Clay time

I've been looking at lots and lots of pictures and tutorials on making miniature foods with polymer clay.

Literally, absorbing as much as I can for the past several months, really. It comes and goes in waves. I cannot resist learning as much as I can get my hands on.

So today I think I'm going to try to crack the cupcake code.

There is a certain person who sells cupcakes from polymer clay, who won't give one iota of information about any of her techniques. Well, I realise this is her prerogative (Britney rolls around in her skivvies in bed), but surely there are a few things she can share that she's learned. The sad thing is, she's more than likely used tutorials from others to help her out in ways, so I see it as a give what you get.

Anyhow, she's claiming it's protecting trade secrets, when in reality, even if she were to tell us how she does it, noone would make cupcakes the way she does. It's not possible. Chris told me a story about someone trying to play Van Halen using his amp settings, and they didn't sound like Van Halen at all, even with his settings in place. It will always turn out different.

So this is why I feel the need to crack her cupcake-making method. At least the texture of the cake. I am almost 100% sure she uses some form of inclusion. They look almost like they have moonies, so I know she uses mostly transparent with a tiny bit of colour. Maybe even oil pants used to tint the clay. I need to buy some oil pastels to test that out. I'm figuring besides the quality of the transparent clay, what else might create moonies or the cakey-texture is an inclusion. My number one contenders at the moment are salt and embossing powder. so I'm going to have a crack at some test pieces today.

I have no problem sharing the things that I learn. The girl who runs monsterkookies.com is wonderful in that way. She could easily hide all the things she knows, but she doesn't because, well, frankly, she isn't an insecure prick. LOL My goal is to be friends with her one day, or at least affiliates when I've got my clay shop up :D She is such a cool lady!

3 for me, none for you

I just ate breakfast and I'm having my green/chamomile tea. I like having a nice, cooked breakfast in the morning with a cup of tea. It's comforting. I almost didn't today out of sheer laziness, but I cooked it all fast like a ninja!

I definitely ate more junk yesterday than I should have. i had a small bowl of ice cream after lunch, and then later after a big dinner decided I needed an even bigger bowl of icecream, which was a bad idea. I could barely finish it off really. And then of course cause I was stuffed to the gills, that triggered a special bonus feature otherwise known as my lethal gases. Haha!I felt guilty, about the big bowl of ice cream, simple because I knew it wasn't GOOD for me. I wasn't really thinking, it's gonna make me fat. More that it was more sugar and fat than my body knew what to do with. I saw it as a waste, actually! isn't that nutty??

I remembered to download a few things last nite....Tori Amos' Scarlet Walk albumn, and The Rocket Summer and Jewel's Spirit. It was while falling asleep a couple nites ago Scarlet's Walk popped into my head (well, the idea of it). That albumn is really special to me. I've tried listening to other Tori Amos albumns but really, when you've heard one you've heard them all in a lot of ways. This one is special to me because I listened to it for hours upon hours while doing my still life drawing that I set up in my old computer room in Arizona. As most grueling art projects are, at the time it was painful to say the least. But I always look back on those times as really special. It was just me, lost in my head, with a pencil. The world fell away, I was a lady on a mission.

I fondly think of the project I worked on with a teacher who's name I can't even recall at the moment. It wasn't long before I moved. I took over the kitchen. The dining table became my gluing station, the kitchen island became my clay station, one of the kitchen counters my clay-softening stations. I can remember the smell of the lavendar baby oil I used to soften the clay. The squishy feel of it all between my fingers. Running back and forth between the living room (drawing) to the computer room (scanning,editing, printing) to the office (photocopy made on fax machine) to the kitchen to do my transfers. It was a scary, busy flurry, but it was me in my element , really. I had my stereo there too, and I constantly played Lionel Richie, Steve Miller Band, and Kenny Rogers (my mom was shocked by that one!).

I was thinking about how strange it is that, when I start working on something, my entire day is gone. Normally that would be a good thing, but it gives me anxiety...Like my day went by without me hardly acknowledging it. Like time goes by so fast, and it already feels like it goes by fast enough, what with my fear of death, my fear of losing the people I love and care about.

I got to thinking, Chris told me before that I have this intense fear of hard work. Now I can see how working on a project, and how that eats up my time, worries me. It's almost as if I'm investing my life in something that is ultimately useless.

But you see, that's my dad's opinion pushing mine away...not even letting mine dare to exist.

