the hearts and laserbeams blog!

we feel fine book winner...

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:18:00 +0000

three cheers to the winner of our we feel fine book giveaway, mr. brian sikorski of wonderful time photography! it seems random.org wanted to see his flaming middle finger just as much as we did, and brian was nice enough to oblige with a photo!

still bummed you didn't win? it's ok, you can still order a copy!

free shipping shopping event this weekend!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:32:00 +0000

you know heart and laserbeams always ships for free - this weekend my unique women in business group is gettin' in on the free shipping action with our first etsy team event! we're super stoked about it and hope you are, too!

both etsy shops and independent businesses are having sales. qualifying items for each shop vary, so check out each individual shop for their promotion. (as always, all hearts and laserbeams items will be shipping for free.)

most of the etsy shops participating will have a shop announcement: Unique Women in Business Etsy Team will be having a FREE SHIPPING event starting Friday, January 22 thru Monday, January 25. Search on UWIBTEAMFS to find all shops/items participating.

Here is the thread for more info, and to see who is participating: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6395648

To immediately start searching, click here.

*****

indie businesses not on etsy that are participating include:

Glitzy Events - Use coupon code UWIBFREESHIP at check-out on our website

The Angel Company - Rita Wetzel, Independent Demonstrator - Send email to Rita at stamp2stamp2@yahoo.com with a list of item numbers, description, quantity. Rita will email you order total. Payment via PayPal or Credit Card.

Charms~N~Things - coupon code FSJAN2010

Painted Laydies Mineral Makeup - Everything ships free all the time. No code needed.

Naughty and Nice Lingerie - Shipping is always free within the US! Fast, free shipping, dollar rewards and free gifts with certain purchases! Check out my store for more details or email sales@naughtyandnicelingerie.com. Ask me how to get an additional 10% off your purchase!!

*****

Please help us spread the word by blogging, Facebooking, or tweeting about this event.

You can learn more about UWIB by checking out the yahoo group.

behind the artwork: the fruit and nuts series

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:44:00 +0000

in light of our recent feature on regretsy, i'd love to share exactly where that strange little fruit and nuts series of paintings came from. step in the way back machine with us, back to 2004!

ah, 2004 - what a good year. i had been laid off from oshkosh bgosh, was homeless on my sister's couch in garden grove for a while, met the future husband... and started getting into art shows.

the very first art show i did was a group show at chango coffee house in echo park. it was a simple piece called "apple takes a stroll". a little 5" x 5" acrylic painting featuring a super happy apple with stick arms and legs walkin through a park.

after the show, my good friend angela bought the painting and made the comment "this is so cute - i really wanna see apple in a knife fight with robert downey, jr!" it was like a burst of comic genius that really got my wheels turning. coincidentally, that same week i had bought a trashy tabloid mag. i was flipping through it, and... well...

i didn't see any good pictures of robert downey, jr. but i DID see a great picture of will ferrell.

that just started an avalanche of wackiness. i flipped through a bunch of tabloid magazines, found some great celeb faces, and collaged them into twelve new paintings featuring that original Apple character along with his friends Orange, Peach, Grapes and more. They were quirky and fun, and within a year every one of the original paintings sold. The most exciting sale came at a Pasedena craft show, where the customer informed me that she worked with courtney cox-arquette on the show dirt, and the next week's filming was going to be directed by david arquette. so she bought the painting as a gift for them!

i ran into that same customer at another craft show a year later - she gave me a great update on my little painting, that the cox-arquette family loved the painting, and that their daughter coco smiled and laughed whenever she saw it. another satisfied customer!

etsy's shown some love for this series, too! they featured the martha piece in a storque post, and also commissioned me to create two new pieces in that stick figurey style to hang outside their conference room doors this past november.

and that's the story! they're a little strange, they're a little nutty, but they're a whole lot of fun and i love em - i hope you do too!

lyrics in review - "tik tok" by kesha

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:23:00 +0000

ok look i've started listening to 97.1 on the way to work in the mornings (and again on the way home) because there's lots of happy dancey stuff playing that puts me in a good mood.

there's one song i've been hearing a lot of recently, and i gotta say there's lyrics in it that trouble me. and spell disaster for today's youth. i'm talking about "tik tok" by kesha. it strikes horror in my very soul.

this is the scariest part of the song:

"Ain�t got a care in world, but got plenty of beer
Ain�t got no money in my pocket, but I�m already here
Now, the dudes are lining up cause they hear we got swagger
But we kick �em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger"

ok what?!?! you don't want the boys unless they look like this?

