Movin' On Up, and a Question About YouTube

Just FYI, I'm losing my mind this week trying to move and balance both workplaces. Packing up my art materials is always the hardest part, because I know the minute I tape up the box is the minute before I'll have an idea. The great thing about the new place is that I'll finally have a space dedicated to being studio space; a nice finished basement where I'll have space and no television or video games to distract me, so here's hoping that I'll be more productive as a result.

It's a silly question, but I was playing around with the video function on my camera the other day. I know a lot of artists have livestream channels where they invite people to come and watch them paint or draw. I don't really have a webcam, but how interested would anybody be in art and crafting video tutorials? I know YouTube is inundated with that sort of thing, but honestly I've seen several that aren't done particularly well, or they are, but pretty obviously aimed at the stay at home scrapbooking mom/grandma type. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I often have a different perspective and background than a lot of the people I see presenting these things, so I feel like it might be more interesting and more engaging for people who tend to veer away from demographic--applying these sorts of techniques to alt fashion accessories or to modeling for tabletop gaming, even if it's just a change in the aesthetics and the subject matter, or directing and reviewing resources like books, websites and retailers. Hell, I'll do bits on whatever it is people suggest. I just keep finding more to do when I've already stretched myself thin!

Anyway, I look forward to reading your opinions and catching up on everyone's blogs sometime next week!

Horror wins!

And no one is surprised at all. I have a couple of ideas, so I figure I'll do some quick sketches and show them off here on the blog with a new poll. In the meanwhile, I'm working on some new prints that I should have up on my Etsy soon-ish.

Any creepy suggestions for sketches? I already have thoughts for doing something with the Mothman or maybe a Jekyll and Hyde set, but I'm totally open to other ideas and will have a real post up as soon as I have something to show!

EDIT: Magpies now up in the Etsy store!

In a carvin' mood!

Hey, I'm busy working my day job(s) for the rest of the week, but with the weather getting warmer (albeit yesterday's sudden snowstorm) I really want to make up my own letterbox and get it planted. I've tossed a poll up at the top of the blog. I figure I'll do that for a while, and then I'll make a new poll to narrow it down from these three broad categories. Honestly, I have no idea what direction to go in. Vote as many times as you want!

What I'm thinking is that I will do what's referred to as an "LTC" box--not only will I carve a stamp, but I'll make a limited number of ATCs to store with it, so the first few people that find it will have something a little extra-special to have. Don't know what an ATC is? Artist Trading Cards-the Wikipedia article covers it fairly well!

Just a quick update, and a question!

First, I'd like to thank everyone for the comments on the cards I posted last time! I was especially happy to see some people describe them as exactly what I was going for. I've also acquired a little statcounter from AtlastQuest to put on the main page of this blog to keep track of my finds and whatnot.

We managed to wrangle a little time here and there to snag a couple more boxes, but over the weekend had the disappointing honor of not actually finding the box we were looking for. It was posted in a public park, so it's possible the box may have been found and removed by a nonletterboxer, or that it may have been washed out of its hiding spot by the heavy rain we had Thanksgiving weekend. In either event, I still need to contact the box's owner and see if it was a matter of the thing disappearing or a matter of us just not looking hard enough.

I tried to make use of the mobile blogging I mentioned in an earlier post to share some photos of the railway bridge that was one of our landmarks, but I couldn't get it to work; it just kept giving me an invalid number sort of message. I tried it as both text and numbers (bloggr/256447) but it wouldn't go through, so I ended up emailing them to share today. Any thoughts? I use an iPhone, and Blogspot's information page says that I should still be able to post with SMS instead of MMS; I certainly didn't have any trouble registering my phone.

 

Question!

Hey! I've got a really busy weekend lined out, but I'm planning on hitting up a couple of new boxes in the coming week and decided to leave a short list here as a quick note mostly to myself. I'm also curious to see what anybody would be interested in seeing me post on. The history and etiquette of letterboxing? Maybe related hobbies like geocaching, or sharing some of my stamped ATCs and cards and talking about the techniques I use with them? I work in retail, so I'm going to be super busy over a good part of the winter and won't have as much time to get bundled up and go out hunting, so I'm trying to plan out some other posts I can do while hiding from the snow and obnoxious customers.

I'm definitely going to be plotting out planting a box, or maybe a series of boxes myself, but I haven't decided on a theme and I want to find a good hiding spot that isn't treading on somebody else's plant site. I'd like to do something with a gothic theme which shouldn't really come as a shock to anyone, but I don't want it to be a lame card-store Halloween type look. I keep picturing this skull wrapped by an elaborately patterned bow, and I'm going to kick myself when it actually comes time to carve it. I am totally open to thoughts and suggestions.