Weekends are glorious.

In a search for a really usable color wheel, I came across this from Realcolorwheel.com and it prints out beautifully.

I had a ton of school work to do this weekend but I managed to get in some satisfying arty activities. Of course, the best arty activity of all is collecting goodies on ebay. I won these things:



Each of the photos were taken by the sellers: flower buttons, clear flower buttons, glass buttons, and vintage bottles.

Also, I have been very interested in red lately, as this joosee montage demonstrates. I'm not thrilled with it, but it is part of my beginning attempts to teach myself how to put together interesting combinations of color.

Illustration Friday Post: Homage

My "homage" to baby animals sprouting in the zoo-garden.

Finally: Luscious Bugs Appear on Luscious Bugs

Harvey met me for lunch today and got to see my office and joocee dead bugs for the first time. We took pictures because it was a historical moment.

This is how my bugs arrive out of the tube: frozen or melty-wet, semi-smashed, often dismembered and all jumbled together in a glorious pile.

I sit here for 6 hours at a time sorting bugs by order and identifying them to family.
AND I love it.

They sort of smell like food until they dry out. But not good food. Here, Phasmodea.

This is my favorite series for keying out insects.

Hooray for Patterns!

spring chick

spring chick
Originally uploaded by Dahleah

I'm just doing a little test to see if linking flickr to my blog is going to work!

Drawings on Flickr!

I've consolidated by library of drawings and they are now on my Flickr page, in case you'd like to take a look!

This and That.

Ahhh, I must take a break. Parasitoid flies, invasive ants, effects of invasive grasses on herbivorous insect assemblages, survey of chaparral and river terrace communities... These are the papers I am writing concurrently. Ouch-ee.

So I will blah-blah-blah about my other developing project: Crab Apple Designs. This is the name of my soon-to-be-official crafting business. A blog [Edit: now an active link!] and etsy store front are established, but so so naked right now. I'm doing little things between school projects to get ready for launching this summer. Mid June, maybe? I have thyroid surgery scheduled at the end of May. After that, I can put all my energy into building up inventory.

The littlest things can become SO HUGE when you want to get it perfect. I've spent about 8 hours (until 2 last night and up again at 7 this morning) trying to find this one exact font to use for my banner. It's beautiful and I want it and that's that! Well, *hurray* because I finally found it. Now it is added to my growing "shopping list" of things needed to begin the funnest part - makin' stuff!

Because Harvey was SO generous with Valentine's goodies this year (he always is!) I thought I would start a new tradition of making him a Man-Easter-Basket (a Measter Basket?). The Peep image is one I drew in Inkscape and printed on an iron-on to make a very manly peep t-shirt. Note: unless you are using a white t-shirt, select the iron ons for dark colors. Harvey is now the owner of a translucent peep shirt.

Later this week, I'll post some photos of some inspiring designs - paper and fabric - acquired over the weekend that are sitting in my little cabinet (and under my butt because one is a chair cushion from Ikea) making it very hard to concentrate on parasitoids.

Illustration Friday Post: Heavy

Martha Love

Hooray! I love the Martha downloads (sometimes). This one is so exciting. It's tricky to get off the website, so I'm including the actual pdf here, but all the details are at the Martha website. I can't wait to run this joosee thing through my new Xyron laminatah.

A spree. A bookstore spree. The best kind of spree.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about establishing an Etsy shop this summer. I would like to prepare a series of paper products and plushes as well as other sewn fabric items that satisfy my various design compulsions. COMPULSIONS, nation! I've got ideas coming out the wah-zoo, but when I held them in my hands, I couldn't resist these helpful books that I've been wanting for a while: The Cute Book by Aranzi Aronzon, Sew What! Skirts by Francesca Denhartog and Carole Ann Camp, Softies by Therese Laskey, and In Stitches by Amy Butler. Although it took up my spree budget for March (!), I'm looking forward to having time to create some of these delicious little items and finally stocking my (as of right now) unstocked Etsy storefront: sweeteebee.

Slap it, shoot it, Kaboodle it.

Kaboodle!
Then you can tell the world that you are longing for...a frog wallet and 5 zillion other things.

Is it stealing or BORROWING?

I'm pretty sure I don't want to know the answer. I find graphics all the time that I absolutely love and I want to make them my own. They really aren't my own, though, and that there is the problem. For instance, I have hearted the Magpie store logo for years now. So I decided to play with it and I am pleased. It has a body now. [NOTE: just double checked the website to find to my horror that they have added a body to their logo but at least mine looks different, right?!?] So the body is mine but the head is not, even through I drew it myself. It's just that I was staring at the original the whole time. Ho-hum.

Improved Peel Proof Weeble

I never had Weebles, but lord I wanted some. while Googling these coveted objects, I came across the work of Jason Chase, who has amazing oil paintings of Weebles doing Weeble things. They look SO real! I intend to create my own entire set of egg-shaped friends and maybe even obtain some vintage Weebles from Ebay. I've started by whipping up a digital Weeble friend based on one of the vintage characters from the Weeble family. I really want to wobble a weeble.

Garden for Illustration Friday

The wonderful Suziblu shared this neat website called Illustration Friday on her blog and vlog. Each week, they select a topic and people submit art inspired by the topic of the week. This week's topic is "garden." Lately, I'm really into doodling birds, so here is what I submitted to Illustration Friday.

People: It's phlo-em. FLO-em. Umkay?

Oh, phloem. For that matter...oh, conducting tissue. If you have pets named Torus and Margo, then you totally know what I'm talking about. So, please don't say "floam." It's vile. And get it straight: sieve tube, sieve plate, sieve area, sieve pore. Get to know the phloem. Here is a visual aide for you. You say you like plants? Prove it!

Virtual shopping is fun.

Here are some of my favorite virtual shopping websites: Fred Flaire, See Jane Work, UncommonGoods, Jet Pens, GelStuff, EverythingSmells, Good to be You, Daddy-O's...the list goes on and on! This is PLENTY for an afternoon of creating "wishlists." Hee hee.