(photo from the daily mail)

i mean, if you're into old crusty rockers that's totally fine, but wouldn't you rather keep them boys that look more like this?

(photo found on the jase knows music blog)

i guess bowie doesnt' really rhyme with swagger, so i'd like to humbly suggest changing the lyrics to:

"Now, the dudes are lining up cause they hear we got blowie
But we kick �em to the curb unless they look like Dave Bowie"

Game, set, match, WIN!

*****
click here to read the full song's lyrics.

hearts and laserbeams on tv! WHAT!!?!?!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:10:00 +0000

as you may or may not know, if you're ever in georgia you can pop into shopScad (in both savannah and atlanta!) and pick up hearts and laserbeams gifties in person.

amy from shopscad shared a video on facebook today of a news bit that was filmed in the atlanta shopscad, and i am alllll over it! how exciting! as you watch it, keep an eye out for our plate designs, glue gun tee, and in the background of one shot you can see our tiny magnet set tins!

click here to watch the video.

friday morning commute playlist...

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:46:00 +0000

ok so admittedly the ipod brought up stinkers i passed over this morning on the way to work, but it DID come up with some really good stuff! if you haven't heard some of these songs you should download em stat!

"triple track" by dance hall crashers

"a kiss is not a contract" by flight of the conchords

"faithfully" by journey

"rang dang" by bloodhound gang

"opposites attract" by paula abdul (this is awesome, family guy completely altered this song for me. now when i sing along and get to the chorus instead of singing "cuz opposites attract" i sing "cuz i'm dressed like a cat".)

"gett off" by prince

"all my rowdy friends have settled down" by hank willams jr. (i started cracking up bad when this song came up directly after "gett off"... cuz that one's a song about one night stands and whatnot... and this one's about how none of the dude's friends go out and party anymore.)

"the new you" by the vandals

"coming clean" by green day (that dookie cd will always hold a special place in my heart... it marked me at 17 just starting to listen to kroq and more rock and punk and blah blah blah. i still love dookie. shut up.)

"uptown girl" by me first and the gimmie gimmies (ok check it out, billy joel came up earlier in the mix but i forwarded past it because it was too sleepy. then the me first and the gimmie gimmies comes on and i'm all YEAHHHHHH BILLY JOEL! KICKASS!!)

"waiting" by cake (cake is awesome awesome rainy day music. if it's pouring when i head home i'm just gonna set the ipod to shuffle through all my cake cds and it's gonna rock my socks off)

the end!

we feel fine book giveaway!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:35:00 +0000

ok real quick cuz i gots to go make dinner -

the folks at we feel fine were kind enough to bestow on me a second free copy of the "we feel fine: an almanac of human emotion" book so that i might do a giveaway for all the rest of y'alls - and giveaway time is here! my second copy came in the mail today. whut whut!!!

SO! here's the rules:

1) i got in the book after the folks at we feel fine found a lovely blog post i had written featuring my middle finger. so to enter the contest, leave a comment here telling us something middle-finger related. it could be about the time you accidentally flipped off your aunt mildred, it could be about the time you did it on purpose. but in celebration of my middle finger picture, your comment MUST share something about middle fingers! maybe you know of a cool piece of middle finger art on the internets? share it and automatically be entered to win!

2) comment as many times as you wish, but one entry per person will be counted.

3) contest closes at midnight on sunday, december 13, at which point i'll use the website random.org to pick the winner!

the winner gets a free hardbound copy of "we feel fine: an almanac of human emotion", and if you like i'll autograph my middle finger on page 82 for ya!

get commenting people, i can't wait to read your middle finger stories!

beware the white t-shirt ambush!!!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:06:00 +0000

so last week, josh got new white t-shirts. and he wasn't quite sure what to do with the old ones yet, like did he want to save em as rags or whatever, so he made a little pile of them on the bedroom floor.

they stayed there for a few days, and then i asked him about it - he mentioned "yeah, i'm not sure what i'm doing with that yet." and i can't tell you what the starting point was, but shortly thereafter we were in a huge snowball-fight style tshirt throwing frenzy! TSHIRTS EVERYWHERE!!!

since then, it's become a source of comedy and careful planning. on sunday, as i was leaving for patchwork at 7:45am and saying goodbye to josh, he snuggled down deeper under the covers and gloated a little about how nice and warm it was in bed.

