Long Beach Figure Drawing Meetup Group

We've begun hosting a meetup group at our house once a week. We tried schlepping up to Los Feliz a couple times for the drawing group, which was very cool, but just to far to deal with on a work night.

Shem, my husband, can have an extraordinary sense of possibility if he wants to. He strung cafe lights between the trees, built a stage, and built 8 drawing horses. I helped build the horses. Of course this building took place on the hottest Saturday I can remember! We bought one of those craft show type pop-up covers, to partially sheild the model from our neighbors in the apartment building next door.

Although the response on our meetup.com group has been positive, the turnout has been low. The idea is that each person who comes pitches in $15 to pay the model. Once the model has been payed, we can put the rest toward the money we invested to get started. Ideally, if enough people show, we don't have to pay for the model ourselves, we just have to worry about the hassle of hosting it. So far, we're still paying the bulk of the model fee. But, it's a good excuse to clean my house on Wednesdays and I get to work on my figure drawing skills.

Going to Catalina

We're leaving Wednesday morning to take the boat over to Catalina Island for three days. It's our 3 year wedding anniversary. I'm really excited!

Morcheeba

Gained the World


Directed by the animator Joel Trussell.

How to make Almond Milk

This is a great demo video that explains how to make yummy almond milk. Before starting the recipe, make sure you buy raw almonds. Soak your nuts in filtered water for 2-4 hours and discard the soaking water as the water leaches toxins from the amond skin. I believe almonds are the only nut you have to discard the soak water but don't quote me on this. There is a whole bunch to learn about why we soak our nuts, but in a nutshell...some of the good stuff remains dormant until you soak them. It's natures way of protecting the nut until it's ready to sprout and grow.

Raw Food Real World

For the past month or so, I've gone off caffine and transitioned my diet to a 'raw food' diet. I credit this book with my transformation.

A friend of mine, Tracy Fitzpatrick, owns a pilates studio and is my source for all things, well, granola...for lack of a better word. She herself, is by no means a 'granola'. A better word for her would be firecracker. Anyway, my husband and I had stopped by her house for a visit, and while Tracy and I had some high speed conversation, my husband picked up one of her books to entertain himself. It was called 'Raw Family'. On the way home, he told me about the book and said he'd like to try eating only raw food for two weeks and see how we felt. I'm always game for an adventure so I agreed but I began to panic over the next week. I'm already kitchen challenged and I knew this was going to through a wrench in my whole operation. I even broke down and cried over it. Then, I headed to the book store to get educated. I picked up this book...Raw Food Real World: 100 Recipes to Get The Glow. As I read about how my skin would be perfect and my weight would drop off and I would have more energy I thought, 'Where do I sign...I'm in'. It didn't really matter to me what I had to eat at that point. But here is the good part. As I looked through the rest of the book, my mouth was watering. I wanted to eat everything in it.

I'm happy to say that I've lost weight, my skin looks younger and I'm still enjoying learning about this different way of eating. I finally bought the book and I made the 'Vanilla Brazil Nut Milk' recipe yesterday. Super Yummy!

Cafe Press Shop Y'all!

So, I'm still working on it. It needs to be completely reorganized. There is actually a ton of product up there but my hope is to add a lot more when I have time. The whole process is quite time consuming. I would love some feedback, though, so, anyone feeling bitchy? Le'me have it!. Just on the products...the shop itself is a mess...it needs a lot of love.

Shipping Costs for Etsy

Someone posted this in the Etsy forums and it helped me soooo much, so I'm passing it on to you- He said he only lists shipping costs for each of these four: one for domestic, one for Mexico, one for Canada and one for 'Everywhere Else'.

I looked through the costs and it seemed like that was it! Other than that, all the prices seem to be the same! So, I put an excel file in my google docs and it has 5 sheets, one for each table of fees, including a table for 'media mail' which refers to the shipping of books, magazines, cd/dvds and other such media. My cards are a form of media.

So, if you are shipping relatively light items through the USPS, then this article is for you.

I refer to this table every time I ship. I highlighted the row that is my most common weight, six ounces.

