chirstmas banners

hello everyone,

well i've come to report on how things are going with me.  my halloween banners were amazing, it's the most sales i've had on etsy and i was totally psyched.  i started making christmas banners thinking (hoping) the same thing would happen, but alas nobody liked my christmas ones.  granted i got a late start on them and it took me a little bit to get into the swing of christma.  my first couple ones are horrible now that i look at them again, lol.

but i got to look at it as christmas was not my artistic thing.  i probably will make a couple more just for the hell of it, but i am going to be happy to just make some.

i'm going to get started on some now...
till next time,
maude

where did october go?? i've seemed to have misplaced it...

at least that's how i feel.  halloween was pretty cool this year.  took the girls out trick or treating and they loved it.  my little girl was a pirate, totally cute, with a wooden sword i painted for her.  now the decorations are down and want to get the christmas ones up and getting ready to cook a huge dinner for thanksgiving. 

my screen printing is going really slowly.  after a small break in set up, which was horrible, i am now back with a  vengeance. the basement is about done and now i am almost ready to start messing with exposure times and the elmusion.  when i get to it i will try to come back and write about it.  also i would like to take some pictures but just haven't had the time yet. 

until then here are some etsy christmas banners i have been working on.  hope you enjoy.

next i think i'm going vintage all the way, or maybe a little retro also.   so far my favorite one is the pirate with a parrot reading a map. 

maude

my absolutely lovely brother

well tommy came to the rescue again.  my computer was completely messed up.  i haven't even been on etsy in a couple days because the issues were so bad.  he has spent countless hours trying to fix it and tonight he finally reformatted it.  well, its like i have a new computer.  he is awesome!!!!  i am so grateful to him because a big part of my life revolves around my computer. 

but now starts some new problems i have to find answers to.  i need to find a good, SAFE place to download pictures for my digital collages.  google image searches may have been how i infected my computer and i do not want that to happen again.  so now i have to find an answer.  i am a little scared to do too much on the computer.  i am strictly going to sites that i know are safe...for now.  like i have mentioned before shutterstock, which always have the best pix, is $250 a month so that is out.  hopefully there is a cheaper alternative out there. 

for now i am just going to bask in the glory of my computer that is problem free and try to keep doing work from the photos i already have on my computer, which is a good amount.  so my seven followers, if anyone out there knows of a good site let me know.

bye bye

lesportsac zoinked....grrrrrrr

i am absolutely pissed about this, really i am.  i went to ross the other day to get a purse.  i don't just shop for purses for the hell of it, or because i want something trendy, i need one because my 10 year old purse's zipper broke about a week ago and it is essential i get a new one. 

now i haven't shopped for purses in a long time so naturally the style i like is nowhere.  there are all these crazy buckles and studs and leather and big and gaudy purses.  i like gaudy rings, not purses.  i spotted this purse almost exactly and liked it.  i said this outloud while some girl was on the other side of the rack.  but i wanted to walk over to marshall's just to make sure this was the purse i wanted.  i went over there and after scouring the racks found nothing remotely i liked.  so i went back to ross pretty excited to purchase my new purse.  i went to where the purse was and there was nothing there.  i looked at the other racks because maybe i was mistaken but again there was nothing.  MY PURSE WAS GONE!!  i was only out of the store for 15 min at the most and i have a pretty good feeling that girl zoinked my purse!!  i am still mad about it. 

it was a good deal, and i missed it.  i looked up online for this purse and i can't find it anywhere for the price it was at ross.  i am really bummed about this.  i went around looking at other stores and there are no more.  so the purse hunt continues...

ps.  i hope that girl spills something red on it and it won't come out.   grrrrrr.

if i had money.....

guess how much it costs to be subscribed to shutterstock.....really you won't believe it.....honestly it's crazy...$250!!!   now i understand that it is an amazing site and there are no worries about copyright blah blah blah, but jeez that's alot of money.  i wonder if there is a poor man's version of shutterstock.  lol. 

also, i am going to be attempting to write up a business plan.  it is going to be horrible and i already looked up a bunch of sites online, but they all want you to pay.  looks like a trip to the library might be in my near future.  hopefully my wonderfully smart girlfriend annie will be able to shed some light on this subject and maybe give me some kind of template to work from.  because i am by no means a business major. 

