Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in hearts and laserbeams' LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
8:21 pm	new garden pics and... uh... we got chickens!!! ok so some major updates in our backyard: our carrots got harvested last weekend! they definitely could have stayed in the ground longer, but we figured they wouldn't get much longer since our planters are so shallow. so we'll save carrots for another time (or big deep pots next year!), but these little guys were totally tasty! and our sugar snap peas have started kickin out some peas - they're so freaking good! it's kinda crazy how tall these plants have gotten. we're thinkin about planting some more so we can have peas to share with friends or freeze or something like that. but the biggest news in our backyard last weekend was... WE TOTALLY GOT CHICKENS! the one on the left is martha stewart. an easter egger type chicken, she'll in theory lay eggs that are blue, green, pink or brown. it's a good thing. the one on the right is paula deen - they said she was a silkie but we're not so sure, we're thinking she may be a hybrid of some kind. and yes. we named em that because they're the dirtiest birds around! if we'd gotten a third it woulda been named oprah. they're old enough to be laying eggs, but nothing yet. we read they'll most likely start molting because of the new home and then start again when they're done molting, so we'll see what happens! they're super cute, we've let em run around the backyard and they are crazy wily when it comes to trying to get em back in the coop! check out the full flickr set here, including pics of the sweet chicken coop josh's uncle donnie helped us build! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
10:00 pm	fight for your right to carbs! josh decided the other day he was going to start making ribbons out of spaghetti noodles to sell on etsy - to raise carb awareness! (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
9:50 am	concert fun and internetty news! ok so last week josh and i went to see the killers play at the hollywood bowl, and it uberrocked!!! i didn't realize until like a day before the show that the psychedelic furs were opening for them, and i was like uhhh that's cool. because it makes me wanna rummage through thrift store racks for pink things to shove in jenn's face while singing (badly) "PRETTYYYYY IN PIIIIIINNNNNNNK". i didn't realize at the time how amazing this one-two punch of musicness was gonna be!! so we pretty much had the perfect concert experience - we drove up to hollywood early afternoon, got there before rush hour traffic had even begun. checked into the best western that's like 2 blocks from the bowl, and moseyed down to the hollywood/highland complex. it really kinda cracks me up how this place is billed as so hip and trendy and the oscars are held there, but really... it's just a fancy mall. i'm not exaggerating. it's a mall. there's a hot topic. steps away from where they hold the oscar. it just cracks me up. we were lucky! we were there the same day hot topic was having a q&a about that new jennifer's body movie, and i guess panic at the disco was gonna play. i didn't so much care about that, we were just there to gawk at celebs. so we hung out directly behind the sound booth, listening to them talk shit about everybody was awesome. and on the second level you could see celebs getting their pics snapped and doing interviews. saw adam brody from the oc, megan fox and diablo cody. i don't know about you but i wanna party with diablo cody. she reminds me of my girl liz. i bet she rocks the karaoke stage! anyhow, i found out after the fact that my old pal ed killmond from scad was there and thought he recognized me, and that is super awesome even though we didn't get a chance to say hi. hi, ed! after we hung out there a bit, walked back to the hotel and packed up our snacks for the concert. i LOVE that you can bring your own snacks to the h-wood bowl. we brought enough for 20 people, but it was just me and josh... we may have overpacked. for certain shows you can't bring your own booze, and i declare shenanigans! the show was AWESOME. every song psychedelic furs played i was all "i know this song! i know this song!" it was like sitting and listening to a john hughes movie soundtrack. and then they didn't play pretty in pink. and their set was over. and i was like "WHAT THE HELL!!!" josh and i started figuring maybe they were one of those bands that was so sick of that song, maybe they refuse to play it these days. but then the killers started, and their sound is SO psychedelic furs, i started thinking. omg that's gonna be the encore. they're gonna do pretty in pink with the furs. and they did. and it was AMAZING. seriously, the killers rock my socks off and almost every song has this nostalgic quality about it, every song is so awesome. i heart them hooray! once the show was over, instead of having to deal with crappy parking lot traffic we just had a short 2 block walk to the hotel and that was it. bliss. the hotel thing, it made all the difference. a while back i saw the police at dodger stadium with my sis danielle and some friends, and we were in the parking lot for like an hour and a half after the show. so that's my recap - in other news, hearts and laserbeams was offline for a couple of days due to hacky shenanigans. it's back online and all fixed now, so thank goodness for that! i have to seriously thank raina from the queen's men for getting rid of all the hacker shenanigans, and bluehost for helping me get my hosting account unsuspended. y'all are the best! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 14th, 2009
10:54 pm	iiiiii've haaaaaaaaaad the tiiiiiiime of my liiiiiiiiife all right dude by now it's old news, but patrick swayze passed away today. i'm really sad about it - that guy made both the best and the worst movies ever and now you gotta sit there and listen to me talk about it! number one, like most preteen girls in the 80s i LOVED the dirty dancing movie. had the soundtrack, had the second soundtrack, saw the movie about 8 billion times between the ages of 10 and 32. (lemme share with you that in the back of my head, i always thought it was kinda weird that johnny and baby hooked up because it was like the gabrielle carteris thing in 90210 - i could not get past the fact that swayze looked way older than the early 20s or so character he was playing) yeah, i liked ghost all right when it came out. (SAM WHEAT!!!) but for me, it was all about coming out - one of my fave swayze movies ever was to wong foo, thanks for everything, julie newmar. PURE COMEDY GOLD. no wait, what's better - patrick swayze as a drag queen or patrick swayze doing chippendales dancing with chris farley(r.i.p.) ?!? crap. this may take some thinking. while i still haven't seen point break or roadhouse all the way through, i did get to see a chunk of roadhouse once a couple of years ago, and one of the best lines ever is "you're too stupid to have a good time". also, a couple of years ago the huzzz and his brother introduced me to the classic red dawn. that shit is intense and fully awesome so you should probably rent it. rumor has it they're working on a remake. rumor also has it they suck. so back to swayze! true story, a couple of halloweens