Blogging, Rambling, Whining & Self-promotion. Isn't that what the internet was designed for?

Except for the addition of a garage, this is basically what I live in.  Suburbs are GREAT.

Let's take a break from our silly tour of my cookie-cutter vinyl house-box in the 'burbs.  You've seen one house full of crows, you've seen 'em all, right?  Right.

Oh, I know people from the Apple Cult will be mad at me for this.  They need to install a humor chip.

I'm in a rambling mood tonight.  Listening to the Killers right now on itunes.  You know, it's really, really annoying how your Apple devices are pretty much useless unless you use itunes.  Ever have your computer crash, and itunes crash with it?  Good luck gettng your music back from your ipod.  It can't be done using Apple software (as far as I know)- you have to download a program that you have to search the net for (a third party developer)  just to get all the music back onto your computer.  If you didnt get the music from itunes, then it's gone!   Well-designed software that is specifically geared to keeping you dependant on Apple.  That's capitalism, I guess.
  Well, I can't put down Apple too much.  They do make a pretty decent product, for what it is.  In fact, I will be selling Apple something pretty soon.  You know that saying about a door closing, and a window opening up?  Well, I just had a HUGE window open up.  I'll be working with a UI/UX designer friend to create something that will be used in a few different Apple products.  Can't tell you what it is yet until our company is formed and the copyrights go through- but I will be keeping you in the loop.

Nothin' like a little sci-fi steampunk.

Anyone seen Sucker Punch?  I'm looking for an honest opinion on it before I go see it in the cheap theaters.  There's that old theater in Joliet next to the Barnes and Nobles that has showings incredibly cheap during the day!  If you sneak in food (which, of course, I would never do, nor encourage anyone else to do...that would be wrongedy-wrong) it makes for a dirt-cheap 2 hours of entertainment!  I don't see many movies in the theaters anymore. 95 percent of the time it simply isn't worth it.  But, a few movies simply must be seen in the theater for the full effect.  Honestly, how many movies are actually WORTH the drive, the parking, the 10 bucks a head, the 368 dollars at the concession stand, and the annoying people around you who are too stupid to figure out that the cinema is NOT the place to use your cell phone? 

There are times when I genuinely wish for a recurrence of the 50's.

Now, there is one exception to my feeling on this- drive-in theaters.  I have a renewed interest in them for the last few years, and I can't wait to go to another.  My current favorite is the Midway Drive in way out by Sterling.  I absolutely adore going there, and it is well worth the gas to get there.  It is in the middle of NO WHERE.  The first time I went out there, there were no lights for MILES, and I was positive that Malakai and the children of the corn were going to stab us with rakes.  But I loved it.  I loved tuning my radio to the audio frequency they put out to listen to the soundtrack, I loved the foil-wrapped burgers at the concession stand, I love the fact that it was literally in the middle of a cornfield.  Absolutely nothing beats seeing "Night of the Living Dead" at 2 in the morning at an all-night drive in.  I am enjoying this bit of American history while it lasts.

All they want is to give you a hug.  Honest. 

I figure I should wrap this up.  Sorry if I went a little long on this one.  Blogs are so incredibly self-indulgent, and it's very easy to forget that there is a strong possibility that no one is terribly interested in what you are rambling about! :)  I wish more people would remember that.  Heh.  Witty remarks and clever phrases can't replace useful information and meaningful knowledge, I guess.

Okay, I've had enough of this blog thing for tonight.   Go do something constructive. 

-Christine

www.crowsfeetstudios.com

http://www.etsy.com/listing/75462703/popcorn-and-megaliths?ref=v1_other_1

Home Tour Part 4- This house is NOT clean...

You know what movie I'd like to see again?  "Poltergeist".  Yeah.

And so continues our whirlwind tour of select portions of my home.  Yes, I'm just as excited as you are. I timed this so that it wouldn't interfere with the royal wedding a few weeks ago.  I'm too classy to take away the audience from the royal family.

Here is the one room that may keep you interested for the 3 1/2 minutes it takes to read this blog.  There are so many knick-knacks, action figures and crappy nonsense that you're bound to find something that is mildly interesting.  I captioned all the photos for you.  Some of them are funny-- others may just disturb you.  I'm not going to pretend to care what the affect is on you.