and he got a faceful of shirts! he told me later "you know, i didn't do anything with those shirts when you left, they just stayed piled around my face cuz it made bed that much cozier."

curses, foiled again!

a favorite ambush is hiding around a corner with an armful of white tshirts, waiting for the other person to walk through the door - WHITE TSHIRTS!!!

last night, josh was getting his new work phone set up and i took his concentration as a golden opportunity for shenanigans:

this morning i woke up to being covered up, coroner style, in white tshirts.

i love my life.

we feel fine book update!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:52:00 +0000

OMG guys! so in case you didn't know, a photo i posted on this very blog is getting published in the upcoming book "we feel fine: an almanac of human emotion".

you can read the whole story about how this happened by clicking here!

and you can read the original blog post they found my photo in here.

you can check out the preview of the book by clicking here, and can preorder a copy here.

i'm just a chock full of superexcited links! hooray!!!

hot air balloons and rocks

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:27:00 +0000

i've been thinkin a lot lately about hot air balloons and rocks, and how we all get to choose which one we are.

which one are you?

when bad stuff happens, do you deal with it, rise above it and move on, or sink into the depths and let it ruin everything from that point forward?

i try as much as i can to be a hot air balloon.

it's funny that i've been thinking about this a lot lately, and then on the drive in to work this morning i heard on npr that a movie's been made of push by sapphire. they named the movie precious, so be on the lookout.

i read push about 10 years ago, i'm not sure how i found it - i think it just looked like a badass book cover, which is how i tend to end up reading any of the books i don't previously know about. it's a semi-autobiographical story along the lines of i know why the caged bird sings - a story about an illiterate teen in new york from a seriously effed up family and all of the horrible aspects of her life. and how she eventually overcame it.

like a hot air balloon.

it is not the feel-good story of the year for sure, but it spoke volumes to me when i read it. i am really glad it got made into a movie, mostly because i'm not sure how many people know about the book and it's one of my favorite reads ever.

this was a bit of a serious post. tune in tomorrow, when we talk about the best way to sneak swear words into your graphic design projects!

hearts and laserbeams book report: confessions of a shopaholic

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0000

ok i picked this book up at the las vegas airport on the way home from... vegas! shocking! gayle and i went out there last summer for a few days and had a blasty - when we were heading home there were big chunks of time on the horizon and i had left omnivore's dilemma in my suitcase instead of throwing it in my purse.

honestly i picked this one because i knew it'd be an easy read, something i could read for a few hours on the way home and then put on a shelf until i'd finished omnivore, the kind of book where you could pick right back up where you left off like a month or two later and not feel lost because everything about reading it is just so easy. plus, i hadn't seen the movie yet and i always dig reading the book before seeing the movie. and with that, i give you:

hearts and laserbeams book report: confessions of a shopaholic by sophie kinsella

ok I LOVED THIS BOOK. super fun read, super fast read, and before you know it you're done reading! the main character rebecca is just so flighty and lighthearted, just la la la la la shop shop shop hooray!

but the weirdest thing started happening as i was reading this - while i was having the time of my life reading about her shoppy adventures, as a chick who's pretty non-shoppy and has lots of living paycheck to paycheck experience, this shopaholic girl was seriously stressing me out!! i'd be reading about her going deeper and deeper into debt, and throwing away late notices and my inner old-lady monologue would scream things like, "YOU'RE RUINING YOUR CREDIT RATING!"

which is a completely uncharacteristically absurd thing for me to think while reading anything. but seriously, girl was freaking me out. other things my brain screamed while i was having a grand ol' time reading this book:

omg you did not just lie on your resume and say you're fluent in finnish!! they're gonna check that!

omg you're poor why are you buying coffee at a coffee house every day! make that shit at home!

omg you did not just do that on your date what is your major malfunction!

omg no you did not just blow off the meeting with the bank when you're gonna start sorting your shit out!

basically, i think part of the fun reading this book was how much it made my practical side sweat. i'll probably pick up another one in the series sometime soon when i need another fluffy feel-good read! (me thinks that may be the case after my next book report selection, the bell jar by sylvia plath. yup, i'm back on the high school reading list stuff!

ratings:
hearts: 4 hearts - really fantastically fun read, well written and funny!
farts: 1 fart for keeping my inner monologue yelling at me throughout the 350 pages.