some new stuff on my etsy store!! enjoy.

hello hello!  well i just found etsy mini.  so i thought i'd share it with my 7 followers.  hope you like it and stop in my shop, Maudes Misfit Factory to look around. 

it's here!!

this is very awesome for me!!!   i ordered a silk screen kit.  it's semi professional and it is amazing.  so far i'm going through the dvd's just for a general review of how it's done.  i haven't touched any screen printing for about 2 years.  the setup is going to be the most difficult.  first i have to make a light tight area.  this is going to require ply wood and hammer and nails and expanding foam.  we might also have to modify our stationary tub or try to get something new and cheap, for spraying the screens down. 

it's all a little overwhelming but slowly it's all going to come together.  i built the press the other nite, which was very cool.  i just can't wait until we're done with the setup and can start printing some shirts.  other things to think about is i might try to build a better exposure unit once we start making some money.  the one i got now is good for spot coloring, but if i want to do half tones and gray scale i'm defiantly going to have to get a better one.  the site that i'm ordering from has better ones, but they start at about $400!  yikes!!  we need to sell some shirts first. 

sorry about the small photo, but it's the only one i could get.   and i didn't forget about the tutorials i was talking about earlier.  i made the chenille pillows and they turned out pretty good.  as soon as i get some free time i will be upload the pix and explaining the process. 

until next time....enjoy!!

marcel has to go away

hello everyone, i'm reading this book by anne rice call 'the feast of all saints' and it is a very good book.  but surprisingly it has nothing to do with vampires.  i'm almost finished with it and not one word about any blood sucking.  i was pretty disappointed at first but i kept on for a couple chapters and i am so glad i did.  there are so many twists and turns, things are happening that take me completely off guard.  it's awesome.  it's a period drama set right before the civil war in america, new orleans.  not something i thought i would have liked, but i do.  and from talking to people about this book, there seems to be a tv movie made about it.  i doubt i'll watch it.

moving on, i've started making banners for etsy stores to sell in my etsy store.  so far i've made four of them, all pretty different styles.  i want to have a pretty good variety to choose from.  i'm going to make a couple more before i start listing them.  listing items is not a fun job, so i always put if off as long as possible.  so far i have about 70 things for sell.  altogether i've sold about 13 things.  i'm going to keep listing items and i hope people keep buying them!  lol.  i think for my new banner pieces i'm even going to add an entirely new section to my store....watch out people, this is pretty exciting stuff.

yellow moon

i have been trying to write about the yellow moon for about a week now.  first time was an issue, i was just really busy with work and family.  then my poor computer was broke, so that cost me a couple days.  well now i have a bit of extra time to talk about the moon.   the other nite on my way home from work there was an excellent full moon out that was completely yellow.  it was a little eerie and spooky, but i loved it.  i looked up online about why it's yellow and here are some of the answers i found.

~the moon certainly appears to be yellow at times, and sometimes it will also look a brilliant white or silver, or orange and reddish. It depends on how clear our atmosphere is and what angle it is being viewed from earth. In reality, the moon is mostly shades of the one color - an ashen gray. The sunlight reflects from it and casts shadows on the low areas which appear to us as a darker color than the rest.

~It was said that a strange color of moon (if not normally as it was) giving signs of atmospheric changes that may affect the season's shiftings or weather.

      In more scientific way of explaination is found in this link..

      Colors of the moon..

      http://www.atalaia.org/filipe/moon/colorofthemoon.htm 

      i looked up the above link and looked over it a little, very interesting. 

alas i am not located in the desert, but this is the best picture i found.  and i also found out that when people mention harvest moon or hunter's moon, the color their referring to is a red...the moon is reddish.

yesturday's today

i wanted to write something about the harvest moon we had a few nights ago, but the thought has left me.  so i'm just going to show you another digital imaging progression.

here's the original, from a state park in pennsylvania.

here's the colors bumped up a little.

here's the saturation turned down.

here's purple foliage with a gray vignette.

 contrast turned up and saturation turned up a little.

cropped to an 8x10.

enjoy

blah for today, but hooray for the......

today was beautiful here.  the sun was out, it was warm but not too warm, nice breeze, and the occasional cloud.  i was inside all day on the computer.  i finished a new photo.  i don't have a tutorial on it but i can show you the consecutive jpgs until i got the end result.  this is a new idea i'm working with, trying to get all the kinks out, but for a first attempt i thought it came out ok.

