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So my internet went out yesterday, and stayed out for quite a while, leaving me bored out of my skull. Thus I entertained myself by painting ki-rins, and I got all the current batch done.
Baby Storm ki-rin:
Water ki-rins:
(I decided that the ice ki-rin ought to be unique, as it was a gift for a very good friend, so though these use some similar colors, they’re not as detailed for one, and have slightly different accent colors for another.)
Baby earth ki-rin:
Baby fire ki-rin:
Baby ki-rins:
These, and my storm ki-rin, may be offered up for sale or for raffle in the next little bit. If you’re interested in owning one of them, please drop me a PM so I can include you on the mailing list to let you know if and when.
Finished two ponies recently.
First, a storm ki-rin
Second, Hermes, the messenger god.
More pics of both can be found here: http://www.sparkcostumes.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=23&page=3
My issue with unwillingness to share hasn’t got anything to do with ‘random people’ it has to do with long standing forum members who haven’t exactly been kind to me. They would no doubt be included in any private room here as well.
And my particular issues just now have to do with things that I suspect would make many nice and kind people here uncomfortable as well. So I keep them in my own space, where I know everyone there is at least able to tolerate my oddities.
You know, I can’t really say I like any male actors. But I like some of the characters!
Like Orlando Bloom, for one. I’ve seen him as himself on TV, and I’ve seen him in several movies now, and I don’t really care for him that much, but Legolas on the other hand makes me drool. Mmmmm pretty elf boys.
Yep, I just picked up some ladybugs at Home Depot’s garden center today. I had used the water/soapwater method* but that didn’t get rid of all of them, so it’s time to up the ante. I almost bought preying mantises instead, as I LOVE them, but they’re not really as effective against aphids as ladybugs are, so I didn’t.
*Get squirt bottle full of water. Set to the narrow stream setting, and use that to knock aphids off. Most won’t be able to find the plant again and will die. Then the next day the ones that do, put just a tiny bit of dish soap in the water, and spray them down with it. That will eventually kill them. But it seems some survived it. And you can’t use the soap too often, or it may hurt the plants.
Adaneth wrote:Plain M&M’s are fine by me, but I have an obsession with eating so all the colors are represented in equal numbers, which means whatever there’s too much of at the beginning gets eaten more. Then, when I’m down to one of each color, I eat from least favorite (browns and warm colors) to most favorite (green). 😆
I do this too! And not just with M&M’s, with any kind of candy that comes in different colors.
When I get a bag of jelly bellies I have hours of entertainment along with having hours of snacking. Because they have to be sorted out and eaten correctly!
(I am so OCD sometimes.)
Heh.
I honestly don’t feel I can post about most of my problems here anymore. So many of you are really great people, but there are too many strangers here now, and there are a tiny handful of people who haven’t been nice or understanding at all, and my current problems are mostly really sensitive things, I wouldn’t feel safe sharing them somewhere so public.
I can always rant about stupid customers here though, at least. 🙂
I hear you there! People have no concept of what materials cost at all.
And the extra taxes thing gets me SO steamed. I could get on a food stamp program, and take the government’s money, I make so little. So why not just let me keep what I earn and quit making me pay totally ridiculous amounts in taxes?!
I hear government people talking about how they support small business, and I want to go up to them and tell them what I think of the way they treat small business owners. *grrs* If they support us so much, why not give us a friggin’ tax break?
Today I found out why my pea plants aren’t thriving. There are APHIDS on them! *grrr* There was aphid carnage today. And there will be more tomorrow if I find any more of the little buggers.
Eat my peas, will you! Ha!
Variety is good. I like medium stuff, myself. I think griffins are just about right! Muses seem small, and the large dragon is big!
I know somebody who just likes muses.
So an assortment of sizes is good, I think.
There are kinds of art that I enjoy more than others, but honestly I don’t think I’ve ever met art I actively disliked.