ago josh and i went out to south carolina to see our savannah friends for halloween, and when we got there our buddy trav had carefully placed a huge dirty dancing poster on our bed, complete with fake autograph from johnny castle himself saying "thanks for the great time at kellermans this year! i truly was the time of my life". i think it was shortly after that, that josh and i found his older than dirt typewriter. we started writing random silly letters to the savannah kids. i don't know who got our patrick swayze letter, but it started as a fan letter to patrick swayze, and then slowly devolved into creepy fanness, and then joking anger that he may have pushed jerry orbach (r.i.p.) down the stairs. and i think it was the last line of the letter where we wrote "i hate you johnny castle". which we later made into a shirt design that we sold via hearts and laserbeams for a long while. also, one year for our anniversary i spent about 10 seconds photoshopping (badly) josh and i's faces onto the dirty dancing poster. that's not all the reasons i love johnny castle, patrick swayze, vida boheme, the whole kit n kaboodle, but it's a lot of em. and that's all the reasons i'm wishin i had a watermelon to carry in mourning. WOLVERRRRRIIIIIIINESSSSS!!!!! (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 6th, 2009
6:29 pm	stop that car! i saw this car on the drive home last week; why is it that anytime i see amazing airbrushed artwork on the road there's no way i can get a decent picture? this one was elvis - the other two airbrushed treasures i've seen were a scene of the last supper and a montage of pics of selena with her name in a fabulously scripty font! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
10:50 pm	gardening with the calverts: month 1 ok so about a month ago, josh and i started a little veggie patch in our backyard using the book square foot gardening by mel bartholemew as a guide for our gardening shenanigans. here's what it looked like when we first built the planter and got the dirt and seeds into it: and here's what it looks like now: (these are just the radishes - check out everything else by clickin' the pic!) josh and i had a tiny balcony garden for like 2 years before this, and expanding the operation now that we have a little more space has been so fun! we're both pretty effing amazed at how crazy some of this stuff is growing; in theory soon we'll have watermelons, peas, pumpkins, corn, radishes, chives, tomatoes, carrots... i think it all kind of depends on the weather - we started all this pretty late in the summer but the growing season in california's longer, so who knows! (we got to eat a few spinach leaves the other night, so freakin delicious!) we also started a compost bin in the backyard, which both of us are a little unsure of - mostly because neither one of us has done that before, so there's a whole lot of "uhhh are we doing this right?" goin' on... we put this little vinyl fence up for like 60 bucks to hide the composting experiment: (if you click to see the larger version of this pic in flickr, and you look at the telephone wires, you can see some of the zillions of birds waiting for me to go inside so they can get back to the bird feeder...) so we'll see how that goes! we added worms to the bin tonight... the gal that we bought em from basically made us smell worm poo, she says to prove that it smells like dirt, but i think it was so she could tell her friends later she got people to smell worm poo. i feel like i need to get a better handle on timing out what we're planting... what are good fall/winter veggies? anyone got any hot tips for what to plant and when in southern california? (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
7:43 pm	hearts and laserbeams book report: ya yas in bloom by rebecca wells ok it has been AGES. sorry about that folks. the only thing that's been constant lately is change, and lots of it - transitioning into having a full-time job again and still keep hearts and laserbeams alive has been a trick and a half but i'm workin it out and it's all startin to mesh, which is awesome. plus i'm bloggin 3 times a week over at oc weekly now, did i tell you that? if ya click here, you can read all the gettin' made posts i've written thus far. and if you check out the one about twisted handmade and comment on it before midnight friday night you could win a set of courtney chesley's awesome telephone-wire bracelets! so anyhow, i may have been missin from this blog but i haven't been neglecting my book reports, here's one i've been putting off for weeks! i've had my copy of ya-yas in bloom for a couple of years now and finally got a chance to read it! hearts and laserbeams book report: ya yas in bloom by rebecca wells ok did you read the divine secrets of the ya ya sisterhood? did you see the movie at least? both effing awesome. ya yas in bloom was like those designer imposters at rite aid - did you like ya ya sisterhood? you'll love ya yas in bloom! the same, but a little cheaper. like it was a fun girly summer read, and i LOVE the characters and getting to enjoy more of their adventures and shenanigans... but like most sequels, this one was a little weak. ummmmm i was gonna write more but there's 2 problems. number one, i finished reading this book like weeks ago and should've written about it when it was fresh in my mind. number two, there wasn't a whole lot of substance or anything heavy to report. some crazy southern gals get together have lots of drinks and madcap mayhem results. so uh, sorry this is so short but that's pretty much it... let's get to the ratings! hearts: 3 hearts - these ya ya books are so much fun to read y'all; they make me wanna move to the south immediately! farts: 2 farts - there was so little thinking going on while i read these that i kinda missed my dense high-school reading list books that usually have to come with a cliff notes for me to get through em. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
9:38 pm	as seen on oc weekly! ok i was doing really well on posting for a little bit and then i fell off the wagon... life has been crazy! part of the excitement is i've become a brand new blog contributer for the oc weekly! so if you get frustrated with coming here and not seeing freshness to read, you should make sure to check out the gettin' made feature on oc weekly. there's a tag to click on, even, to make it super easy! AND - if you check out the inaugural post soon you can enter to win a free hearts and laserbeams print! good luck folks! OH DUDE! ALSO! renegade craft fair is this weekend! you better get there and come visit us or else! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
7:07 pm	brand new paintings! today was such a fun day! i spent a bunch of time working on five new 3" x 3" paintings for the upcoming arthouse coop canvas project group show. the goal for the project was to create a sort of visual encyclopedia - each participating artist gets five random words to paint and that is that! here's the words i was assigned: "carcinogen" 3" x 3" acrylic on canvas "cotton" 3" x 3" acrylic on canvas "equator" 3" x 3" acrylic on canvas "larynx" 3" x 3" acrylic on canvas "zebra" 3" x 3" acrylic on canvas it was so nice out today i set up a folding table in the backyard and did my painting out there, and the group of three little birds that are always visiting our bird feeder kept me company all morning! i also spent a ton of time yesterday and today working on new screenprinting screens, i'll share the finished products with ya soon! (wanna be the first kid on your block with a brand new hearts and laserbeams grocery tote? better get your ass to renegade craft fair on july 11 and 12!) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
