Years Are Like Falling From High Places...

... When you are at the beginning of your fall from something high, you have time to think about your options... But as you progress through your fall, everything starts to speed up; Your point of impact seems to rush towards you, faster and faster... and then your realize... You severely misjudged just how much time you actually had to work with.

Well the holidays are upon us, and so is sick season, and that time of year when whatever computer I have starts to act wonky.

I have been dealing with sick for the last 2 weeks. 

Last Thursday, my computer's hard drive started warning me of bad sectors... It is still under warranty, so Samsung is going to fix it, but I will be without my computer for 2 weeks.

I never could get motivated to recover the work I lost to my dog's nervousness disorder, but I have been spending a lot of time being miserable, or taking care of my daughter when she was feeling miserable.

Hopefully we are past the sick part of the year, but to be realistic, there are still two people in the house who have managed to stay healthy so far....

In the mean time. I haven't been completely useless... I have been doing some crafting that doesn't require much standing, or breathing of fumes, or the use of power tools. None of it will end up in my Etsy shop anytime soon, and it can't be considered recycled, but I did make 'em. Some of the pics are older, but they are all related...

You can check out my jointed dolls in my Flicker set...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42043690@N05/sets/72157638029738143/

I am still alive...

I know that I have been scarce for a week.

'Tis the season for every nasty sickness known to school children... and school children, unfortunately have to come home everyday, even during this season... And you get in trouble if you don't send them to school to catch the damn diseases. It's a lose/ lose situation.

The even more terrible reality- Kids get over crap faster than parents. So, both of my kids suffer for 2 days, and BAM! They're all good.

Me? I think I may or may not be fighting it off and winning for 2 days, and BAM! I am down for the count... Then the count down finishes, and then it rewinds, and then it counts down again.

My face hurts. My ears are crying, I know that all that liquid draining from them is tears. I don't think I would miss my nose if I cut it off, I haven't been able to use it for four days.

In other news...
My dog has effectively made my "Dear God In Heaven, How Are You Even Still Alive!?" shit list.

He has severe separation anxiety when he is in the house alone. He destroys stuff if left to his own devices. It doesn't even help if you give him something that is OK for him to destroy like rawhide, or stuffed animals... He won't touch it while I am gone. He goes for the stuff I really like! In the past he has destroyed a brand new $70 comforter, my daughter's mattress, my son's sheets and curtains, a bedroom door, accent pillows...

 I left to go to the store Monday (20 minute trip), and he got into my finished craft projects and destroyed several of the ornaments I had spent hours making (so you guys won't get to see them, and I am now very behind in what I was going to put up in my Etsy store next). I was pretty annoyed, but the stuff only cost me time, no real amount of money, and that was awesome considering his past record. I thought we were making progress.

I had to leave the house yesterday, so I put him in his kennel. I had to be gone for 2 hours, and I didn't want a repeat of Monday. Well, I didn't get a repeat of Monday. When we got home (the husband was with me), we found that he had tore up the bottom of his kennel, he had pulled the metal frame and twisted it up, and continued to dig at my brand new linoleum floor... He didn't just tear up the linoleum under his kennel. He proceeded to drag his kennel all through the kitchen to demolish the entire job.

I cried!... I still cry when I walk in there.

...It wasn't even 3 months ago that I , all by myself, gutted my kitchen, laid brand new linoleum wall-to-wall, and replaced the cabinetry (did I say all by myself? Becasue I DID do it all by myself), painted, and effectively remodeled that entire end of the house...

I was so happy with my kitchen... I actually spent time in there!... I was beginning to be proud of my tiny little house. It actually looked updated and cool... It fit my personality...

Now my kitchen reminds me of a movie set where the bad guys make drugs in abandoned slum neighborhoods. Maybe I should submit pics to Hollywood and see if anyone wants to pay me to turn my kitchen into a movie set.

Well, I took a tally of the total amount of money the dog has cost me, and coming in at nearly $2500, NOT factoring in the cost of food since we got him (we got him in March and he has turned out to be a decent sized dog )... We can't afford to keep him. Especially since neither my husband, nor me, can find a 9 to 5 at the moment.

So I have my hands full... Much more than I had before yesterday morning.