ok, here's the original photo.  nice, cool train track scene.  love the curve in it and the water too.  i remember this day, i was pissing around waiting to pick someone up from work...pretty sure it was my brother.  any who, this is after i adjusted levels and colors and things.

this one the colors are much more bright and rich and vibrant.  i like it this way better.  so i tried to just crop it and see how it looked.  this is what happened.

totally different picture, right.  i like this one too.  more emphasis on the tree line that the tracks.  till nice proportions and good flow i think.  but now i wanted it to look vintage.  something like a crumpled map came to mind first, or the wild west or something along those lines.  so this is what i came up with.  i also had some ideas while i was at work to make it look better.  but after i'm done with this blog i'm done with the computer tonite.  ok, here the grand finale.

ok, here it is.  i think it turned out ok.  looks vintage, wild west, crumpled map.

enjoy!

Johannes Itten

i'm rereading a book called 'the elements of color', a shorten version of 'the art of color' published in germany in 1961.  itten devoted his life to fine arts, mostly exploring color and the different things color can do.  he was a master at the bauhaus school.  he also was into mysticism which is where he gained his inspiration for his work.  if you know of this man, this is probably how you know of him:

the color wheel.  by the time your out of high school if you have an interest in art you are familiar with the color wheel.  well itten is the one who, not invented it, but built on it tremendously.   so i'm reading his book and came upon a couple interesting quotes, i thought i'd share them with you...

"doctrines and theories are best for weaker moments.  in moments of strength, problems are solved intuitively, as if of themselves."

"only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and immanent presence. It affords utility to all, but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees."


these were my favorite.

Photoshop magic

hello everyone.  i have come up with a sort of tutorial, or should i say me meandering through a project with little extras to show you guys some of the capabilities of photoshop.  this is not a detailed point by point tutorial....maybe this isn't even a tutorial at all, oh dear.  but rather, oh why must i rattle on??       ok, you remember the lovely picture of the little log cabin in the post before.  it had lots of potential, right??  well the first thing i did was bring the raw format of the picture into photoshop. 

raw file format is absolutely amazing, you can really control everything about the image your working with.  i felt this picture was flat, the colors, so i decided to go in and change them a bit.  so this is me a little further along in the process.

the change of color, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation is very apparent.  i just kept messing with it until i liked how it looked.  i have a tendency to go with very bright and contrasty pictures when i'm done with them, some say the mark of an amateur, but of course i beg to differ.  anyways, with the changes i made i would say it could stop here and be a beautiful photograph.  

the top left hand corner bothers me, i tried to adjust it as much as i could get away with, but for now it has to due.  next i decided to crop the image to add interest and excitement to it, well as much excitement as you can to an old log cabin.  like my little joke? 

boy i wish i had a wide angle lens, but that is another discussion.  now that it's cropped it looks much more interesting as in not so much dead space.  now it really can be done.  but something else to think about....if you want to crop a picture in some weird dramatic dimensions, remember, if you plan on framing it things might get difficult.  now i had another picture i really liked, so i made all my color, brightness, etc, changes and decided that picture maybe needed a log cabin.

so this is that.  i looked up some different ideas to do this, which were all not quite what i was looking for, so i just did it the way i knew how to.  i think it turned out alright.  pretty realistic.  now for the last of me goofing off with these images i went all crazy cool.  i always go towards the blues and purples, which i have no idea why, but this is what happened.

i played around with layer masks, one of my best friends, and some paint brushes.  finally i cut out some birds from another picture and put them in here. 

so that lays this photograph for rest for awhile.  

till next time

bye

bike ride and good pictures

hello everyone,


i went for a bike ride last week and brought my camera.  it was a good thing i did because i found this old log cabin that someone restored.  you couldn't see it from the road, how i found it was i stopped to take a break and some pictures of this wonderful field i found.  when i walked down the hill this cabin was down there as well.  i was so excited about it.  i told a friend at work that knows alot about the area and said that back in the 1920's that little log cabin i found used to house the schoolteachers.  he went on talking about another house a little down the road used to be the schoolhouse for the children in the area.  i was totally amazed.  a family bought the property and the cabin a couple years ago and restored it.  so it turned out to be an excellent trip for me.

