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

Faust is in the House.

  It's raining and thundering outside. I had barely enough time to plant a few more flowers & herbs this morning, but I did it.  The huge lightning strikes happened about 10 minutes after I finished.  I was a little concerned about ending up like that priest in Caddyshack.

  Man, we still have so much to do outside.  When things are closer to finished, I may post a few pictures of our tiny backyard.  We did our best to make it our own little world, and it's still continuing.  We built our own deck, flagstone patio and planting beds-with our own grubby hands.  And believe me, wrestling with 100 pound flagstones was not easy or fun.  It was well worth it, though. :)  Remind me to post a couple pics, ok?

  Sorry for all the pointless rambling in this blog.  Just as a warning, I gotta tell you that you will get blog posts like this occasionally.  Today I feel like showing you some random things in our house.  Sound good?  Well, I can't hear you if you are screaming at the monitor, so I'm going ahead anyway, with or without your approval.  Oooh, I gotta get off topic for a second- did you see "Oddities" yesterday on the Science Channel??  It was a marathon!  Check it out sometime.  It's nothing but a televised freak show, but I really love seeing some of the objects in the that curio shop.  Okay, back to the matter at hand.

  I'm thinking about taking you on a guided tour of our humble home, one room at a time.  I will carefully edit out most of the mess, dust and children's clothes that may find their way into the photos.  That's the nice/scary thing about the internet and digital photos- with a few minutes labor and a couple clicks of the mouse, you can give a completely inaccurate impression of almost anything.  Frightening, no? 

Moving on.

Okay, here are some random pics of our stuff in the front room/living room. If I were 95 years old, I guess I'd call it the "parlor".  Look it up.  Anyway, lookey lookey.  Here's some of our knick knacks in our bookshelf. 

Some of them are silly.  I think you might notice a theme, though....

 And yes, we do have books in our bookshelf, but I didn't think you'd be too interested in our reading material.  Or are you?  Again, I can't hear what you're saying right now, so I'm just going to make a few assumptions unless you email comments to the contrary.  Whatever.  On with the show & tell.

I call this one "Mr. Moosenheimer".  Yes, it's a moose skull.  Antlers would have been cool.

Here's one of our curio cabinet.  The sparkly glasses look nice. 

And this is on top of our shelving unit.  To the average observer, it would seem slightly dangerous.  We built that frame as well as hand painted the sign.  Mmmmm....shameless self promotion.... You may be wondering why we have a ridiculously big, 6 foot long picture of our mascot/logo on our bookshelf.  Long story.  But, it looks nice up there.

So whaddya think so far?  Shall I continue room-to-room?  We'll see what kind of mood I'm in on Tuesday or so.  Our office is by far the most interesting.  We can get to that later.

I hate to cut this little visit short, but I gotta paint stuff.  My husband came up with a couple GREAT ideas for a line of products and posters for Crows Feet Studios, and we gotta hash out some details today.  Plus the kids are screaming about something or other.  I think it has to do with popsicles or socks.

Okay, kids.  Until next time. Here's a quote from Goethe that I really like-

              "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."

He was a very smart, dead German dude.  Read "Faust" sometime.   Auf Wiedersehen.

www.crowsfeetstudios.com

                                          

Day 3 in California- I saw Mickey, Dressed in Black, and Spent Lots of Money. Then I left.

Okay, here is the last exciting installment in the LA soap opera I was involved in.  Again, sorry for the long delay.  It wasn't some lame attempt at suspense; recent developments have allowed me to get back to a semi-regular schedule, thankfully.  So saddle up, 'cause here we go.

Day three- Bats Day.  Oh, day three...  I think the reason why it took me so long to write this was because so much happened that day-  but it didn't all get absorbed and processed until much later.  You won't hear any of it from me, mostly because I still don't have a clue as to what really went on.  C'est la vie.  Don't ask.

