curtains are complete!

The entranceway curtain project is complete. I am hoping that these curtains will save us some money and heat by closing off the front door. I still have a bunch of necklaces to post so that should be coming early this week. Have a great weekend!

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putting the last two panels together

I will definately make these curtains again however it will be a bit easier with different fabric. This crushed silk is a bear but it is forgiving as much as it is a pain, however a bit time consuming. It doesnt help that i am blogging to procrastinate...peace out finishing project; engage!

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curtain panels in the making

Here is a sneak peak of the almost finished first panel

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too much water not enough fire

So long story short I think that we have some spirits hangin out in our house so a friend of mine who works with energy came to town and helped evaluate our house as well has give us some ideas of how to change the energy flow. My kitchen was one area in which we needed to improve upon, the answer, more red by the sink and window. We need to balance the water element with some fire. Lucky for me i was able to find some fabric that incorporated my existing color palette. Here you see the fabric i will use to sew some new curtains. It is amazing what a little fabric with some color can do.

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Weekend full of Cleansing and Backyard Nature

I am on day 6 of my Standard Process Cleanse and it is going very well! It is so strange but the minute someone says you can't have you want! In the last several days I have had cravings for things I haven't eaten in years! Anyway here is a normal routine 2 times a day that is 19 pills and a shake!
Today I made one of the best shakes yet containing:

• flax seed oil
• vanilla coconut milk
• the supplement
• apples
• kiwi
• banana
• spinach
• grapes
• tart cherry juice

Yesterday was the first day using the flax seed oil and I made a delicious shake with it too:

• orange juice
• supplement
• flax seed oil
• organic fresh wild maine blueberry's
• strawberry
• banana
  

While enjoying some time out back and watering my garden the birds were in full force enjoying a bath in the sun!

Here is a yellow bird that I think my husband and I saw a month ago and thought it was someones pet but it rolls with the sparrows in the neighborhood.

This was a gift from a friend and I just love the pot and dish it is in.

Contract Job just about Done, New Projects getting Started

I am back from working my long days in the big city and ready to start some new projects, get the garden into shape and take pictures and notes along the way.


I have been wanting to redo our bedroom for a bit of time now and have finally found exactly what I want to do, but I don't want to put too much money into it and I definitely did not want to paint, right now. I found some great fabric at Ikea as well as a bunch of accessories for the new updated brighter bedroom. Luckily I was able to find a fabric that went with the current paint color spanish moss but also added some lighter soothing colors with an accent of brightness.


We have had the same hardware and curtains since before we were engaged so I thought swapping out the curtains would make a major change and the easiest way to add some color. But I didn't really want to swap out the hardware since it was a huge pain in the ass mounting the current ones. So I decided to go with a more convenient and thrifty plan. I am going to paint the old ones which will change the texture of the glass and the color will be updated to be a brighter, more cohesive color with the fabric I have chosen.


This is half way through my first coat of paint.



This is the finished product which I think will accent the design concept a bit better then the originals. Next plan of attack is finding a good template for some window coverings.

How to...Get out of a winter time funk

Winter has taken a toll on us as usual, but the first signs of spring are starting to peek through! This is the time of year I hear everyone doing a bit of cleaning whether it is the house, body, mind or spirit, sometimes all! Winter has always effected my mood and as the years go by it seems to be getting better but I had to do the work to get here. I feel that if you keep your mind and body in good working order everything just goes as it should. The last few weeks in between winter and spring were a bear for me to cross and it got me thinking about ways to get out of the winter time funk!

Now I know that you hear it all the time but here I go, you need to eat right. Now I am not talking about the South Beach diet or any other name brand diet there is out there. But how you as an individual should eat, you know certain foods make your body feel crappy well those foods can also make you mind not work as well. It is weird because it seems everyone is on a "diet" but it is usually for weight not for their mind or to feel good. However, if you are on the right "diet" and you stick to it you realize you do feel better. Having talked to a nutritionist it is interesting to use the vitamins and herbs they recommend because they really do make you feel better. I recently found out my blood type and was excited to use this new information to read the book Cook Right For Your Type and interestingly I found out why I have the cravings I do and that is because I am supposed to eat those foods. The thing that is interesting is the nutritionist as well as the book have the same common thread stomach acids! Stomach acids are a very important factor in how our body feels and it is weird because when you have the right stomach acids you feel way better then you thought you could. So this week I am going to be trying the diet that is recommend for type A's and that is very little meat and tons of fruits and vegetables, beans but not the beans I have been eating.

