iRule

One of the benefits of being in art school is that when you have downtime, there's lots of crap laying around to play with. Today, my friend and I found ourselves in class with nothing to do so we made ourselves iPhones out of foamcore. She had already made herself a foam iTouch, but I told her she deserved more, thus the iPhone was built. Nice, eh?


I need to practice looking all smug and hip now. I should also buy a Prius.

I've been kicking around the idea of getting myself a Mac laptop, since it's what I'll eventually be working on in a job and it's what I work on every day at school. Our PC is fine for internet crapola and such but my design programs work so much better on a Mac. Unfortunately, they're pretty expensive so I'm not exactly running out today to buy one. Foamcore however, is not, especially when you find it on the floor. Thus, my new Macbook Pro:


Nothing like the internet, a printer, old foamcore and a glue stick. Viola. It's pretty sweet and the first picture totally looks like it's on.

Artsy Fartsy

I fancy myself a bit of a painter from time to time and my work usually revolves around abstract color studies or some kind of weird shape or something. I currently have a small series of art pieces that revolve around slang terms and pop culture references and how the innocent word or phrase can be made offensive. As I have stated before, I am a fan of offensive art (to a point) so it isn't a negative take on it, more of a tongue in cheek type of thing. I also like big art. Like REALLY big art that takes up a whole wall. Which is odd because as I also mentioned before, I have an abnormal obsession with things that are ridiculously small. For instance, we were at Home Depot the other night and when we walked in there were these boxes with a sign that said "miniature tools $1.99". SOLD! I came home with a itty bitty pair of pliers. For what purpose you ask? I have no idea but that isn't the point. I'm also a big fan of airline bottles of liquor and those squatty little bottles of condiments that you get at hotels.

Anyway, back to my story about how I like big art. I am usually broke and don't have a lot of cash to spend on big canvases and such so I have, to this point, created paintings and stuff that are about 24" max. I'm also way too lazy to stretch my own canvas so I'm a slave to the man. I had a job at an art supply store last year and learned that they have a big sale every year and you can buy canvases in quantity for a HUGE discount. Jeff was all "go get gigantic canvases" and I did, but the biggest I got was about 36" X 48". Big, but not super big. Then I hit the motherload. My friend Sam had acquired a HUGE canvas and had no place to put it in his apartment and sold it to me for $50. This canvas would have sold for WAY more in the store but Sam is a peach and didn't even want me to pay for it but I insisted. Well, I was so excited and had the perfect place to put it and was all jacked up to paint on it. The problem is that I haven't been able to. Well that's not true. I have painted on it 4 times now and nothing is working. I think that I'm so obsessed with making it something spectacular because it's so big that I freeze up. It now sits in my basement with my last attempts scrawled on it, taunting me to try again. This freaking thing haunts me! I have since painted several other smaller pieces that I am perfectly happy with but I can't seem to get it right on the monster. It is perplexing to me. I'm giving it another go this week because the plan is for it to hang in my fancy new dining room and at this rate the room will be done before the stupid painting.

Sweeeeeeeet

Thar she blows! I finally finished the cake. The cake plate is messy and I should have run it through photoshop and cleaned it up but I'm lazy so just avert your eyes. Here's another one:

I have to say that I'm pretty proud of how it turned out even though it's a bit crooked but what else is new. We really only get one chance in class to practice any one technique and it's up to the student to practice at home, which I didn't really get to do. My mom's cake turned out nice despite my teasing and her cake was the only one in class that actually looked similar to the cake on our workbook. She worked really hard on it and I wish I had a picture to post but trust me that it was really pretty. I think that only a few other people actually finished their cakes out. Class was nice and relaxed because the obnoxious few didn't come and the ladies that were there turned out to be nice, which is good because I think almost the whole class will be in our fondant class next week. There is one woman who makes it VERY CLEAR that she wants to do this for a living and acts all smug about it and she's the only one left that irritates me. I know it shouldn't, but it does because every time our instructor talks about a technique or a product, she ALWAYS has to chime in about how she's already tried it or that she already used it on a cake or blah, blah, blah. Just shut up already. WE KNOW. Her cake was nice but it didn't blow my skirt up SO THERE lady! Oh well, she'll probably become some world famous cake decorator while I'm ringing up copies at Kinko's.

UPDATE: Yes, that is me holding the cake and I am indeed wearing pumpkin pie pants.

