lots of updates (very long)

1. i went to the chuck palahniuk event last night, and it was AMAZING. i mean, beyond amazing. i was even one of the lucky people who got a wristband to meet chuck and get my book ('snuff', his new one, which he was there to promote) personalized! here are some pictures:

chuck talking up 'snuff'. i loved hearing him talk about his work, his thought process, and his reactions to how the world perceives him and his writing. also, when asked what some of his favourite books were growing up, he cited ray bradbury's 'the martian chronicles', which just so happens to be one of my favourite books, as well!

my copy of 'snuff' and my ticket stub for the event. i will treasure them always ♥.

so here is one of the blow-up sex dolls that chuck threw into the crowd. some friends we made while in line for the signing caught one, and let me and jason take pictures with it. then we all had fun making fun of his non-anatomically correct body parts. see: his mouth is red only inside his lips. see: his horribly-drawn chest/chest hair. see: his heart-shaped head. there were other discrepancies, but i'm trying to keep this blog rated-pg :p.

my signed and personalized page of 'snuff'. too funny (and sweet, in a weird chuck way)! he even sprayed several of the pages with a -really really good smelling- cologne. mmm, i can smell it any time i want and remember that moment :). and i LOVE his handwriting.

me with chuck! ♥ ♥ ♥. i was so starstricken that all i really could manage to say was, "i'm enamoured!" to which he said, "oh!" it was a magical moment. as you can see, i was pretty happy with his arm around me and everything. oh, and look - well, you can't really see it that well, but i'm wearing a necklace from my new line that will be revealed soon in my shop :).

so that was my wonderful chuck night :). it was everything i hoped it would be and more. i really didn't expect i'd be able to meet my absolute favourite author. he's such a great guy :).

2. one of my pendant necklaces, 'pollen', got featured in two treasuries yesterday! thank you, tizz, for being of the currators :). not only that, but i came home from chuck at almost 1 in the morning to find that i had actually sold the necklace! sweet!

this got sold to my first canadian customer (yay!), and she also bought my 'ambrosia' pendant necklace, each for just $4 (remember my clearance on my tile pendants? yeah! go take advantage of that! :D).

3. i am designing my newest line of pendant necklaces, which are going to be similar in style to the tile ones, but better! for this new venture, i needed to get familiar with epoxy. i've always kind of stayed away from it because of all the health hazards, but it was necessary to use for what i'm trying to do.

me, prepping my pendants for epoxyness. sexy, i know. :p.

anyway, the point of this story is that melissa is clueless when it comes to epoxy. well, not anymore, i guess, but i sure was when i started this project! my experiment was... not meant to be. at least, not on the day i tried it the first time. first, i wanted to work outside because of the fumes from the epoxy, so i set up everything on my front patio. i went back inside to get the epoxy, and when i came back out, i found that a big wind gust (it has been very windy the last few days) blew all my wood pieces and all my metal findings all over the yard. ugh. this did not bode well for the rest of my task. so i moved everything inside, to the living room (which is very open) and proceeded to work. everything was going fine more or less, but later i realized that i didn't use enough epoxy, so the metal findings i was attaching to the wood pendant popped right off, even when i waited several hours for it to cure (it says usable strength in just 1 hour on the package, so clearly i did something wrong). i was just trying to avoid having a huge clump of glue on the back of each pendant, but i guess that's how it's actually supposed to be. i'll try again on sunday. hmph. but at least i provided you with a picture you can make fun of me forever with ;p.

4. the eddie izzard performance is tomorrow, and brandon and i are excited! we're not allowed to take pictures at that event, though, so i won't have anything like that to show you :(. but i will let you know how it went :).

okay, i'm off to package that order that's going to canada!

♥,
melissa

a startling discovery

well, the internet, on wednesday i went to buy my wedding dress. my maid-of-honour and best friend, sarah, went with me, and we also bought her dress. then we went to ulta and bought my nailpolish and makeup for the big day. it was a really great day, and i had a lot of fun catching up with her. we don't get to hang out very often because she goes to the prestigous university of texas and i live an hour away :(.

but today's blog entry story comes from a realization i made just yesterday.

backtrack to wednesday: i wanted to get pictures of me in my wedding dress so i could show my mom, who had wanted to come but had to work. all sarah and i had to take pictures with was her camera phone, however, because i was not thinking clearly due to the fact that i hadn't got a lot of sleep the night before (brandon had his friends over till 1 in the morning). so sarah took pictures, and yesterday she emailed them to me. obviously, they were blurry, but i was glad i at least had something to show my mom.

so i opened up the picture file after receiving it in my email, and i made a startling, horrifying discovery.

i'm not sure if any of you are familiar with lost highway, but it's a movie directed by david lynch and it is very messed up. needless to say, it is one of my favourite films, as i have weird tastes :p. anyway, robert blake (yes, that robert blake) plays this really creepy guy in the film, and my first thought upon seeing me in that wedding dress was: holy crap, my face looks strikingly familiar to robert blake's in lost highway.



this is not a good thing, the internet.

please note:

• the pale face


• me with very small eyebrows, robert blake with no eyebrows


• the wide, dark eyes


• the similar noses


• the colour of the lips
  

and most terrifyingly:

• the same exact smile. right down to the crescent wrinkles and dimples.
  

when i pointed this out to brandon, he exclaimed: honey, you really need to come up with a different smile.

yeah... i'm definately going to work on that. i always thought i looked creepy smiling in pictures, but it took my wedding dress photo for me to realize just why! ugh!


