Posts Tagged ‘steampunk’

Thought I’d post a smiling grandson today since it’s Sunday and everything :p It was taken the other day while he was roaming around playing with his toy cars…hehe
Yesterday the whole family attended a Viking wedding outside town. I believe that both of them are members of the local Viking association and they arrange a wedding every summer. At least I think they still do :p It means that the couple that is getting married have a lot of guests for the ceremony, both invited and uninvited. I believe that the reception is private though…but I might be wrong.

I’m not sure if Peter and Helene knew the couple who was wed, but it’s very possible. I’ve asked Helene if it’s ok if I post her photo’s from the event and I’m waiting for a reply. So in the meantime I thought I’d post the little rascal above :p Both Peter and Helene were dressed in Viking clothes yesterday, while Alexander was wearing regular clothes. Peter actually made a dress for Helene for the event and it looked great :D  My son is pretty good at crafting things :)

I might just finish the Tom Hanks painting today. Did paint a bit last night but I was too distracted by the TV. And by reruns for some stupid reason. But today I’m alone and unsupervised (as usual), with no TV on or anything, so I’ll ignore the dishes for a while longer I think and paint instead ;)
And I’ve got a bracelet and a ring to send off to a photographer who wants to borrow them for a photo shoot. They contacted me the other day over email after being to Steampunk Box. Of course they wanted to borrow something that was sold a long time ago, so they had to pick something from the available items. The necklaces they wanted to borrow were sold to the US for Valentines a couple of years ago, so it’s not like they are easy to pick up somewhere for the sake of the photo shoot.

So I’ve got to pack the bracelet and ring to ship on Tuesday. The photo shoot is on August 1, so it’s no panic. But I want it done, otherwise I might just forget :p

And then I need to do a similar thing with a pair of earrings, but those are being sold. So that’s different. I don’t expect those back…hopefully not anyway ;)

And that’s it for now :) Hope your Sunday is as calm and quite as mine…that is, without being boring :p

During my first 2-3 years here in England we went out almost daily taking photos. I’ve always been a lousy tourist and rarely carried a camera, so it was a different way to see a new place…even though I wasn’t a tourist since I planned on settling down here.

But you see things differently through the lens of a camera than you do if you just browse around a place you’ve never seen before. You get snapshots of how you see things and memories to preserve as well.

I’ve got over 200 shots sitting at Zooomr and unfortunately my Nikon took a dive into Eternity a couple of years ago, but before that it really served it’s purpose. It’s been well used. All together I think I have around 4,000 shots from the first couple of years here, which is more photos than I took during all the years before I came here. Of course, Robin’s photo interest helped a lot. Most things are more fun when they’re shared :)

The plan for this summer – unless it turns into a cold and rainy one – is to visit some of the places we already been to with the cameras and do some filming instead. Sherwood Forrest is a huge place and we’re not that far away from two of the visiting centers, so that’s on my list. And it’s a beautiful place in the summer :)
Then of course there’s a lot of other places that I’d like to take some moving pictures for a change.

But first I need to invest in a Flip Ultra HD. Since Crazy Cameras I’m a bit hesitant to order anything online, but to buy one at PCWorld or similar is a lot more expensive. So I’m gathering courage…heh

And yesterday I got sick and tired of waiting for clients pulling together content for future sites they want us to build, to decide if they want a site or not (because of the recession we’re way belong the market in pricing, so it doesn’t take a lot of market research for them to figure out that we’re a lot cheaper than most), and maybe most of all, waiting for people to pay their darn bills. They want maintenance and they expect their sites to be up 24/7, but they want it for free – of course.

And I really hate waiting for anything in general. So last night I began to browse around for some supplies so I can kick some life in Steampunk Box again. I’m seriously considering changing the name of that place since at least I don’t think that my designs are steampunk. Not sure what they are, but to me Steampunk is masks, goggles and that sort of thing. And that’s not what I do.
We’ll see. Changing the branding when it’s already established is not a smart thing either, and it might scare some of the customers I already have as well, no matter what the designs look like.
No matter that, I did make a new ring last night. It’s not done yet, so I’ve got nothing to post, but if I can find what I’m looking for in my boxes of stuff, I might be able to finish it tonight.