8:23 pm	rosettes for everyone and say, what kind of tree is that? ok so today i was planning on making ice cream for the first time ever! got all my supplies together to make a delicious cherry garcia style ice cream, spent a good long while cutting and pitting cherries, cooked em up in the sugar water, went to read next steps and the instructions on the ice cream maker and whaaaaaaaaaaaaa? you have to freeze part of if first? denied!!! so i decided to make rosettes with josh instead! if you click on the picture, you'll go to the entire photo set on flickr... and if you click on the below picture you can watch a video of how the batter flowers once it hits the hot oil! once the rosettes are done you just sprinkle em with a little powdered sugar and enjoy! they're an old-timey scandinavian dessert, a little funnelcakey, a little donutty, a lot deliciousy! also, for you sleuths and plant experts out there - we have this tree in our backyard and have no idea what it is. any thoughts? it's got serrated leaves and a pit in the middle of the small fruit. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 20th, 2009
11:03 am	winner! pow! three cheers to julie, who won my copy of "into the wild"! i'm really jazzed to go to our buddy melissa and her boy dan's wedding today; it should be a blasty! and i have to share that josh and i saw year one last night and uh... it wasn't all that great... but it did remind me that i still haven't seen the wolverine movie and omg i need to get caught up! still workin on gettin a few things under control here at the house, i think tomorrow's gonna be a lot of unpacking and organizing... maybe it'll be time to tackle the garage! listen... i have to go. i have to sheepishly admit i'm all hopped up on coffee and i can't really hold down a coherent thought to write right now. BUZZZZZZZZZZ! i made the coffee quite a bit too strong this morning. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
7:21 am	hearts and laserbeams book report: into the wild by jon krakauer ok so this last weekend josh, brittanie and i went to minnesota for my brother justin and his girl ashley's wedding - we get to the airport and talking to my sister brittanie, she had a sexy vampire book while i had nothin' to read at all and this aggression will not stand! while josh usually sleeps through flights or listens to tunes and movies on his ipod, i like takin those big long chunks o time as an opportunity to do some reading, cuz honestly there's just not enough time for stuff like that. so off to the airport bookstore i go - and i saw into the wild on one of the tables. i always wanted to see the movie, but never quite got around to it. and i like readin' the books before i see the movie of the book, cuz i like seeing the contrast between what i play in my head while i'm reading and then what they actually do with the film when it's brought to life. so there you go! read on to the end (or just scroll down to the bottom of this post if you're in a hurry) and find out how to get your hands on my copy of into the wild, complete with a little note from me to you and a hearts and laserbeams doodle on the inside cover! hearts and laserbeams book report: into the wild by jon krakauer ok lemme share with you the premise of this true story is really super appealing to me. if you didn't know and haven't seen the movie, this book is a journalist's telling of how a kid named chris mccandless graduated from college, then gave away all his money, packed up a few possessions, and ran off to see america for 2 years. his adventure culminated in one final big hurrah when he went to alaska for a few months to live completely off the land, and he died after like 112 days or something in the alaskan wilderness. the part i love about this idea is just picking up and going. camping, livin' off the land, gettin the hell outta southern california and seeing real places that don't kinda kill my soul. i can't wait to move to georgia someday where we're in a more rural setting and have the option to grow most of our food and fish at our own place and just be left the hell alone. that being said, i should wanna hang out with this chris mccandless dude. but i totally don't. number one, he died over 10 years ago and i'm sure he's pretty smelly by now. number b, with all due respect to all the cool things he did do and see over his 2plus years of adventuring across the u.s., he really comes across as a bit of an arrogant douchebag. just the way he changes his name to alexander supertramp, for example... love the name supertramp, but if you're actually a for reals hobo, and you give yourself the name supertramp, that pretty much means you're king of the tramps and you should probably be smarter than thinking you can just prance off into the alaskan wilderness with not enough gear and not enough experience to actually make that happen successfully. there's lots of letters and excerpts from postcards chris wrote in this book, along with highlighted passages from books that he had with him when his body was found, and all of those just kind of add to the man this kid was kinda a jerk feeling i got while reading it. ok awesome you like reading old books about nature, but don't get all i'm better than you about it and don't demand that other people live your hobo life or else they're stupid. i'm a very live and let live type, and when people shove their own beliefs or way of life down my throat it's a huge turnoff. the end of one letter to a friend of his was written juuuust before he went up to alaska. it ended with a sentence that was something to the effect of "i now walk into the wild". and at this point, i put down my book and told brittanie and josh that this dude annoys me just as much, if not more, than emo kids. so yeah... i don't know if we would've been friends if we met. but his personality aside, wow. WOW. who wouldn't want to just walk away from the 9 to 5 and just drive away, and hike everywhere and canoe at the beach and just live life every day without worrying about when the next rent payment's due? i kinda can't wait to rent the movie and see how this all plays out. did they use the actual bus that supertramp was found in? that would creep my shit out. i was totally into how well this book was written - even though i wanted to punch the hobo in the face i was still totally riveted to the story and i honestly can't say that about many nonfiction books. total page-turner. until you get to the end. then you pretty much stop turning pages. ratings hearts: 4 hearts - really solid good book, would definitely recommend it to my friends even though i generally hate non-fiction. farts: 1 fart - i really spent most of that book wanting to punch the kid in the face. and also, probably he should've taken something a little stronger than a .22 into the wild for the purposes of obtaining dinner. so on to the giveaway! What would your hobo name be if you were to pull a chris mccandless and leave town to live a hobo life on the road exploring? mine would be The Venerable Hobo McTootPants. leave a comment tellin me your chosen hobo name, and i'll pick a name at random from all entries received before midnight friday june 19th. the winner gets my copy of this book! (Comment on this)