I have been busy, but I haven't done much with Etsy. I check it everyday, just on the off chance I might have an order. I don't expect it yet, as I haven't fine-tuned anything that has to do with my SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I also have began some listings, but I haven't activated them yet, because I want to be able to monitor them after I do. It is easier to keep track of which ones people are liking when the new listings are in the spotlight, and that gives me ideas on where I should focus on in the future.

Expect to see stuff by tomorrow evening. I hope to get some more ornaments done and listed, plus some new suncatchers, I may even have a couple PET bottle projects as well.

Later.

It Seems I Have Survived My Day So Far.

I have made it all day, without a nap, running on 3 hours sleep. Not something I was ever designed for, to be certain, but apparently I can do it. Be proud of me.

I have actually managed to separate myself from my keyboard and monitor long enough to do things. I won't say what those things are right now, because then you might expect to see proof of said things, and I am not playing that game right now.

No. I am not grouchy... I am just out of energy.

I have decided that I need to post at least 5 items tonight before I reward myself with sleep. I also need to sketch out a couple drafts for some reclaimed wood projects, but I haven't decided if that needs to be done tonight, or if it can wait until the morning.

I have a lot of rough-hewn wood that needs new purpose, and I need to use it before the ice makes it here, which means I have roughly 3-ish weeks if my approximations are correct. Maybe you will be seeing some larger stuff on my Etsy sooner than I originally thought.

I have also been considering harder, the option of making "how-to" videos for the things I make. I have already had a couple people tell me not to do it. The main reason being that everyone would be trying to cash in on the things I came up with... but I am not worried about that.

People are going to figure it out anyways, sooner or later.

Besides, my creativity knows no bounds... except for 24 hour days... and the fact that I have so many ideas, that I can't remember them all... and that I sleep between ideas...

Ok. So there are bounds... But I will never run out of ideas.

As I see it though, the beauty of art is this...

Whatever I make will always be what I made. There will always be that part of me put into it. Whoever copies me, has been inspired by me, and thus, their inspiration is still part me...

Not to mention...

The items I have in my shop were made with the intention of breathing new life into old items that would otherwise be sent to a landfill somewhere. If I can inspire other people to rescue and reuse items destined for the trash, should I really be that concerned with being stingy with my ideas... Ideas, I might add, that were inspired by existing ideas... Sure, I haven't seen CD suncatchers like mine, but there were already versions of CD suncatchers that helped me evolve an idea into what it is now.

... And if I can evolve an idea from other people, then other people can surely evolve an idea from me, and that to me is AWESOME!

Why stunt evolution for stinginess? Besides, not everyone is motivated or talented to be crafty. There are enough people out there who would much rather pay now and have an instant gratification, than invest various forms of their own DNA into making something for themselves. There will always be customers.

Put simply...  I want to inspire other people... I want my ideas to procreate... (and I will stop there before I get to that weird part of my head)

If you would like to see how I do stuff, give me a heads-up on what you are most interested in, and remember there is more to come.
You can contact me in the comments here.
You can post on the Facebook page- https://www.facebook.com/AssortedDiversions
You can also Twitter me- https://twitter.com/AssortedDiv

I Think I Might Need Intervention Already!

So, I stayed up until 3 this morning tweaking my listings, gathering feedback, and trying to tie up loose ends I overlooked before opening a storefront...

Ok.

That was only a small fraction of what I was doing.

I stayed up until 3 this morning refreshing my store stats page to see if I had gotten a view since the last sentence I typed...

I woke up at 6:20 to get my kids ready for school, but as I passed through the living room, my finger shot out and hit the power button on my computer before I even knew what was happening.

I don't remember much about this morning, but I know my kids aren't here, and I vaguely remember the watching the kids get on the bus before letting my dog out to do his business...

Apparently, I let him back in at some point, because he is laying right behind me, as usual, waiting for me to trip over him when I get up. I think he hates me, but disguises it by acting all devoted and stuff. He always follows me wherever I go, staring at me... cocking his eyebrow and tilting his head to one side like he is wondering if his last scheme just might work; Yeah, it just might... Really, it's behavior I would expect more from a cat. It seems more menacing from such a larger animal.

I found myself in front of the computer with all the normal tabs open, plus one new one this morning... My Etsy Store Stat page. I had 3 item favorites, and one store favorite. It made me happier than it should. They aren't sales, but people I don't know looked at my stuff, and it made me feel good inside.

