Author? Me? + Lucky Cate McNabb

16 days. That is how long it has been since I was last here, which is completely unacceptable. Of course there have been loads of thins I've been meaning to blog about including products I will be testing, sweet gifts from friends, and things I've been up to. As a blogger and a student and an artist, however, I've found it extremely hard to make time when life gets in the way - rather, make time and remember. My lack of a camera or proper phone for photos has also created a problem. To the two lovely ladies that won my giveaway: I have not forgotten and hopefully it won't be in the latter half of the 6-8 weeks that the postcards actually reach you.

Soon enough I shall be blogging about various teas that I've tested - either from smaller, independent companies or as gifts. Along with gifts you'll get to see my crystal collection which has recently been added to by some of my lovely tumblr followers over holiday. As soon as I get all the pictures together, I'll write about my time at Holi on 8 March; amazing people, amazing time, and loads of books to read and review.

Speaking of books, I've recently started a class for Creative Writing. CalArts hosts this class and every Sunday I take a train, subway, and a bus to get to Sunset where the class is held. It's quite the experience every time. We've had a few different assignments in class, none of which I actually enjoyed the results of on my part. There are a few students that have marvelous writing, like Patrick, who has quite a way with words. I've most enjoyed how he seems to write things in poetry style, instead of paragraphs. The teachers are pretty swell, too.

The most recent assignment we've had was an out of class assignment in writing a flash piece. A flash piece is a short writing which conveys a specific moment in great detail. For this, in order to make sure we were all writing about the same amount, the piece had to fit on the back of a postcard and cold not be more than 10pt font if typed. The biggest struggle, for me, was choosing a postcard that went with my piece, was meaningful, or looked nice. This arose after I became attached to the one I had bought from Stories cafe and originally planned on using - "Ready for the big Indian pow-wow" from M36.

Postmarked 28 June 1950 from Wisconsin Dells the card was sent out to a Mr. & Mrs. J Erickson in Mundelein, Illinois, the card read:

Dear Grandma + Grandpa
Having a swell time - this will probably reach you after we get home but we wanted you to know we were thinking of you. Marie - Bob + Mary Celeste

Complete with the standard card information "NATURAL COLOR POST CARD MADE IN U.S.A. BY E.C. KROPP CO.. MILWAUKEE, WIS. -- (HEY)" as well as lot or card number 23761 and a one cent postage stamp. I found it very fascinating and decided to keep it in exchange for painting on one of the many stationery postcards I had from an old 1950's or 1960's set.

Do you see my dilemma?

These are all the different postcards I could find in my house: from LACMA, from an old scrapbook, ones my aunt sent me. The second row is the one painted by myself with oil paint and the one I had originally purchased. I enjoyed this assignment so much, I'm going to share with you my writing.

Cold fingertips, cold glass. Odd how the daily routine transformed from normal to haunting in seconds flat. In an instant her face filled with stress, eyes a window to things falling apart. Slow movements made it seem as if time had stopped. Such a blank look on her face made the heartbreak evident – the drop of her fragile heart could be felt with one glance. Through the halls she moved, distressed; tears clearly blocking her vision. Pacing back and forth only caused the small room to close in tighter. An illusion. Voices; a jumbled mess actually, turned to white noise rising louder and louder. Still the ticking of the clock stood out as immensely as her pain. Such a sorrowful sound her crying was, as it had appeared that she was no longer breathing. How could it be true? An instant, unbearable heaviness descended. Her knees giving out, the flow of tears continuing soundlessly as she sank to the ground.

21 is not supposed to be a year to die, it is supposed to be the year to live.

In the middle of writing this the postman came around with a delivery from Cate McNabb cosmetics - my favourite - from the St. Paddy's competition I won. And right on time! The eye shadows came in loose gold (You're Golden) and green (Kiss Me, I'm Irish). The packaging was so lovely, complete with a sticker for me to show off my luck and Paddy's themed confetti! For now I've done little swatches on my hand (which looks oddly swollen) but will definitely be doing other photos soon. These are the perfect colours for me and my green eyes.

Oddly, the golden seems to be showing very subtley - almost not at all on the computer - when it showed so nicely whilst I was taking the photo. Anyways! Both colours are absolutely wonderful, so I'm sure the rest of the collection is too. This is part of their just-released collection which features all new containers and colours. Each product they have is high quality, so I do recommend it. What do you think?

Babely Valentines

With this week escalating into one bad event after another, blogging was put on hold for me. Being sick took it's toll and wiped any energy I had, preventing me from doing all the photos and transfers needed for a post. Flashback to last Friday - Valentine's Day.

This year I was in a very festive mood in terms of actually making Valentine cards. Instead of pining over making the perfect thing for a certain someone, I gave up hopes of having a boy this year and did Valentines for rad girls. Not store bought ones either.

With glitter glue, sequins, and tons of other cute things, I made some great cards for amazing friends and random blog followers who deserved a little extra in the good vibes department. A good portion of this little lot went to Midge Blitz over at ModernGirlBlitz. She'll be returning the love and I'll definitely post about it when I get to my next round of my mail haul, as it really built up over this week.

The final products were pretty great, I think. 

I've also chosen the winners for my art postcard giveaway: Kriselle from Livin' & Lovin' blog and an Allie who had also entered. Congratulations you guys, emails have been sent out for addresses and I can't wait to send you your cute lil' loves.

Busy week + GIVEAWAY

Above polaroid: Andrew, Wolf, myself, and Chris. 