Column 1 & 2:
I have a column for weight, a column for the published rate for that weight.

Column 3:
The third column is for the amount I will post, which includes my packaging costs, and I round it up within the next five cents. I don't make any money on my shipping, it already costs to much as it is for what I'm selling, because I choose to take extra care in my packaging materials. In addition, this markup includes 'parcel rates' of about 20 cents. Because I ship in a rigid cardboard envelope, my shipment is considered a parcel.

Column 4:
Next, I have a column for that 'ship with another item' category, which I keep at the cost for shipping one item. Unfortunately, Etsy doesn't let you scale the shipping costs for how many items are shipped, so at a certain point, I am starting to make money on shipping. I try to offset this by offering a sale, like buy two cards, get one free. Its not that I don't want to make money, it's just that moving product is more important to me at this point.

Column 5:
Basically, I packed my product as I would ship it...notes and all, weighed it and recorded that weight, then I recorded it as I added one product, and another. I did it up to 9 products and recorded this in the table.

Finally, you may notice that under domestic I have a column that lists how many stamps. This is purely because I happened to have a bunch of stamps and was feeling to lazy to go to the post office.

I've included a link to my google doc, for your reference, in my Etsy shop, in my profile. Yep, you got to go to my shop to get it!

I encourage you to go to the USPS website and educate yourself, at least for a couple days, and make your own table. I do not recommend that you use my exact rates, as they may not be correct for you and I'm still working on my table, it's a work in progress and could contain mistakes.

In addition, there is some slight change in international rates after a pound. Here is a link to a helpful chart: Tom's International Shipping Rates

Please leave me a comment if this was helpful to you!

Foxy Lulu

I recently came across this beautiful jewelry by Foxy Lulu. Swooooon. All of her products can be purchased on her website and she does accept paypal. I can't wait to get these cute little rose earrings for myself. They come in at least 4 different colors...orange, a darker pink, a cantelope/orange sherber color, which I also love. I had to control myself from just posting a ton of pictures.

Symbiosis By Julia

I love this Etsy Shop Symbiosis By Julia. Julia is based in southern, coastal Oregon. She makes so many lovely pouches and bags, so go shopping already!

All of her adorable Japanese fabrics are making me antsy to do some cute patterns. You never know!

Donvier

I'm currently lusting after this yogurt maker by Donvier. I've been reading 'French Women Don't Get Fat', which is a lovely book, and the author suggests making your own yogurt.

Did you know you don't even have to have a 'yogurt starter'? You can actually make yogurt if you have milk and some yogurt in the house. The cultures in the yogurt get the new yogurt started. Amazing. Also, it's apparently doable without the official yogurt maker.

If you have a Trader Joes near you, I suggest the Greek style Cheese Yogurt. It's very much like a cross between sour cream and cream cheese. It is divine on wheat toast!

Paper Party

These are some boards I recently sent out.

Neon Neon

Neon Neon - I Lust U


Song title is 'I Lust U'. Features Cate Le Bon on vocals.

Prints on Etsy

I'm selling prints of my work on my Etsy shop. This is fairly new work and I'm really excited to show it off. Let me know what you think. $20 each y'all!

Cheryl Hoffman Illustrated Stationery

Color Chart: An Online Exhibit for the MOMA Color Exhibittion

The new exhibit at MOMA NY is on color, canned color to be exact, or the idea of ready to use, ready to buy color as opposed to actually mixing pigments as was done in earlier centuries. View the online exhibit, called COLOR CHART, which features a number of paintings from 1918 through 2008 and also has audio from the curator for each one. Very educational, and it's a nice little art history recap. I have a video posted a few posts back that shows the installation of the floor for the exhibit and it's very cool.

Gocco demo

Justice... it's logorific!

Justice - DVNO


Song title is DVNO.

Vampire Weekend

Song title is A Punk.

Furoshiki

A couple of how-to demos on folding a Furoshiki cloth. Use these instead of plastic bags for responsible visits to the market and inadvertently up your style quotient.

Thao Nguyen

Song title is Bag of Hammers

Kaki King

The Guitar Goddess. Song title is Yellowcake.