Friday, June 12th, 2009
10:36 pm	hearts and laserbeams book report: born standing up by steve martin i don't know if you know this, but there's a gem of a website out there called goldstar that sells discount tickets to all kinds of shows. you can sign up for their email newsletter and get periodic updates on what cheap tickets are available in your area, and it's awesome the stuff it has available sometimes! their newsletter is how we came to see steve martin play the banjo. apparently steve martin's been playing the banjo since he was like 17 - i saw a tiny clip on tv years ago of him pickin' and grinnin', and i have to tell you it was magic. so when i saw $15 tickets to see steve martin play the banjo i told josh immediately if i don't go to this show i will die. so it turns out that this concert's a fundraiser for the los angeles public library - and i'll tell you what, there are some major differences when a concert is put on for the library. number one, before the show there's people reading. number two, the opening acts are folks in suits talking about the library. the show itself was freaking amazing. the first chunk of it was dave barry interviewing steve martin about his banjo playing, and then the second part was steve martin playing a bunch of songs off his new cd called the crow. if you dig bluegrass music like i dig bluegrass music, even if you don't dig bluegrass music you should give it a listen cuz the shit is GOOD!! and since it was a benefit for the library when we picked up our tix at will call we were also given a free copy of his latest book, born standing up, which leads us to: hearts and laserbeams book report: born standing up by steve martin i have to tell you i've always been a huge steve martin fan. one of my fave movies as a kid was roxanne, the song "king tut" will stay with me forever, one of my fave books is pure drivel, and i can even forgive the movie where he's got a dozen kids or whatever it was. (cheaper by the dozen? that sounds about right.) is that gonna bias this book report? probably. i get really nostalgic when i see steve martin movies, like kinda fuzzy-hearted and if it's a really good one like my blue heaven or planes, trains and automobiles, i may even get a tiny bit weepy. i heart steve martin because he has always just felt really genuine and real to me, like he's not playing a bit. like if you met him in real life, he'd be exactly the way he is on stage, in movies, whatever. i am convinced if josh and i met steve martin in real life, not in any kind of fan/celebrity sort of way, we'd be friends. this genuine realness totally comes through in born standing up. it's a memoir about steve martin's time doing standup comedy, from the time he was working at disneyland starting to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, through his development as a standup comedian, including lots of chunks about his family and how that helped shape his future. while it exposes the painful parts of his past, it doesn't exploit it. he lays it out for you without throwing anyone under the bus and i really respect that. it's not a tell-all, it's a tell-some. and the way steve martin writes is the way he talks. so as you're reading the book, it's not really like you're reading at all. it's like he's sitting right there in the lunchroom with you just chatting with you about his life and his comedy while you eat your stouffers macaroni and beef microwavey lunch goodness. i remember i saw steve martin on the jon stewart show a while back, and he was asked at what point did he know he was big. he tells this story about how at one show, at the end of the show, he took the entire audience outside and there was an empty swimming pool there. so he told everyone to get in the pool. and then he swam over them, crowd surfing style, doing the crawl. and the excitement he gets on his face when he's telling this story - you can see it when you're reading about it in the book; you can totally tell this is one of his favorite memories. the end of the book came full circle - it started with him giving some background on how his family started him down this road, and it closes with thoughts on making peace with his past. and it kinda made me tear up quite a lot, guys. good good stuff. anyways, i can't give away my copy of this book because i loved it too much and i'll probably read it again soon, but stay tuned - i'll be doing a giveaway of another good book i read recently, into the wild, soon soon soon! in case you didn't guess, here's how born standing up rates: ratings hearts: 5 hearts - you're gonna be hard-pressed to get me to say anything bad about steve martin, sorry charlie! (except uh... please no more cheaper by the dozen sequels) farts: 0 farts - yeah sorry see above... except for cheaper by the dozen you got nothin' on this guy the end! (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
7:18 pm	my long beach tech support heroes! ok so about a week ago, mysteriousness was afoot on my laptop. i'm not sure what the eff happened with my norton antivirus, but all of a sudden it started freaking out and repeatedly asking me to activate my account (which i've had for at least 2 years). so i got online with norton tech support and through the wonders of remote desktop magic or voodoo or something they were able to uninstall and reinstall my copy of norton antivirus. so it seemed like things were awesome. and then my laptop decided it wanted an immediate divorce from the internet. no trial separation, just straight get the fuck out my house. as someone who does quite a lot of freelancing over the internets, it was like putting me in stephen king's misery house and hobbling the shit outta my operation... the process became do work on my computer that has all my files, save the stuff to show the clients onto a usb flash drive, take that to the huzz's computer, email the files that way, and if a client sent something to me reverse the process. basically i was about to jump outta the window. or worse have my wallet raped by the best buy geek squad. so today i did some searching on craigslist trying to see if there was someone that looked reputable enough to trust the goods with. and while i did see a couple of ads that could possibly be legit people that don't wanna steal from me... i still couldn't get behind the idea of handing my laptop over to a stranger for at least a day, expecting to get it back with no hassles (if i could get it back at all!) i decided that for once i should have some standards, look for ratings, reviews, whatever. and that is how i found quickfix. they were the only guys i saw on google maps that had 11 ratings that all seemed pretty positive, so i gave em a call. (while crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.) and without bringing my computer in or charging me, they tried a bunch of things with me over the phone to try and get this thing to work. and when none of that did and we had thoroughly discussed how my computer got to the point, they said ok i think you're gonna need to bring it in. and as i drove to 3397 east 19th street in signal hill, i racked my brain as to how long i could possibly work without my computer. and what dollar amount was i willing to spend to get this issue fixed? turns out neither of those extremes happened. i walked in, they were super helpful, fixed it on the spot in the span of about 15 minutes, and charged me 25 bucks. TWENTYFIVE BUCKS. and they also threw in some pointers about things i could do to make my computer run a little better, AND installed avira virus protection freeware after making sure all the little nasty bits of norton antivirus that had kinda put me in this position were gone. long story short, I HEART QUICKFIX. and i wholeheartedly recommend em, and if my computer effs up again that's where i'll go. the end! (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