Although I suppose the thing that comes closest is (don’t kill me) Thomas Kinkade. Not even so much because I don’t like the art, but because I’m not sure it IS art, and even if it is, I don’t like the business practices behind it.
This is what I mean, if you don’t know.
I could enjoy his stuff in a “Eh, it’s kind of bland but pretty” way if it weren’t for how it’s hyped far beyond its artistic merits, and how the artist appears to care about nothing but making more money.
The ones in Ireland were easy moves, because I didn’t bring everything I owned, just enough to get by with for the time I was there.
But yeah, it’s pretty crazy.
Heee. I always kind of laughed at that on my own forum, though I don’t have anybody there who does it right now. But this one guy always did. Always! But he posted a whole lot anyhow. I always wondered what he thought he was accomplishing by being hidden.
Oh boy, here goes…
Born in Bountiful, Utah
Somewhere in Washington that I can’t remember, I was 2
Somewhere else in Utah. (Kearns, I think?)
Austin Texas.
Utah again.
Santa Rosa California. (Two different houses here. And this is where I start remembering stuff myself, I was 4 when we moved here.)
Rhonert Park California.
Austin Texas.
Toquerville, Utah.
Kearns, Utah.
Toquerville, Utah. (We stayed there eight years, the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. In three diferent houses though. Six years in one, the longest I’ve been in a single house.)
Dublin, Ireland. (Also a two-week stay in England before going to Ireland, but I don’t know if that counts.)
Swords, Ireland.
Carrickfurgus, Northern Ireland.
Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Lurgan, Nothern Ireland.
Ogden, Utah. (Two different houses with my parents, and two different apartments on my own.)
Eugene, Oregon. (A brief stay at the boyfriend’s parents’ house, plus two different apartments.)
Corvallis, Oregon.Not done yet! Corvallis is just a stop along the way, though I should be here for the next three or four years, most likely.
So if any of you don’t know, I make costumes for a living. I specialize in mascots/fursuits. It’s been really rough this year, since luxury stuff like that is the first thing to go when people are feeling the pinch, but I’ve been coping. I love doing this, and I’m not going to give up on it if it’s at all possible.
Anyhow, that’s not the point. That’s just the intro.
Today I got an e-mail from a customer. He’s buying a basic costume set, fuzzy gloves, fuzzy slippers, a tail, and a set of ears on a headband. When we started discussing this I told him that ears cost $20.
The e-mail says that he wanted to ask if the ears he was getting were the super-realistic ones mentioned on my website, the ones where I hair the ear rims individually, one hair at a time. Then he said that he assumed they were, for $20 but had just wanted to make sure!
This is stupid, firstly, because the one place they’re mentioned on my web site is the place where I say doing a full costume to that level of detail costs several hundred extra. So why on earth would one assume that doing it on some random individual part doesn’t?
But secondly, and this is the pet peeve, WHY on earth does he think that I’m going to spend most of a day placing hundreds and hundreds of individual fibers by hand for twenty flipping bucks?!
And this kind of thing happens all the time! People look at my pricing, and they make snide comments about how I must really be rolling in the dough! ARGH! Yes, a full mascot suit is $1,200. Yes, I realize that’s a lot of money, but that suit takes me most of a month, and costs me $300-odd in supplies, so I am getting $900 for my entire month’s income, you dip and I have to LIVE on that! That isn’t money I get to spend on silly fluff, that’s the money I pay my rent with and buy food with and some months I barely have enough to do that! Of course most months I do a few plushes and a bunch of tails and so on, so I have a little more, but seriously I have never made more than around $1,500 a month. You just try living on that and see how well you do!
Grrrrr.
That just drives me crazy and I hate it. I’m scraping along, practically dirt poor, and these people who HAVE hundreds of dollars to buy stupid frivolous stuff like costumes with sneer at me for how much I charge, because they don’t even take ten seconds to think about how much work goes into something like that!
So that’s my pet peeve. What’s yours?