Now, I keep trying to peel myself away from the computer. Mostly because I really need a little more sleep...
.... Ahhh...
... but my "If I go back to sleep I need to wake up before 9" alarm just went off, and I now realize, I put the kids on the bus a lot longer ago than I thought!... Well, today, I am plugging through on 3 hours of sleep.

I have more items to list, so I really probably need to move away from the computer, but even as I type this blog entry, I have been flipping over to my stat page to see if I have had any new activity. I am hoping that as the novelty of having my own shop wears off, I will find it easier to peel myself away from watching it so obsessively.

Maybe I am just really tired, and am subconsciously looking for reasons to keep doing nothing productive.
Stay tuned...

Grand Opening! or at least 'Grand-ish'

I FINALLY opened my Etsy Storefront!

I know. After 2 weeks of saying I was going to do it, I don't really have the right to brag. Don't judge me!

... And, Yes, I know 10 items aren't much for a "Grand Opening", but they are epic items.

I have more guitar string jewelry, suncatchers, and some other miscellany almost ready to list as well, but I wanted to spread it out through the week. 

In the near future, I will be working on converting PET bottles into useful items, making aluminum can into pretty things, and tuning glass bottles into, well, not bottles...

In the near future after that, I plan on doing stuff with beaver wood... 

Yeah... 

Try not to think anything dirty after hearing that one... 

...and if you were actually succeeding in keeping your mind innocent... Well... You aren't now. 

I also have ideas for some larger items, but I have some footwork to do in regards to shipping costs and methods. At the moment, my main focus is getting a fully stocked storefront, exciting big stuff will have to wait a little bit, and let the awesome little stuff that fits in envelopes have their day.

Piano Benches Are like Treasure Chests!

You can find all kinds of amazing forgotten things in piano benches!

I mean, you really don't think of a piano bench as being anything more than a place to rest your rump. That is what a piano bench is.

BUT...

Did you know that they open? ... I always forget. Except when I am changing guitar strings, because that is where I keep my winder, and where I stash my old strings.

Sometimes, I am not sure when or how, my piano bench swallows an odd but wonderfully curious item here or there. On the exceptionally rare occasion that I actually look and see what is in my bench, it is like my birthday, Christmas, and Election Day all in one! I am finding new and exciting stuff with an occasional handout to someone else. Everyone has to come in an check the ongoing results before returning to their previous activity.

Well, I was looking for new distractions today, and while I was doing so, my guitar caught my eye. I picked it up and strummed a few chords, realized that my stings are quite dull, set my guitar down, and then had an AH-HA moment... I have years worth of old guitar strings in my piano bench! I should DO something with them!

My guitar strings are very much like my CDs in the fact that there is something about them that I find... well... to put it simply... I find them hoardable. Their captivating quality isn't as readily apparent as CDs. They don't reflect rainbows, in fact, they are quite dull and tarnished. Although they are quite circular when I have the coiled, they are rather tangled and kinky when I uncoil them... Maybe it is the shiny brass bead on the end, I do like the bead on the end...

I don't know why I love them, but I love them enough to keep 15 years' worth of them, tightly coiled, in sets, in my piano bench, for 15 years.

Anyways, back to my AH-HA moment... I have a lot of guitar strings... and I didn't know what to do with them. I decided I would figure something out.

I used to coil them up and wear them as fashion accessories as a teenager. They also looked cool coiled around my rear-view mirror... I was thinking about that when I got to what was under my coiled strings... I happened to find a few old macrame projects that I had been experimenting with long ago when I got it in my head it was a good idea to make my own guitar strap.

... I also found an old dragon pendant, some old sound track tapes that I used to use when I sang specials in church, a pair of sunglasses, a golf ball, a couple Hot Wheels, a Glade plug-in (that is useless because they don't sell those scented cartridges anymore), some old chapstick (that was no longer chapstick), a bag of foreign coins, and some other miscellany.

After enjoying the Hotwheels for a couple minutes, and then memorizing the last time I would ever smell Glade Rainshower scent (which didn't smell quite like I remembered), I returned to my strings and macrame...

And then the other part of my AH-HA moment, when I thought, HEY! Macrame is made with strings!... Guitar strings are made of ... WIRE... which is like strings because they are long, and thin, and stuff...

And so, now I am making cool decorative knots with my guitar string. I also made some coiled rings and bracelets. My fingers are sore, but I am pretty proud of myself.

