Lady Gaga and Yale expert team up for anti-bullying effort
My old personality psychology professor is doing a study on Lady Gaga’s anti-bullying campaign. Definitely the coolest thing I’ve heard all day.
20 Years of Journals
I’ve been reading Simone de Beauvoir’s Letters to Sartre, which is let’s say, not quite what I expected. In the introduction, it explains that after the publishing of Sartre’s letters, everyone asked Simone- hey, why don’t you publish your letters too so we can get the whole story? Â And she said that they were all lost during the war. They turned up later (obviously), but it’s unclear whether or not she was lying to keep them from being published, as they show a side that’s at odds with her public persona.
Anyways, it got me thinking about my journals, scrapbooks and correspondence. I’ve journaled all my life, and today I pooled them all together in one place for the first time in… ever. I’m going to try to slowly read my way through them. In keeping with my minimalism resolution, I’m thinking about purging, or maybe digitally archiving the more boring ones, but it’s so hard. I’ve deleted entire blogs many times, but this just feels so different. I guess I’m a book sentimentalist.Have you ever thrown away a journal or a diary?
2012/2013, the Return of Saturn, and the List of Lists
It is an alleged phenomenon which is described as influencing a person’s life development at 27 to 29 or 30-year intervals. These intervals or “returns” coincide with the approximate time it takes the planet Saturn to make one orbit around the sun, i.e. 29.4 years. It is believed by astrologers that, as Saturn “returns” to the degree in its orbit occupied at the time of birth, a person crosses over a major threshold and enters the next stage of life. With the first Saturn return, a person leaves youth behind and enters adulthood. With the second return, maturity. And with the third and usually final return, a person enters wise old age.-Wikipedia
I don’t believe in astrology at all, but without a doubt 2012 was my “Return of Saturn.” It wasn’t so much “entering adulthood” as “hold on, everything in your life will be rocked to the very core.” Â WHEE!
So, yeah, you name it- it all got shook up in 2012. This felt in some ways similar to 2006, the year my dad died. Everything was up for grabs, and yet there was still a whole lotta love, travel, and intense feeling throughout the entire year. While it was a crazy time, one of the best things about this past year was that through sheer will and practice I developed a much stronger sense of empathy. I also became better at dealing with stressful emotions and thought patterns. I know it sounds crunchy, but it’s AWESOME, like some emotional superpower. Anyways, I enjoyed developing my empathic skills so I decided to investigate becoming a therapist. That wasn’t the right career path for me, but I found a great volunteer opportunity at the IOA, and so far I’m still working toward being a phone counselor there. Who woulda guessed?
So now that the dust has mostly settled, I can turn my attention toward 2013. My resolutions list is about a week late, but I wanted to make sure that I was committed before I made them public. Here we go:
The Easier to Implement
- Start a positive early morning routine that allows me to slow down: including 5 minutes of meditation, a little stretching and some coffee. I’m not a morning person, so it would be nice to have pleasant things to look forward to when I wake up.
- Switch to washing my face with jojoba oil instead of soap (random, but I’m already seeing results)
- 30 days of veganism concurrent with 8 wks of the I Quit Sugar Program  just to see how my body feels (will be doing blog updates on this one)
- Finally get my wisdom teeth out. 🙁
A Little Vague, A Lot More Tricky, And a Lot More Hippie
- Work on getting out of my head more. This sounds so vague but I think that it can be accomplished with continuing my volunteer work, reading more, and continuing to make time for travel.
- Helping my mom out with her restaurant, from revamping her menu to getting her set up online.
- Simplify- I already love purging, but since I moved into a 6″x10″ room I’ve felt more inspired to take it to the next level. Beyond stuff, this includes cutting out people and habits that aren’t working for me anymore. Goodbye Twitter, goodbye friends who only want to talk about themselves.
- Hold onto moments of happiness and don’t feel guilty or rush through them when they happen.
- Probably the trickiest but most exciting goal: Write something. Will it be short stories? Will it be a blog? Will it be a novella? I don’t know, but I’d like to be able to publish it as an e-book by the end of the year. It will probably be about either 2006 or 2012. Surprise, surprise.
I feel a bit freaked out by these goals, so I guess that’s a good thing.
Not Quite Block Printed Napkins
A little background
About a year ago I got into linoleum block printing. As a result of seeing my card posts, my friend Michelle from Hummingbird On High fame asked me if I could decorate a couple of napkins for her. After investigating the technique on Etsy, and seeing the block printed napkins post on Apartment Therapy, I agreed. I have worked with fabric before, but never in this particular way.
So Michelle asked me eons ago. Of course life got in the way, as it always does. By the time that I finally tried out fabric printing with linoleum blocks, I realized that for this project it didn’t make any sense. Using stencils would achieve acceptable results with much less work and a more even finish.
I stopped by the local art shop and picked up several different types of letter stencils in several different fonts and played around to find a look I liked. So I prepared! And YET when I finally sat down and pulled it all together, I still made several mistakes. Here’s a quick recap:
How to + Don’t Make the Same Mistakes I Did
Ah, napkin number one. So lemony yellow fresh, so full of promise. It’s going to have the word “EAT” decorated in the bottom right hand corner. I threw down a cardboard mailer to catch the ink.
Mistake #1: Remember to wash and dry your fabric first before decorating!
Next I traced the outlines of the letters with pencil. I messed up, so I erased my mistakes. It became a mess that lasted until the end 🙁
Mistake #2: Do not trace and erase pencil on fabric. Use fabric chalk.
I traced over my pencil with the water-based black ink I’d purchased because I thought I was going to be filling it in with shading lines.
Mistake #3: Avoid freehanding if you can, the result is less polished.
Ugh. You can see the erased pencil. So terrible. I ended up not liking the shading lines, so I filled in the letters completely black.
For the next napkin I got it together a little better. I taped down my stencils.
And carefully filled in the outline with a very very thin coat of the ink (different effect than the first time around). Then I let it dry for about 10 minutes. Then I added another layer.
It’s all good, right? NOOOOOO.
Mistake #4: I did not put my ink protection between the napkin layers. The ink bled through. D’oh.
Next I removed the stencils and manually added the serifs to the letters. This is about what it looked like when I was done. I added another thin layer of paint to fill out the empty white spots after this picture was taken. The napkins air dried for about 24 hours. The finishing touches were a quick ironing to set the ink, hand washing in cold water, air dry (again), followed by another bout with the iron to press the napkins.
Phew! What work just to decorate some napkins! Seriously though if you want to decorate fabric you should have at it. The main tips again:
- Practice on a rag first
- Wash and dry your fabric before printing/decorating. It may shrink.
- Lay down something in between layers so the ink does not bleed through. A piece of cardboard works well. Avoid newspaper.
- Use fabric chalk to sketch out your ideas.
- Don’t go freehand if you don’t have to. Best to print out a stencil and tape it down for stability.
- Use water-soluble screen printing ink. I used Simply Green, which had a precise nozzle tip for detail work.
- Use very thin layers of ink. If you get too gung ho about it, it’ll be all puffy, and that is gross, especially when you iron it out.
- If it looks like crap when you’re done decorating, don’t worry. It will probably even out after you iron, wash/dry and iron again.
Happy crafting!
Who, me?
I’ve been sick all week, and finally caved and ate the cuteness (it’s kind of like “tasting the rainbow”). Â Verdict? Delicious. The mouse I had was filled with dark chocolate and an almond, so I got to pretend I was eating his little heart. Â Get your chocomice here.Â
