Love Your New CD

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“Love Your New CD” read the email title.

“Huh?” I thought brilliantly. (I really need to stop reading my email before 6:00 am.)

“I used to have this thing…” writes my friend Mike, “when I got bored, I’d take photos of people I know and make them into fake CD covers.

“I was on your blog and spotted your photo of you with the dinosaur bone, and I said, ‘Now THAT is the shot for her book jacket or album cover.’ Which meant I had to test it out. The album title means nothing, except that when I closed my eyes to come up with one, I started thinking of the Kennedy assassination for some reason.”

Um, Mike? Why do I make you think of the Kennedy assassination?

You can see more of Mike’s crazy CD covers here.

You’re Looking for *what*?

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I have to hand it to you guys - you search for some crazy things on the Internet. I was glancing at my web stats yesterday, which show me how people find my blog, and I saw that someone had been looking for “totem poles made out of playdoh”.

Of course then I was dying of curiosity. What else have people have been searching for? So I immediately had to stop everything and page through the hundreds of search terms in my stats looking for gems.

Now I get a lot of people looking for Krav Maga, but “krav maga ‘my husband’” really made me laugh. Could you be a little more specific? Like, I don’t know, maybe his name would help?

Some of them are just weird, like “eyeballs falling out dream” and “i can fly by flapping my arms”.

Out of all of them, though, this one was the standout, hands-down winner:

how to make llama poop earrings

Whaaaa?

I bet the people at Google have lists of these all over the office…

With Your Eyes Turned Skyward

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Wandering around the Red Bull Air Races pit lane walk yesterday, I fell in love with the little faces on the front of the planes. They all look so surprised!

This is Matt Hall’s plane. He’s a funny bloke from Australia, and we had a lovely little chat with him (although I somehow failed to get a photo of him). And by “we” of course I mainly mean Andy, who can talk planes with the best of them. Did I mention Andy has his pilot’s license? And that he used to build airline flight simulators for a living? He’s a man of many talents, that Andy.



I love this quote, which Matt Hall had printed on the wall of his hangar:

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” Leonardo da Vinci

Mind you, on the other side of his hangar it said “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” Ha!

Lensbaby F18s and MIGS, Oh My!

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The weekend has been redeemed, at least for Andy, because we made it to the Red Bull Air Races pit lane walk today. This was way cheaper than a ticket to the races, which is not in the budget. As it was pay-per-car, I went along for the ride to try out my new Lensbaby lens. I was hoping I’d love it, since Andy stole the lens I used to use on photo shoots. Well, he says he “permanently borrowed” the lens. You do the math.



I haven’t had this much fun shooting photos since my old Diana plastic camera died the death of all old plastic toys during our trip to China. It’s just plain old fun taking crazy, imperfect pictures of the world. Not at all like the precision of studio photography. Which is exactly what I’m looking for in my spare time. Something that’s Not At All Like Work.

According to Andy, who knows about these things, that’s an F18 Hornet in the top photo, and the engine of a MIG 21 in the bottom photo. I know, I know, neither of these are Red Bull Air Races planes. I did get some shots of those planes. I’ll pop them up in the next few days.

Crabwise

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We went to watch the practice for the Red Bull Air Races today, and sat there for two hours waiting for the cloud ceiling to lift so the planes could fly. The planes never did get a chance to practice, but I was entertained by these charming little crabs, who were stuffing their faces with something-or-other that they were picking off the rocks. Andy was pretty disappointed that the planes never came out, but I could happily spend many an afternoon sitting by the sea and watching crabs scuttle around.

Through the Mists of Time

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And yet another necklace! I’m having a lot of fun setting these stones. My goal is to get through my current stash before the next gem show, although I admit to ordering a few stones online yesterday. I’m so impatient!



This gorgeous stone is a piece of fossilized dinosaur bone from the Utah/Colorado border. These stones were created when dinosaur bones became buried in silt, and over time were slowly replaced by minerals. You can still see the structure of the bone, which gives it a gorgeous pattern. It shades from a khaki green at the top to a deep green at the bottom, with a rust-red pattern throughout. I’ve set it in sterling silver with a fine silver bezel.

Love it? You can find this necklace up in my Etsy shop.

With Feathers in Her Hair

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I found this stone in a box of fossilized coral, but when I did a little research, it turns out this piece is fossilized fern. I love the pattern - it reminds me of feathers. So I added a little flair with some melted silver balls. The sterling silver balls are made from recycled silver scraps, which I’ve melted down and reused.



I got a great deal on these stones, so these necklaces are really reasonably priced. My last one of these went really fast, so grab it while you can!

Creative Spices

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Creative use of star anise. I decided this necklace needed a more textured background to show it off. How entertaining to be able to use my chai spices for more than just chai!