Book Love

 I've told you about my love for Mike Stilkey, right? He makes art out of old books. It's amazing:

I have dreams all the time about my future library, and I haven't been able to buy too many physical books lately (I've been downloading ebooks), so I'm feeling withdrawal. This post is about awesome book-related things. 


First up, bookends! They break up the space on your shelves, separate special books, and help out on those shelves without sides.

Bookend Women, $49.95 at Wrapables:

 

Bicycle Bookends, $24.99  by Knob Creek Metal Arts:

I've never heard of shelf pillows, but now I want them! These Victorian Women bookends are $22

from Etsy seller Two Stray Cats

$45 for this set of Shabby Chic Bookends in Turquoise from Pretty Darn Cute

Only $14 for a print of this awesome painting by Parada Creations:

Bookplates (with a BIRD on it!) $4.50 for 6 of em from the Paper Pumpkin:

I don't have the funds for something like this, but I would totally love it! $450 for a vintage card catalog.

Birds in a Book Club print by Barking Bird Art, $18

Workin' Hard

Fully entering my upswing, I have updated the Sweet Lady Shop on Etsy, so if you are in the market for my gothy goods, go get 'em.

I'm also writing, hoping to turn in another chapter on Monday. Which would leave me with only 2 chapters and some revisions. Wish me freaking luck ok. Like miracle worker, one in a million, against all odds kinds of luck. I want to enjoy Halloween without having any chapters left to write. Is it possible? Let's hope.

In addition to all this stuff, I am still reading random paranormal fiction, doodling in my sketchbook project book, and enjoying my adopted city. Good times.

My in-laws surprised us with a very cool gift: a mini-fridge. For those of you who haven't taken a look at my apartment pics on Flickr (or don't remember), we have a tiny refrigerator. I am pretty sure it's the kind they put in RVs. Which is citified, but cumbersome. I haven't had a cold Coke from the can in forever. They got us a small fridge, which we've managed to squeeze into the kitchen by force, and now our sodas are cold, ice gets made on the regular, and fruits and veggies are easy to find.

Also, I entered a chance to purchase this Let the Right One In 24x36 screen print poster:

The artist only had 250 prints available, so I had to enter a lottery to get a chance to buy one. And I won! I just got it today and it's so much more beautiful in real life! These things happen in 3s, right? I should play the lottery. I totally should.

Blythe!

I've been fascinated with Blythe, the doll, for oh, about 17 years. I remember in the early 90s seeing a picture of one at some kind of art show and I loved it immediately. Blythe dolls are an early 70s creation. They stand about a foot tall and have these super large eyes that blink and change direction when you pull the cord attached to the back. They weren't really popular when they first emerged in 1972. Their production only lasted about a year. Some 27 years later, the doll has had a resurgence in popularity and Hasbro allowed a Japanese company to make the dolls again. And they took off like wildfire. Originally inspired by the art work of Margaret Keane, who painted kids with big eyes, Blythe now has a whole army of people who are fascinated by her.


Original Blythes from the 70s are rare, but sought after, and can be worth hundreds of dollars.
The Takara remakes are also worth a pretty penny. Ashton Drake, the US company that is replicating them, charges about $60 for their Blythe. All of them have slight variation in skin tone, shiny-ness, and eye color, but the basic shape of the doll is the same.

Here is a 1972 Kenner Blythe:
I think she struck me as interesting because most dolls are happy faced, and she seems to be kind of pensive. Also, I loved Margaret Keane and mod 60s style, so she fit into a lot of my design requirements. What has happened since the resurgence in the 90s is a total explosion of Blythe. People who are into Blythe not only buy the dolls, they remake them, which is amazing! They not only buy clothes, accesories and wigs for her:


They make them over completely, changing eyes, sanding the faces to reapply makeup. Here's goth Blythe:


To do this, of course, you have to kill Blythe. Some models easily come apart with a little prying. Others require cutting open her head! There are tons of websites devoted to helping you figure out what doll requires which kind of surgery to get apart. And then, what you can do is limitless. Some go as far as to resculpt the face, to give lips a new shape.


