Sunday 10 May 2009
A very very delayed post due to major jet-lag, cfs and entirely forgetting the email I used to sign-up with and being unable to access my account. A mistake I shall not do again! Still, I'm here finally now! And with an update, back from holiday and fully inspired by the glorious Cirque du Soleil show, KOOZA!
We had Justin Sullivan as The Trickster and that man can dance. I also wanted to steal his suit, I believe I have a thing for stripes and those were some incredible stripes. Even if his first outfit reminded me of freshly squeezed Aquafresh Toothpaste.
Nevertheless, it was an amazing show, the music was glorious the show itself was amazing and I'd strongly recommend it! Kooza has officially taken the place of my second favourite Cirque show (only the epic KA! could beat it.)
Now moving swiftly on as I need to fill in a few months here, unfortunately the CFS is still here and now worse than it has been for a while. I took part in the Open Mic 2009 competition, got myself through the auditions to the Regional Final at Sheffield City Hall but wasn't what the judges were looking for unfortunately, so no Manchester Final for me. On top of that all the excitement, nerves and general build up has triggered my CFS off really quite badly again. Today is the first day in three days where I've gotten out of bed or off the sofa for longer than a few minutes at a time. But enough of dwelling on that I was on the radio twice earlier in the week and my interviews can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004f8q4 which is my initial half hour-ish interview on the Friday 18th and follow up the Monday 21st after, including one of my songs played on air! How exciting! The first time I've ever had my music played on a radio station! There's a few other musical things in the works, but I'll let you know about those when I have more to tell, currently they're just inthe planning stages.
On with the crafting! I'm working through some photos of all my goodies at the minute, making them look lovely for you, so I'll start posting those up and explaining them very soon! I've sold a mask and a few other oddments here and there including some hats and a beautiful Emilie Autumn style jabot collar as well. So I'll update as soon as I'm feeling better than I currently do!
Labels: bbc radio lincolnshire, CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, cirque du soleil, open mic 2009, sheffield city hall, singing
20:18
Monday 13 April 2009
I have always had the best timing.
Having just started this lovely little blog, I'm now about to abandon it for two weeks. Two weeks without the internet, two weeks living out of a suitcase, two weeks of no updates, and two weeks of no crafting crafty things!!
I suppse it's all actually worth it. I'm going on a road trip with my parents! Partly for them to go and see Parelli (some horse-related cult with a cowboy) and for myself to go to the Hershey's chocolate factory, geek out at some historical museums along the way and then finish up with a Cirque du Soleil show in New York City, Kooza!
So alas, poor blog, you will be abandoned, closed away in a shed, stripped of your wings, I shall name you Skellig and leave you to feast upon old take-aways out the trash. *Pats blog* But then I'll come back and there'll be holiday updates and finally I shall dare to show you some of my actual work!
Till then, adieu!
20:48
Sunday 12 April 2009
So here it as, as promised. I took a photo (well technically it didn't all fit in so I took four photos and jammed them together in photoshop in a haphazardly shoddy fashion then attacked the levels and such so it didn't look bright orange) of my craft room, finally all done and finished. It might look like cluttered chaos but I assure you there is method to my absurd madness!
The top two shelves are still to be sorted but I can't do that until I've bought one of those upright glass collectors cases. I got a little overexcited when the Corpse Bride was released and bought those gorgeous Jun Planning dolls. The only issue was...nowhere to put them! So alas they're hidden away under a cloth away from the dust until I buy a case from Ikea and until they're not up there I can't sort the rest of the shelf out. On with the tour though, if one peers closely enough behind the dummy there's the jacket sleeve of a Pirate coat I made. The very first item of clothing I ever made from a pattern...and I was so proud. Now I look back and see all the little things I did wrong - but it's all about learning! The rather gorgeous peachy-pink fabric there is in face my Tia Dalma coat, though it desperately needs to be tea-dyed and distressed. It looks all shiny and new currently. Her necklace itself is actually currently sat on the dummy's neck, along with my Jack Sparrow hat and wig from my last visit to Disney World. Then there's all my scrap wicker baskets with odds and ends, ribbons and lace, jars of buttons and beads, music books, inspiration crafting cd's, movie and costume and patterning books, Edwin Morose of Teddy Scares fame is up there next to my Sirus Black wand replica and boxes of paints and pens, there's a whacking great Ringwraith Sword on the wall and all this is wonderfully finished off with a large old batmobile toy on the top shelf. Then for any terry Pratchett fans out there...if one should look closely they might catch a glimpse of a Nac Mac Feegle stealing off with a chicken egg...there look, there he is! Second shelf, near the basket, pesky pictsie!
So yes, that's that really. My little wallspace of creativity and amalgamated junk I like to call mine.
And to finish on two slightly obscure notes, the first being the brief subject of David Tennant on Doctor Who, having just seen the Easter episode The Planet of the Dead, of which I shall reveal no spoilers for those of you who haven't seen it yet, I realised as I watched transfixed by the gloriously tousled haired Mr Tennant that only two more episodes to go before we lose him! I'm all very well and willing to give Matt Smith a chance but a small part of me, the inner hysterical fangirl is just waiting to bawl her eyes out and demand that there be no replacement. David Tennant, I, like the Unit Captain Magambo, salute you, sah!
Now finally! I just gave myself quite the fright. I have a Creative Zen Vision W, I love it very much, it's been many places with me and entertained me for many hours, and tonight the little rapscallion decided to frighten the bejeesus out of my by refusing to connect to my computer and allow me to put anything else on it. Thankfully the Gods of the Internet were kind enough to show me the Light of Google and several dozen other poor victims of this unfortunate mishap and after a few fist shakes at Windows Media Player 11 and a rollback to a previous version all is once well again between myself and my beloved little video player.