Thar she blows! I finally finished the cake. The cake plate is messy and I should have run it through photoshop and cleaned it up but I'm lazy so just avert your eyes. Here's another one:

It leans a little

It's go time for my cake. I went with a 6" round 4-layer cake, yellow with chocolate icing. I baked 8" rounds but wanted to test out my carving skills so I carved it down to a 6". It came out okay but I went in freehand so it's kinda off. Whatever. I also went to town on some new flowers. I'm pretty much sick of this cake now and just want to finish it. I start fondant class next week and I'm pretty convinced that therein lies my future. I already have my fabulous new career in cake decorating all worked out in my head and I am totally disregarding the fact that I have no experience and moderately limited skills but I just have this itch in my head that this could be "it". I've been searching for "it" for a long time now and so far all my ventures have failed but I keep plugging along like an idiot still hoping that something works out. We'll see. I'm sure the other ladies will have very elaborately decorated cakes since they are so highly skilled and then I'll come home all dejected and threaten to quit but then I'll see an awesome cake somewhere and then I get all jazzed again and the cycle continues.

I'll post pics of my cake tomorrow. Good, bad or ugly.

at least I got sweet parking

As I have mentioned in the past, I am a disorganized individual. I actually manage to get quite a bit done in a day, but my attention span is short and I am easily distracted so I go in circles alot AND I have a terrible memory so it's really a wonder of science that I can even operate a pair of pants. Anyway, this leads to my morning. Jeff gets up earlier than I do and I usually just sleep right through it but today I was up with him and I was being slowly pushed out of my side of the bed by two ninja shih-tzu's, so I decided to just get up and get on with it. I had roughly 45 extra minutes on top of the hour I normally have and yet at 8:45, when I needed to be in my car, I was still trying to decide between the black shirt or the green shirt. What the hell is my problem? Needless to say, I pulled in to the parking lot right when my class was supposed to start. I was quickly distracted by the fact that the parking lot was almost empty. I started panicking and was all "is today a holiday and I don't know it?" so I pulled into a spot to gather myself but then I remembered that I am a dumbass and today is Thursday which means that my class starts at 9:30, not 9. I have been in school now for 12 weeks and I still can't keep this straight. I thought about going back home but for what, so I decided to get some administrative crap done for my schedule next semester. For some ungodly reason, I had to go through advising to get my schedule finalized before they will give me my loan money which is RIDICULOUS because advising is a cesspool of mismanagement. They give wrong information and tell you to take classes that you can't use. Anyway, the secretary or whatever she does told me I had to fill out some giant form so I did and then she directed me to room J to talk to the advisor. I went to room J and no one was in it. There was an office across from it and I could hear 2 ladies having a loud conversation about stuffing so I positioned myself so they could see me out the door. After about a second, this lady barges out of that office, past me and into room J. I started to go in after her and this transpired:

room J lady: " Did they send you here? What room did they tell you? Room J? 'Cause THIS is room J and they didn't tell me they were sending you back? WHO TOLD YOU TO COME HERE?"

me: "The lady out there told me to come to room J"

room J lady: "What lady? Out front, that lady? DAMN, I'm gonna go out there and TELL them that they need to NOTIFY me when they send someone back. This is registration time and I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS"

me: (silence because I fear for my life)

room J lady: "How can someone have the SAME job for this long and NOT KNOW HOW TO DO IT? I don't understand. I tell her to NOTIFY ME when she sends someone. RETAIN SOMETHING FOR GOD'S SAKE!"

me: " do you want me to leave?"

room J lady (looking puzzled): "What? Why? Oh no, this isn't about you. You know what I mean? YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

No, room J lady, I do not know what you mean. I was frightened of this woman. Then she wanted my class printout and when I asked her where I would get that from, she was like "WHAT?!!!! They give it to you BEFORE they send you here. DAMN." At this point I was going to make a break for it before she morphed into a chupacabra and ate my head but then she just started laughing and saying "you know" over and over so I figured the threat had passed.

shutter bug

Here are my flowers from class the other night. They aren't masterpieces but I'm pretty happy with them. I'm going to make more on Sunday and they'll all be clustered on top of the cake. Jeff was so kind as to set up a tripod to take this so it wouldn't be all blurry. Thanks, babe.

Jeff is quite the amateur photog. I'm not sure if anyone knows that. I'm the worst photographer which is sad because I'm good at picking imagery for projects and stuff and I know very specifically what I like but i can't actually do it to save my life. If it weren't for Jeff we would have to pass on all our riveting life stories verbally because there would be no visual record. I usually take one picture of something and hope it looks alright which it never does. Jeff will take like 10 and they all usually look really good. I rarely even remember to bring the camera for chrissake. Anyway, he takes some really nice pics so today's post is a "Tribute to the Amateur Photography of Jeff."