2:41 pm	hearts and laserbeams book report: the jungle by upton sinclair ok so i figured i'd do another high school reading list selection this time, and i went to the barnes and noble classics section at uh... my local barnes and noble to see if anything caught my eye and dragged me fifteen feet. ended up walkin out with the jungle - wasn't sure i'd wanna read it, cuz from what i knew about it, there's some pretty graphic nasty talk about how our meat used to be handled back in the day. but then i read how this book was a milestone in american history, and that because of this book the pure food and drug act was passed. so i thought i'd give it a go - make sure you read to the end to see how to get my copy of the jungle and the cliff notes for it for free so you can read it for yourself! hearts and laserbeams book report: the jungle by upton sinclair dude did you ever see the snl skits about debbie downer? like there's a big group of happy people hanging out and they're talking about cool stuff and then debbie downer pipes up with some shit like "I'll tell you what the Pilgrims did bring: smallpox." seriously, that's what this whole book is. it's a big fat huge debbie downer. it pretty much made me wanna kill myself in a lot of parts. (not really. but it DID make me want to drink) so basically the jungle is not all about the meatpacking industry - that's a tiny part of it that really only takes up a couple chapters of the 400 pages. the overall story is there's this poor lithuanian family who comes to america in the early 1900s to make a better life for themselves. and they get crapped on over and over and over and over and over. by the end of the book, a couple of em are dead, one of em's run off and abandoned the family, the kids are all effed up, one of the family's a morphine-addicted ho, the list goes ON AND ON. you just keep reading about how crappy everything is, how everything's a swindle, everyone's out to rip everyone else off, everything's a lie,and holy crap guys this book was super depressing. cuz we are jerks!!! and then i got to the last few chapters of the book and had lots and lots and lots of problems finishing the book because it was all politics. you know how i am about politics - SNORE!!! i honestly couldn't really tell you much about it except for the fact that the main dude jurgis finds out about socialism and it solves all his problems the end! say it with me now - WHAAAAAAAAAAAA??? so as i'm reading the cliff notes on this thing, it turns out the jungle is only partly about the meat-packing district and all the bad tuberculosis infested meat being churned out back in the day. the entire book is about how capitalism stinks, and how it fucks up everyone that isn't top dog and how it's all corrupt, and how awesome socialism is. and upton sinclair was a socialist! and he ran for governor in california as a socialist a couple of times! WHAT THE EFF!!! how come i never heard about this part of the book? (if i'd have known it was all about politics i would've just rolled over and taken a nap instead) apparently when the book came out mr sinclair the social socialist was pretty upset because the whole socialist slant of the book was lost in the OMG WHAT THE EFF ARE THEY DOING OVER THERE IN THE MEATPACKING PLANTS!!! so basically, here's the book in one sentence: the jungle isn't so much about bad meat as it is about bad politics. it's pretty riveting though, and until i got to the last 3 chapters that were all about socialism it was pretty much a page turner! ratings: hearts: 3 hearts - this wasn't my favorite book to read, it was pretty depressing and the last 3 chapters could be lovingly called "boring as all hell" farts: 2 farts - it was actually pretty good, didn't so much like reading about diseased meat and REALLY didn't like reading about politics. and there you have it! wanna check out the jungle for yourself? i'm givin away my copy along with the cliff notes to the first person to comment about this blog post! be quick, though - i post my blog on 5 different sites so the first one from any of them wins! (Comment on this)
9:44 am	winner winner chicken dinner! thanks to the awesomeness of random.org, the winners for the screenprinted tee and greeting card giveaway have been picked! congrats to kb of kokoleo for winning an awesome tee, and to dao for winning a greeting card! there's gonna be lots more giveaways in the coming weeks so stay tuned! (i may have a quickie one coming up later today even for you book lovers out there!) (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
11:23 pm	the voodoo that yudu so well - part 2: all the screens that are fit to print and A CONTEST! now that we've covered how to burn screens with the yudu, i'm gonna share my experiences today in printing a big ol pile of shirts for an order i'm putting together for shopscad in savannah, georgia! there's a lot of info to cover, but if you can hold on til the end i'll tell ya about a fun giveaway we're gonna do! first up you start with a big ol pile of shirts and a few fabulously burned screens! you'll wanna iron your shirts before printing on em so there's no weird wrinkles in the design, fyi be advised! first of you'll need to prepare the screen by taping off all the areas you don't want ink to get through. i use ordinary 3m blue painters tape for masking off stuff because it's not super sticky and comes off really clean when you need to take the tape off. also, notice that i burn more than one image onto a screen - thisll save you a ton of money in the long run - figure a yudu screen is 25 bucks - if you put 4 designs onto 2 screens you've effectively saved yourself 50 bucks! such a smart shopper! you can use vellum, plastic, acetate, or heavy paper to block off designs you don't want to be part of your current printing. i use vellum. so if you wanna be awesome... uh... use vellum? i would also totally recommend springing for yudu's better squeegee. it just feels better with printing. i'm willing to bet if you already do screenprinting you've got a squeegee you like and i'll be honest with you that shit will work. it won't make the yudu blowup! so relax! money saving tip: i think the yudu means well with their platens you can buy a bunch of and adhesive sheets, but for my one-color printing uses i find it kind of unnecessary. i left the protective sheet