Here's my work area.  ooooooohhhh....I'm messy, so therefore I'm talented.

I got this huge steel drafting table for 25 bucks about a decade ago.  I hope it isn't cursed or anything.

Look!  More crap!

I use the magic 8-ball to make all of my financial decisions.

And yet MORE crap! It never ends.

My "desk friends" keep me company, but sometimes they tell me to do bad things.



I just like Christopher Walken.  And so should you.

I don't think having a picture of Christopher Walken needs any explanation.

Edgar and Skeletor are good friends.  On Wednesdays they play darts at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Yes, I keep Edgar Allen Poe in a cardboard candy coffin.  He likes it in there.

Go out and read something by Jhonen Vasquez.  Don't argue, just do it.

Johnny the Homocidal Maniac is actually quite inspiring.

Good ol' Siouxsie Sioux.  She looks like she wants a bite of my Three Musketeers. 

If you don't know who Siouxsie and the Banshees are, you must leave right now.

Aliens are actually very festive creatures.  Just don't look too closely at their eggs.

My magnifying lamp is used to hold up silly things...

My tickets to a Cure concert 4 years ago.  Held to my lamp with sushi magnets.

Yeah, every artist has some kind of stupid action figure. 

Dr. Zaius still won't let the rest of the action figures in the Forbidden Zone.  Damn dirty ape.

Just got the printer.....Mmmmmmmm....

Good wide-format printer.  Good printer.  Stay.

Next time I will take you through my DVD collection.  I know this is a lot of excitement for you, but I think my readers are tougher (or at least more desensitized) than most.

I'm tired now. Blogging makes me thirsty.  Disperse.

-Christine

www.crowsfeetstudios.com
http://www.etsy.com/shop/CrowsFeetStudios?ref=si_shop

I'm not sure if Robert Smith would like to be next to a rubber chicken.

  This whole "professional artist" thing is occasionally more time-consuming that I anticipate.  I'm getting backed up again.  I've still got a poster to design, 2 portraits, modifying 3 paintings, another possible mural, and now I may be illustrating an e-book and an iphone ap with a new friend.  Even good stress takes its toll, but these are all good things.  Gotta keep this stuff in perspective, schedule my time right, and take it one at a time; I can't complain about being busy.  Enough about my workload. 

  It'll be a short blog tonight, kids.  I stayed up too late putting more stuff on Etsy and then watching "Chopped" on the Food Network.   Ever see that show?  4 chefs are given a basket of mystery ingredients to prepeare a meal on a time limit- actually, it's 3 courses.  It's kinda cool. I like it because of the goofy kinds of ingredients they are forced to use sometimes.  It's sort of like, "If you open your basket, you will find your mystery ingredients.  They are-  six Funyons, some sawdust, a bag of fish heads, and a live weasel.  You have 20 minutes!"  Now THAT's a good cooking show.  Oh, and I'm now listening to my new cd of Cure songs re-arranged for a string quartet. And here's my stuff on Etsy.   http://www.etsy.com/shop/CrowsFeetStudios?section_id=10009161

    I almost forgot about our silly tour of the house. Tonight, you only get 1 photo of our office.  I need to take some more tomorrow.  I promise to blog again Wednesday with more photos, okay ?  Honest.  But for now,  you get to see Robert Smith, Theda Bara, and a rubber chicken signed by Svengoolie.  No, I'm not making that up.  He actually signed it for us.  We didn't even threaten him.

I gotta get some sleep.  Writing this blog for you people is exhausting.

I'm sure you have somewhere to be, so stop hanging around here.  Shoo.  You bother me.

-Christine

www.crowsfeetstudios.com

New Paintings on Etsy! Oh, and I can show you some more stuff in my house.

Two paintings finished.  Why is it so painful to finish paintings??  It's not like I'm passing a kidney stone or something.  Anyway, they are done.  Look at them!