Bleary eyed, I rolled out of bed to the sound of of a text from Karen.  It was time to break out the outfit I had specially planned for the day- and hey!-  the basic black corset that I ordered from the UK just for this trip was two sizes too big.  Eh, with four hours of sleep, I guess it didn't matter... tightening something that snug around my waist for twelve hours at a theme park was enough to make me a little queasy anyway.  So, after gaining some sense of balance and motor control, I then stumbled downstairs and met Karen & friends in the lobby.  We were all promptly driven to Disneyland in Matt's cute little square car (or maybe it was more of a trapezoid.  I can't remember.  My Euclidian geometry is a little rusty).

This is the point where we met up with (now unfortunately defunct) the "Crown and Casket Society" founders and members. The plan was to head over to Sleeping Beauty's castle with them for the Bat's Day group picture (which apparently is a tradition).  There had to be hundreds of us dressed in our finest gothy clothing.  Luckily, it wasn't 90 degrees, otherwise there would have been a LOT of sweaty pale people dressed in black- some of which would be passing out.  I think there was a movie like that.  What was it called?  Lord of the Rings?

Now, most of our group was exhausted from the night before because of the Market, or staying out too late with the nice neighbors (shh!  that wasn't me) so we decided to take it easy- a train ride, Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Carribean.  NO TEACUP RIDES.  Spinning, rotating teacups are just tempting fate.

I met some really fascinating, incredibly sweet and welcoming people that day.  The Crown & Casket members were most gracious in including me on their day out- Natalie and Joelle, Shannon- Jeff and Damian to name a few.  Oh, and Chuck!  Chuck likes to sit and read a book whenever he goes to Disneyland.  I love that.  Funniest, best guy I've met in a long time.  One of the perks I found being with this wonderful group is that we were in the company of a couple of castmembers (aka Disney employees), so we were able to see a bit of behind the scenes!  We all were able to ride on the Presidential Car on the train that travels the perimeter of the park, the one that Walt himself would ride, and sneak behind the Haunted Mansion for a peek at the back pet graveyard.  Oooooooo....spooky.

The traditional "goths-only" visit to the Mansion was a hoot.  If you have ever been, when you are in the first room of the house, and the floor begins to sink.  Then there's a creepy monologue meant to set up for the rest of the attraction.  Go figure, EVERYONE in the room knew and recited it word for word.  Loudly.  I think it's a universal fact that the locals all have annual passes, which allowed them to know the sacred words.  I know that if I lived here, I'd just come to go there and hang out, too.  While riding the moving car pod thing with Karen through the familiar sights, suddenly the car stops.  Mid ride!!  How cool is that?  Heh.  I wish now that I could have gotten out and taken forbidden picures- except for the unforgiving steel bar on my lap.  Damn those Disney security thugs.  Walt thought of everything.

After a bit of touristy-like shopping with Karen, I got something from a food cart (about 10 hours after we got to the park) that I will never in my life forget.  It was THE BEST corn dog I have ever had in my life.  Was it because I was so damn hungry, or the fact that it cost me $6.50?  I may never know.  But that corn dog was heaven on a stick.  Oh, I love you, deep-fried and processed meat.

After meeting Captain Hook, The Evil Queen, Minnie and Mickey (they were oddly silent) - it was time to say goodbye to the wonderful and down-to-earth people I met that day.  They were delightfully sweet and have a "I have a real life behind this one" kind of  feel to them, just like the rest of us.  At nearly midnight, after hugs and a promise to see them again, I was on my way back to the hotel on the tram and in the rhombus car.  Or maybe it was a dodecahedron.  Hee.

I called Becky.  She was awake (her night shift occupation allows). We sat in our jammies for three hours talking about nothing and everything in this big ol' suite that I didn't spend enough time in (thankfully) and wondering what life is all about.  What a day.  

What a life.

After all this, I think I'll put in my will that I want to be cryogenically frozen, and propped up next to Mr. Disney.  And maybe next to this guy, too.  Now go wish upon a star or something.  I've got stuff to do.

Christine

http://www.crowsfeetstudios.com/