on top of the platen's adhesive and i don't put the platen inside the tee when i print. rather, i put a piece of cardboard inside the tee and set it on the platen and print away. here's some info on lining up your images: see that dark shape behind the "i pushed" text? i put a piece of tape on the platen to mark where the top of the artwork is. then i jot down on the tape the measurement info on what points i want the tee to line up to to have proper placement. if you're only doing one color stuff, the registration isn't super important at all - if you're planning on doing more than one color, definitely look into the yudu's registration sheets and whatnot... get your bead of ink across the top of the design and get to printin! it's a good idea to test print a couple of times on paper beforehand to make sure everything's gonna go to plan... money saving tip: you'll need to put ink at the top of the design again with almost every pulling of the print - if you look at your squeegee you've probably got a lot of excess on there that you can scrape off with a popsicle stick and put across the top of the design instead of using another bead of ink from the bottle! and POW! before you know it, you're done printing your first tee! and POW POW!!! before you know it, you're done printing a whole mess of tees! one of the things i love about the yudu is it really really helps me production-time-wise. printing tons of shirts used to take forever, but i did 60 tees in 6 hours today! that includes printing, stamping a logo inside at the neck and heat setting each tee individually. you really can't beat that! i ran into a tiny problem with another screen of mine - the transparency was too high up on the emulsion when i exposed the screen, and part of the apostrophe got cut off! no worries though, i busted out a tiny paintbrush and the yudu's screen blocking stuff and fixed it right up! i will tell you i think i may try speedball brand's screenblocking fluid in the future, because the yudu's seemed to wash out when i cleaned the screen later... if you have a larger tee design, it may be good to put a bead of ink across the top of the art, and then another bead of ink across the middle just in case! potential problem alert! ok i did find one thing with the yudu that was giving me some issues this morning. it seems like some screens don't wanna stay on their pegs and they shift slightly. you don't believe me? here's proof! it's really not a huge deal for me because i do all one-color desigsn for now. BUT - i kept getting subtle double fingers from my neil diamond screen! maybe it's too close to the edge of the emulsion? i dunno! printing these neil diamond tees i can now tell you the 2oz bottle you receive with your yudu machine will be enough for about 16 large graphics. if you're using it for tiny graphics you'll get more for the money... but what would be even better for the money is using a different brand of screenprinting inks... i kept reading everywhere that you are really only supposed to use yudu brand inks with this system. but they're so flipping expensive! i started thinking about how i've always used speedball fabric screenprinting inks, and how they're water soluabe just like the yudu inks... and then this happened: and i felt like i should probably give it a try and report back! and survey says DING DING DING! the tees i did with speedball ink turned out just as good AND rinsed out of the screen just fine at the end! hooray! ok so if you're using more than one design on a screen, how do you line up the bottom image when you wanna print it? i do the same thing as with the top graphic - i put a piece of tape to mark the top of the artwork - and then i measure out where i want the shirt to line up in comparison with that top of the artwork. make sure this piece of tape is long enough so you can se it on the side of your tee when you're placing it on top of the platen! here's my classic steph's screenprinting pose! if you press your left arm down on the end of the screen and really lean into your print as you're pulling the squeegee across you'll get a nice amount of pressure and a crisp clear print. i like to pull my squeegee across twice so it's nice and dark! check it out! i effing love this glue gun design and i've been wanting to burn a screen of this for ages - if you like it make sure you read to the end of this novel-length post for info on an awesome giveaway! once i did one of those glue gun tees, i wanted to print that graphic on EVERYTHING! i'm not one for texty tees so i put tape over the words on the back of the screen and slapped that design on one of my sweatshirts! and then i went for the yoga mat! but due to the texture of the mat and the thin quality of the speedball ink i used, the design came out really smudged on the yoga mat. i recommend on highly textured non-clothes stuff it may be better to use the yudu inks cuz they're a lot thicker. and all that smudging went up on the back of the screen, too - something i didn't think about until i tried screenprinting a pillowcase with the glue gun design... (i still kinda like it though!) and THEN i put it on a tee using the yudu gold metallic ink! i don't know if speedball has a shiny gold and silver fabric ink but if they don't the yudu brand is totally worth it! and THEN i made some of these notecards! i think they'd be fun invitations if you're planning a crafty party night a your house - or if you're in a craft mafia chapter (like me!) and you're inviting new members to join they'd also be super cute! and THEN i screenprinted my dog! i think it turned out pretty good, check it out: and that about does it for my adventures with the yudu today! it's time to talk CONTEST! first place gets the kelly green "get made" tshirt pictured in this blog post - i only have one available right now in an american apparel unisex size small, so if you don't wear that size and you win you can maybe give it to a friend or bake it into a pie! second place gets a turquoise "get made" greeting card! just so i can keep everything in one place you can find out how to enter at the end of this blog post on my own website at http://www.heartsandlaserbeams.com - good luck! 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Saturday, May 9th, 2009