  I just put both of the originals up for sale on my Etsy page, and I will get my section of prints up and running tomorrow.  Still have to update the crowsfeetstudios.com website with a big ol' link to my Etsy page, though. Here are links to both of them-

http://www.etsy.com/listing/75434894/knitting-up-a-storm

http://www.etsy.com/listing/75462703/popcorn-and-megaliths?ref=v1_other_1

Workin' on getting the prints for sale, too.  Not everyone wants a big honkin' painting in their house, after all.  They will be 8 x 10, I'm thinking.  Maybe on watercolor paper, or linen or ragstock.  Not sure yet.

Okay, on with my spooky yet pleasantly non-threatening tour of our humble abode.  Today we move on to the kitchen.  That's where we cook, eat, and occasionally wrestle eachother.

Here is small dome that we keep on the kitchen table.  It has a little nest in it! We put the goofy plastic skull in there for no good reason.

Here is a close up of a painting one of my sisters-on-law gave me. Very, very cool. And veiny.

Here's the doorway from the kitchen leading to the dining room.  Note the spooky twigs of doom on the right.  Very impressive sticks, huh?  :)

These are our kitchen cabinets.  Utterly fascinating.  But yes, we do have a fence on top of our cabinets.  We have lights on top that add to the ambiance, too.  Shoulda gotten a photo of this at night.  Oh, well.

And here is how we tell what the temperature is.  No digital doo-dads for us, no sir.  We deal with 16th century technology in our household.  It's a Galileo thermometer, and it goes with our wooden ox cart and the leeches we use to cure our headaches.  Hee hee....leeches. :)

I'm afraid that is the end of tonight's exciting episode, kids.  Keep the dial tuned right here for more top-notch, blue-chip free internet entertainment.  Where else can you learn about leeches and Galileo?  Everyone knows that the internet is the only way to learn anything, right?  Yeah....

Gonna have a Hostess fruit pie now.  They are one of mankind's top 10 inventions of all time, right up there with the Sham-wow.  Goodnight, kids.  And remember- knowledge, experience, and intelligence are very different separate things.  You need them all to be smart.  Now get out of my blog.

-Christine

www.crowsfeetstudios.com

Knitting up a storm

Finally, this one is complete.

  I have the bad habit of doing one painting after another, and ALMOST completing all of them.  Then I go back and do about half an hour's work on each of them, and then they are finally done.  Anyway, this one is called "Knitting up a Storm".  I'm using one of my favorite characters named Nissa as the subject.  She will turn up in future paintings.  You'll have to excuse the less than perfect photos- I took these photos quickly after my eyes were almost burned out of my sockets from overuse!

I am exhausted.  Gonna put this on my Etsy site, and see if I can put it on my crowsfeetstudios.com website in the morning.  I'll be selling the original, as well as prints. She turned out pretty well, I think.

Time to relax.  The only way to rest my weary brain is with a rum & Coke and Ghost Adventures.  Heh.  I love watchin' those idiots run around in the dark.

Nighty-night, kids.  It's Bacardi time.

-Christine

www.crowsfeetstudios.com

If only our house were as neat and tidy as we would have you believe.

Finally got most of our flowers in pots, and the garden is pretty much planted.  We have 2 pumpkin plants in one of our planting beds, so I hope they do better than last year's pumpkins.  We bought the ridiculously huge Hindenburg-sized pumpkins this year, so they'd better be as massive as advertised on the little picture that came with the plant. Okay, enough of the botany.

Since I didn't hear any objections to the heavily-edited expedition through our house, we will continue with said tour.   Today, we will look at the family room- also known as the "rumpus room" or "the room with the TV in it that has toys, games & crap all over the place".

I gots lightnin' in my head!

Here's one of those "lightning storm" globe things from the 80's, but it's shaped like a skull.  It sits on top of our subwoofer, and we call it the Skull of Confusion. We use it to hypnotize census takers. 

Okay, the lower left photo isn't actually in our family room.  It's actually in the guest bathroom downstairs.  However, it is directly adjacent to the family room, so it kinda counts.  The image is an old German woodcut of Red Riding Hood.  I admit, I am a sucker for old German woodcuts.  They are inherently weird and creepy- not that there's anything WRONG with that....

The photo on the right is a custom made broom that we paid too much for at a Renniassance faire a few years back.  Still, it's a pretty darned cool broom.  Not very practical for the sweepin', however.

We've got a ridiculous number of cloches and apothecary jars with stuff in them. Here are a few of them that are on our bookshelf in the family room.  Note the spooky waterglobe!