here's a copy of the original picture i took.  i'm going to take it on the computer and 'fix' the image how i like it.  right now the colors are a little flat, but not in a good way, and it seems like it's lacking in overall interest.  so that is what i'm going to try to fix.  when i'm done i'll post a copy of the finished piece, so people can see how a photograph can be transformed from a little dull into a fine art picture.  well that's all for now.  till then.....

oh and one more thing.  i think i have a new interest....tshirt shredding!!  i practiced on one of my old tshirts and it actually came out really good.  looks like a trip to good will is going to be in my future for more practice shirts.  

bye for now....

my new little project

ok, so i've been working on homemade chenille pillows, like i make the chenille.  i am going to be posting a tutorial about my process soon.  i'm pretty excited, this is going to be my first tutorial.  it will include pictures and everything.  my computer has had a nasty virus that kept me from the internet for a little over a week.  very stressful, but my brother is a computer nerd and he fixed her all up.  thank you thank you thank you!!!  

 so hopefully in the next week or so i will have my first tutorial posted. 

till then.............here is a photo i've been working on.  i have yet to add it to etsy.  i kinda like this blog because i can put up my pieces i'm not sure about or haven't finished yet.  there is still a record of them out there on the net.  pretty cool.  

but anyways, i past this hay wagon taking the kids to the park a couple months ago.  on the way home i stopped the car and ran around someone's farm a little to snap the picture.  i went behind the garage/barn thing and there were bulls with the most beautiful horns, but my car with the kids was out of my sight and the bulls were a little scary.  so unfortunately i didn't capture them on film.  i like this picture.   i figured out how to make the image look like it's about twenty years old.  i like the look, and if anyone out there is actually keeping up with my very random and sparse blog tell me what you think.

finally here's my digital work that isn't done yet.  i still want to add some words and i'm not really sure what else yet.   when working with whatever i want i always tend to stay towards the cool colors.  i want to give myself a challenge and try a monochromatic piece of work.  maybe all in browns or something.  it will be hard for me to do, but something different.


one last comment.  when i work in illustrator my files always end up so very, very big.  and i absolutely hate waiting for them to rasterize.  jeez i would like to kick computer now.  lol


well here it is, so if anyone is actually keeping up with my meanderings i would really like an honest opinion on this one.


oh yeah, my alias is maude.  

ok, so far my blog has been a place for me to come and agonize about the hardships i feel go on in my life. to simplify even further it's been, pretty much, an online diary that is impossible for me to lose. i feel i write so beautifully when i'm depressed, so this is where i do it. and this will not stop, no no, not by any means. but i will also now begin to find something that holds some interest and write about it on here as well. even put up a couple photographs of the other things i like to do and talk about that. i have an etsy store and most of my extra time goes into making art. i need to create art no matter what, it is another one of my more important outlets in life, so etsy is nice because if other people like my stuff it is on display and i might actually make some money. but that is defiantly not what it's all about. ok, so my wittle baby might wake up because of all this noisy typing so i will put up a pic of one of my pieces of work, and until next time....ado

lost of love...or just paranoid

when things hit you, that realization that you have been trying to avoid. the one that as it enters your mind you try to still push it away. then all the other thoughts start coming in as well. my perfectly constructed fortress of self preservation and my defense tactics and maneuvers come rushing to me, to aid me in my distress. their good to have, i never have to call on them, their just always there, to protect me and keep me well. well, they are now swirling around in my mind, just which one i'm going to act on is the question. and when you hear the words, tell me what's wrong, but your....or maybe i should say i, are just so good at shoving those things down because to me, uttering them is like some kind of weird taboo or something, so instead of getting down to the issue and letting someone hear me out...but then do i want to hear alll the crap most people have to say in situations like this. do i really feel like sticking my head in a garbage can and let in, garbage fall all over my head. nope, don't really feel like letting that happen. so maybe i can be my awesome passive aggressive self and let my plan for world domination go into effect. this little battle, scermage will be entitled, will death do us part. ok, that may be a little dramatic. how about, i'm not changing anymore, and i am going to do what i want.....even though my want is not that exciting. i still want to do my want. everything clicked, the realization came....but i do not like what i see. insercurity, maybe.....probably, but whatever it is i don't like it.