As for the painting, I’m still working on it. Got one more window pane to paint, the frame around the window and the part of the wall you can see. Then I’ll post that again :)

It’s a rainy and cold day here today. Robin’s got sciatica, very loud and clear, and we’re off into town a bit later.
If any of you got some sun rays left over – please send them this way :D

Alexander’s mom told me the other day that as soon as he sees a camera these days, he goes serious. Not at all as smiley as he used to be and maybe it’s the fascination with the camera itself that interrupts the good mood. He does chase the cell phones when he gets a chance :p

However, in this photo he’s competing with the sun :D Granny’s cutie :))

We have a grey and overcast day today, not at all nice. But at least we don’t have to be anywhere today. I’m going off screen in a bit to take care of some things that we brought in from the motor home yesterday. Among other things I’ve got a shower curtain to wash, some dishes to do and other things to tuck away. If I can find any space :p Robin’s got some books and games to take care of.

And I have to take a closer look at the coffee maker too. I paid a small fortune for that thing, so I have no plans on trashing it. Need to find that spring somewhere in the kitchen first :p That should be fun.

A few weeks ago I found a company that is specializing in selling custom made jewelery. They were looking for designers, so I sent them an email with a link to Steampunk Box just for the heck of it. A couple of days later I had a reply where they confirmed my email to them and that they would get in touch when they looked a bit closer on all the applications. And this morning when I sat down I had a note from them in my inbox and they want my designs :D
However, they are located in Sweden and I’m not, so I’m not 100% sure that I can sell through them. I’ve written back asking about that bit so we’ll see what they say. If not, it’s not a huge loss, but if it would work out I would have to start hunting for new/old watch parts again.

And I’m feeling a bit better today, probably thanks to a lot of time off the screen yesterday. Which is why I will continue in that same way today. There’s a lot of waiting time when you work with the web. Clients rarely understand deadlines other when they set them themselves, and requests on quotes can take weeks before it all ends up at a point where a client decide to either go with us or not. That’s why I paint. It’s something I can let go of whenever I need to, unless it’s on commission of course, and at the same time it’s fun. It’s also a learning period that I value a lot :)

But if needed I can put it away and rest instead, and that’s what I’m going to do today. Then I will be back here tonight again :)

I hope your day is a lot warmer with more sun than ours :D
Have a good one :))

My hair has grown a lot this winter and a few weeks ago I bought a pack of barrettes to keep it all together in the back. I’m not sure why I saved all this hair because now it’s in my way no matter what I do :p So usually it’s in a braid or a tail in the back.

I wanted a barrette that had a unique look…something for special occasions that I knew would stand out, but that would still have a bit of style. So I made what you see above.
The base is a leather barrette and the round silver piece in the middle is a lid from an old pocket watch that once belonged to my dad. It still got his initials engraved in the middle – G.E – and I’ve saved it for something like this. Something that I could keep and use :)

I made this fairly easy since I believe that less is more in most cases. There’s no gears or anything that interrupts the roundness, except from the black gem at the top, which is square. I also have barrettes that are brown, but I picked the black one on purpose since it went together with that silver lid better than what brown leather would have done.

There’s a larger image if you click the one above :)

As I said the other day…I want to do a different kind of still life.
So here goes…

Chocolate is probably one of my biggest weak spots ever. Preferably dark chocolate, but anything goes :p
But just to arrange and paint chocolate would be boring…no matter how much I can drool over the subject. So I wanted to do something different. Steampunk chocolate. Or ChocoBots…heh

The sketch above will make more sense once I started to paint it, and there will be a lot more details as well. But it’s chocolate covered cherries…or almost. It will partly look like that once this is done, but in a mechanical way.

Parts of these will be in metal, while other parts will be in chocolate.
So if you want to follow this chocolate covered progress, keep an eye out in here during the next few days :)

And no, I have not forgotten about the painting of Cate Blanchett. I’m still playing with possibilities to make it extraordinary in some way, that’s all :D