Eye chips allow you to play with eye color, and with an airbrush, you can change little white Blythe into any number of skin tones.

There's a number of Flickr groups devoted to Blythes of color with names like Black Blythe is Beautiful.
This is one of those beautiful cultural moments where people take something aimed at one group of people and totally transform it to fit their own needs and desires, ignoring the intentions of the creator. A whole subculture has grown out of this. People who make and sell clothing, wigs, trade techniques and post images on Flickr and Blythe websites like This is Blythe, What's Blythe. There are tutorial sites like the Pucci Collective, and YouTube has tons of videos explaining how to customize your doll. But...well, most of the big Blythe aficionados don't refer to Blythe as a doll. It's not like they think she's a real person, like they are divorced from reality (at least not most of them), but they seem to participate in the fantasy of her realness. They call her "my girl" and sometimes name her, giving her a personality. Some photograph their Blythes in tiny dollhouse like settings, like kitchens or living rooms, as though she has her own life. She has long days at work, has to get ready for tonight's party, that kind of stuff. And though Blythe is definitely big in Japan, and probably has a few fans under 18, most of these websites seem to be by middle aged women. Fascinating.

Oh yeah, I'm one of them now. I don't call her "my girl" nor do I play with Blythe, but the idea of a customized doll was right up my alley! I had a fantasy of transforming her into a mini-me, but that didn't happen. Once I found a cheap enough doll, I did what I could with what I had. I didn't want to cut it and open up the skull, so I decided to just do minor adjustments. Here's my original doll, the Aztec Arrival Blythe:

I, being me, made her all gothy. I cut her hair, painted her face (girl needed some eyebrows, for sure), and made her a tiny little dress.



I think these would be great dolls to give a kid who doesn't see herself in the dolls at the store. You could make a really beautiful gift for someone by customizing the doll to look like a kid or just look like they could be related!

If I have time and money, maybe one day I'll get more of these babies. But for now, Vampire Blythe will be my little companion. I don't have the heart to pack her up yet, so she might be the last thing to get boxed up before our move.>var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); />

Valley Girl Intelligentsia

Not only does Kathleen Hanna have her own BLOG, but Bikini Kill has an online archive. Where have I been?



Check out this interview with Kathleen here: KH Interview

LB Comic Con Pt. 1

Man it is tough to get into fall when it's 92 here at the beach. It's officially October. Come on! By keeping all curtains closed in my apartment, and putting the fan on oscillate, I have managed somehow to avoid being sweaty in my own home. The portable AC unit is working, but expensive, so I try to only use it on days when it's unbearable. Meanwhile, in my future city of Philadelphia it's currently 52 degrees. People there get to wear jackets. I have about 5 cute 52 degree weather jackets gathering dust right now. Next year, hopefully I'll be wearing them and drinking pumpkin lattes, not once thinking about whether my makeup is melting.

Anyway, complainypants can take a seat, because I am gonna have a big awesome weekend. Not only is my Wonder Woman tattoo going to get some color-which I am super excited about-but M. got me a weekend pass to the first annual Long Beach Comic Convention. Yep, Long Beach gets its own ComicCon. I didn't even know about it until a few days ago, but thankfully M. cares about his community and reads the local paper. The convention will have a lot of famous people in the comics world, as well as a Robot Chicken panel, with Seth Green.
I've been a big Seth Green fan for a long time. He's the go to guy in Hollywood when you want to cast a nerd with sympathetic qualities (which is what I like to think I am). He was Scott Evil in the Austin Powers movies. And he played a role in the heist film The Italian Job, which I saw on my first date with M. But I will always love him as Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

There are at least 5 female artists on the list of guests, one of them being Amanda Conner, who is working on Power Girl now, but was one of the first artists to work on the Vampirella comics.

Stan Lee is going to be there. Which is cool and gives the con some credibility for sure, but I'm there, of course for the learnin' and for the ladies.