***

so it's giveaway time! you want my copy of confessions of a shopaholic to check out for yourself? it's easy, just leave a comment here about anything at all before monday, october 19 at midnight and you'll automatically be entered to win! one entry per person, suckas!

new garden pics and uhhh... we got chickens!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:13:00 +0000

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!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the omnivore's dilemma

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:46:00 +0000

ok so you know how i go back and forth in my book reports - i'll do some books that are classic high school reading list pieces, some fun chick lit, some nonfiction brainy stuff...

after reading ya ya's in bloom, which i loved by the way, i really was needing something a little more thinky if ya know what i mean. i'd heard from a few peeps that omnivore's dilemma was good so i made that the next read on my list. (i think it's interesting to note that this book was such an intellectual read that i went right back to the other end of the spectrum afterwards and am now reading sophie kinsella's confessions of a shopaholic.)

hearts and laserbeams book report: the omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals by michael pollan

so the omnivore's dilemma the title refers to, it basically is people have so many choices in food we don't know what the hell to eat anymore. food overload. i mean there's more to it than that, but that's the general idea.

if you're into food this book is for you. it basically follows four different food chains from start to finish, with finish always ending up as your mouth. he looks at corn, cows (both commercial and grain fed), and the hunting and gathering lifestyle. and this whole book pretty much makes you want to curl up on your couch and never buy anything from a grocery store ever again.

and it makes you start thinking about effed up the system is.

here's one of the big things i took away from this book, something that bugs the shit out of me:

farm subsidies are given to farmers because they can't sell enough crops to pay their bills. they can't sell enough crops because prices are too low. in an effort to make more money the only thing to do is grow more crops. which equals an even higher market surplus and even lower prices.

there's a huge corn surplus, and every day They (whoever they are) finds more ways to shove it down our throats. one way is to process it so it's kinda corn-flaky and feed it to cows. sounds like a great idea, corn fed cows are supposed to be real tasty. problem is it's a myth; cows aren't even supposed to eat corn and get sick from that diet. so farms have to drug up the cows with antibiotics to keep from getting sick.

another way the corn surplus is shoved down our throats is through value meals at fast food places. you don't need that much food. you don't need a 5 gallon paintbucket full of soda or a 12 pound hamburger. stop it.

basically i got really angry at these parts of the book, and then in the following chapters it talks about a farm that grows all kinds of crops and has all kinds of happy animals living on it in a perfect symbiotic system (thanks to the farmers help), and it made me want to run away to georgia and make all the food josh and i eat. those chapters made me so happy, i am not kidding you.

i loved the last section that was all about hunting and gathering, and i kinda wanna try catchin my own yeast to make bread with... i wonder what it would taste like?

and that's pretty much it - book about food and pretty non-biased but still very much an expose on the system. if you like brainy stuff, and long descriptions of different kinds of food totally turns you on then this book is for you the end!

ratings:
4 hearts: really good stuff to think about, and also it gave me some ideas josh and i can put into practice now
1 fart: it took me a really long time to read this - i'm a busy woman, dammit!

sorry i'm not giving away this copy, my buddy gayle already asked to read it when i was done - but stay tuned, i'll totally be doing a giveaway of my confessions of a shopaholic book.

we feel fine about getting published!!!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:38:00 +0000

a while back (a LONG while back!) i had gotten an email from the website www.wefeelfine.org. their website is all about exploring emotions on the internets, and they had decided to create a book.

and they had discovered this blog post on the livejournal version of my blog, and could they use my middle finger picture in their book?

what's that you say? make my middle finger famous? YES PLEASE!!!

months and months and months went by, enough that i totally forgot about their exciting email. then yesterday i got another one from them, saying "hey sorry it's been so long since you've heard from us, your section of the book got cut but we liked it so much we found a way to put it back in - so you'll be in it!"

and there you have it! my middle finger will be in the book we feel fine, in stores december 1. you should probably go get a pre-order copy from amazon!

this morning's commute playlist, or you should check out these hot traxxxx!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:24:00 +0000

lots of mornings on the way to work i'll hook up my ipod, pick a particular somethin' to listen to and that is it.

other mornings, i set the ipod to shuffle through my schizophrenic music library and pick some gems for me for the 40 mile drive - this morning's playlist was killer! your homework is to check out any of the songs you've never heard before:

1) "take me with u" by prince and the revolution
2) "happy rap" by junior senior
3) "talk dirty to me" by poison
4) "the other way of stopping" by the police
5) "rockabilly" by the mavericks
6) "like a virgin" by madonna
7) "interlude... the set up" by foxy brown
8) "fat bottomed girls" by queen
9) "she's automatic" by rancid
10) "won't get fooled again" by the who
11) "heaven must be missing an angel" by tavares
12) "only the lonely" by roy orbison
13) "dick lips" by blink 182

a quick thought for a monday evening...

