculpture, and there are some very talented people out there. There are plenty of doll artists, and some who concentrate on fairies or fantasy creatures - Those are the one's I'm most interested in. My favourite is Shirley Ann MacKillop, who was the first fairy sculptor I came across. She produces the most beautiful sculptures, I'd love to own one but I just can't afford it - they go for about £200 a piece (rightly so). I keep stumbling over more and more artists all the time, and usually stick around with the ones that are willing to share technical information.

I’ve been learning from DVDs by Patricia Rose, and also from various books including ones by Katherine Dewey (Creating Lifelike Figures in Polymer Clay).

I’ve currently been making lots and lots of heads – just the face, no ears, just to practice and get it right. The more you do it, the better you get. Later I’m going to do the same with bodies (make lots and lots in succession), work on proportions and scaling – fitting the right head to the right body. In time I’ll get it, and I’m determined to be ranked among the people I admire at the moment.

I need to get some books on anatomy for the artist. Just some guides on proportion, and maybe some good quality images of people to work from (the internet is full of pictures, but not exactly what I need). I love sculpting people (well women really) in small scale, it gives you that extra challenge of making something that isn’t real....you have to make all those extra decisions and use your imagination. That’s what true art is all about.

It all takes practice. It’s a skill that needs to be honed, and I have so much fun with it! I like seeing a face take shape, and actually look like a person when it used to be a lump of clay. I hope I can do the same with bodies. As with all art, a lot of it is tricking the brain into believing it sees something. If the proportions look right, you’ll see a person. If the face looks real, you’ll ignore any small imperfection that might exist.

I’ve seen some shockingly bad fairy sculptures in my time – some I wonder why the person thinks they’re saleable!! Just take the one on the right.....This was made by someone in America who has a shop on eBay selling fairy sculpture supplies (wire, wing supplies, mohair etc.). Whenever I see this sculpture I think, “yeah, stick to the supplies...”

I’m not going to even try selling one until I’m sure they’re right and can compete with the ones that already exist. I’d like to do an exhibition at some point, if I can find out how! I don’t just want to be another person who sells dolls on eBay – I want people to see my creations and admire them, to show people what I’ve been doing! I haven’t done an art exhibition in a while (I did that jewellery in May but I wasn’t actually at it), the last time it was my foundation year.

part I – the new flat

I want to start blogging again, I never seem to make time for it in my life and I really should do. I remember the summer before I went to uni I wrote almost every day and it felt great!

Time to start it up again as I have a few ideas for things to tell you.

Firstly, I’m fairly settled into my new flat (I say fairly, because there are still a lot of boxes hanging around the place and I’m just a little overwhelmed by the job to do anything about them. I’d rather do things that are more important, but then they never get shifted! Grr!). It’s a nice little flat above a shoe shop, the owner of which is our landlord. It’s self contained, two bedroom, the second of which has been christened the ‘Craft Quarters’ a la Star Trek tee hee because it’s an attic room and slightly resembles a Star Trek TNG or Voyager crew quarters.

The Craft Quarters has kind of become my domain, I sit up there at night and Craft to my hearts content. I have my desk all set up with a space for the computer and it’s just what I didn’t have in the other flat – somewhere to work. He works proper night shift now, which is a bsatard, (and might be changing soon!) so during the night (10pm – 8am) I sculpt like mad. Or do cross stitch. More on that later in part II ;)

Our bedroom has really nice fitted wardrobes which I haven’t filled yet, again I’m a bit overwhelmed by the job and there are currently boxes in the way of it. Bri just tidied the lounge out the other night, and it actually looks like a lounge now and not a dumping ground hehe! There are still some DIY projects to do around the place, but we’re hopefully going to get those sorted in the next couple of weeks.

It’s just down the road from my parents house, I suppose I got my fix of living far away for a while, and now I’m back up here in close proximity. Living far away was good when I had friends and was having fun a lot, I kept in contact by email and so didn’t really think about not living with them or missing them all that much. But living in the flat in Midhurst (which technically was only Bri’s flat and I didn’t have a key), got very isolating. Being up here now is a good thing because it means I can go back home whenever I want, but still have my own place and alone time whenever I need it.

Yes, it’s finally Our flat – both our names are on it and we both have keys so it’s actually official, we live together :D We did anyway, but now it feels better somehow – I not just ‘staying round his’.