As much as I love gadgetry I come to realise I invest far too much emotion into the darn little things, and they seem tod elight in giving me shocks to test my blood pressure every so often. Hmm, I smell a full computer backup pending after this small scare!
Labels: craft room, creative zen, david tennant, doctor who, photo
01:04
Friday 10 April 2009
Well there are many new things afoot for me starting now...ish. So this seems like the best time to begin one of these 'blogging' things everyone’s been telling me all about since the dawn of time.
First thing being I finally have my craft room finished. Which means no more wasteland jungle of cardboard boxes and old plastic bags full of 'things' of an intriguing nature of which I had no idea what they were. Finally I have shelves up, everything is all neatly arranged and I know what I actually have, which is wonderful. I can actually get to things without having to gather together supplies for the outing sand leave a note asking for a search party to be sent out if I don't return within the hour. I can walk in and say "Yes, there is what I want!" and pluck it from the shelf and skip off to do my crafting. It's rather wonderful.
However more on that tomorrow as I have yet to take any photos to show you all my glorious hard work.
For now, I shall merely splurge my almost fangirl-like addiction to Cirque du Soleil shows. So far my count is six live shows, one of which I think I've seen three/four times now, so that takes my total up to maybe ten shows? I adore them, I always walk out afterwards feeling, for one slightly sick with slightly sweaty palms, why on earth would anyone want to trust their lives to wires and rigging?! I say this as a full blown acrophobic lunatic. But rather more importantly completely overflowing with enthusiastic creativity. It's everything from their costumes, the make-up, the music, the soaring vocals to the incredible feats they perform daily...sometimes twice. My latest addition to shows I have seen is Quidam.
Finally Cirque came up from London so I was able to avoid the three hour long train journey there and back again, I went instead to Sheffield and saw yet another spectacular show. I saw people doing things with skipping ropes I did not believe entirely possible, and they just casually sauntered through the blurring ropes with hands behind their backs like Charlie Chaplin sauntering through a spring park, I saw a charming red headed woman with a heck of a lot of hair spinning around on a rope a good twenty feet in the air and then I laughed until I cried as a clown snog-tackled some innocent victim from the audience to the ground to which I joined the nervous laughter of 'thank god that's not me down there'. I spent £22 on a brolly because it was black and white and stripey and I'm a sucker for black and white stripes...especially when it also features the gorgeous Alegria singer on it. Even if this wasn't Alegria I'm apparently still happy to fork over my money for overpriced merchandise. (But what does that matter as I marvel at home how with the push of a button the brolly unfolds itself and whooshes open like magic?)
Even a day later I still feel somewhat in the throes of creative inspiration, with the glorious Atmadja lyrics floating dreamily through my head. I should put all this creativity to some good use and go and make something! Then I can show all you lovely people the physical incarnations of my throes of inspiration, as it were.
Labels: cirque du soleil, masks, quidam
23:37
I suppose you could say I'm relatively new to this whole crafting thing (and blogging, so many virginial confessions, oh my!)
I have only been doing this for a few years, five or six at the most I think, with a few big gaps in between. I studied art through GCSE, A-Level and into College for a year where I knuckled-down to specialise in textiles. Though I technically ended up with my own little category as I was straddling both fashion and textiles but fit into neither one exactly.
Now originally (and to sopme extent still) I intend to sing for a career, I've been classically trained for I think around about nine/ten years now and I LOVE to sing. I sing anywhere and everywhere, however my issue with starting it up professionally is I tend to be alittle 'different' as everyone tells me. I have no interest in a pop music career at all, quite frankly my voice doesn't suit it in the slightest and I don't like singing that style. I do however adore classical and rock, by default I also enjoy gothic symphonic which seems to combine to two (think Within Temptation here!) However despite having done some professional singing work I have no unfortunately been diagnosed with ME/CFS (which explains the multitude of chronic sore throats and inability to get out of bed or move and all those weird aches and pains after I do two minutes worth of energetic movement.) So, this has gone on hold as I simply don't have the stamina to do this, so singing is now on the backburner until I'm better. I will get better. Positivity is the key...even if I sometimes don't feel like there is much hope. Meanwhile, in all my hours of sleeping and being generally unable to move or do much else my crafting instinct started to kick in.
I'd always been interested in movies, namely costumes in movies and so I studied costume design a little at college, until my illness really caught up with me and I was unable to move on from college to Uni. (Insert sad face here!) So instead I figured why not put my creativity to good use, so what if my qualifications don't go higher than College level, that's pretty darn good anyway! So I have decided to start my own little company, and to sell my masquerade masks, and other odd creations I create along the way. So this is me now. You are relatively up to date, the short way around and missing all the depressing bits in between, each day I'll try to remember to update with some of my older stuff up to the new stuff I'm making nowadays. There'll be sketches and finished designs and lots of luffly images, because everybody loves oogling photos.
So this is me, taking control of my life, at least as much as I can, battling off some invisible demon and attempting to do something I want to do and not get entirely taken over by this thing. So this is going to be a chronicle of myself, my insanity, my inspiration and a few bits of fabric, thread and needles on our occasionally epic misadventures across the small local universe as we battle the invisible forces of CFS/ME and come out the otherside...hopefully.
I wonder if Universal would be interested in the film rights...hehehe.
Labels: masks
20:33