...

in other news, these are the nailpolishes i came home with:

the colour on the left is 'chicago champagne toast', and it's what i'm wearing on my wedding day. the colour is a little off in this photo; it's actually less mauve than that. the one in the middle is my favourite, and it's called 'gargantuan green grape'. brandon's actually letting me paint our bathrooms this colour (yay! i've always wanted a green bathroom, for some reason). the one on the right is 'do you lilac it?'. gotta love opi nailpolish names!

also, i have several new books to read this summer! i bought lullaby (chuck palahniuk; the only book by him that i haven't read), no country for old men (cormac mccarthy), teacher man (frank mccourt, another of my favourite authors), a gemstone reference book, and another mothman book. those should keep me busy, don't you think? :)

well, i'm off to start making some new, exciting merch for my shop! and my sale ends tomorrow, so don't forget to take advantage of that!

♥,
melissa

oh noz! teh internets is failed!

you might have noticed, the internet, that i have not been adding to my blog the last few days. let me explain: i live in a very small town, and when 70mph winds come through (with rain, hail, and a vortex that became a tornado a few miles away), the radio signal that connects me to the internet via a huge tower nearby goes bye-bye! well, just such a scenario took place a week and a half ago, and while i was able to connect to the net for 5-minute spurts, i certainly couldn't type out a blog these past few days. we had a technician come out and fix everything (finally...), so now i can resume my blogging (and running my business properly)!

things that are going on:

• i listed some new pendant necklaces in my shop! here's an example:

• there are these two birds that keep perching next to our windows and peering in at us. one we named harvey, and the other crestor. like the heart medication. this is because he has a crest of feathers on top of his head, and i though 'crest-or' would be a funny name :p. i couldn't get the best picture of him (he flies away when i pull out my camera, the sneaky bugger), but here:

see him up there? sorry for the crappy-quality photo, it truly was the best i could do in a split-second!

this is the archway in front of our house. there are eggs in the birdhouse, but no birds seem to be using the bird feeder yet for some reason.

there's harvey on the electrical pole's guidewire, watching me carefully :p.

• i'm having a clearance sale! grab what you want a.s.a.p. because i'm unlisting all that stuff friday morning (maybe saturday if i forget, haha). there are tons of pendant necklaces in there for just $5!
  
• i am so looking forward to seeing my favourite author, chuck palahniuk, in just a few weeks! i just got done reading his nonfiction fugitives and refugees and i've started on his other nonfiction stranger than fiction.
  
• i am a big fan of quentin tarantino and robert rodriguez (whose house i drive past whenever i drive to austin), so it's amazing that i never got around to seeing the grindhouse double feature of planet terror and death proof. well, i bought them and watched them with brandon this weekend, and let me just say that i am in love with death proof. what an awesome flick (other than all the drug use, but it does sort of serve a purpose). the music is really cool for the most part, too.
  
• my wholesale order made it safely to its owner, and she loved the earrings! i am so happy! if they sell well, she's going to order more :).

well, believe it or not, that's all i've got to say right now. i hope everyone's having a great week, and don't forget to check out my clearance!

♥,
melissa

done one

this 6x6x6 box holds the 40 pairs of earrings i made for my first wholesale order! yes, i am done! it only took about 3 days to do everything that was needed, plus i threw in a magnet set as a sample :). here's to hoping these sell out super-fast and she needs MORE! :D

let's see, what else is going on today? i'm mailing that box ^, plus some pendant necklaces that didn't sell in my shop (and were about to expire) to a friend of mine (yay freebies!). i have a custom order for solid gold-accented pendant necklaces and/or earrings that i need to concentrate on, plus i need to design/order more moo cards, start making my newest line of washi cuties, remake some pieces that i sold recently, and mop the floors (friends are coming over tomorrow night!). plus, i'm really into my book that came in the mail yesterday, so i'll probably read a bit more of that.

oh, something i forgot to mention several days ago: my favourite author, chuck palahniuk (fight club, survivor, etc.), is going to be in austin for a book signing on june 5th! yes, i am totally going! wow, this summer keeps getting better and better :). the plan is to meet up with my friend jason (who was my history professor at one time) and go to bookpeople, where the signing is. jason's met chuck in the past, so maybe i can get a picture taken with him? brandon hasn't decided if he's going or not.

one more notable thing: gift sets in my shop are now just $25! i realized that i wasn't offering any kind of discount for essentially buying a pendant necklace plus a set of earrings, so that's why i reduced the price. now you save $1 by buying the gift set :). just a few months ago, i had the gift sets priced at $30, and while they were selling, i started buying supplies in bulk at a discount, so i passed it along to the customer, like any good etsian would! here's one of my favourites:



you can find all my gift sets here, in my shop :).

have a great day, everyone! i sure am going to be busy, but that's how i like it :).

♥,
melissa