Below polaroid: Myself with The Unlikely Candidates.

These are probably the first photos from the ballet school which my smile compliments me instead of making me look awkward. Thanks to Cece for letting me donate to her film fund in exchange for these.

Since I produced a black and white version of that photo for my Facebook cover, it ended up being printed on one of my business cards. Earlier last month my friend Kriselle posted about a mail haul that was waiting for her when she got back to campus from winter break, and she posted about a sample of business cards she ordered. (Post here.) Since I've been thinking about business cards, I decided to go ahead and order my sample since they were 100% free - shipping too. Before my order could even go to print I ran across a 50-pack of the "Facebook cards" with only a shipping charge of about 5$ and decided to order those too. The orders both arrived on Friday 31 January, one week early. Packaging is 100% recycled and reusable, which I love, and the sample 10-card set is made of eco-paper. 

A grand bit of news from this last week is that my mum finally decided to accept me being vegetarian. She bought a bunch of different things for me, which was really sweet. She even helped me to make a vegetarian pizza - though not quite "traditional." I am very proud of it because I got compliments from tons of people, including friends that find my fascination with helping animals weird sometimes. Email me for recipe details.

My week ended with a short French film festival at Le Lycee Francais LA, Theatre Raymond Kabbaz. Les Lutins de Court - Metrage showed Les Chiens Verts (The Green Dogs), Fais Croquer (Don't Be Tight), Jeunesse Francaise (French Kids), Sur la route du paradis (The Road To Paradies), and Je sense le beat qui monte en moi (Beauty and the Beat); all of which were exceptional. Then there came the art. I wanted to do some simple postcard art, and decided to host my first Rafflecopter giveaway. Below is a low quality preview of the first two that I've worked on and more information on how to enter.

Follow the instructions from Rafflecopter to gain entries. There will be three winners. First chooses which card they want, same with second, and the third winner gets the left over design. Please read the giveaway terms and conditions.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tenacious - an art gallery in the works.

Over the last two years I've had much experience; both good and bad. Some things have been extremely uplifting while others have been heartbreaking. I guess this can extend to back in 2008 when my Grandmother died, but this last two years have just been especially important.

At the end of 2012 I had become deeply inspired to do some art. There were tons of ideas around in my head and heart, but for a particular piece. Well, not particular, but I knew that I had to take the ideas and turn them into something magnificent. Everything fell through until the start of 2013. I had this image in my mind, from where I'm not quite sure, of a heart - and inside of that heart the words: you are here. So I tried to think of how to paint what I was thinking and ended up with a sloppy red heart on a square white canvas for months. Months! Eventually I'd thought of doing silhouette work. But of what? There weren't a lot of options when it came to putting my thoughts to art in a non-obvious way. So I decided on a soldier. The silhouette of a man or a woman or an alien. Just of a hero, of a fighter.

But what else? There were so many other things I wanted to add or ways I could improve it. I had the heart, I had the soldier, I had the barbed wire fence, and rifle. There was too much white, too much space, too much emptiness. So again it sat, until one day I looked at it and realised that it was everything I'd wanted it to be. But with thinking that came the sadness over the thoughts and emotion I had put into it. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't hang up this canvas like the rest in my room; it made me too sad. After much thought I decided to sell it, to find a loving home for it where it could mean something to someone. The lack of online presence made it harder for me to get the painting around to serious buyers, so it had to sit some more. 

Amidst planning the 50th anniversary for Carson High School, I had decided to sell and raffle off some of my artwork to raise money for one of their extremely underfunded academies - though needless to say no one really had an interest in the art and preferred to make purchases from the surrounding sports booths. The lovely ladies from the health centre were very enthusiastic about my pieces; each made comments about nearly every work. Ms. Garrison was especially drawn to "Tenacious", saying she'd buy it if no one else did.

Deciding to give away the painting free of charge was especially easy for me, but when I had to gather the papers to hand the work over it suddenly became hard. Not making money from it wasn't the important thing, the growing attachment was. Day after day I grew busier with classes and acting and so pushed off creating the papers. Tenacious hung as a reminder that I had to get it done, and just before winter holiday I did - or maybe it was Thanksgiving, but I can't quite remember. The day I took the painting in, she was really happy and expressed her appreciation for it along with the others in the office and that made me really happy. It would be hanging up in the office, she told me.

Now that it's been a month or so later, Ms. Garrison has told me that everyone who sees it really likes it too. The thing that really warmed my heart was to hear about how each person says it means something different to them - student, parent, faculty. Something so simple can mean so many things. Underneath all the things it meant to me, somewhere deep down I had wanted it to - I think that was my point with the silhouette style and simplicity.

So now, after having such an experience with the art process itself and getting to hear something like that about my own work, I've decided to further it. Many times I've thought about working on a potential gallery, only to fall short at "well what theme/style/pallette/etc. do I go for?" But now the answer has come to me in this simplicity. 

The next moment of free time I have is going to be dedicated to making a decorated box with a hole only big enough to drop slips of paper. The box and the paper will be decorated with block printing, very formal like, but to match the original work. Anyone who feels like it can write down what Tenacious means to them anonymously - or not, if they feel. Knowing what people think when they see it would mean the world to me, and with that I can expand and create more.

Tenacious
Bridgette Jameson
2013

Or at least I believe that's what it was given under, though it seems all the original documents have been wiped from my hard drive. It's been in my mind all day to perhaps start selling prints of this piece, though that I'll have to wait a bit for. Any questions, comments, concerns, etc. are welcome!