The best part of this convention is that it seems to be focused on artists, with a lot of panels aimed at developing skills in digital art, character building, and narrative structure. I'm looking forward to those. Here's hoping there are other ladies there who like comics and I'm not the only woman there not in some kind of costume. No, I'm not going in costume. I think my costume choices are pretty limited if I'm going to do a comic character. I'd have to do someone from Love and Rockets and I don't think anyone would get it.

I'll let you know how it goes....

Gothic Care Package

Ever have one of those days when things just don't go right?

Like you worked really hard on your powerpoint presentation to go along with your lecture and it's finally perfect and then the stupid computer doesn't work in your classroom. So of course, because you no longer have your slides, your pacing is all off and the board looks like a mess.

Or when you have to tell a student that the classroom is not the stage at the Improv, so can it with the jokes and take this shit seriously already.

Or when because of stupid budget cuts, your classrooms are all at about 78 degrees. Add in 60 warm bodies and you get somewhere around 85 degrees. Ugh.

Plus it's the first day of your period and all you want is to drown in a sea of chocolate and wear something drapey and beltless.

Yeah, well Monday was that kind of day. Geez. But, sometimes the Universe gives you a little pep talk. In addition to M leaving the driveway open for me and cleaning up the house (which made coming home stressless), it just so happened that my friend K, who lives in Germany, had sent me a package of goodies that arrived that very day.



So many good things! Where should I start?! The awesome chocolate eggs for one. They are milk chocolate on the outside, white chocolate on the inside and just shells in egg form. Inside each shell is a little toy. Nutella dipping sticks, in addition to another chocolate hazelnut combo treat. Hazelnuts and chocolate are pretty much the most awesome combination. Around Christmas, I roast shelled hazelnuts in the oven and dip them in melted chocolate. Soo good.

Also part of this amazing care package was a bag of Jumpys. These little paprika chips are shaped like kangaroos and were pretty much what I lived on when I visited K in Germany nine years ago (has it really been that long?). We were addicted to them and bought them whenever we got the chance. On a train ride from somewhere in Germany to somewhere else (Berlin to Hannover?) we debated what kind of drug they were laced with, because what else could inspire such immediate devotion?
I got this care package because a few months ago I sent K a tiny painting of her as a vampire.


Her daughter Cleo is also into vampires and the fantastical, and she called my house and left the cutest message on my machine asking me to do a painting of her as a vampire. I thought I'd up the ante a bit and send her a little package of goodies. Handmade stamp with her name in Calavera font:


And two paintings, one of her as a mermaid, because she has super mermaidy hair. And one of her as a vampire:
So not surprisingly the vampire exchange program is still going!
They sent me these amazing vampire gummy bears.


The center of the vampire bat (the body) is black licorice flavored, and the wings are traditional gummy. Yums.

Plus I got a tin of gothic band-aids.

The band-aids were wrapped in this super cute wrapping paper as well.

I indulged in a couple gummy vampire bats, had a chocolate egg, sampled a few Jumpys and forgot all about my bad day. So thanks K! Excellent timing and a really great care package.

New Website For Ava

Hey folks, I've been working hard on my comic, Axis of Ava: The Undead Adventures of Ava Perez. This weekend was made up of 30% work for next week's classes and 70% work on the new website. Yes, that's right, Axis of Ava finally has its own website with a comic-friendly design. Click on this link to visit her new home: www.axisofava.com!




There's a neat list of comics I visit on the regular on the website, so you can check out some professionals and their cool work.

Designing websites is hard work, and I'm kind of glad I'm too poor to afford a decent web designer, because it was a good, if not necessarily fun, learning experience.

I've even got my own nifty e-mail address: sandra@axisofava.com

The blog is still up and will be used for the wordy aspects of publishing an online comic. Research I've been doing, any progress Ava's made outside of my little group of readers who know me (if that happens), and anything else that I can think of. So visit the blog too.



