in the bedroom

sooner or later i'm gonna get around to decorating our bedroom. i'm pretty much at a loss on where to begin. i've been building somewhat of a furniture backbone but still need to get ideas on how to bring everything together. thank goodness for the internet. i stumbled across a really great website to find ideas for any room in your house.



above are the gender-neutral designs i like. below is what i'd love if i didn't have to worry about appeasing the man. yep, i'm sure i need a little girl or avery's gonna be surrounded in purple and poofs pretty soon.

robots can love

cute video my brother-in-law's girlfriend made for a design class. starring both danny and karla. cute.

female retail therapy

the last few days i've been doing a little online retail therapy to get my mind off things. i haven't really found anything worth mentioning, a few hooks for the bathroom and other odds and ends. i did stumble upon this site: cribcandy. and on the first page was this vase. i thought it was kinda funny, given light of our current situation. of course, this gave me the idea find more tasteful reproductive art.

exalted beauty uterus medallions. 30 one-of-a-kind art jewelry pieces created by amy e. fraser.

a series of plates about fertility and sex by nina levett.

not to worry. you won't be seeing these at our next holiday function. although they would make for some great conversation pieces!

loco for gocco

i finally busted out the gocco machine i bought months ago. i've been hoarding it, waiting for the perfect image to reproduce. (bulbs can only be used once and screens can not be cleaned and re exposed with a new image) knowing this, i may have never used it! well i decided to bite the bullet and find a decent image to give it a test run. i watched a few "how-to" videos this morning and this afternoon i started the presses.

this is the original image i got from istockphoto. it's a simple, clean image that i converted to grayscale. at first i had it completely black and white but i noticed while i was thumbing through the example booklet that came with the machine it had grayscale screens on some of the images. (all the instructions are in japanese, hence the video watching) so i went back and added a 30% and 50% screen on the trees. unfortunately, when i exposed the image, i lost all the grayscale screens. not sure if it can't do screens or if my screens were too light. i'll figure it out eventually.

the image is still decent so i went ahead with test run. i spread brown ink on the screen and began printing. it takes some getting used to. knowing how much ink to use and making sure it's spread evenly. i was able to print about 20 in the brown and after cleaning and reapplying red ink, printed about 20 more. i used the ink sparingly. it's supposed to print up to 80 with a good inking. all in all it was a good test run. now that i've started, i may not stop.

well lit

today i made my own little indoor light studio. i was having some difficulty/frustration figuring out why my photos had a yellow tint. especially when my subject was being blasted with light from all directions.

i'm a novice when it comes to macro photography. i assumed if i had a white background with lots of light it'd be enough. (that's what you see behind my makeshift lightbox) i took my first photos and the result is what you see to the left. the yellow is so bad that i can't enhance or mess with the levels to correct it. i started thinking maybe i can't have direct light on the subject that i needed to diffuse it somehow. i googled how to create a lightbox and found a great tutorial. made a tiny box just to see if it was the problem. nope. still yellow photos. i decided to hit up a photography forum to figure out what i was doing wrong. posted my dilemma and a few minutes later i had my answer. needed to adjust the white balance on my camera.

i was afraid i'd be reamed for asking such a basic question. but they were extremely helpful and told me how and where to find the and adjust my settings. the results were immediate. at least i can now adjust the levels to correct the background without ruining the photo. luckily i'll be getting adobe creative suite in a few weeks so i'll have photoshop at my disposal again. i've been going through software withdrawal.

shop construction--lighting setup: check!!

now on to the next step.

gocco pg-5

my most recent purchase: a tabletop printing press


i'm extremely excited about this acquisition. so many possibilities. along with bulking up my fabric stash with lots of cute japanese prints. things are moving forward. i've been feeding my minds eye for weeks. soon, my friends, soon.