7:15 pm	the voodoo that yudu so well: part 1 - how i learned to stop worrying and love the yudu ok i'm really bummed that i JUST found my camera that's been missing for a week or more - i wanted to photodocument getting to know my yudu better! it was gonna be perfect... photos of us taking long walks on the beach, romantic candlelit dinners, canoodling at the movies - but instead you get just boring old stupid words! except sometimes my words have been known to be at least a little entertaining. but still. the plans i had for the pictures. ugh. i'm buildig a bridge and getting over it! so as i mentioned before, my superawesome amazing faboo rad honkytonk husband josh surprised me (us, we're sharing it, i keep forgetting that!) with one of those spanky new fancy yudu machines a couple of weeks ago! and i was so busy getting ready for Unique LA and workin on freelance projects on top of freelance projects that i juuuuuust got to crack that baby open last night! i have to tell you that i've done the regular way of screenprinting before, and i was a tiny bit skeptical the first time i saw a yudu. it's by the same people that brought you the cricut, which is great for scrapbookers but not so much for people that wanna make their own die cut designs... i don't wanna be rude but my first impression was i kinda thought that it would be a very lowest common denominator type thing that would make low quality stuff for folks who just don't wanna be bothered with learning how to really screenprint. then i saw the yudu display at michaels, and started reading labels and kinda learning more about it, and had to tell josh very sheepishly "uh hey i know when you mentioned it i said it was dumb, but, uh, i kind of really super want a yudu. like really bad. so uh... sorry, and my birthday's coming up in july hint hint"... and he ended up buying it early thank god! so far i am a total screenprinting convert and i'll tell you why: 1) shit on the yudu is all the same steps as traditional screenprinting but easier (once you get the hang of it). there's still emulsion and darkroom scenarios, but it's less time consuming! 2)if you mess up on burning a screen, it doesn't take a crapload of work and scrubbing to reclaim your screen - it takes like a minute. in your kitchen sink. while you hum to yourself. i have old-school wood frame screenprinting screens that haven't turned out right (from like YEARS ago) that i still haven't reclaimed because it's a huge pain in the ass! 3) as far as i can tell so far, the quality of the actual screens and supplies isn't inferior to old-school screenprinting. they say don't use any other inks but yudu inks, but i did find a website that tested using riso inks (like for the gocco) on the yudu screens and it worked fine. and they're cheaper. i'll be testing using the speedball fabric screenprinting ink i normally use in the future, will letcha know how that goes! if you've never seen a yudu before totally check out the demo from handmade detroit, it's a good one! so here's how burning the screens for the first time worked out for me: i burned some screens after watching the demo video and following yudu's specific directions and none of those screens turned out right. i reclaimed the same screen like 3 or 4 times. and then i got tired. later i came back to it, tried a few different things, and EVERY screen came out effing perfect. so without further ado, here's my tutorial tips on how to prepare the perfect yudu screenprinting screen for exposing! 1) mood lighting: keep your lights dim the entire time so you don't forget what you're doing and ruin your emulsion sheet! i wrecked one by going into the kitchen to get something and flipping on a light - FAIL! 2)wet it and forget it: forget about the "dont get the screen too wet" part of yudu's instructions. i ran my screen under the kitchen faucet from the front and reverse side. then i wipe off the extra drippy water from the metal screen edges. 3)lay it on me sistahpants! so now (IN YOUR DIMLY LIT ROOM!!! NO DIRECT LIGHTING!) take your emulsion sheet and peel the plastic sheet off the side that comes off easy - then put it sticky side down on the back of your screen (the flat side), being careful to center it as you lay it down. (can't tell which is the sticky side? lick your finger and touch a corner, you'll figure it out real quick!) run your squeegee down it lengthwise, and then widthwise making sure to press out all the air bubbles. then comes my special trick to make sure it's wet enough - holding it in your hand, look at the screen from the opposite side. lightly lightly spray that other side a couple of times with a water bottle, and run your squeegee once lengthwise along the screen. (from that side you just sprayed). at this point, the green emulsion should look really even on both sides. if you've got any areas that look splotchy (they call it spiderwebby) you're not going to have a good end result. it should look really good and clean and even after doing my special trick. if not, try misting it again from that reverse side. note: if your emulsion looks effed up before you dry it and expose it, you will end up with a bad screen. best to try again with a fresh sheet instead of going through the whole process to find out later it didn't turn out how you wanted it. also note: drying time for my techniques is significantly longer than following yudu's instructions to the letter, but the results have been great every time. also also note: your mom called and told me you're out of the family. sorry! so the rest of it is business as usual following yudu's instructons: 4)dry that shit! after your emulsion looks lovely, put that screen in the drying rack and run the fan on it! using my method with more wetness involved, i think i averaged three to four 20-minute dry cycles before the screen was dry enough for exposing. you'll know when it's dry enough when it looks really even (and not wet at all) on both sides. test it by picking the plastic backing off the emulsion in a corner and peeling a tiny bit of it off. if it comes off really easy you're done! if it doesn't DON'T FORCE IT! put that thing back in the dryer and let it dry! 5) picture perfect pictures! ok one thing i tried from my old-school screenprinting techniques is i ran outta yudu transparencies, so i used vellum instead to print my image on. and i don't know if it was because that was a screen i did at like 2am and i think i messed up a bunch of things or what, but the vellum did NOT work at all. so don't do it! i do really like the yudu brand transparencies - they have a little bit of a tooth to em, so the images don't get all smeary when they come outta my inkjet printer. from that point on i did pretty much everything to yudu's specifications - exposed the image for 9 minutes instead of 8 cuz i like to go the extra mile just to be sure, rinsed out the screen with cold water, and every one i've done since i started following these techniques has come out AWESOME. oh wait one more thing. when you're done burning your screen and you've rinsed the unexposed green gunk out, i don't think it's necessary to use the yudu's fan for drying it. if you've got the time just blot off the excess water and set it up against a wall for a bit to dry. if you don't got the time hairdryer that shit! another exciting thing i wanna share about the yudu is that i have a graphic i designed like 4 years ago that i've tried burning to screens the old fashioned way like 4 or 5 times with zero success because the line work was a little fine and frankly i'm not the best screen-burner in town. but following the above techniques i was FINALLLY able to get a clean burn of that image onto the screen and i am really effing excited about that! because it's pure comedy and it makes me chuckle! so anyways, that's it for tonight - i'll be testing out the printing tomorrow, and like i said i found my camera so expect to see pics of the screens i burned and the printing process! pow! 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Friday, April 17th, 2009