For those of you who don't already know, Axis of Ava is my webcomic. I write, ink, and color the thing. It's my way of not just commenting on pop culture, but making it as well. It's about a half-vampire, half-human gal living in Long Beach, California who spends her time fighting vampires, saving humans, and sometimes vice-versa. Go check it out.

Judge a Book by its Cover

A new blog about book covers that is hilarious. Newest entry? A book titled "Pregnesia."

click it.

http://judgeabook.blogspot.com/

Working

Week 1 of the summer and I'm already hard at work. Spent a few mornings on the dissertation, some afternoons on the comic, and I went to one of my 'happy' places: the art store.

If you've ever been to Lyon Art Supply in downtown Long Beach, you know it's totally ridiculous in there. Stuff is in piles, boxes are everywhere, there is danger at ever turn. Seriously, a couple of times I probably would have tripped had I not conditioned myself to constantly look down for debris/random poles from light rigs/boxes of stuff. It is dirty, messy, and the sort of place that immediately makes me anxious, but (and this is a huge but), it's friggin' cheap! Markdowns on everything, sales all over the place - and not 20% sales, we're talking 50% and up. Everyone is really sweet and there is a whole comic section filled with goodies. Most of them are totally in Japanese, but I get what they are for, so I bought a few layout pages and blue line sheets. The same day that I went to the art store, M. came home with his Art Bin of goodies from Platt. They loaded him up with a bunch of stuff. I believe one of the first things he said to me when my little eyes lit up with wonder at the bounty spread before me was, "Jealous?" To which I replied, "Of what? This stuff is mine too!"

Today I'm cutting the morning writing short to go visit my friend Rachel, who recently bought a loft in downtown LA. I've been aching to take advantage of the pool and spa for months now, so today's the day.

Tomorrow I will reinstate Friday Finds. Any requests on a theme or stuff you'd like to see?

Lunch Break

I'm on my lunch break. Writing is going better today, so I'm not so worried. Anywayz...

If you've seen the Coraline movie, you know buttons for eyes is super creepy (hell, I would hope you think it's creepy even if you haven't seen the movie). Anyway, the official website lets you button your own eyes! Like the Simpsonizer, you upload your picture and then pick which buttons look best. Each button has a description if you move your cursor over them.

Do it! The other mother commands you.

The New Office

The office is finally done. I had a good time redecorating and tossing all kinds of things. It has made for easier grading not having bunches of stuff towering over me. I took pictures at night and in the daytime, so the color is slightly different. Here's a tour:

The wall behind the desk is lime green


Also behind the desk is a small station for M. to paint
The bookcase has been sorted so that I don't have a wall of books. There are open shelves where I put my stuff so that it's not strewn about like before. Don't worry about the books, they are all going to my office at work.



I made the curtains myself. They are lined and rest just over the windowsill so that when we have sleepover guests they aren't treated to blaring sunlight in the morning.


I totally stole this idea from Brande, who stole it from a magazine. All my pencils, pens, markers, etc. are sorted by color in clear containers (cheap tumblers from Ikea). I put them on a lazy susan so that I could just take the whole mess to the desk when I wanted and they would be easy to access.


My desk is now floating in the middle of the room, which makes it much easier to work on big projects and sewing projects. If you notice on the bookshelf there is a shelf that is covered by the same material as the curtains. I covered a couple of shelves by making a tiny curtain and putting them on small tension rods. That way I can store my art supplies (paints, glues, etc.) but not see them all the time. Also I found a lime green desk chair for cheap at Target. The after Christmas sales have treated me very well.



Across from the desk are my bookcases all lined up, kind of like built ins, but there was this opening between two large ones. I didn't know what to do with it, so I painted a blue square and got a few block canvases. I painted over them twice and finally made a set that I liked. The bike on the left is pretty easy to figure out.


Here are close ups of the li'l ones.

I liked the little girl so much I made it into my banner.

So....now that that is done, I have actually enjoyed hanging out in there! I take my coffee in there in the mornings and just enjoy it, which is all I could ask for, really. What do you think?