Things in jars are spooky.  Unless it's jelly or something.

Here's a little doll that my husband paid our daughter 2 dollars for.  He modified her into what you see now- we call her Sushi Sioux, and we keep her in a bowl. We are thinking of including her as a helper on our website.

Look at me! I'm in a bowl and I'm spooky! Fear my raw seafood! FEAR IT!

These are our pet frogs. One of them is named Stretchy- I forget the name of the other one.  It's some kind of Japanese name like Gonnagitchamichi.

I'm 40 grams of fury- don't mess wit' me, homes.

Here's our picture of Rudi Hurzlmeier's "Krahe".  Check it out online sometime. Note the spooky birdhouse on the left.  We think in may be haunted by some sort of finch.

That's about it, kids. We will continue our tour in the next couple of days or so.  Oh, I am nearly done with my painting, and I will be posting it maybe later today.  Watch for it!  We're getting our Etsy site updated, too, as well as our main website at crowsfeetstudios.com.  And we ordered some cool stuff to customize and sell!  Oooh, you should see it!  Well, you will see it- just not right now.

Gotta run, kids.  I got my day job to get ready for, and I gotta take some Advil for my headache I got from painting so much.  Those big green gell caps work great, don't they? Okay, I'm gonna listen to some Psychedelic Furs and get ready for work.

Peace, and Humpty-ness forever.

-Christine

http://www.crowsfeetstudios.com/

A tour of my house is even more boring than this blog...

Rigby & Mordecai.  I base my life on their teachings.

  I was just on Facebook (again), and a friend was quoting an episode of "The Regular Show" on Cartoon Network. Heh. It was this episode where Rigby and Mordecai are trying to defeat a horrible pop song that came to life (in the form of a giant dancing cassette tape) by writing an even more mindless song. It was one of the best episodes EVER. Check it out sometime. Really. It's worth watching just for the character "Pops" and all the 80's references. Yeah, sometimes I watch the cartoons that my kids watch.



Okay, let's get back to our bargain-basement tour of my house. Any objections? No? I'll pretend that no one is objecting.  I'll also pretend that you are genuinely interested.

Monday we looked at a portion of our living room/front room. Today, we will look at the dining room for a bit. It's one of those rooms that we keep more or less clean, just in case 6 people force themselves into our house and demand a civilized dinner. That hasn't happened yet, but we are prepared.

Here's our family mummy. She's next to a really cool old typewriter that appears to be from the late 1940's. It weighs roughly 3 and a half tons.

Here's a picture we have on our wall. It's by Madame Talbot.

This is a sculpture we bought years ago from an artist in Rhinelander. We call him Beakey.  The sculpture, not the artist.

If ya'll behave yourselves, we may move on to more interesting rooms later on this week or Saturday. Got some more weird stuff to show! :) hee!

  So here's a question for you. During our last huddle around the kitchen table the other night, we (meaning my large yet surprisingly quick husband and I) were discussing at length which direction our business should be going. We were going back and forth about what people-or at least the demographic we were looking for- like to see in the way of art, collectables, and personalized knick-knacks. I mean, do people actually buy coffee mugs with logos on them anymore, or do they just get the freebies from work like everyone else? Do people buy goofy mousepads, or is that a relic from 1998? We really want to know. Tell us what stuff you'd like to see, or examples of things you like and have bought from other sites. I have no interest in trying to sell bland chachkis that were lame 15 years ago! You can email, Facebook, or use the comment box, if you so desire.  We've got a few really good ideas, but we want to hear yours, too.

  Also, I've finally wrapped up a couple of paintings I've been working on.  I'll post some pictures of them soon--and they will be turned into prints or posters that will be for sale!   Mmmmmm...moderately priced art goods......

   It's time for me to get off this keyboard now.  The "Z" button is sticking because someone spilled something in the keyboard.  I have my suspicions as to who is at fault.- I think it may be Wizzo the Clown.  Man, he creeps me out.

Gotta run, kids.  Dinner won't cook itself, and I can't paint & type at the same time.

Stay classy.

It's ME!

http://www.crowsfeetstudios.com/

crowsfeetstudios@yahoo.com