Ever since I was a little girl in Ishikawa Elementary, drawing, art in general was so important to me. I was always so isolated. I rarely played with the other kids (and only then if they were people I knew. I was always fiercely picky about who I felt safe with). I will never forget the day we had our first art class. We went out to a trailer set up out beside the playing field. It was pretty small....a bunch of kids at different circular tables. We were told to imagine up and create our own bird. It's funny, really, because afterwards we hung our birds up on the wall, and I remember waiting for people to comment on mine. Wether they did or not, I don't remember, but it's irrelevant really. What was important was the fact that I had this expectation to be praised. As though I knew, this is what I do, look how good I am at it! Now I wonder where that came from :)

This is why I find it so easy to believe in past lives. There's a confidence there, a knowing there, that seemed to always be a part of me. It was just, as corny as this sounds, a part of the truth of my soul that I already knew but simply had to reconnect with.

I think I'll leave it off at that.

Number One

So this is where it has to stop.

Well, not completely stop. But begin, I guess.

The stopping of the voices of everyone else. The end of the suppression of my own voice. The beginning of daring myself to have the courage to be who I am, and stop trying to be what everyone else has always wanted of me.

It's no small step. Even just starting, here and now, I stand on the verge of a sublime emotion caught up between thrill and complete vulnerability. How do I navigate through this, when I feel like I only just realised it had to be done?

How can a person who was always guilted into surrendering to others stop that attachment to guilt, chop down the proverbial jungle plants in my path, and feel strong enough after the fallout, after the shit hits the fan, to continue?

I don't know, obviously. This is my uncharted terrain, attempting to make sense os my situation as best I can with some bottled water and a keyboard, the sound of the dryer thumping making the floor vibrate beneath my bare feet.

I've read so many things tonite. I believe fate guiding my mouse here and there, the day passing in a blur of firefox tabs and stories so sad that I wanted to reach out and pull the person to me and hold them safe and still.

So, the beginning. Picking through the memories that trail behind me like bad cologne.

My parents are from the former Yugoslavia, moved to Chicago soon after marriage. My brother was born in Chicago and I followed 11 years later, born in Arizona in 1982.

My conception was no small miracle. From the details I've been able to gather, after my brother was born my mom had some type of birth control device implanted in her nether-region. It was metal of some sort. When it came time that they weren't completely dirt poor and wanted to have another kid, my mom went to get the device removed. For some time after, they had no luck conceiving. She feared that the device had somehow screwed up her insides. After visiting another doctor, they were advised to move to a warmer climate, I suppose to help stimulate the ovaries.

So basically I was, as I like to say, smoked out.

Moving on....

I'm very young. I don't know how young. I looked perfectly normal for my age, even cute. I had long, naturally blonde hair. I was a firestarter, often causing fights between my brother and I.

I remember my dad had gotten me a small kitchenette set as a gift (one of those child-sized ones). It was made entirely of sheets of metal, painted to look like a kitchen. I was disappointed to say the least. Even at that age it was obvious my dad opted for the cheap alternative to the type I actually wanted. Though I remember thinking to myself that I wouldn't say anything, lest I make him feel bad about it. A few minutes at a time, my brother would put it together for me little by little. The most interesting and interactive aspect of this kitchenette was it did have a "cabinet" along the bottom, that actually opened. I vaguely recall mixing something green into my dad's shaving cream and storing these "pies" inside that cabinet.

Being a child of parents born outside of an English-speaking country, I inherited an unusual, difficult-to-pronounce name. This name was the first true bane of my existance. Children being essentially ignorant little creatures, I was teased because of my name. One day at school in particular we were assigned the task of going to the library and doing "research" to find the name of an animal that begins with the same letter our first names began with. Mine being a "J", I found "Jaguar" and was satisfied with this choice. When we all returned to class, we were made to sit in a large circle and one by one recite our name along with the animal. I think I can remember my best friend, Taylor, had picked "Toucan." When it came to be my turn, I stated my name and "Jaguar." My teacher insisted that that was incorrect....that I needed an animal with a Y sound (in my name, the J is pronounced as a Y). When she asked the kids what animal would work, they all, somehow, came up with the colourful "Yak." Much to their sniggering delight. Well, I did what I was told, it hadn't been my fault the teacher wasn't more specific to begin with. A yak wasn't exactly a noble creature for a little girl to pair her name with.

Maybe that's when my feelings of masculinity began.

But I'll continue that next time. It's past 4am, and rest is much needed.

test