I now have a couple types of upcycled items to list on Etsy, if I can just do it.

I can be such a slacker sometimes!

I didn't get anything up on Etsy yet... 

I keep thinking of ways to make what I have better! I think I am done improving my first items. 

So I have this collection of outdated/unusable/unwanted CDs. I think CDs are pretty, and I always had issue with throwing them away on that merit alone. Really though. Who in America doesn't have an overabundance of useless stuff? So, my solution is, "Make it Usable Again". YAY! 

The quandary is "How?"... I looked online and found all kinds of stuff I could do. 

People are covering them with fabric and make coasters- but that just effectively eliminated the whole reason I couldn't bring myself to throw the CD out in the first place. The entire awesomeness of a CD's visual appearance is the rainbowy, shiny, holographic, prism effect!

There was this awesome disco ball idea I wanted to try SO BAD... But then I realized, there are only two people in the world who thinks that is a cool enough idea to actually own and hang in a house would be me and the person who actually did that and posted a picture of it online (maybe 3 if you read this and say "I would SO DO THAT!").

There is also this thing that people do that includes a tuna can, a CD, an oven, and a tea light, but I don't think my small house could handle the smell. Melting CDs are noxious.

There are people breaking up CDs and using them to make jewelry, but I want to do something that hasn't been done yet. It was important to me to do something different, for a few reasons. Jewelry is everywhere anyways. 

I like the idea of sun-catchers made of CDs. It really captures the reason we hypnotize ourselves with all of the pretty colors in the first place... But hanging naked CDs in trees or windows seems a little lazy to me. I needed to find a way to make mine different.

TA DAAA!

Upcycled/repurposed CD suncatchers.

 

I still have to settle on a price per piece. 

They take a couple hours a piece to make, but I am hoping that as I make more, I can cut the time down. It is pretty time consuming when I am engraving designs onto every available centimeter of space on one though. Inking them can be time consuming too. Amazingly, the less design engraved on a CD the more time it takes to get the ink to do what I want it to. So between engraving and inking, each one takes about the same amount of time when all is said and done.

I have 4 more left to ink, then I need to back them and string them with some pretty glass beaded strings. I will be done with that tonight. I don't know when I will have them listed. I suppose that will be when I decide upon a conscionable price.

I guess that's it for now. 

Today's Check in...

I had a productive day, but still no posted pics.

I went and got some crafting tools and supplies that should help me out. There are 4 projects that I had going that needed one thing or another, and now I have what I need to get all 4 of those projects done. The shopping was an all day event, and I went to help a friend out this evening.

My Etsy will have its first listing by the end of the weekend though, because I can finally finish something for real.

There is Progress! I Swear!

You just aren't allowed to see it yet...

Aren't you glad you aren't subscribed yet? Well, you should be subscribed if you are seeing this already, because you can say you were there before the beginning. LOL

I have pictures, I am still learning the best way to manage my pics across my different platforms and sites. I had a glitch with my Flickr, and I got sidetracked with actual making of stuff today. My phone, my camera, and my photo sharing capabilities are not all on the same page.... But I make kick ass stuff sometimes, so I did what made me feel good.

I did say pics were my weak spot...

Feeling Somewhat Accomplished!

I have-

Opened an Etsy Storefront:
https://www.etsy.com/your/shops/AssortedDiversions/preview

Started a Twitter Account:
https://twitter.com/AssortedDiv

Made a Pinterest Board:
http://www.pinterest.com/heathermeadows7/assorted-diversions/

Created a Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/AssortedDiversions?ref=hl

Have a Tumblr:
http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

...AND...

I have this blog. Not that you are looking at it yet, but it IS here.

Today, I plan on taking lots of pictures, and tonight, I plan on posting those pictures to all of my sites. Pictures are my weak spot, but it's time for me to change that. Wish me luck!

The First Step is the Hardest...

... But the next few can be just as intimidating...

I have decided to attempt to get all of my balls rolling at once, which means establishing my Etsy shop, starting a companion blog for it, getting my social networks in line, and updating my many accounts and syncing them up. Wish me luck with my organizational efforts.

So this post is really just my opener. It will help me figure out my layout, look, and help me find my way back. If you actually have the pleasure of checking this out in the next few days, don't expect it to stay looking like this.