Another thing that helps me get out of the funk of procrastinating, is make a list whether it be on paper, your phone, computer, or just in your head, make a list! I will start procrastinating when I have too much going on, for instance spiffing up the house I know that it is going to take a while to do and it isn't going to happen over night but of course I am anxious for it to be done! But if I just make a list and decide how many things to check off a day and stick to it I will eventually be done with it. This also works well with job hunting, do you daily appointed things and then forget about it!

The other thing that Cook Right For Your Type mentioned was that certain exercises are beneficial for each blood type. My blood type likes meditation, yoga, and brisk walking, which makes me happy because I hate running, jogging anything faster than a fast walk I just don't see the point. I have been in sports where you run and I've always hurt even when I was a kid I would get a side ache, but I do understand why people love it, my body just doesn't like it. Exercise is also a nice time to think about nothing other than just doing your exercise. So when you don't want to exercise just remember it will be rewarded with the ability to turn off your thoughts.

The last thing to help you out of a funk is read your horoscope! It's always interesting and also worth a different perspective to view your thoughts from.

Mannequin in the House!!!

Mannequins are the much needed tool in necklace making, especially when you are working with how things hang, it is hard to gauge thus a neck is needed! Luckily for me I started working at Macy' part time over the holidays, gotta love the discount and the fact that they sell off their old mannequins for cheap! So I snagged one and painted this super awesome nickle color!

I spent most of the fall working on christmas gifts for friends and family!









This is a giraffe ribbon with black, silver and copper chain, that I made for my niece. I have a few other pieces to share in the upcoming posts!

Daily Dose of Inspiration

My Ink Blog is a great resource for everything including some great proofing solutions, which we can all use.

Blue Blots is a great all around resource for all types of design from toys to usb drives along with a bunch of free resources.

What is Color Management

It is described by current International Color Consortium (ICC) architecture, as the method in which output devices have a common reference. This allows the user to add several output devices by only linking them to a common reference to standardize color throughout.

Color Management is important to translate from one color space to another hoping to maintain integrity of the original. For example your monitor displays color in RGB and printers print in CMYK. These are actually two different languages that sometimes have a hard time communicating the intended output. This is why we use color profiles and why they are so important.

Most devices come with generic ICC profiles, however, these profiles are not as accurate as we would like them to be. Custom profiles have been created and supplied by the manufactures and are preferred when looking for consistency in output. These profiles that come with a specific device are beneficial because the device’s manufacturers are producing a more consistent product thus more consistency from one machine to the next.

When setting up a document with the knowledge of your end product, you should be able to use a custom profile in the application you have chosen to use, for that particular printer. Which will communicate with your monitor and tell it how to look when displaying. So what you see and what you get will be similar.

To get the most accurate color from monitor to printer, calibrating your monitor is necessary. When calibrating you need a print out from the device you are using. Then you match your screen to the printed material using the system preferences to calibrate, this is where you can name and save a specific profile for use later. This may sound simple but there are many factors to consider. For instance is there artificial light, or natural light in your work space? If you are by a window, then the color of your monitor may change as the sun goes behind a cloud. There is also the paper you used to calibrate to, is it glossy, matte, or varnished? As you can see a lot goes into calibrating your monitor and it takes a lot of work to maintain the consistency.

Custom profiling is the most consistent use of color management and takes most of the guess work out of your end product. Even with these precautions it is important to go to press with new pieces because the press operator can tweak the color a bit for you. They are even able to match previously run pieces by locking in the color profiles on the press itself.

If you must have a specific color a spot color is the way to go, using the Pantone Matching System (PMS). This system allows the user to color match specific colors (even metallics and fluorescents) when a design enters the production stage—regardless of the equipment used to produce the color. As with any system, color variance also occurs based on paper stock.

Saving Swatches to Use throughout Creative Suite

Color is such an important element in design and when printing you need to be pretty specific to match previously run pieces. We have certain color pallets for quarterly reports that are very specific and need to match from quarter to quarter. We have struggled with consistency but then I found the way to save swatches from you document and you can use them across creative suite.

First thing you want to do is make sure all unused/unwanted color swatches are deleted from your pallet. In Indesign you will pull down the menu on the swatch pallet and you want to save swatches (hi-lighted in yellow) then it allows you to add to a swatch folder or what I do is I put with this clients resources so it is all in the same place. This will save as an ASE file to use in a new indesign file go ahead and use the pull down menu again and this time you want to load swatchs.While working in illustrator you go to the same pull down menu but this time you will select save swatch library to ASE and to load you will open Swatch Libarary and add your swatches that way.


These ASE files work accross all of creative suite and helps keep colors consistent.

I am using this swatch saving method to create coated and uncoated swatch pallets for all of my clients there for it is super easy when you go to so a job for them you can just open up a file set up specs, grab your color pallet and then get designing and you will know that these are the right swatches right off the bat.