From Beyond The Grave Comes A New Blog Post!

It's been forever but I've been really busy. I'll share some of the things I've been doing at work and maybe something else that I've written in the next couple of days.

"Why am I back on here?" you ask. Yesterday I listened to the messages on the home phone and there was a message from a publishing company. I thought at first the person said Random House and I almost fainted. Then we listened to it a few more times and they actually said Author's House Which is a totally different company all together. Author's House is a self publishing company and I think they were just fishing for someone else to spend money on them. I really don't want to self publish.

I really to actually have a manuscript before I consider shopping it around versus self publishing. That's why I got back on here. I haven't actually touched a computer (other than at work) in months. I've been writing in spirals and notebooks but nothing typed up and official looking. I got on here because I need to have a book good enough so that I can confidently turn down an offer from a self publisher.


For the work projects I promised. I have been doing some pretty fun stuff recently like making a Chinese dragon, an alligator and a train. 

One of the first construction projects that I did after starting at Central Market was for the cheese event that was going on. Someone came up and wanted an enormous cheese wheel and I said, sure, I can do that.

So I made these two delicious looking cheese wheels. This was also right when I started learning how to hand letter. That was actually what took the longest on these, the words. The images took me around an hour each.

The red gouda wheel is about 3.5-4  feet tall and the French brie is only two feet. I really love the picture on the brie and they kept this cheese up even after the event.

For Christmas they tied a bow on it...

Now the biggest and newest thing that I learned to do at work is chalkboards!

I know they are all the rage on Pinterest and shit but I didn't care about that when I applied for the job. I just knew there was no way something that bored and moderately crafty stay-at-home-moms could do that I couldn't.

So the first few days I spent getting my ass handed to me while I failed at making chalkboards. I was especially bad at the fonts. So I spent about two days perfecting my co-worker's writing by obsessively writing the alphabet and then sentences in her personal font in all different sizes. I looked like a serial killer but now I can just whip out her writing style. I am still not near as good as she is but I can fake it pretty well.

These pics are the first boards that did all by myself. The pie pumpkins chalkboard I did when we had a lot of free time and I was trying out how to use the chalk makers to blend and draw in my usual style. This happened. I obviously concentrated very hard on the lady and not so much on the pumpkin. Even though I really should have been working on the pumpkin because I'm going to have more need to draw vegetables than ladies at a grocery store.

But now I also know how to blend and shade like a beast! I didn't tell anyone but the other art dept. members how long that board took (only around three hours) and I think we were listening to a program about Easter Island... Looking at the chalkboard makes me think of the Easter Island heads so that's probably what I was listening to.

I did that a lot in college, listening or watching tv while painting, to where I could tell you what was happening when I was painting certain areas. "That top corner with those clouds was when they were crossing the mountain and trying to avoid detection by the dragon riders..."

Well, I'm tired of this post and I can talk about the rest of the stuff I've been doing later.

Peace

KB