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:18:00 +0000

i have quite a lot of times in my life where i am excited and happy about things that are going on.

and i am really fortunate and grateful for how freaking awesome my life and the people involved in it are.

T to the G to the I to the F y'all!!!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:04:00 +0000

this weekend is gonna be jam-packed with awesomeness, here's what josh and i have on tap:

kickball championships on saturday - it's the last games of the season, and it's almost unnecessary to play the games because i know exactly how it's gonna turn out... there's 3 games being played. #1 top team will play the #4 bottom team, the #2 (us!) and the #3 team will play each other, and then the winners of those two games will play each other.

so basically, #1 team will win and we will win (cuz we've beat the #3 team twice before), then we'll play the #1 team and they will kill us because apparently they're amazing. but it'll be good times and there's gauranteed snacks!

after that josh gayle and i are gonna go to the sneak preview showing of whip it at the long beach towne center. i don't know if i've mentioned before... but i'm crazy about roller derby. if i'd discovered it like 10 years ago when i didn't have things like a sometimes-angry knee, and i had the money and time, i would so join a league! but alas, for all the reasons stated above, i must be content to sit and drink my beer from the sidelines.

SO EXCITED FOR THIS MOVIE! josh and i have been waiting for it to come out for months. and if you go to the sneak preview they're givin out free tshirts! they're showin it at more places than long beach town center, check out moviefone.com or fandango.com and you can find the theater near you!

also, sunday morning josh and i are starting a 4 week long sailing class - i don't know why this terrifies me... but i'm kinda freaked out by the idea of driving a boat. i'm pretty sure i know why, but it's a stupid reason so hopefully i'll be able to put that behind me and kick some watery ass!

and then mixed in there will be the usual weekend web design class homework and some writing for the next week's oc weekly blog posts. and painting a commission. aaaaaand what else. sleeping i hope! i definitely hope there'll be some sleeping in there.

like i said, this weekend's gonna be chock full of awesome! will hopefully get a post up this weekend with an update on our backyard garden - our plants have completely BLOWN UP!!!

fight for your right to carbs!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:57:00 +0000

josh decided the other day he was going to start making ribbons out of spaghetti noodles to sell on etsy - to raise carb awareness!

concert fun and internetty news!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:33:00 +0000

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!

he works hard for the money...

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:14:00 +0000

here we see my fabulous huzzz hard at work in the hearts and laserbeams sweat shop! we're sending a box full of tees to shopScad today; if you're in the low country you besss get in that shop later this week and pick one up! shopscad features work by students, alumni and faculty of the savannah college of art and design, and is located at 340 bull street in historic downtown savannah.

not fortunate enough to live in the south? don't fret my pet, our tees are also available online!

i've had the time of my life...

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:32:00 +0000

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!!!!!

all kinds of fun news!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:37:00 +0000

i am chock full of art news today!

yesterday i found out that my art school savannah college of art and design was looking for people that went there to contribute paintings for an upcoming project. so i email the gent, and send him to the paintings section of my etsy shop. he wrote back telling me that my flipping bird painting would be perfect and could i get it out to new york by next tuesday?

um, yes please thank you! even more so when i asked for more details about the project. apparently, scad's working on revamping studio 54 and will be styling a dressing room for an upcoming carrie fisher 1 woman show. and my painting will be in her dressing room.

my painting.

will be in her dressing room.

carrie fisher.

there's talk that hgtv will be covering this project and that us weekly, usa today and other press outlets have made inquiries, and that is awesome. but i'm completely bowled over by it being for CARRIE EFFING FISHER!!!

want a little piece of hearts and laserbeams history? prints of this painting are available!

in other exciting news, my candy corn party fabric design is part of this week's spoonflower halloween contest - i am currently getting my butt kicked by another cute design so please PLEASE consider a vote for hearts and laserbeams! if i win there'll be a great big sale to celebrate!

stop that car!

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:24:00 +0000

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!

gardening with the calverts: month 1

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:30:00 +0000

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?

hearts and laserbeams book report: ya yas in bloom by rebecca wells

noreply@blogger.com (steph) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:45:00 +0000

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.