Coupled Confessions

My latest obsession that has been keeping me occupied in my free time is cardmaking! My friend and I took an introductory cardmaking workshop at Paper Source last week, where we learned how to emboss, stamp, use punches, line envelopes, among other techniques, and I had so much fun! Cards can get so expensive these days if you keep buying them in stores, and it’s so nice to be able to make custom creative cards of your own! I’ve been bitten by the bug and bought some basic tools and supplies and have been daydreaming about all the possible creations I can make! I’m still very much a beginner, but here are some of the cards I’ve made so far…

My current favorite is definitely the embossing. It produces such a cool effect, and is super easy!

Unrelated to the workshop, I also started learning to do paper quilling on my own recently, and decided to try integrating it into my cards in this one:

I even got Dan semi-interested in cardmaking, too! He made the “Bon Appetit” card to the right, below. The other two are ones I made at the workshop.

I am lucky that I work in a field where I can be creative at work, but all the time spent sitting in front of the computer and coding for hours can get a little draining after a while. I like embracing my inner grandma from time to time and working with crafts where I can create things that are more hands-on. Being a graphic designer, I’m used to the ease of designing my own holiday cards on the computer and getting them printed en masse, but this year I’m toying with the idea of handmade holiday cards….

This year was the first year that we got Christmas lights to put up, although they ended up being more for interior decoration since we live in an apartment. I’ve always preferred the colorful oversized bulbs to the mini lights that everyone has, and it looks like The Nest agrees — going bigger and bolder with your lights is becoming a trend! You just have to do it well so that it doesn’t end up looking tacky.

So Dan and I picked out some Christmas lights at the local convenience store but when we got home, we discovered to our dismay–or more to my dismay–that they were actually not as opaque as we had anticipated. In fact, they were totally translucent and you could clearly see the filament within.

translucent Christmas lights

The easy (and probably normal) thing to do in this situation would be to go back to the store and return them, but we decided to be a little creative with the mishap and try making them not translucent nor opaque, but frosted! You don’t see too many oversized frosted bulbs being sold, so we decided to “make” them ourselves.

Dan tested frosting one to see how well it would work.

What a difference!

Setting up the lights in an array to be frosted.

The secret ingredient!

Spraying the bulbs outside. (Please ignore the Trader Joes steamer clams box.)

Post-frosting: the bulbs are set out to dry for half an hour.

The frosted lights give off the soft lighting we were hoping for. Success!

Converting the Christmas lights into frosted lights was super easy. So easy, in fact, that this probably didn’t really warrant a post… haha* But it was a fun little collaborative project for the two of us. If anyone ever wants frosted lights but can’t find any, you know what to do!

I realized recently that we didn’t have enough magnets to post things up on our fridge, but looked around and found it hard to find magnets that I really liked that weren’t expensive. (Why are magnets so expensive? They’re just magnets…) So I decided to explore my inner Martha Stewart to create my own. I did some research online and found that these handmade marble magnets are a very easy DIY project and you can customize how the magnets will look by what patterns of paper/cloth you put inside them. It seems like it’s a very common DIY project, so there are lots of tutorials for them out there, but the one I chose to follow was at Not Martha. The instructions are very thorough and come with step-by-step photos.

All you need are small round magnets (you can find them in packs), marbles that are flat on one side, circular cut-outs from patterned/illustrated paper or cloth (the most tedious part was cutting them out), silicone glue and a toothpick to help with assembly. You can find all of them at Michael’s or any other craft store, so definitely try making these yourself!

Here are the magnets that I created…

I made a batch of fifty... no shortage of magnets for a while!

Experimenting with different patterns and cut-outs from magazines.

Some of my favorites used musical notes (à la sheet music) and typed text.

For all you computer/electronic fan-boys out there, here is a treat for you. I just finished building my new workhorse computer; ready for hardcore video editing, rendering, and entertainment. The case is ancient, its probably 10 years old. But it is one of those old school Antec Towers that serious computer users sought after. For modern day components, the case was due for some serious modifications to both the cooling and the looks. Here is a brief list of things modified: 3x120mm Radiator with grill, carrying handles, HDD LED relocation, VU stereo meter (the ring of LEDs), Tinted Plexy front window, Glass side window, custom made fan controller, 80mm rear fan converted to 120mm, black paint job, improved dust filters, and more.

So the next question people are probably going to bring up is, why the AMD 955 instead of the Intel i7? The answer is a no brainier for me, I confidently support AMD over its ruthless competitor. The hard fact is that the i7 is a stronger CPU, but ever since my first AMD computer made for video editing (1Ghz Althon) I’ve been an AMD enthusiast. Plus after hearing the news about Intel’s non-competitive scandal, I can’t help but make my purchase a statement. Please take a moment to read the article. Intel already holds the majority of the PC & Mac market, but they just couldn’t stop there, they had to black-mail other companies to avoid supporting AMD products. So please next time you consider buying a new computer, give AMD a chance. With every AMD sold, Intel is forced to lower their inflated prices.

So in case you were wondering about the specs, here they are. As for CPU overclocking, I’m holding off on that for the time being. I plan to Lap the CPU surface to maximize my water-cooled investment. Overall cost without the case – $850

AMD AM3 955 Black Edition 3.2 Ghz Quad-Core
4GB DDR3 1600Mhz memory (7-7-7-20 2.0VC)
MSI 790FX GD70 Motherboard
MSI 250 GTS 512MB video card
1TB Seagate Hard drive (7200 generation 12)
650watt Antec Earthwatt 80 Plus Powersupply
Dual Boot – Windows 7 & Windows XP x64

One another note, I’d like to make a bold statement and recommend people take a leap of faith and try out MS’s new OS, Windows 7. This is without a doubt the best OS windows has had to date! It is very stable, fancy, and full of features that even expert computer users can appreciate. At first glance, you may say it’s just Vista or an OSX clone. But it is actually a totally new OS that is fresh and inspiring. Make sure to check out the Aero view, the new “windows – tab” function, the new task bar, and responsive feel. I discover new features everyday I use it! I even feel that it is more fancy than OSX, in comparison to the Mac Pro I use everyday at work.

Last Saturday, Dan and I attended the 2nd Annual Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco. Held at the festival pavilion in Fort Mason, over 200 craft artists came together to show off and sell their goodies — all things handmade including clothing, jewelry, stationery, bath soaps, ceramics, posters, plush dolls, even cupcakes! We had a great time exploring all the crafts that the huge variety of artsy fartsy vendors had to offer. You can get a glimpse at some of the lovely items here, although I admit I was too busy checking out the goods to take too many pictures.

They had a photo booth there, and Dan and I had some good fun snapping some silly shots:

The Renegade Craft Fair toured four big cities this year — Brooklyn, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. I already can’t wait for it to come back next year!