7:52 pm	I'M BLOGGING!!!! omg lol wtf!!! ok i have been all but m.i.a. on the internets for like 3 weeks, popping in long enough to check emails and take care of a couple of worky things here and there, and of course to play my turns on facebook scrabble and twitter like a mofo. (in keeping with that mofo comment, tonight i went to the twittergrader website where they gave me a 99.3% (which i believe is a solid A, and means i get to stay up late tonight AND have ice cream for dinner!). and if you scroll down there's what they call a "tweet cloud" which is just made up of the words you twitter the most or most recently or something. i was laughing my ass off because number one it is very apparent that i'm a bit of a swearer and also a TON of my twitters are directed at jenn aka @swirlogirl. oh shit i had a open parenthesis there. better close it. ) there. i feel better. ok so here's all kinds of updates on what i've been up to! number one, i started a temporary freelance gig onsite for 3 months down in mission viejo. this means wearing pants to work is actually a requirement for now, until this summer when i'm work from homegirl again. it's been good! i've been getting really solid in my indesign skillzzzz and that's been nice. the people are cool and the drive isn't as bad as i thought it'd be, and i feel fortunate that this particular gig came along because freelancing has been terrible slow lately. so there's that - i also recently discovered the massive importance of having more than one method of backing up your work on the computer. especially if everything you do is on the computer. a couple of weeks ago, i was working late on some tee designs, and my dog comes walking up only wanting to say hi... but in the process he got tangled up in the power cords for my laptop and external hard drive and pretty much threw my external hd on the ground. rendering it useless. josh took the hard drive in to work so some of the computery guys there could try and recover all my files - they're trying a few more things before we have to send it to an actual data recovery place that's gonna cost buku bucks to get my stuff off of the drive... this is basically all my artwork that i've done over the past year and a half or so. and loads of photos. and hi-res scans of paintings that i've since sold. basically everything i've ever done. i'm still kind of freaking out about it, but i've had the past two weeks to calm the eff down so i'll just share that if all the art is gone i'll start fresh and make more art, and that you could learn from my mistake and back things up 2 or 3 times. going forward i'll be saving everything to dvds and uploading to an online backup service. this will never happen to me again - i hope it never happens to you, either! there has been good news - number one, i got featured on a blog! you can check it out here, she asked me a bunch of questions all interview style! also, our dog has lost weight! it was only 3 or 4 pounds, but when the dog weighs 47 and drops to 43 that's losing almost 10% of his weight! i won't say he was tubby, but boy was getting tubby. jimmy's been discovering the joys of full-speed sprints chasing birds at huntington beach dog beach, and it's really been helping. i've been trying to help him drop the extra weight for MONTHS and nothing's worked! what else, what else... if you're not doing anything tomorrow hearts and laserbeams will be at the de portola boutique in mission viejo! mention you heard about it on my blog when you visit my table and get $5 off your $25 dollar purchase! i'm working my way through the jungle by upton sinclair for an upcoming hearts and laserbeams book report and that shit is DEPRESSING. are there any highschool reading list books from back in the day that aren't about people getting screwed over or dying? honestly, i wanna know if there's such a thing as an american classic novel that falls in the humor genre. and shakespeare doesn't count because even his comedies are tragedies. THE END!!! ps if you can think of a funny high school reading book i will send you a free bookmark! first responder only, cuz listen up i don't have a ton of stamps! (Comment on this)
Monday, March 30th, 2009
6:35 pm	hearts and laserbeams book report: derby girl i got this book for valentines day from the huzzzzz - what can i say the boy knows me! for those of you that don't know, josh and i manned a hearts and laserbeams booth in the vendor area of a couple of l.a. derby dolls matches last year. then we went with some friends to see a multi-game roller derby extravaganza put on by the oc rollergirls last march, and when we actully saw a match we were hooked. hooked may not be the word. but full-on obessessed may be a little strong... anyways, moral of the story is we had to stop getting booths at the derby dolls games because all we want to do is watch. and drink beer. roller derby is the fucking bomb! derby girl is a novel written by shauna cross, who used to skate for the l.a. derby dolls under the name maggie mayhem. according to the inside cover of this book, she "is obsessed with flea markets, the art of the perfect cd mix (even though cds are so over), and pretending she still lives in her hometown of austin texas." i would also like to add to this that she likes long romantic walks on the beach and candlelit dinners from mcdonalds but i don't actually know her so i'm not for reals adding that at all. according to my extensive research (i.e. josh mentioned he thought this might be the case and then i double checked imdb which never lies), this book is where the story for the upcoming roller derby movie whip it came from, with the screenplay also written by shauna cross! hearts and laserbeams book report: derby girl by shauna cross ok i got through this book in one day because i couldn't stop reading it - which is a stark contrast to the ambrose bierce travesty (check out yesterday's book report)! if you're looking for a superfun read this is it - it's kinda a bit like reading a teen girl's diary, and no chapter is longer than like 3 or 4 pages. love love LOVE the cover. i know that's got zero pull in the merits of reading a book, but dammit i'm an artist so that shit matters. the cover's got a cool pulp art kind of feel and i totally dig it. don't read this book trying to learn the rules of roller derby cuz it's not that kind of book. i can't quite put my finger on what it reminds me of - maybe juno a tiny bit but not really... ghost worldy maybe! just very much a book about a misfit teen who's rebelling against a mom who's trying to make her a beauty pagaent winner and all the madcap mayhem that results. i can't wait for the movie of this book to come out dammit! and no i'm not giving away this book cuz number one it's about roller derby and number two it was a gift from the huzzz! but the next book i will, i swear! i think i'm gonna start passing on the books i report on so someone else can have a read... ratings hearts: 4 hearts - i totally had a blast reading this book! it's really fun to do more lighthearted books in between the high school reading list type stuff i've been getting into lately, and this was a much-needed break! i will probably read this again sometime! farts: 1 fart - as a roller derby fan it was kinda confusing to see l.a. teams and players referenced in this book set in texas mixed in with other teams from other places and it kinda left me scratching my head at times. but really, that's the only complaint! pow! super fun, super fluffy, no cliff notes needed, read 40 pages of it in the morning and came back to (Comment on this)