reupholstering: phase 1

last week, the night before trash day on mauricio's street, i fell in love. it was love seat sized, dark wood framed, lonely looking and sitting on the curb next to a pile of trash. it had a bit of fading from the sun, probably from sitting too close to a sunny window year after year. it didn't look outdated, or old, or worn. it wanted to come home with me. oooh, cute little love seat sofa.

we tried to shove it in my Rabbit. with the seats flat, you can fit a lot of stuff in there! but, alas, you can't fit a cute little love seat. unless you saw the cute little wooden legs off (nice idea, mauricio). but then how will it stand? a couple days later, we try to shove it in my father's car. a much bigger VW: the passat wagon. a wagon? you can fit anything in there! yeah right. although the opening was much larger, we just couldn't manage to fit it in. so, a week later and two tries later, i gave in and made a U-Haul reservation for Saturday morning. $35, 1/2 hour standing in line, 1/5 hours driving back in forth, 20 miles later... the love seat is parked safely in my garage.

silkscreen 101

i've been DYING to learn how to silkscreen. with the combination of my love for all things artistic, my art school background, and my newfound love of graphic design, it seemed a match made in heaven. a couple years ago someone bought me an intro to silkscreening kit for my bday. not a cheap gift, i might add- about $100 beans. it's been sitting on assorted shelves in my studio(s) for years now... surviving move after move after move. i managed to lose the instructional DVD. woops.

Mauricio has silkscreened before, and you know how we love a good weekend art project... so i give you the "short" two color silkscreen:
(a side note: i'm a dork and did a work-related screen. i'm going to make tshirts for some events we're doing next year, and possibly make some huge, mother-truckin' stickers).


this is the photo that inspired the print. on the left, my photo. on the right, the photoshopped version.



this is the "drawing fluid" step. the drawing fluid is blue, and you basically "paint" it in everywhere you want to be printed in the end.



close up of drawing fluid step. this dries overnight, then comes the next step



now comes the screen filler. you paint this on everywhere you don't want ink to be printed. the drawing fluid acts as a resist- and the screenfiller ignores everywhere that is blue.




this dries overnight, too. i don't have photos showing how i hosed off the screens, washing the blue drawing fluid off.



now comes INK!! the fun starts.




first screen: blue ink



my garage work station



first print



second screen: black ink!!






rows of prints





nice shorts!!

MINX nails experience

when i first saw the above image, i knew immediately that i had to find a salon to have those nails done on myself.





it turned out to be a pretty fun field trip after a stressful day of work with meghan, all the way to manchester, NH (who goes to manchester?!) The girl doing our nails was super nice, which was great considering my tom-tom got me lost twice and made us a half hour late. our nails took an hour for each of us, and looked absolutely fabulous when they were done.
HOWEVER, she really needs to work on her technique. really, it's just a glorified sticker that's heat-seat onto your nails. after a day, the edges start to unstick and curl up. the next day at the movies, i was chewing on the stickers and peeling them off. my sweater fuzz was sticking to them and grossing me out.
they lasted me about 1.5 days. i guess, according to reviews, if you get them on your toes they should last closer to three weeks. but with washing your hands in hot water constantly, putting them under hand dryers, and just day to day wear and tear, they don't last a long time. but man! in the short time they were on my fingers, i got so many compliments i couldn't even keep track of them. people were amazed at how cool they looked. i admit, the pattern was pretty wild and it was hard to not notice them.

the verdict? i'd do them again, from a different nail salon, knowing that they'll only look good for about 2 days. super fun and trendy! after all, all the celebrities are getting them!!